_Mr. Wilkes._ John Wilkes (1727-1797), M.P. for Middlesex; the radical
politician and hero of the London populace. He had a reputation for
facetious wit, and he made a practice of sending his speeches in advance
to the newspapers. Wilkes was another, like Fox and Burke, who enjoyed
Tickell’s anticipation of his speech. Boswell reported Wilkes as saying
to Tickell in April 1779: “Much obliged for your speech for me. If you’ll
make me another for next session, I’ll be damn’d if I don’t speak it”
(_Private Papers of James Boswell_, XIII, 231).
_Here Sir Grey Cooper caught at a pen._ Sir Grey Cooper (1726?-1801),
third Baronet; M.P. for Saltash and a Secretary of the Treasury. The
allusion is to Lord North’s habit of sleeping through Whig speeches and
answering them from the notes of his favorite secretary. The following
lines are from _The London Magazine_, XLVIII, 1779, 186:
Whilst B[ur]ke and B[arr]é strain their throats
The mild SIR GREY is taking notes;
And, wise as owl, is seen _composing_,
For the good Premier, who is _dozing_:
Whilst to each patriot’s loudest roar
N[or]th answers with a well-tim’d _snore_.
Till by some shriller trebles vex’d,
He discants on the _good Knight’s_ text.
_magic plates._ Hartley had invented an arrangement of thin iron strips
to be placed as a lining under floors and above ceilings to prevent fire.
An anonymous handbill of four quarto pages, dated July 1776 and called
_An Account of Some Experiments Made with the Fire-Plates, Together
with a Description of the Manner of Application, and an Estimate of the
Expence_, contains newspaper accounts of unsuccessful attempts to burn a
house near Reading equipped with Hartley’s plates.