[227] Mr. Langton married the widow of the Earl of Rothes; post, March 20, 1771.
[228] Horace Walpole, writing of 1764, says:—'As one of my objects was to raise the popularity of our party, I had inserted a paragraph in the newspapers observing that the abolition of vails to servants had been set on foot by the Duke of Bedford, and had been opposed by the Duke of Devonshire. Soon after a riot happened at Ranelagh, in which the footmen mobbed and ill-treated some gentlemen who had been active in that reformation.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ii. 3.
[229]
'Alexis shunned his fellow swains,
Their rural sports and jocund strains,
(Heaven guard us all from Cupid's bow!)
He lost his crook, he left his flocks;
And wandering through the lonely rocks,
He nourished endless woe.'
The Despairing Shepherd.
[230] 'In his amorous effusions Prior is less happy; for they are not dictated by nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They have the coldness of Cowley without his wit, the dull exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study…. In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college.' Johnson's Works, viii. 15, 22.
[231] Florizel and Perdita is Garrick's version of The Winters Tale. He cut down the five acts to three. The line, which is misquoted, is in one of Perdita's songs:—
'That giant ambition we never can dread;
Our roofs are too low for so lofty a head;
Content and sweet cheerfulness open our door,
They smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'
Act ii. sc. 1.
[232] Horace. Sat. i. 4. 34.