London merchant, and Maria Olier, the daughter of a French refugee. He
married in 1797, Caroline, daughter of Richard Vernon and Evelyn, first
Countess of Upper Ossory. Their son, Robert Vernon Smith, was created
Lord Lyveden. Lord Holland’s mother, Lady Mary Fitzpatrick, was a
daughter of Lady Upper Ossory by her first marriage.]
[326] Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Greeks in insurrection when
this was written in 1826.—V.H.
[327] [William Robertson (1721-1793), Principal of Edinburgh University
until 1792.]
[328] [Hon. Henry Erskine (1746-1817), second son of Henry David, tenth
Earl of Buchan. Lord Advocate in 1783 and 1806. Second brother to Lord
Buchan and elder brother of Lord Erskine, whom he greatly resembled,
and nearly equalled both in his genius and his foibles. He was almost
as vain; in vivacity of parts, suavity of manners, and playfulness of
fancy fully equal to him; and in forensic talents and eloquence, though
inferior, very like him.—V.H.]
[329] [Thomas Warton, the younger (1728-1790). Poet Laureate from 1785.
He wrote _A History of English Poetry to the End of the Sixteenth
Century_.]
[330] [Henry Kett (1761-1825). Appointed a fellow of Trinity College in
1784. He drowned himself in a fit of depression, to which he was subject.]
[331] [William Crowe (1745-1829), poet and divine. Son of a Winchester
carpenter.]
[332] [As Chancellor of Oxford University.]
[333] [John Sibthorp (1758-1796).]
[334] [Cyril Jackson (1746-1819), Dean of Christ Church, 1783-1809.
He declined preferment to a bishopric, which was on several occasions
offered to him.]
[335] [William Jackson (1751-1815), Bishop of Oxford, 1812-1815.]
[336] [Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), physician. He resigned his post of
Reader in Chemistry at Oxford in 1792, partly owing to his sympathy with
the French Revolution.]
[337] He published a pamphlet with his name, in which he denominated
tithes, and I believe the Church establishment, a remnant of Popery; and
he did not conceal his earnest wishes and expectations of seeing them
suppressed.—V.H.
[338] [John Ingenhousz (1730-1799), physician. Born at Breda, and came to
England about 1765. He was an intimate friend of the first Marquess of
Lansdown, and died while on a visit to Bowood.]
[339] [The first Lord Lansdown always signed his name without a terminal
_e_, the spelling adopted by his successors.]
[340] [Samuel Parr (1747-1825), son of a Harrow apothecary, and a master
at the school. He left there in 1771, from pique because the governors
refused to appoint him headmaster, in succession to Dr. Sumner. He set up
for himself, and afterwards took the living of Hatton in Warwickshire,
and kept private pupils. Many of his letters are preserved at Holland
House.]
[341] [Martin Joseph Routh (1755-1854), President of Magdalen College
from 1791 until his death.]
[342] Dr. Parr was well aware of the characteristic caution of the head
of our college, and of the college itself. “When I leave my card at the
Deanery,” said he, “I shall write on it,
“Carpere vel noli nostra vel ede tua”;
and, speaking of the whole society, he often said, “Litus amant.” It
must be owned that the fate of the little _Phalaris_* bark, which they
launched at the close of the preceding century, was enough to deter them
from a second venture. It was prudent to lay up their great vessels if
they had any in ordinary.—V.H.
[* _The Epistles of Phalaris_, said to have been written by Phalaris,
tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily. The scholars of Christ Church determined
at the end of the seventeenth century to publish a new edition of these
letters, upholding their genuineness, and entrusted the task to Charles
Boyle, afterwards fourth Earl of Orrery. His work was attacked by Richard
Bentley, who proved conclusively the weakness of the case.]
[343] [Joseph White (1745-1814), theologian and orientalist; Laudian
Professor of Arabic, 1775-1814.
