gass T^t<o ^ 
 
 Book l\5'5' 
 
 1^11- 
 
AT PRIOR PARK 
 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
PRIOR PARK: GARDEN FRONT 
 
 (from a photograph) 
 
AT PRIOR PARK 
 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON 
 
 Ne nous servons 
 point de paroles 
 plus grandcs que 
 les choses. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 

 .A^^ 
 
 'f^/^ 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
TO 
 
 SIR ALFRED BATEMAN, K.C.M.G. 
 
 My dear Bateman, 
 
 I think you have done me the hon- 
 our of reading some of these papers in their 
 periodical form. This — in my opinion — should 
 of itself suffice to distinguish you from those 
 who have not made an equally commendable 
 use of their opportunities. But I have another 
 motive in dedicating this volume to you. For 
 more than forty years I have enjoyed the 
 privilege of your friendship, which is a better 
 testimony to your powers of longsuffering 
 than if I proffered you a certificate of heroic 
 endurance as a student of fugitive prose. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 -^ Austin Dobson. 
 
PRE FA TOR Y NO TE 
 
 Apart from the statement that these papers 
 first appeared in the ' National Review^ there 
 is little to say respecting the'tn which they can- 
 not say for themselves. But in revising and 
 arranging them for issue in book-form, my 
 obligations have been considerable. I have to 
 tender my thanks to Mr. Thomas Gordott Duff 
 of Drummuir for particulars of his valuable 
 Carmontelle drawings, and for reference to the 
 ' Souvenirs ' of the Baron de Frenilly ; to Mr. 
 T. Sturge Cotterell of Bath for the interesting 
 photograph of Prior Park which forms my 
 frontispiece ; and to the former owners of the 
 recently-discovered Fielding Letters for leave to 
 verify my extracts from the originals when at 
 Messrs. Sotheby's. I am further indebted to 
 my friends the Rev. William. Hunt and Mr. 
 David Hannay for helpful hints in connection 
 with the Bailli de Suffren, and to Mr. Hannay 
 especially for the loan of Gerard's portrait, 
 here copied. The Governors of the Dulwich 
 
viii Prefatory Note 
 
 Gallery {thi'ough Mr. H. Yates Thompson) 
 have also been kind enough to allow me to 
 reproduce Gainsborough's beautiful likeness of 
 Loutherbourg. Finally, I must record my ac- 
 knowledgments to Miss Dorothy Jennings, 
 Mr. Emery Walker {the present occupant of 
 Loutherbourg' s old residence at Hammersmith 
 Tei'race), Mr. Samuel Martin, Chief Librarian 
 of the Hammersmith Public Libraries, and Mr. 
 Walter W. Sadler of the Dyce and Forster 
 Library at South Kensington, for assistance in 
 illuminating some of the obscurer corners of the 
 painter's career. 
 
 A us TIN DOBSON. 
 September 1912 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 At Prior Park i 
 
 The Portraits of Carmontelle ... 32 
 
 Garrick's ' Grand Tour' .... 62 
 
 Loutherbourg, R.A. 94 
 
 A Fielding ' Find' 128 
 
 The BaILLI DE SUFFREN . ... 150 
 
 Eighteenth-Century Stowe .... 180 
 
 Robert Lloyd . 210 
 
 Gray's Biographer 24.3 
 
 Appendix A (Carmontelle's Transparencies) 275 
 
 Appendix B (Exhibitions of the Eidophusi- 
 
 kon) . 277 
 
 Appendix C and Postscript (Death of the 
 
 Bailli de Suffren) 282 
 
 Index 
 
 289 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Prior Park: Garden Front. From a Photo- 
 graph Frontispiece 
 
 Carmontelle. By Himself to face page 4-8 
 
 The Two Garricks. By Carmontelle 
 
 to face page 68 
 
 'LouTHERBOURG. From the Portrait by Gains- 
 borough in the Dulwich Gallery to face page 94. 
 
 The Bailli de Suffren. From the Portrait by 
 
 Francois Gerard to face page 150 
 
 Princess Amelia's Arch at Stowe. From the 
 
 Engraving by Thomas Mediand to face page 202 
 
AT PRIOR PARK 
 
 HENRY FIELDING has many memories 
 in Bath — some definite, some doubtful ; 
 some of long standing, others of more recent 
 discovery. One of his occasional pieces was an 
 impromptu in the Pump Room to a shadowy 
 ' Miss H — land ' — a performance which preserves 
 the name of that once popular physician and 
 translator of * Persius,' Dr. Thomas Brewster, 
 who afterwards attended the philosopher Square; 
 a second, entitled 'Plain Truth,' is the panegyric 
 of another Cynthia of the minute. Miss Betty 
 Dalston, apparently the sister of a local minor 
 poet. At the then-secluded church of St. Mary, 
 Charlcombe, Fielding married his first wife, 
 Charlotte Cradock of Salisbury; from Bath, ten 
 years later, with loving and lavish ceremonial, 
 he brought her dead body to London for inter- 
 ment in the chancel vault of St. Martin's-in- 
 the-Fields.' Around Bath, rather than elsewhere, 
 cluster most of the traditions connected with the 
 composition of his greatest novel — that master- 
 ' Godden's 'Henry Fielding,' 1910, p. 153. 
 B 
 
2 At Prior Park 
 
 piece for which a later Bath frequenter, Mr. 
 Samuel Richardson (the wish being father to the 
 thought) predicted the duration of a firework. 
 Parts of the book, it is quite possible, may have been 
 written at Salisbury, at Twickenham, at Barnes 
 Common, and half a dozen other places ; but a 
 large proportion was undoubtedly penned within 
 sound of the Abbey bells; and if not at Wid- 
 combe House or Prior Park, either at the modest 
 villa on the Avon at Twerton with the phoenix 
 crest over the door, or at the still humbler retreat 
 in Church Lane, now dignified into a ' Lodge,' 
 where its author so often sought sanctuary with 
 his sister Sarah. From the 'little parlour' at 
 Yew Cottage, as it was then called, if anywhere, 
 must have issued that proud invocation to Fame at 
 the beginning of Book Thirteen — an invocation 
 which, it may be observed, has enjoyed the excep- 
 tional advantage of being heard. But of all the 
 associations that connect Fielding with the 'Queen 
 of the West,' there is none more ancient and less 
 uncertain than that which links him with Ralph 
 Allen, the * Squire Allworthy ' of ' Tom Jones.' 
 As it is with Allen's residence and friends 
 rather than with Allen and his biography, that 
 we are for the present concerned, it can hardly be 
 needful to deal at length with the oft-told story 
 
