Sir William Curtis. The ‘father’ of the corporation of London, for which city he was M.P. for thirty-three years. He made his money in the Greenland fisheries, and then became a member of the banking firm of Robarts, Curtis and Co. (1752–1829).
The Speaker (Onslow). Arthur Onslow (1691–1768) was elected Speaker of the House of Commons in 1728 and re-elected in 1735, 1741, 1747 and 1754. He retired in 1761 with the reputation of being the firmest and most dignified holder of his office and authority.
[272]. Give his own little Senate laws. Pope’s Prologue to Mr. Addison’s Cato and also Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 209.
They look only at the stop-watch. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Book III. chap. 12.
Hit the house between wind and water. See vol. IV., The Spirit of the Age, 227.
[273]. Servile ministers. King Lear, III. 2.
Jack Davies. See vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 89.
Note. Making the worse appear the better reason. Paradise Lost, II. 113.
[274]. An indifferent History of James II. Charles James Fox’s A History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second was published by Lord Holland in 1808.
A colleague of Lord Grenville. Fox was Foreign Secretary in the ‘Broad-bottomed’ or ‘All the Talents’ ministry, formed by Lord Grenville on the death of Pitt in 1806.