Footnote 85: See Parker's Sir Robert Peel, vol. iii. chap. 1.
Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria.
Melbourne, 7th November 1843.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and thanks your Majesty much for the letter of the 4th inst., which he has received this morning with great satisfaction. Lord Melbourne hears with great pleasure of the gratification which your Majesty and the Prince received in your visit to Cambridge. Lord Melbourne collects from all the accounts that the proceedings in the Senate House were not only full of loyalty, enthusiasm, and gratitude, but also perfectly decorous, respectful, academic, and free from all those political cries which have recently prevailed so much in the theatre at Oxford on similar occasions.86 Lord Melbourne hopes he is within [the mark]; if he is it forms a remarkable and advantageous contrast. Lord Melbourne does not know anywhere a better account of Cambridge, its foundations, and the historical recollections of its founders, than is given in Mr. Gray's ode on the installation of the Duke of Grafton, which it would not be amiss to read with the large explanatory notes that are given in the editions of Mason and Mathias.87
Lord Melbourne is very partial to Lord Hardwicke, who always is and has been very civil and good-natured to Lord Melbourne, and these are qualities to which Lord Melbourne is not at all indifferent. Wimpole is a curious place. Lord Melbourne is not exactly aware how the Yorkes got hold of it.88 There is much history and more poetry connected with it. Prior89 mentions it repeatedly, and always calls the first Lady Harley, the daughter of the Duke of Newcastle, Belphebe.90 If Hardwicke should have a daughter, he should christen her Belphebe. The Lady Belphebe Yorke would not sound ill....
Footnote 86: See ante, p. [292].
Footnote 87: Gray, the poet, who had been appointed by the Duke Professor of Modern History, composed an ode (set to music by Randall) for the latter's installation as Chancellor, on 1st July 1769.
Footnote 88: The cultured but indolent Edward, Lord Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford (son of the great minister), sold Wimpole to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in 1740 to pay off a debt of £100,000. He had married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter and heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle, who brought him £500,000, most of which he dissipated. Their only child, Margaret, the "noble lovely little Peggy" of Prior, married William Bentinck, second Duke of Portland. Lady Oxford sold to the nation the "Harleian Collection" of manuscripts, now in the British Museum.
Footnote 89: Who died there in 1721.
Footnote 90: Alluding to the rarely printed poem "Colin's Mistakes," where "Bright Ca'ndish Holles Harley" is seen in the glades of Wimpole by the dreamy youth, and mistaken for Gloriana, Belphebe, etc.