At Prior Park 3 
 
 of the circumstances which raised him from ob- 
 scurity to opulence. But, remembering the useful 
 caveat of Pope that 
 
 Men must be taught as if you taught them not, 
 And things unknown propos'd as things forgot, 
 
 no great harm can be done by ' reminding ' the 
 reader briefly of the leading facts of his career. 
 Ralph Allen was the son of the landlord of the 
 'Duke William' or ' Old Duke ' Inn at St. Blazey 
 in Cornwall. His grandmother kept the post- 
 office at St. Columb, not many miles away; and 
 being employed here as a boy, his alertness and 
 intelligence attracted the notice of the district 
 surveyor, in consequence of which he was trans- 
 ferred to the Bath Post Office. He had inborn 
 gifts for organisation ; and his foot once on the 
 ladder, his ascent was assured. The timely dis- 
 covery of a projected English rising in connection 
 with Mar's rebellion, procured him at once the 
 favour of the Ministry; the patronage of General 
 (afterwards Marshal) Wade, then stationed at 
 Bath ; and, in due course, the office of Bath Post- 
 master. In this capacity he set about the much- 
 needed task of reforming the very rudimentary 
 postal service. In those days, the days of the 
 first George, except over certain radial routes to 
 and from the capitals of the three kingdoms. 
 
4 At Prior Park 
 
 there was practically no transmission of mails, 
 and bye or lateral communication between county 
 and county or town and town, was of the most 
 dilatory and circuitous description. Although a 
 Post Office Act of 171 1 had afforded scope for 
 what are known as ' cross-posts,' nothing much 
 had been done.^ Nine years later, Allen, being 
 then no more than six and twenty, took up the 
 work. He obtained a concession from the Go- 
 vernment empowering him to establish better 
 methods, and virtually to re-arrange, in these re- 
 spects, the entire letter-carrying machinery of 
 England and Wales. For this he had to pay a 
 heavy annual ' consideration ' ; and his first essays 
 were necessarily made at a loss. But in the end 
 his energy and resource triumphed over every 
 obstacle; and although, on subsequent renewal 
 of the contract, the rent was raised, his profits by 
 degrees became so considerable as to make him a 
 rich man. By the simultaneous exploitation of 
 
 1 ' A bye or luay letter would be a letter passing be- 
 tween any two towns on the Bath Road and stopping 
 short of London — as, for instance, between Bath and 
 Hungerford, between Hungerford and Newbury, between 
 Newbury and Reading, and so on ; while a cross-post letter 
 would be a letter crossing from the Bath Road to some 
 other — as, for instance, a letter between Batli and Oxford.' 
 (Joyce's 'History of the Post Office,' 1893, p. 147.) 
 
A t Prior Park 5 
 
 the valuable oolite quarries at Hampton and 
 Combe Downs near Bath, he not only materially 
 increased his already ample means, but added to 
 the architectural beauty of the town, while his 
 generous use of his wealth earned him the merited 
 reputation of a public benefactor. He died in 
 June 1764, aged seventy-one, and is buried under 
 a beautiful mausoleum in Claverton churchyard. 
 He was twice married, his second wife, Elizabeth 
 Holder, surviving him. A monument was erected 
 to him on a part of his estate, which is also a 
 monument to the bad taste of his heir, Bishop 
 Warburton. 
 
 With the historical ' Bath stone ' of the re- 
 opened quarries at Combe and Hampton Downs 
 is also connected that famous mansion which 
 must always be remembered with Ralph Allen's 
 name. For many years his town residence had 
 been a house to the rear of York Street in Lilli- 
 put Alley (now part of North Parade Passage);* 
 
 ^ In Lilllput Alley, the Lilliputian historian delights to 
 remark, once lived the celebrated Sally Lun of the tea-cake 
 and the ballad-mongers : 
 
 ' No more I heed the muffin's zest, 
 
 The Yorkshire cake or bun j 
 Sweet Muse of Pastry! teach me how 
 
 To make a " Sally Lun." ' 
 
6 At Prior Park 
 
 but in later life he migrated to Prior Park, a house 
 he had built on Widcombe Hill, a little to the 
 south-east of Bath, and commanding through a 
 hollow a fine view of the city, four hundred feet 
 below. Its origin was on this wise. Bath stone 
 was beginning to be used freely, not only for 
 facings and ornamentation, but for building;^ 
 and gradually what is now known as modern 
 Bath was slowly coming into shape and being. 
 Queen Square, begun in 1728, was finished in 
 1735, in which latter year the North and South 
 Parades were also completed. But Bath stone had 
 a formidable competitor in Portland stone, and 
 bitter enemies in the London architects, who 
 contemptuously compared it, both for colour and 
 durability, to Cheshire cheese. All these preju- 
 dices Allen's patience had to overcome, not with- 
 out difficulty ; and he resolved to give the adversary 
 an object-lesson in the matter by building, in the 
 neighbourhood of his Combe Down works, a 
 
 ' The house in St. John's Place now known as the 
 Garrick's Head, and once inhabited by Richard Nash, 
 was one of the earliest examples of Bath Stone decoration. 
 Mrs. Delany and Miss Berry afterwards lived in it. There 
 is a good representation of it in J. F. Median's interesting 
 'Famous Houses of Bath, etc.,' 1901, 41 — a work in 
 which, following the precept of Linnaeus, the author has 
 worthily commemorated his locality. 
 
