[1028] Foote had taken off Lord Chesterfield in The Cozeners. Mrs. Aircastle trains her son Toby in the graces. She says to her husband:—'Nothing but grace! I wish you would read some late Posthumous Letters; you would then know the true value of grace.' Act ii. sc. 2.
[1029] See ante, p.78, note 1.
[1030] See a pamphlet entitled Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne, included in Swift's Works, ed. 1803, vi. 163.
[1031] Carleton, according to the Memoirs, made his first service in the navy in 1672—seventeen years before the siege of Derry. There is no mention of this siege in the book.
[1032] 'He had obtained, by his long service, some knowledge of the practic part of an engineer.' Preface to the Memoirs.
[1033] Nearly 200 pages in Bohn's edition. See ante, i. 71, for Johnson's rapid reading.
[1034] Lord Mahon (War of the Succession in Spain, Appendix, p. 131) proves that a Captain Carleton really served. 'It is not impossible,' he says, 'that the MS. may have been intrusted to De Foe for the purpose of correction or revision...The Memoirs are most strongly marked with internal proofs of authenticity.' Lockhart (Life of Scott, iii. 84) says:—'It seems to be now pretty generally believed that Carleton's Memoirs were among the numberless fabrications of De Foe; but in this case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his Cavalier, he no doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer.' Dr. Burton (Reign of Queen Anne ii. 173) says that MSS. in the British Museum disprove 'the possibility of De Foe's authorship.'
[1035] Lord Chesterfield (Letters, ii. 109) writing to his son on Nov. 29, 1748, says of Mr. Eliot:—'Imitate that application of his, which has made him know all thoroughly, and to the bottom. He does not content himself with the surface of knowledge; but works in the mine for it, knowing that it lies deep.'
[1036] The Houghton Collection was sold in 1779 by the third Earl of Orford, to the Empress of Russia for £40,555. (Walpole's Letters, vii. 227, note 1.)
Horace Walpole wrote on Aug. 4 of that year (ib. p. 235):—'Well! adieu to Houghton! about its mad master I shall never trouble myself more. From the moment he came into possession, he has undermined every act of my father that was within his reach, but, having none of that great man's sense or virtues, he could only lay wild hands on lands and houses; and since he has stript Houghton of its glory, I do not care a straw what he does with the stone or the acres.'