(475) The resignation of Lord North, and the formation of the Rockingham administration.-E.
(476) Edward Chamberlayne, Esq. recently appointed secretary of the treasury. He was so overcome by a nervous terror of the responsibility of the office, that he committed suicide, by throwing himself out of a window on the 6th of April. On the following day, Hannah More sent the subjoined account of this melancholy event to her sister:—"Chamberlayne! the amiable, the accomplished, the virtuous, the religious Chamberlayne! in the full vigour of his age, high in reputation, happy in his prospects, threw him self out of the Treasury window, was taken up alive, and lived thirty-six hours in the most perfect possession of his mental activity, his religion, and his reasoning faculties. With an astonishing composure he settled his affairs with both worlds. He never seemed to feel any remorse, or to reproach his conscience with the guilt of suicide. In vain had they entreated him to accept of this place. In a fatal moment he consented: after this, he never had a moment's peace, and little or no sleep; this brought on a slow nervous fever, but not to confine him a moment. I saw him two days before. He looked pale and eager, and talked with great disgust of his place, on my congratulating him on such an acquisition. We chatted away, however, and he grew pleasant; and we parted— never to meet again."-E.
(477) In a review of the edition of the Works of Mason which appeared in 1816, the quarterly Review, after expressing a wish that this and the Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers had been included in the collection, says, "The Archaeological Epistle was an hasty but animated effusion, drawn forth by the Rowleian Controversy, and dressed in the garb of old English verse, in order to obviate the argument drawn from the difficulty of writing in the language of the fifteenth century. The task might indeed have been per; formed by many; but the sentiments accorded with the known declarations of Mason." Vol. xv. p. 385.-E.
Letter 246 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, May 24, 1782. (page 312)
You are always kind to me, dear Sir, in all respects, but I have been forced to recur to a rougher prescription than ass's milk. The pain and oppression on my breast obliged me to be blooded two days together, which removed my cold and fever; but, as I foresaw, left me the gout in their room. I have had it in my left foot and hand for a week, but it is going. This cold is very epidemic. I have at least half a dozen nieces and great-nieces confined with it. but it is not dangerous or lasting. I shall send you, within this day or two, the new edition of my Anecdotes of Painting; you will find very little new: it is a cheap edition for the use of artists, and that at least they who really want the book, and not the curiosity, may have it, without being forced to give the outrageous price at which the Strawberry edition sells, merely because it is rare.
I could assure Mr. Gough, that the Letter on Chatterton cost me 6 very small pains. I had nothing to do but recollect and relate the exact truth. There has been published another piece on it, which I cannot tell whether meant to praise or to blame me, so wretchedly is it written; and I have received another anonymous one, dated Oxford, (which may be to disguise Cambridge) and which professes to treat me very severely, though stuffed with fulsome compliments. It abuses me for speaking modestly of myself—a fault I hope I shall never mend; avows agreeing with me on the supposition of the poems, which may be a lie, for it is not uncharitable to conclude that an anonymous writer is a liar; acquits me of being at all accessory to the poor lad's catastrophe; and then, with most sensitive nerves, is shocked to death, and finds me guilty of it, for having, after it happened, dropped, that had he lived he might have fallen into more serious forgeries, though I declare that I never heard that he did. To be sure, no Irishman ever blundered more than to accuse one of an ex post facto murder! If this Hibernian casuist is smitten enough with his own miscarriage to preserve it in a magazine phial, I shall certainly not answer it, not even by this couplet which is suggested:
So fulsome, yet so captious too, to tell you much it grieves me, That though your flattery makes me sick, your peevishness relieves me.
Adieu, my good Sir. Pray inquire for your books, if you do not receive them: they go by the Cambridge Fly.
Letter 247 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Berkeley Square, June 1, 1782. (page 313)
I thank you much, dear Sir, for your kind intention about Elizabeth of York;. but it would be gluttony and rapacity to accept her: I have her already in the picture of her marriage,(478) which was Lady Pomfret's; besides Vertue's print of her, with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law. In truth I have not room for any more pictures any where; yet, without plundering you, or without impoverishing myself, I have supernumerary pictures with which I can furnish your vacancies; but I must get well first to look them out. As yet I cannot walk alone; and my posture, as you see, makes me write ill. It is impossible to recover in such weather—never was such a sickly time.