A^ Prior Park 7 
 
 sumptuovis mansion of Bath stone, which should 
 not only exhibit the superlative quality of the 
 maligned material both for ornamentation and 
 construction, but ilkistrate and exemplify the 
 ' Orders of Architecture in all their glory.' 
 Modified, as might be expected, by after-con- 
 siderations, and less ambitious in the execution 
 than in the conception, Prior Park was begun 
 about 1735. Its erection completely vindicated 
 the capabilities of oolite; while the concurrent 
 construction of the General, or Mineral Water 
 Hospital (1738-42), to which Allen, besides a 
 donation of ^^ 1,000, presented all the necessary 
 stonework, certainly did not diminish the prestige 
 of the proprietor of the quarries. 
 
 John Wood, the architect, and first of the 
 name, who, it should also be stated, gave his pro- 
 fessional services to the Hospital gratis, describes 
 Prior Park as consisting of ' a Mansion House in 
 the center, two Pavilions, and two Wings of 
 Offices. All these are united by low buildings, 
 and while the chief Part of the whole Line fronts 
 the Body of the City, the rest faces the summit of 
 Mar's H'lll^ namely — Mount Beacon, or Lans- 
 down. The first part of this short description 
 suggests a superficial affinity to Stowe,^ and pro- 
 ' See post, ' Eighteenth-Century Stowe.' 
 
8 At Prior Park 
 
 bably to other eighteenth-century country-seats. 
 The central structure, in the Corinthian style on 
 a rustic basement, occupied 150 out of the 1200 
 feet of the frontage, and rose from a terrace 100 
 feet below the summit of Combe Down. The 
 entrance was in the south front ; on the north 
 front, or garden side, stood a stately six-column 
 portico, intended by its designer to rival and even 
 excel that erected for Sir Richard Child, at Wan- 
 stead House in Essex, by Campbell of Greenwich 
 Hospital, one of the most determined detractors 
 of Bath Stone. Between its Ionic pillars were 
 balustrades converting the whole into an alfresco 
 pavilion from which it was possible at once to 
 enjoy the air and the magnificent view of distant 
 Bath.^ Below the terrace on which the house 
 was built, the ground sloped gradually in lawn 
 and garden beds; while a spring from the summit, 
 falling by careful lapses and contrived cascades, 
 found its way at last into a lake, well stocked 
 with fish, about a quarter of a mile distant. At 
 the head of this lake there was, as at Stowe, a 
 Palladian Bridge, a copy by Richard Jones, Allen's 
 factotum and clerk of the works, of that erected 
 by Lord Pembroke at Wilton in Wiltshire. Jones 
 was also responsible for the west wing of the 
 ^ See the frontispiece to this volume. 
 
At Prior Park 9 
 
 house which was finished after Allen had dis- 
 pensed with the services of his original architect 
 Wood, who died in 1754. To complete the re- 
 semblance to Stowe, it may be added that, in 
 1752, soon after the erection of the Palladian 
 Bridge, Prior Park was visited by the Princess 
 Amelia ; and Allen, retiring himself to another 
 seat he had at Weymouth, surrendered the house 
 to his illustrious guest. But there is no record 
 that he erected a Doric Arch in Her Royal High- 
 ness's honourj nor on this occasion had she any 
 Walpole in her suite to play Polonius, and 
 chronicle her diversions. 
 
 Prior Park, apparently, was not like Stowe, a 
 treasure-house of works of art, or even a museum 
 of curiosities. But it is nearly as memorable by 
 its visitors, some of whom, for example — Pitt 
 and Pope, were common to both places. The 
 first-comer, in point of time, as well as in promin- 
 ence, was Pope. Pope's relations with Allen 
 were, however, more creditable to the host than 
 the guest ; and they constitute one of the more 
 equivocal chapters of Pope's equivocal biography. 
 They cover the last eight years of his life; and 
 arose out of the issue, from ' Curll's chaste press,' 
 of his so-called spurious or pirated correspond- 
 ence. With this, it will be remembered. Pope 
 
lO At Prior Park 
 
 professed to be indignant, although in reaUty he 
 was an accessary. Allen, one of whose most en- 
 gaging qualities, in addition to simplicity, seems 
 to have been a genuine veneration for goodness, 
 was struck by the highly edifying sentiments 
 which the letters expressed; and in order to en- 
 sure their reproduction in authentic form, wrote 
 to Pope offering to pay the cost of a new edition. 
 Pope replied with polite ambiguity, promising to 
 avail himself of Allen's proposal, should it become 
 necessary. Thereupon Allen busied himself actively 
 in soliciting subscriptions to the folio and quarto 
 issues of 1737. His advocacy was very genuine 
 and effective, and indeed there is every reason 
 to believe that, as suggested by the poet himself 
 in one of his unpublished letters to Allen now 
 in the British Museum,^ his enthusiasm supplied 
 rather more of the subscriptions than are assigned 
 to his name. In any case, this marks the begin- 
 ning of the friendship between the Man of Bath 
 and the ' Twit'nam Bard.' Pope, who was a 
 pioneer in the matter of landscape gardening, 
 went on to advise Allen in the laying-out of Prior 
 
 1 Quotations from these letters (E.G. 194-7), whicli 
 extend from 1736 to 1744., were made, for the first time, 
 in vol. ii. of ' George Paston's ' ' Mr. Pope : His Life and 
 Times/ 1909. 
 
A t Prior Park 1 1 
 
 Park, then in progress ; and Allen in return con- 
 tributed curious incrustations and perforated stones 
 from the Combe Down quarries to that famous 
 grotto by the Thames which was the plaything 
 of Pope's declining days. Pope sent Surrey pine- 
 apples, and Allen replied with Somerset waters. 
 In 1738 Allen formally visited Pope at Twicken- 
 ham ; and the November of the follovi^ing year 
 found the poet domiciled at Prior Park, rhe- 
 torically rejoicing over his remoteness both from 
 the Babel of London and that other mimic Babel 
 of Bath, which he was enabled to survey, in the 
 true Lucretian fashion, from Allen's specular 
 portico. He must have enjoyed himself im- 
 mensely, for Allen and his wife were models of 
 considerate hospitality. On all matters horticul- 
 tural Pope's word was law: and Pope had an 
 entertainer who was also only too willing to par- 
 ticipate in any philanthropic proposal. One of 
 those for whom he secured Allen's assistance was 
 the unsatisfactory Richard Savage, whom his long- 
 suffering friends were endeavouring to establish 
 in Wales ; and the Museum correspondence 
 shows pretty clearly that half Pope's contribution 
 of twenty pounds for this purpose was quietly 
 furnished by Allen's munificence. To this un- 
 obtrusive quality we owe Pope's notorious refer- 
 
12 At Prior Park 
 
 ence to his host in the dialogue which afterwards 
 became the first ' Epilogue to the Satires : ' 
 
 Let low-born Allen, with an awkward shame, 
 Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. 
 
