Frederick of Prussia described him exactly, when he said, that "of all men of his age he had the most watches, dresses, lace, boots, shoes, and slippers. Cæsar would have put him among those well dressed and perfumed heads of which he was not afraid." But this mixture of prodigality and profligacy was not to go unpunished, even on its own soil. Bruhl involved Saxony in a war with Frederick. Nothing could be more foolish than the beginning of the war, except its conduct. The Prussian king, the first soldier in Europe, instantly out-manœuvred the Saxons, shut up their whole army at Pirna; made them lay down their arms, and took possession of Dresden. The king and his minister took to flight. This was the extinction of Bruhl's power. On his return to Dresden, after peace had been procured, he lost his protector, the king. The new elector dismissed him from his offices. He died in 1764.
Some scattered anecdotes of Doddington are characteristic of the man and of the time. Soon after the arrival of Frederick Prince of Wales in England, Doddington set up for a favourite, and carried the distinction to the pitifulness of submitting to all the caprices of his royal highness; among other instances, submitting to the practical joke of being rolled up in a blanket, and trundled down stairs.
Doddington has been already spoken of as a wit; and even Walpole, fastidious as he was, gives some instances of that readiness which delights the loungers of high life. Lord Sunderland, a fellow commissioner of the treasury, was a very dull man. One day as they left the board, Sunderland laughed heartily about something which Doddington had said, and, when gone, Winnington observed, "Doddington, you are very ungrateful. You call Sunderland stupid and slow, and yet you see how quickly he took what you said." "Oh no," was the reply, "he was only now laughing at what I said last treasury day."
Trenchard, a neighbour, telling him, that though his pinery was extensive, he contrived, by applying the fire and the tan to other purposes, to make it so advantageous that he believed he got a shilling by every pine-apple he ate. "Sir," said Doddington, "I would eat them for half the money." Those are but the easy pleasantries of a man of conversation. The following is better: Doddington had a habit of falling asleep after dinner. One day, dining with Sir Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, &c., he was reproached with his drowsiness. He denied having been asleep, and to prove his assertion, offered to repeat all that Cobham had been saying. He was challenged to do so. In reply, he repeated a story; and Cobham acknowledged that he had been telling it. "Well," said Doddington, "and yet I did not hear a word of it. But I went to sleep because I knew that, about this time of day, you would tell that story."
There are few things more singular than the want of taste, amounting to the ludicrous, which is sometimes visible in the mansions of public men, who have great opulence at their disposal. Walpole himself, when he became rich, was an instance of this bad taste in the laborious frivolity of his decorations at Strawberry hill. But in Doddington we have a man of fashion, living, during his whole career, in the highest circles, familiar with every thing that was graceful and classical in the arts, and yet exhibiting at home the most ponderous and tawdry pomp. At his mansion at Eastbury, in the great bed-chamber, hung with the richest red velvet, was pasted on "every panel of the velvet his crest, a hunting horn, supported by an eagle, cut out in gilt leather, while the footcloth round his bed was a mosaic of the pocket flaps and cuffs of all his embroidered clothes."
He was evidently very fond of this crest, for in his villa at Hammersmith, (afterwards the well known Brandenburg House,) his crest in pebbles was stuck in the centre of the turf before his door. The chimney-piece was hung with spars representing icicles round the fire, and a bed of purple lined with orange, was crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers. The great gallery, to which was a beautiful door of white marble, supported by two columns of lapis lazuli, was not only filled with busts and statues, but had an inlaid floor of marble, and all this weight was above stairs. One day showing it to Edward, Duke of York, (brother of George III.) Doddington said, Sir, some persons tell me, that this room ought to be on the ground. "Be easy, Mr. Doddington," said the prince, "it will soon be there."
At length this reign, which began in doubt of the succession, and was carried on in difficulties both political and commercial, came to a close in the most memorable prosperity. The British arms were triumphant in every quarter, and the king had arrived at the height of popularity and fortune, when the sudden bursting of a ventricle of the heart, put an end to his life in October, 1760, in his seventy-seventh year, and the thirty-third of his possession of the throne.
A general glance at the reigns of the first three Georges, might form a general view of the operations of party. In other kingdoms, the will of the monarch or the talents of the minister, alone stand before the eye of the historian. In England, a third power exists, more efficient than either, and moulding the character of both, and this is party, the combination of able members of the legislature, united by similarity of views, and continuing a systematic struggle for the supremacy. This influence makes the minister, and directs even the sitter on the throne. And this influence, belonging solely to a free government, is essential to its existence. It is the legitimate medium between the people and the crown. It is the peaceful organ of that public voice which, without it, would speak only in thunder. It is that great preservative principle, which, like the tides of the ocean, purifies, invigorates, and animates the whole mass, without rousing it into storm.
The reign of George the First, was a continual effort of the constitutional spirit against the remnants of papistry and tyranny, which still adhered to the government of England. The reign of the second George was a more decided advance of constitutional rights, powers, and feelings. The pacific administration of Walpole made the nation commercial; and when the young Pretender landed in Scotland, in 1745, he found adherents only in the wild gallantry, and feudal faith of the clans. In England Jacobitism had already perished. It had undergone that death from which there is no restoration. It had been swept away from the recollections of the country, by the influx of active and opulent prosperity. The brave mountaineer might exult at the sight of the Jacobite banner, and follow it boldly over hill and dale. But the Englishman was no longer the man of feudalism. The wars of the Roses could be renewed no more. He was no longer the fierce retainer of the baron, or the armed vassal of the king. He had rights and possessions of his own, and he valued both too much to cast them away in civil conflict, for claims which had become emaciated by the lapse of years, and sacrifice freedom for the superstitious romance of a vanished royalty.
Thus the last enterprise of Jacobitism was closed in the field, and the bravery of the Highlander was thenceforth, with better fortune, to be distinguished in the service of the empire.