He tried to obtain the return of his letters, after Samuel Badcock’s
death, from the latter’s sister. This request was refused, and the matter
obtained publicity from the unwillingness of White to meet a bond for
£500 found among the papers.]
[344] Of his _simplicity_, especially in money matters, many ludicrous
and even incredible stories were recounted.—V.H.
[345] Canonry of Christ Church and Hebrew Professorship.—V.H.
[346] I am not sure that he did so much in virtue of his office of
beadle; by profession the man was a barber.—V.H.
[347] [A Latin preface to a new edition of three treatises by William
Bellenden (d. 1633), into which he infused a political current, by
dedicating it to the _tria lumina Anglorum_—Burke, Fox, and North, and by
denouncing the leading men of the other party.]
[348] [Richard Porson (1759-1808). Born of humble parents, his marvellous
memory as a child attracted early notice, and he was sent to Eton on the
Foundation. A fund was specially raised to maintain him at Cambridge,
where he was entered at Trinity College. He was elected Regius Professor
of Greek at Cambridge in 1792.]
[349] The King of Clubs, instituted by some lawyers and men of letters.
Among its founders were Mr. Robert Percy Smith, Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr.
Rogers, Mr. Dumont, Mr. Sharp,* and Mr. Whishaw.† It lasted near twenty
years, but expired soon after the death of Sir Samuel Romilly, who was
more constant in his attendance than Mr. Sydney Smith, Mr. Brougham, and
other persons of eminence who had been chosen members thereof.—V.H.
[The club was first instituted about the year 1801.]
[* Richard Sharp (1759-1835), known as “Conversation Sharp.”]
[† John Whishaw, Secretary to the African Association.]
[350] I do not insert it, for in all probability it has been or will be
printed elsewhere.—V.H.
[Porson, who had been elected a fellow of Trinity, was obliged by the
statutes to resign his fellowship within seven years unless he had
taken orders. This he was unwilling to do, and when he applied to Dr.
Postlethwaite, the Master of Trinity, for one of the lay fellowships
which would enable him to remain a fellow, his request was refused.
On the Greek Professorship becoming vacant in 1792, Dr. Postlethwaite
wrote urging Porson to become a candidate. The latter, thinking he would
be obliged to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, at first refused, but on
finding out his mistake, came forward, and was unanimously elected. One
of the passages in the letter referred to by Lord Holland is: “The same
reason which hindered me from keeping my fellowship by the method you
obligingly pointed out, would, I am afraid, prevent me from being Greek
Professor.”]
[351] His birth and family were very humble indeed. Mr. Rogers, who is
so uniformly accurate that one can quote his conversation as testimony
to a fact, says he is pretty confident that his father was a sexton or
gravedigger in one of the Eastern counties in England.—V.H.
[His father, a worsted weaver by trade, was parish clerk at East Ruston,
near North Walsham, Norfolk.]
[352] [These “letters” were the result of Porson’s researches in divinity
at the period when he was seeking to make up his mind about taking holy
orders. George Travis (1741-1797), Archdeacon of Chester, in his _Letter
to Gibbon_, had upheld the genuineness of the text, 1 St. John v. 7; but
his conclusions were ruthlessly pulled to pieces by Porson’s superior
reasoning.]
[353] If one added to the list such names as Hooker, Newton, Locke,
Tillotson, Middleton, Paley, and Low, one should not perhaps vary
materially from the judgment formed of those writers’ opinions by the
respective champions of the two doctrines; though, in direct words, none
of them have avowed, and some have distinctly denied, all doubts of the
Trinity. They are not, however, such Trinitarians as exclude Arians or
even Socinians from the pale of Christianity.—V.H.
[354] [Thomas, seventh Earl of Elgin (1766-1841), Ambassador to the Porte
from 1799 to 1803, and collector of the “Elgin Marbles,” now in the
British Museum.]
[355] [Joseph Dacre Carlyle (1759-1804), chaplain to the mission.]
