It is a vivid and authentic picture, and it is also an entertaining one. Though parody is a minor genre, it has its masterpieces. But they should be read rather than talked about. Let the last opinion on Anticipation be that of George IV, who was a person of discernment in these matters. J. W. Croker recorded in his diary that at a royal dinner-party in January 1822 the talk had turned to Tickell. The King spoke of Anticipation “con amore and quoted some of the speeches.” He promised to have a copy looked out for Lady Conyngham, who had never read it. “The events and the pieces were gone by,” said the King; “but the wit and pleasantry of it never could fade.”[44]
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1] A certain A. Buzaglo, who had a shop in the Strand, opposite Somerset House, frequently advertised in the newspapers in 1778. His warming-pans, for curing the gout, were highly recommended to the nobility.
[2] Letter to Mason, 18 April 1778 (The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, Oxford, 1903-05, X, 222).
[3] Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell, Oxford, 1934—, III, 318.
[4] XLV, 1778, 310.
[5] See Ruth A. Hesselgrave, Lady Miller and the Batheaston Literary Circle, New Haven, 1927.
[6] LIX, 1778, 145. Garrick acknowledged his authorship of this review in a letter to Hannah More, misdated 1777, in William Roberts, Memoirs of ... Mrs. Hannah More, 3rd ed., 1835, I, 116.
[7] The Farington Diary, ed. James Greig, New York, 1923-28, I, 186; Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers [ed. Alexander Dyce], New York, 1856, pp. 71-72.