 Allen's private views of this couplet are not on 
 record. But, despite the admirable and antithetic 
 dexterity of the second line, he must have been 
 curiously constituted if he did not regard the 
 epithet ' low-born ' as even more unhappy than 
 that of ' our little bard ' which Johnson applied to 
 Goldsmith in the first version of the Prologue to 
 the ' Good Natur'd Man ; ' and though Pope, perhaps 
 with some 'awkward shame' of his own, after- 
 wards changed ' low-born ' to ' humble,' it is diffi- 
 cult to believe that Allen can ever have been 
 extravagantly gratified. But though he was not 
 a highly educated man, he had instinctively ac- 
 quired that virtue of reticence which, in such 
 junctures, the true philosopher exhibits or simu- 
 lates. He preserved a discreet silence, only re- 
 doubling, if possible, his good offices to his tactless 
 panegyrist. 
 
 When Pope first went to Prior Park, his main 
 regret, he told ' blameless Bethel,' had been the 
 absence of his favourite, Martha Blount. In April 
 1743, that lady lost her mother, and August at 
 
At Prior Park 13 
 
 last found them together at Prior Park. But the 
 joint visit was not a success. Some obscure dis- 
 agreement took place almost immediately be- 
 tween Mrs. Allen and Miss Blount which hur- 
 ried Pope precipitately to Lord Bathurst's, and 
 brought about a breach which, on Pope's side, 
 was never wholly repaired. It is but just to say 
 that Miss Blount was evidently in poor health ; 
 and that, in addition to her recent bereavement, 
 she had vexatious domestic difficulties. The 
 origin of the rupture has never been definitely 
 ascertained. Whether, from the beginning, Mrs. 
 Allen was prejudiced against her feminine guest; 
 whether Miss Blount was more than ordinarily 
 untunable and exacting;^ or whether the sug- 
 gested proximate cause was the refusal of Allen, 
 who had just been Mayor of Bath, to lend the 
 fair Patty his coach to carry her to Mass, will 
 now probably never be known. What seems cer- 
 tain is — that matters had become perilously 
 
 I In any case, she must always ha%'e been a somewhat 
 difficult guest. In a letter written from Stowe by Lady 
 Suffolk in September 1735, she says that Lord Cobham 
 had been put to much inconvenience owing to Miss Blount's 
 reception at Stowe of friends of hers who, though neigh- 
 bours, were not on his visiting list. ('Suffolk Corr.,' 1824, 
 ii. 14.3.) 
 
14 At Prior Park 
 
 strained. Pope, quitting Prior Park in a crisis of 
 nervous irritation, had left his lady friend to follow 
 as she could. However well he might wish his 
 host, Mrs. Allen had suddenly become ' an im- 
 pertinent minx '; and Warburton, who was im- 
 plicated, * a sneaking parson.' It was Warburton, 
 nevertheless, who, later, effected a reconciliation; 
 and between Pope and the Aliens, at all events, 
 the old cordiality appeared to be renewed. A few 
 months afterwards Pope died ; but though by the 
 will which he executed in December 1743, he 
 left Allen part of his library and ;^I50, the man- 
 ner of the money bequest still betrays a residue of 
 rancour. The sum named, said the testator, was, 
 to the best of his calculation, what he had re- 
 ceived from Allen, partly for his own, and partly 
 for charitable uses. Allen promptly handed over 
 the money to the Mineral Water Hospital (as in- 
 deed Pope had suggested) merely remarking la- 
 conically that his friend was always a bad 
 accountant; and that a cipher added to the 
 figures would have more accurately represented 
 the amount of the obligation.^ He also took into 
 
 ^ The Warburton truce took place in September 1743, 
 and the will is dated 12th December following. It was 
 conjectured, perhaps not unnaturally, that Miss Blount 
 was at the bottom of the stroke at Allen; but the lady 
 
At Prior Park 1 5 
 
 his service Pope's faithful gardener, John Searle, 
 who had been adequately, but perhaps not liber- 
 ally, provided for by his late master. Pope had 
 left him £100 and a year's wages. Allen gave 
 him a second hundred and a home. 
 
 Of Warburton, already mentioned more than 
 once, it is now time to speak. At the date of 
 Pope's death he had been some two years an 
 habitu^ of Prior Park, for admission to which he 
 was indebted to Pope. In 1 741 he was a middle- 
 aged Lincolnshire clergyman of no great emin- 
 ence, although he had already published the first 
 part of his famous contribution to the Deistic 
 controversy, the ' Divine Legation of Moses.' 
 But his championship of the ' Essay on Man ' 
 against those who questioned its orthodoxy, had 
 strongly endeared him to Pope ; and when, in the 
 year last mentioned, his proposal to visit Pope at 
 Twickenham reached the poet at Widcombe, 
 Pope, then wrestling with the new ' Dunciad,' 
 eagerly availed himself of Allen's polite proposal 
 that Warburton should join them. ' The worthy 
 man who is the master of it [Prior Park],' he 
 wrote enthusiastically to Warburton, 'invites you 
 
 denied this to Spence. She asserted on the contrary that 
 she had vainly endeavoured to procure its withdrawal 
 (' Anecdotes, etc.,' 1820, p. 357). 
 