[356] [Richard Wooddeson, the younger (1745-1822); fellow of Magdalen
College and Vinerian Professor, 1777-1793.]
[357] [Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780).]
[358] [Thomas Francis Wenman (1745-1796); Fellow of All Souls College,
and Regius Professor, 1789-1796.]
[359] [John Robison (1739-1805). Elected Lecturer on Chemistry at Glasgow
in 1766, and described by Sir James Mackintosh as one of the greatest
mathematical philosophers of his age.]
[360] He added that an Oriental scholar from Hungary or Bohemia had been
invited to decipher the Arabic MSS., as no resident Oxonian was equal
to that duty; and that the poor foreigner, after sundry vexations and
indignities, and notwithstanding his laborious execution of his task, was
unhandsomely dismissed without sufficient remuneration either in money or
in fame. I have forgotten the man’s name, but I think it was “Uri.”—V.H.
[361] [Thomas Hornsby (1733-1810); Fellow of Corpus Christi College and
appointed Savilian Professor of Astronomy in 1763.]
[362] [John Randolph, D.D. (1749-1813). He held many professorships at
the University before becoming Bishop of Oxford in 1799; became Bishop
of Bangor in 1807, and of London in 1809. It is related that most of his
divinity lectures were delivered by candlelight, and though notes were to
be taken, his supposed listeners were usually asleep.]
[363] [John Grosvenor (1742-1823), proprietor and editor of the _Oxford
Journal_. He was admitted to the privileges of the University in 1768.]
[364] [Sir Christopher Pegge (1765-1822), appointed Regius Professor of
Physic in 1801.]
[365] [Sir Henry Halford (1766-1844), son of Dr. James Vaughan. He
changed his name on inheriting a large property in 1809. He practised in
London, and was made a baronet by George III., whom he attended, as well
as George IV., William IV., and Queen Victoria.]
[366] On one of those occasions, in commending the younger students for
their diligence and exhorting them to persevere in it, his phraseology,
pure and Ciceronian as it was, exposed him to the saucy waggery of some
punsters, for he began one of his earnest paragraphs with these words,
“_Pergite_, Adolescentes, _Pergite_, inquam, Adolescentes.”—V.H.
[367] It would be uncharitable to attribute the selection of Glasgow
to any persuasion in the testator’s mind that the Northern University
had fewer scruples than its neighbours, when anything was to be got by
concealing or overruling them. There is, however, a story current that a
Mr. Zachary Boyd once left a valuable collection of MSS. to that Learned
Body, on condition that a Bible in doggerel verse of his composition
should always lie on the table of the library. The translation was not,
indeed, in intention a _travesty_, but it had all the effect of one. The
University was sorely perplexed between a due reverence for the sacred
writings and an unwillingness to forego a valuable legacy. At length
they hit upon an expedient by which they hoped to secure the bequest,
spare their students and visitors the scandal of seeing the scripture in
so unbecoming a garb, and yet adhere to the letter of the conditions.
They nailed the book to the table, enclosed it in a heavy wooden binding
with ponderous clasps; and if they did not prohibit, discouraged all
examination of it, as well as resorted to every artifice to prevent its
attracting any notice whatever.—V.H.
[368] [John Hunter (1728-1793), the celebrated surgeon and anatomist.
Born in Lanarkshire, he first practised cabinet-making in Glasgow, but
at the age of twenty went to London, where he commenced his studies in
anatomy. He took part in Keppel’s expedition to Belleisle in 1761, and
was appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to George III. in 1776.]
[369] [He was flatly contradicted by one of his colleagues when speaking
at a board meeting at St. George’s Hospital. He retired to an adjoining
room, where he almost immediately fell dead.]
[370] [Johann Gaspar Lavater (1741-1801), the famous physiognomist, and
a minister at Zurich. He was wounded during the capture of that town by
Massena in 1799, and died from the effects.]
[371] [John Baker Holroyd, first Earl of Sheffield (1735-1821), who
edited Gibbon’s _Miscellaneous Works_ and _Memoirs_.]
