[534] 'Dr. Johnson,' writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'was no complainer of ill-usage. I never heard him even lament the disregard shown to Irene.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 386. See ante, i. 200.
[535] Letter to the People of Scotland against the attempt to diminish the number of the Lords of Session, 1785. BOSWELL. 'By Mr. Burke's removal from office the King's administration was deprived of the assistance of that affluent mind, which is so universally rich that, as long as British literature and British politicks shall endure, it will be said of Edmund Burke, Regum equabat [sic] opes animis.' p.71.
[536] Georgics, iv. 132.
[537] See ante, iii. 56, note 2.
[538] Very likely Boswell.
[539] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[540] Johnson had said:—'Lord Chesterfield is the proudest man this day existing.' Ante, i. 265.
[541] Lord Shelburne. At this time he was merely holding office till a new Ministry was formed. On April 5 he was succeeded by the Duke of Portland. His 'coarse manners' were due to a neglected childhood. In the fragment of his Autobiography he describes 'the domestic brutality and ill-usage he experienced at home,' in the South of Ireland. 'It cost me,' he continues, 'more to unlearn the habits, manners, and principles which I then imbibed, than would have served to qualify me for any rôle whatever through life.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 12, 16.
[542] Bentham, it is reported, said of of him that 'alone of his own time, he was a "Minister who did not fear the people."' Ib. iii. 572.
[543] Malagrida, a Jesuit, was put to death at Lisbon in 1761, nominally on a charge of heresy, but in reality on a suspicion of his having sanctioned, as confessor to one of the conspirators, an attempt to assassinate King Joseph of Portugal. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XV, ch. xxxviii. 'His name,' writes Wraxall (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 67), 'is become proverbial among us to express duplicity.' It was first applied to Lord Shelburne in a squib attributed to Wilkes, which contained a vision of a masquerade. The writer, after describing him as masquerading as 'the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College,' continues:—'A little more of the devil, my Lord, if you please, about the eyebrows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida, I protest.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 164. 'George III. habitually spoke of Shelburne as "Malagrida," and the "Jesuit of Berkeley Square."' Ib. iii. 8. The charge of duplicity was first made against Shelburne on the retirement of Fox (the first Lord Holland) in 1763. 'It was the tradition of Holland House that Bute justified the conduct of Shelburne, by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud." "I can see the fraud plainly enough," is said to have been Fox's retort, "but where is the piety?"' Ib. i. 226. Any one who has examined Reynolds's picture of Shelburne, especially 'about the eyebrows,' at once sees how the name of Jesuit was given.