1 6 At Prior Park 
 
 in the strongest terms ; and is one who would 
 treat you with love and veneration, rather than 
 what the world calls civility and regard. He is 
 sincere and plainer than almost any man now in 
 this world, "antiquis moribus." ... It is just the 
 best season. . . . You will want no servant here. 
 Your room will be next to mine, and one man 
 will serve us.' And then follows a passage on the 
 amenities of Prior Park. ' Here is a library and a 
 gallery ninety feet long to walk in, and a coach 
 whenever you would take the air with me.' ^ 
 (Allen himself, it may be noted, seldom used a 
 coach unless he went beyond Bath.) The invita- 
 tion thus given was the making of Warburton. 
 He became a regular visitor to Prior Park, 
 preached in its chapel,' ingratiated himself with 
 its open-handed proprietor, contrived to obtain 
 the hand of Miss Gertrude Tucker, Allen's 
 favourite niece, and eventually, through his new 
 friend's influence with Pitt, then Member for 
 
 1 Pope's * Correspondence,' by Elwin and Courthope, 
 iv. (1886), pp. 220, 221. 
 
 * In November 174.5, he preached there a sermon 
 'occasioned by the present unnatural rebellion,' which 
 was printed. The large folio Bible used in Prior Park 
 Chapel, it may be added, was that presented to Pope by 
 Atterbury at their last interview in the Tower. (Hill's 
 Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets,' iii. (1905), p. 141.) 
 
At Prior Park 17 
 
 Bath, proceeded Dean of Bristol and Bishop of 
 Gloucester. From this time forward, he virtually- 
 resided at Prior Park; and when Allen died, 
 Warburton and his wife came in for ^5,000 each, 
 with reversion, on Mrs. Allen's death, of the 
 Widcombe and Claverton estates. 
 
 Warburton, for all his good fortune, can 
 scarcely be described as a very attractive person- 
 ality. He evidently could be, whenever he chose, 
 exceedingly conciliatory and agreeable ; he could 
 also be, and he frequently was, in controversy es- 
 pecially, insufferably rough, overbearing and 
 abusive. Prosperous externally, it is not impos- 
 sible that his prosperity had its drawbacks. His 
 married life, according to his biographers, was 
 not idyllic; and even when he first made Allen's 
 acquaintance, he must have had premonitions of 
 that ill-health which finally, like Swift's, landed 
 him in senile decay. At Prior Park he doubtless 
 exhibited both aspects of his disposition. To 
 Allen, whom he genuinely respected, and to 
 whom he was bound by the strongest ties of 
 gratitude, he was uniformly deferential and 
 amiable. He regarded him, he says in one of his 
 letters, as ' the greatest character in any age of 
 the world. . . . Charity is but a small part of his 
 virtues. I have studied his character even malici- 
 
1 8 At Prior Park 
 
 ously, to find out where the weakness h'es. But 
 I have studied in vain.' Even a large deduction 
 for partiality would still leave this laudation. And 
 he proved the sincerity of his devotion by defend- 
 ing his benefactor strenuously when he was at- 
 tacked. On the other hand, it is quite likely that 
 to those who had less claim on him he was offen- 
 sively patronizing and arrogant; and it is con- 
 soling to think that he sometimes met his match. 
 Quin, the actor, for example, who was by no 
 means inclined to be suppressed by the 'saucy 
 priest,' and who had, moreover, an inconvenient 
 habit of blunt repartee before which Warburton's 
 erudition was powerless, sometimes effectively 
 routed him. Once, when they were discussing 
 the execution of Charles I, which Quin upheld, 
 Warburton asked loftily by what law he was 
 condemned, and Quin retorted : ' By all the law 
 which he had left in the land ! ' The Bishop 
 could find no rejoinder. On another occasion 
 when Warburton sought to accentuate Quin's 
 calling by insidiously asking him to recite some- 
 thing, Quin, yielding to pressure, selected a speech 
 of Pierre in Otway's ' Venice Preserv'd,' contain- 
 ing the passage : 
 
 Honest men 
 
 Are the soft, easy cushions on which kna'ves 
 
 Repose and fatten — 
 
At Prior Park 19 
 
 ' mouthing out his hollow oes and aes ' with such 
 unmistakable application to Allen and Warburton 
 that the latter never again troubled him for a 
 taste of his quality as an elocutionist.^ 
 
 Quin and Warburton were antipathetic ; and 
 it is known that some of the severer strokes in 
 Churchill's merciless castigation of the Bishop in 
 ' The Duellist ' are based on the bons mots of the 
 actor. But Warburton and Quin have broken 
 our chronological sequence, as the next important 
 of Allen's guests is undoubtedly Fielding, on 
 whose relations with Pope and Allen the unpub- 
 lished correspondence in the British Museum 
 throws a fresh light — a light which justifies us in 
 drawing out those relations rather more minutely 
 than hitherto. Pope's earlier connection with 
 Fielding is obscure. In one of Fielding's love- 
 verses to Charlotte Cradock, he speaks of the poet 
 as ' sweet Pope^ which proves nothing. Pope 
 commented on a passage in 'Tom Thumb'; and 
 Fielding referred obliquely to Pope in the ' Cov- 
 ent Garden Tragedy.' When ' Pasquin ' appeared 
 in April 1 736 Pope was one of the audience — 
 according to the ' Grub Street Journal.' But the 
 security is no better than Bardolph's; and the 
 statement besides was promptly contradicted. 
 
 * John Taylor, ' Records of my Life,' 1832, i, 86. 
 
20 At Prior Park 
 
 Four years later the ' Champion ' was praising 
 Pope's ' IHad,' which the writer of the paper (ap- 
 parently to meet the allegations of the enemy 
 that Pope was ignorant of Greek) declared, in 
 emphatic typography, he had, ' with no Disad- 
 vantage to the Translator, COMPARED with 
 the Original.^ In February 1742, appeared 
 ' Joseph Andrews,' Book III, chap, vi, of which 
 brings in both Pope and Allen: * Some gentle- 
 men of our cloth ' [i.e. ' skips ' or footmen], says 
 Joseph, * report charitable actions done by their 
 lords and masters ; and I have heard Squire Pope, 
 the great poet, at my lady's table, tell stories of a 
 man that lived at a place called Ross, and another 
 
 at the Bath, one Al Al I forget his 
 
 name, but it is in the book of verses [Pope's 
 " Satires "]. This gentleman hath built up a stately 
 house too, which the squire likes very well ; but 
 his charity is seen farther than his house, though 
 it stands on a hill, ay, and brings him more hon- 
 our too. It was his charity that put him in the 
 book, where the squire says he puts all those who 
 deserve it; and to be sure, as he lives among all 
 the great people, if there were any such, he would 
 know them.' 
 