[372] [In 1779. The remaining lines of the stanza are:
Thought no way so sure
His pen to secure,
As to give the historian a place.
Wraxall says that, notwithstanding Lord Holland’s contradiction of the
fact, he always understood that the verses were of Mr. Fox’s composition.]
[373] So Sheridan told me, but Lord John Townshend assures me it is a
mistake,* and that Mr. Fox, anxious to make Sheridan’s acquaintance,
prevailed upon Lord John to give them a dinner at the St. Albans Tavern,
where these two great orators met one another for the first time.—V.H.
* “Jack Townshend called it by a coarser name,” one which I am afraid he
has never much scruple in applying to Mr. Sheridan’s assertions.—V.H.
[374] Query: _’Tis scarcely odds_.—V.H.
[375] [At Winchester.]
[376] His bust is placed among those of the friends of Mr. Fox in the
Temple of Liberty at Woburn Abbey.—V.H.
[377] [It is related that Fox, when receiving congratulations on his
first speech in Parliament, remarked, “Wait until you hear Hare.”]
[378] [William Mitford (1744-1827).]
[379] [William Coxe (1747-1828), fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.]
[380] [_Memoirs of the Administrations of Henry Pelham._]
[381] [John Douglas, D.D. (1721-1807); Bishop of Carlisle, 1787-1791;
and of Salisbury, 1791-1807. He was the origin of the discovery of the
forgeries of William Lauder, who accused Milton of imitating the works
of the seventeenth-century Latin poets, and who, to prove his case, had
produced garbled and inaccurate quotations.]
[382] [Thomas Burgess, D.D. (1756-1837); Bishop of St. David’s;
1803-1825; and of Salisbury, 1825-1837.]
[383] [William Scott, Lord Stowell (1745-1836), son of a coal-merchant
in Newcastle. Barrister; and Judge of the High Court of the Admiralty,
1798-1828. He was knighted in 1788, and was raised to the peerage in
1821. His friendship with Dr. Johnson dated back to their Oxford days.]
[384] [The original Literary Club, or “The Club,” founded in 1763,
and held at the Turk’s Head, Gerrard Street, Soho, till 1783. It was
originally a weekly supper, but after 1772 it became a fortnightly dinner
during the Parliamentary Session. Late in 1783 Dr. Johnson formed another
club, held at the Essex Head in Essex Street.]
[385] Miss Mary Palmer (1750-1820), niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who
married, in 1792, Murrough, first Marquess of Thomond. Sir Walter
Armstrong, in his _Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds_, states that the
_Dialogue_ was first printed privately in 1816.
[386] The story is told of Annibal Caracci; and if Sir Joshua said it, as
I have been often assured he did, he stole it from the same biographical
account of that painter.—V.H.
[387] [The picture is at Petworth, and belongs to Lord Leconfield.]
[388] George III.—V.H.
[389] [Lord Holland probably refers to an exhibition of Hogarth’s
pictures held in the Gallery of the British Institution in 1814,
succeeding one of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ in the preceding
year.]
[390] Yet with all its defects it is a well-coloured (piece) picture.
To the reader of my MS., perhaps the double sense of my original word in
the above note made it a more correct description of the work, but for
that very reason I expunge it.—V.H.
[The picture is now in the National Gallery, to which it was bequeathed,
in 1879, by Mr. J. H. Anderdon. Hogarth attempted to follow the lines of
Correggio in the composition.]
[391] [Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828). He was born of
humble parents in a small village in Aragon, and never studied painting
till after the age of sixteen. He spent some years in Rome, and returned
to Spain in 1774.]
[392] [Don Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos (1744-1811), statesman and
poet. He was a member of the Supreme Junta during the first years of the
Peninsular War, and took an active part in the direction of operations
against the French. Joseph, when King of Spain, offered him the post of
Minister, which he refused.]
