As M.P. for Bewdley. He was returned in 1768, and unseated in January, 1769.
In the Public Advertiser for January 1, 1779 [1780], appeared a notice of the Poems, said to have been "published yesterday;" and although two pieces are extracted at length, not a syllable of doubt is expressed as to their genuineness.
The estate at Arley was left to the Hon. George Annesley (afterwards Earl of Mountnorris), son of Lord Valentia, by the will of Thomas Lord Lyttelton, and Mr. Roberts was one of the trustees appointed.
Minor Queries.
Lord Chatham.—I would suggest as a Query, whether Lord Chatham's famous comparison of the Fox and Newcastle ministry to the confluence of the Rhone and Saone at Lyons (Speech, Nov. 13, 1755), was not adapted from a passage in Lord Roscommon's Essay on translated Verse. Possibly Lord Chatham may have merely quoted the lines of Roscommon, and reporters may have converted his quotation into prose. Lord Chatham (then of course Mr. Pitt) is represented to have said:
"I remember at Lyons to have been carried to the conflux of the Rhone and the Soane: the one a gentle, feeble, languid stream, and, though languid, of no depth; the other, a boisterous and impetuous torrent."
Lord Roscommon says:
"Thus have I seen a rapid headlong tide,
With foaming waves the passive Saone divide,