 This, to all appearance, is the first mention of 
 Allen by Fielding; and it suggests that Fielding 
 
At Prior Park 21 
 
 had heard of Allen's benevolence from Pope. In 
 a subsequent letter from Pope to Allen there is, 
 however, a specific reference to Fielding. 'Field- 
 ing has sent the Books you subscribed for by the 
 Hand I employed in conveying the ^^20 to him. 
 In one chapter of the second vol. he has paid you 
 a pretty Compliment upon your House.' At 
 first sight this might seem to relate to the fore- 
 going passage from 'Joseph Andrews,' which 
 speaks both of Allen and his dwelling-place. But 
 Pope's letter is dated 12th April, 1743, more 
 than a year after the issue of Fielding's first 
 novel, which besides was not subscribed for, but 
 had been sold outright to Andrew Millar. The 
 reference is therefore to the 'Miscellanies,' which 
 were issued in April 1743; and the 'compli- 
 ment ' occurs at p. 42 of the second volume of 
 these, in chap, v of the Lucianic 'Journey from 
 this World to the Next,' etc. Contrasting the 
 many ' noble Palaces ' on the road to Greatness^ 
 with the absence of them on the road to Goodness^ 
 Fielding remarks that in the latter thoroughfare 
 there was ' scarce a handsome Building, save one 
 greatly resembling a certain House by the Bath.^ 
 This is clearly the passage indicated by Pope, who 
 himself receives a tribute further on in chap, viii, 
 p. 64, where Homer is said ' to have asked much 
 
22 At Prior Park 
 
 after Mr. Pope^ and said he was very desirous of 
 seeing him : for that he had read his ' Iliad ' in his 
 Translation with almost as much delight, as he 
 believed he had given others in the Original.' The 
 same chapter contains a reference to Warburton. 
 To what extent these citations imply direct 
 intercourse between Allen and Fielding is doubt- 
 ful; and it is notable that neither Allen nor Pope 
 appears in the list of subscribers to the ' Miscel- 
 lanies.' It may be that the story of the ^20 — 
 with an additional cipher! — is the source of Der- 
 rick's statement that Allen sent Fielding a present 
 of ^200 ' before he personally knew him,' for 
 Derrick, who blunders badly in another part of 
 this very passage, cannot be regarded as very 
 trustworthy.^ But Fielding, whatever may have 
 happened previous to the publication of the ' Mis- 
 cellanies ' in 1743, was at Bath in 1744, since, 
 as we now know, his wife died there in Novem- 
 ber of that year J and in the interval which 
 elapsed before the issue of ' Tom Jones ' in 
 February 1749, a period of unusual stress, ill- 
 health and privation, he must often have visited 
 Bath. It is admitted that he lived for some time 
 in the house at Twerton, already referred to;^ 
 
 ' 'Letters,' 1767, vol. ii, 04. 
 
 2 This, now known as 'Fielding Lodge,' is authentic- 
 
At Prior Park 23 
 
 and that while there he was writing ' Tom Jones' 
 and dining ' almost daily at Prior Park.' So says 
 the Rev. Richard Graves, the author, later, of 
 that clever book, the ' Spiritual Quixote' ; and he 
 is a credible witness. Other places in Bath asso- 
 ciated with the progress of the book are Wid- 
 combe House, the home of Allen's connections, 
 the Bennets, with whom Fielding's acquaint- 
 ance seems to go back to the time of his court- 
 ship; and he must have often resided with his 
 sister Sarah in her little cottage in Church Lane, 
 now transformed into Widcombe Lodge, and 
 tableted as a site he once haunted. During all 
 this time it is clear that he was in frequent com- 
 munication with Allen ; and that he was indebted 
 to him for repeated kindnesses, which he, on his 
 side, acknowledged with all the ungrudging gra- 
 titude which was part of his large and impulsive 
 nature.^ 
 
 ated by an inscription placed on it by the good offices 
 of Mr. R. G. Naish of Twerton. 
 
 ^ Fielding's original agreement with Andrew Millar 
 for the coyyright of ' Tom Jones, and his autograph 
 receipt for ;^6oo, were sold at Sotheby's in June 1911 for 
 ^1,015, the late Mr. Huth having paid Sotheran ^12 12s. 
 for them in 1868. The author's entire gain for the six 
 volumes was ;^70o, as Millar afterwards added ^^loo, in 
 view of the success of the book. 
 
24 At Prior Park 
 
 It is true that ' Tom Jones ' is inscribed not to 
 Allen but to George Lyttelton; and that, by 
 Fielding's dedicatory Preface, a third patron, the 
 Duke of Bedford, is associated with the triple 
 ' picture of a truly benevolent Mind' after which, 
 in drawing the Allworthy of the novel, he had 
 been endeavouring. From Bedford and Lyttelton 
 he had certainly received pecuniary help; indeed, 
 he not only indicates Lyttelton as the sole be- 
 getter of the book, but expressly declares that 
 he (Fielding) ' partly owed his Existence to him' 
 during much of the time occupied in its com- 
 position. ' Tom Jones' is nevertheless full 
 of references to Allen, and if the book does 
 not precisely depict Prior Park, it is from its 
 terrace that Allworthy surveys the sunrise ; and 
 the leading traits of Allworthy are the leading 
 traits of Allen. Kindliness, simplicity, modesty, 
 unpretentious generosity — these are all the merits 
 of Allworthy, and they are also the merits of 
 Allen. Sometimes the description is literally 
 transferable. The following, for instance, is quite 
 unsuited to Bedford and Lyttelton, while it is ex- 
 actly true of Allen : ' Though he had missed the 
 advantage of a learned education, yet being blessed 
 with vastnatural abilities, he had sowell profited by 
 a vigorous, though late application to letters, and 
 
At Prior Park 25 
 
 by much conversation with men of eminence in 
 this way, that he was himself a very competent 
 judge in most kinds of Hterature.' ^ Moreover, in 
 Book VIII, chap, i, Fielding, though without 
 naming Allen, draws his character at full. It is 
 too lengthy to quote ; and we have only room for 
 a passage borrowed from an earlier page, which 
 throws a light on the unconventional hospitalities 
 of Prior Park. After referring to those hosts to 
 whom their literary guests are little more than 
 dependents, or servants out of livery, the author 
 goes on: 'On the contrary, every person in this 
 house was perfect master of his own time; and 
 as he might at his pleasure satisfy all his appetites 
 within the restrictions only of law, virtue, and 
 religion; so he might, if his health required, or 
 his inclination prompted him to temperance, or 
 even to abstinence, absent himself from any 
 meals, or retire from them whenever he was so 
 disposed, without even a solicitation to the con- 
 trary; for indeed, such solicitations from superiors 
 always savour very strongly of commands. But 
 here all were free from such impertinence, not 
 only those, whose company is in all other places 
 esteemed a favour from their equality of fortune, 
 but even those whose indigent circumstances 
 ^ 'Tom Jones,' Book I, chap. x. 
 