[393] [Antonio Josef Cavanilles (1744-1804). He went to Paris with the
Spanish Ambassador in 1777, and remained twelve years in France.]
[394] [Alleyne Fitzherbert (1753-1839), created Lord St. Helens in 1791.
Ambassador at Madrid, 1791-1794.]
[395] [Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the celebrated sculptor, born at
Passagno, near Venice.]
[396] [François Xavier Fabre (1766-1837), a French painter of portraits
and historical subjects. He lived almost entirely in Italy until 1826,
when he returned to his native town of Montpellier, where he died.
Several of his pictures are preserved at Holland House, including a
portrait of Lord Holland, painted in 1796.]
[397] [Louise de Stolberg-Goedern, Countess D’Albany (1753-1824), widow
of Prince Charles Edward, “the young Pretender.” She lived for many years
at Florence with Alfieri, the celebrated dramatist and poet, but seems
never to have married him. After his death in 1803 she became attached to
Fabre, and by her will left him everything she had.]
[398] [John Flaxman (1755-1826), sculptor and draughtsman.]
[399] [Lazaro Spallanzani (1729-1799), naturalist, and director of the
Museum at Pavia.]
[400] [Aloisio Galvani (1737-1798), the discoverer of the action of
electricity on the muscles of the human frame—a power called after his
name. A native of Bologna, he became professor of that university in
1762, and remained until 1790, when he was deprived of his post because
he refused, from religious scruples, to take the oath prescribed by the
Cisalpine Republic.]
[401] [Fontana was born in 1730, and died at Florence in 1805. He was
appointed Professor of Philosophy at Pisa by the Grand Duke Francis, but
was recalled by the Grand Duke Leopold to Florence, and placed at the
head of the Natural History Museum.]
[402] [Giovanni Fabroni (1752-1822), who succeeded Fontana as Director.
He was appointed Overseer of the Roads and Bridges, by Napoleon, and to
him is due the commencement of the Corniche road.]
[403] [Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799), a native of Milan, whose chief work
was _Il Giorno_, a satire.]
[404] [Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828), Italian lyric poet and dramatist.]
[405] [Juan Andrès (1740-1817).]
[406] [Girolamo Tiraboschi (1731-1794), an Italian author, who published
a _History of Italian Literature_, etc.]
[407] [Melchiore Cesarotti (1730-1808), Italian poet and professor of
Greek and Hebrew at Padua. He translated _Ossian_ into Italian blank
verse.]
[408] [William Roscoe (1753-1831), historian. Member of Parliament for
Liverpool, 1806-1807, in the Whig interest.]
[409] [Horace Walpole.]
[410] [James Currie, M.D. (1756-1805). Originally a native of
Dumfriesshire, he emigrated to Virginia and spent seven years of his
life in America. He studied medicine at Edinburgh with the intention
of returning across the seas; but hearing that a doctor was wanted in
Liverpool, he settled there in 1780.]
[411] [William Shepherd (1768-1847), Dissenting minister of Gateacre,
near Liverpool, and author of a _Life of Poggio Bracciolini_.]
[412] [Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), son of a large land-owner in
Jamaica. He was for a short time attaché at the Hague, where he wrote
_The Monk_; and sat in the House of Commons 1792-1802. Sir Walter
Scott said of his verses, “He had the finest ear for rhythm I ever met
with—finer than Byron’s.”]
[413] [Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), physician. Grandfather of the more
celebrated Charles Darwin. He married, as his second wife, the widow of
Colonel Chandos-Pole, of Radbourne Hall, Derbyshire, where he lived for
some years. He died quite suddenly of heart disease.]
[414] [William Godwin, the elder (1756-1836), philosopher and novelist.
He married, in 1797, Mary Wollstonecraft, the authoress, who died the
same year. _The Adventures of Caleb Williams_, a novel, was one of his
best-known works.]
[415] [John Curran (1750-1817), the Irish orator and judge.]
[416] [Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), son of a London shoemaker, who
fell into difficulties and turned pedlar. Young Holcroft accompanied
his father on his wanderings, and became a stable-boy at Newmarket at
the age of thirteen. Returning to London, he worked for some time at
the shoemaking trade, which he then abandoned for the stage. He began
to contribute articles to the newspapers about the same time, and to
write plays with some success, _The Road to Ruin_ being his best-known
composition. He became deeply imbued with the principles of the French
Revolution, and was indicted, in 1794, with Thomas Hardy and others, for
high treason; but his case was dismissed without a trial. He was four
times married.]
[417] [James Kenney (1780-1849). He married Holcroft’s widow, not his
daughter.]
[418] [A weekly review founded by Canning in 1797. _The Needy
Knife-grinder_ was also the joint production of Canning and Frere.]
[419] [Robert Southey (1774-1843), the poet and historian.]
[420] [Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850), Scottish judge, and
editor of _The Edinburgh Review_ from 1803 to 1829.]
[421] Bayle, in speaking of too great a fastidiousness or apprehension of
coming before the public, says, “Ce defaut n’est pas fort commun parmi
les auteurs et néanmoins on peut dire qu’à certains égards _il ne l’est
que trop_; car pour l’ordinaire ce ne sont pas les mauvais auteurs ou les
écrivains médiocres qui en sont coupables, ce sont _les plus excellentes
plumes_”: and surely the productions of nine or ninety-nine bad or
middling works is not so serious an evil to the public as the suppression
of one excellent or useful one.—V.H.
[422] [“Tenui Musam meditamur avena.”]
[423] [Richard Payne Knight (1750-1820), the celebrated antiquarian and
collector of coins.]
[424] This name must be omitted in any copy likely to be read before Lord
Strangford’s death.—V.H.
[Bartholomew Frere (1778-1851) was a younger brother of John Hookham
Frere. He was Minister Plenipotentiary _ad interim_ in Spain 1809-1810,
and Secretary of Legation at Constantinople for some years.]
[425] Is it possible that, in this instance also, Brougham secretly and
maliciously conveyed to the object of the invective, that not he, but
the person who had in truth remonstrated against it, was the author?
I have no ground for a suspicion, but the mischief and fun of such a
manœuvre would not be out of character, nor a solitary instance of his so
indulging his malice or revenge.—V.H.
[426] [_Poems from the Portuguese of Camoëns, with Remarks and Notes._]
[427] [George Lamb (1784-1834), brother of Lord Melbourne.]
[428] 1836. The manner in which this impression was effaced through the
kind offices of Mr. Rogers, ever active in promoting reconciliations
between his friends, is related elsewhere in my writings, and will, if
this chapter be ever finished, be in all probability again alluded to and
explained.—V.H. [See _ante_, p. 122.]
[429] [These _Observations_ were written by Lord Strangford in refutation
of certain statements of Colonel William Napier’s in his _History of the
Peninsular War_; and Colonel Napier issued a pamphlet in answer upholding
his view of the case.]
[430] Lord Strangford’s _Observations_, pp. 5, 6.—V.H.
[431] _Ibid._ pp. 10, 20, 22.—V.H.
[432] [Charles Lloyd (1735-1773), Private Secretary to George Grenville,
and the writer of several political pamphlets in his patron’s interests.
Lord North certainly at one time entertained suspicions that Lloyd was
the author of the _Junius Letters_.]
INDEX
_The figures in italics refer to the notes only_
Abbot, Charles, Speaker (afterwards Lord Colchester), and Catholic
Emancipation, 170
Abercromby, James (afterwards Lord Dunfermline), 257
Aberdeen, Earl of, 303
Adair, Sir Robert, 75
Adam, William, Attorney-General to Prince of Wales, 26, 90, 110
Alava, General, 229
Albemarle, Lord, 404
Albuera, victory of, 68
Alcudia, Manuel de Godoy, Duke of (“Prince of the Peace”), 19