26 At Prior Park 
 
 make such an eleemosynary abode convenient to 
 them, and who are therefore less welcome to a 
 great man's table because they are most in need 
 ofit.'^ 
 
 Fielding when at Bath continued to frequent 
 Prior Park,*^ and he had not exhausted his grati- 
 tude to ' Mr. AUworthy,' to whom, two years 
 later, he inscribed ' Amelia.' We have always re- 
 garded this tribute as a model of the dignified 
 style in dedication. Here, in their first fashion, 
 are the portions which relate to Allen : ' The 
 best Man is the properest Patron of such an at- 
 tempt. This, I believe, will be readily granted ; 
 nor will the public Voice, I think, be more 
 
 * * Tom Jones,' Book I, chap. x. 
 
 ^ There is token of this in the censorious utterance of 
 Hurd to Balguy in 1 751, in which he speaks of having 
 dined there on the previous day [i8th March] with Field- 
 ing, whom he characterizes as 'a poor emaciated, worn- 
 out rake, whose gout and infirmities have got the better 
 even of his buffoonery.' Warburton's servile biographer, 
 then a young man, had apparently not yet acquired the 
 charity which later made him the admiration of Bathonians. 
 In March 1751, Fielding had, not long before, been dan- 
 gerously ill; and if he was a martyr to gout, so was Pitt. 
 Moreover, at this date he was an active and energetic 
 magistrate, whose philanthropic pamphlets were by no 
 means 'buffoonery,' and whose latest novel was 'Tom 
 Jones.' 
 
At Prior Park 27 
 
 divided, to whom they shall give that Appella- 
 tion. Should a Letter indeed be thus inscribed, 
 Detur Optimo, there are few Persons who 
 would think it wanted any other Direction.' 
 
 After saying that he will not ' assume the ful- 
 some Stile of a common Dedicator,' he goes on : 
 * I have not their usual Design in this Epistle 
 nor will I borrow their Language. Long, very 
 long may it be before a most dreadful Circum- 
 stance shall make it possible for any Pen to draw 
 a just and true Character of yourself, without in- 
 curring a Suspicion of Flattery in the Bosoms of 
 the Malignant. This Task, therefore, I shall 
 defer till that Day (if I should be so unfortunate 
 as ever to see it) when every good Man shall pay 
 a Tear for the Satisfaction of his Curiosity ; a day 
 which at present, I believe, there is but one good 
 Man in the World who can think of with Un- 
 concern.' 
 
 Notwithstanding that the owner of Prior Park 
 was an older man than Fielding, the 'just and 
 true Character' was never composed, for Ralph 
 Allen survived the novelist some ten years. But 
 he extended his benevolent protection to Field- 
 ing's family, one of whom was named Allen after 
 him; and although he resigned the execution 
 and administration of Fielding's will, he is said 
 
28 At Prior Park 
 
 to have made a ' very liberal annual donation ' 
 tow^ards the education of his children — a state- 
 ment supported by the fact that he left three of 
 them, as well as their aunt, Sarah, ^^loo each. 
 
 Fielding had been dead three years, and Pope 
 thirteen, before vv^e hear of the next great visitor 
 to Prior Park, William Pitt, later Earl of Chatham. 
 Allen had no doubt made Pitt's acquaintance be- 
 fore 1757, w^hen he became Member for Bath; 
 and their friendship continued until Allen's death. 
 Whether, as there is some ground for supposing, 
 Allen actually paid Pitt's election expenses or 
 whether he did not, there can be little doubt that 
 Allen's local influence, and power with the civic 
 authorities, materially contributed to Pitt's suc- 
 cess ; and that the relations of the two men were 
 honourable to both. Unluckily, towards the close 
 of Allen's life, those relations were troubled by a 
 passing disagreement between the Great Com- 
 moner and his constituents. Pitt regarded the 
 Peace of Paris, which closed the Seven Years' 
 War, as * inadequate,' and he had said so in 
 Parliament. When he was subsequently invited 
 to present to the King an address from the Mayor 
 and Corporation of Bath in which it was qualified 
 as 'adequate,' he naturally declined to do so; and 
 as Allen honestly admitted his responsibility for 
 
At Prior Park 29 
 
 the peccant epithet, the situation became embar- 
 rassing. Between Pitt and Allen, however, matters 
 were happily smoothed over without loss of self- 
 respect on either side/ At Allen's death he left 
 Pitt ;^i,ooo as 'a last instance of his friendship 
 and grateful regard for the best of friends, as well 
 as the most upright and ablest of Ministers that 
 has adorned our Country.' Pitt, on his side, wrote 
 to Allen's widow of her dead husband in terms 
 of the warmest affection and esteem. But of his 
 actual visits to Allen's house no record remains. 
 There was no pious poet to sing of Pitt at Prior 
 Park as Thomson sang of Pitt at Stowe. 
 
 Pope, Fielding, Pitt — these are the most sub- 
 stantial shadows of the Prior Park guests; of the 
 others we get little more than passing glimpses. 
 Of Warburton, Graves, Quin, Hurd, and even 
 Sarah Fielding, the most has been said that is 
 known. There seems to be an impression that 
 Sterne was one of the visitors. But the picture 
 of him painted by Gainsborough, another of 
 Allen's friends, and now in the Peel Park Museum 
 at Salford, was not executed until after Allen's 
 death. Of Richardson, who is also said to have 
 sat to Gainsborough, and who married the sister 
 
 1 Peach, 'Life and Times of Ralph Allen/ 1895, 
 pp. 176-9. 
 
30 At Prior Park 
 
 of James Leake, the bookseller whose back-parlour 
 on the Walks by LilHput Alley was a rallying- 
 place of the Bath literati, there is a solitary and 
 very characteristic anecdote. It is here that he is 
 recorded to have uttered the memorable words: 
 ' Twenty years ago I was the most obscure man 
 in Great Britain, and now I am admitted to the 
 company of the first characters in the Kingdom.' 
 He was going to dine at Prior Park ! ^ Thomas 
 Ed wards,of the 'Canons of Criticism,' Richardson's 
 friend and admirer, and a Greek scholar bold 
 enough to cross swords with Warburton, was 
 another of the group ; so also was that most 
 dapper of Dukes, the French envoy, Nivernais, 
 wearing no doubt on his extremely diminutive 
 person the extremely diminutive hat which he 
 had brought into fashion, and which Anstey in 
 the ' New Bath Guide ' celebrated as the mark of a 
 *Beau Gar^on.' Other names might be added. 
 But the pleasantest figures to pause upon are those 
 of the host and hostess, as drawn by Derrick, one 
 of Nash's successors as Master of the Ceremonies. 
 Allen he portrays as *a very grave, well-looking 
 old man, plain in his dress, resembling that of a 
 Quaker, and courteous in his behaviour. . . . His 
 wife is low [i.e.j of stature], with grey hair, of a 
 1 Graves.. 'The Triflers,' 1806, p. 68. 
 
At Prior Park 31 
 
 very pleasing address, that prejudices you much 
 in her favour.' * One w^ants no fuller picture of 
 that homely, kindly pair ; but those who desire 
 further to visualize ' Mr. Allw^orthy ' may consult 
 William Hoare's picture in that Hospital at Bath 
 to which Allen was so munificent a patron. 
 
 • 'Letters,' 1767, ii, 94. 
 
THE PORTRAITS OF 
 CARMONTELLE 
 
 AT Strawberry-Hill, in the sunny Blue 
 Breakfast Room overlooking the Thames 
 with its solemn, slow-moving barges, hung many 
 mementoes of Horace Walpole's friends and pre- 
 dilections. There were prints of Lady Mary 
 Coke, Lady Hervey, and Mason the poet; there 
 was a sketch of Fontenelle ; there was a portrait 
 of Voltaire cut out in card by Hubert of Geneva. 
 There was a painting by Raguenet of the Hotel 
 de Carnavalet ' in la rue Coulture St. Catherine, 
 at Paris,' now an Historical Museum, but once 
 the residence of Mme. de S^vigne; and there was 
 an engraving minutely reproducing Mme. du 
 Deffand's room and her favourite cats, a taste in 
 which she rivalled her contemporary, Mme. 
 Helv^tius. But the picture that here most im- 
 mediately concerns us was a washed drawing in 
 which a young, aristocratic-looking woman, in 
 the ' robe rayde' of the period, was shown present- 
 ing a doll to an old lady in a frilled hood-cap, 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 33 
 
 who, seated in a high chair, and with closed eyes, 
 was raising her hands to receive it. 
 
 The figures stood for two of Walpole's French 
 friends, the Duchesse de Choiseul, the young and 
 beautiful wife of Louis the Fifteenth's Prime 
 Minister, and Mme. du DefFand, then more than 
 seventy years old, Mme. du DefFand had long 
 been blind ; but was still possessed of extraordinary 
 vivacity and feverish interest in life. Her own 
 grandmother had been a Duchesse de Choiseul; 
 and in allusion to this, she was accustomed to 
 call the existing Duchess ' Grand'maman,' while 
 that lady on her side addressed her septuagenarian 
 friend as her 'petite-fille.' Hence, apparently, what 
 Walpole styles the 'joli badinage de la poupde.' 
 Not long after his second visit to Paris, the two 
 ladies had sent him their combined portraits by the 
 hands of the French Ambassador, the Marquis 
 du Chatelet. That of the elder lady was held to 
 be excellent. Nothing could be so ' exactement 
 vrai au pied de la lettre.' ' Vous etes ici en per- 
 sonne, je Vous parle, et il n'y manque que votre 
 impatience a repondre ' — says Horace in his 
 English-French. Her ' Tonneau ' (this was her 
 so-called ' Tub ' or great chair), her furniture, her 
 environment, were all faithfully given. 'Jamais 
 une idee ne s'est si bien rendue.' On the other 
 
34 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 hand, the portrait of Mme, de Choiseul, whom 
 Walpole professed to admire extravagantly, was 
 reckoned a failure. That ' queen of an allegory,' 
 as he called her, had lost her beauty and distinc- 
 tion; and probably a good deal which, in those 
 days, when expression played so large a part in 
 personal charm, could not possibly be transferred 
 to paper or canvas. Even if the artist had suc- 
 ceeded, as he had with Mme. du Deffand — who, 
 by the way, was practically ' still life ' — some- 
 thing, as Walpole admits, must always have been 
 to seek. ' L'eloquence, I'elegance, la saine raison, 
 la bonte, I'humilite, et I'afFabilite, sont-elles du 
 ressort de la peinture? ' he asks. In all this, there 
 is no doubt a good deal of the hyperbole of com- 
 pUment. But others, as well as Walpole, appear to 
 have agreed that the popular artist, M. de Carmon- 
 telle, had not been as fortunate in his likeness of 
 Mme. de Choiseul as in his likeness of Mme. du 
 DefFand/ And who was M. de Carmontelle \ 
 That is the question we shall attempt to answer. 
 
 ^ We have failed to discover what has become of this 
 drawing. At the Strawberry-Hill sale it was sold for 
 seven guineas to Mr. W. M. Smith (Strawberry-Hill Cat., 
 1842, p. 121). An engraving of it by W. Greatbach 
 forms the frontispiece to vol. vii. of Walpole's 'Letters' 
 by Cunningham, 1857-59. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 3 5 
 
 There seems, at the outset, to be some doubt as 
 to the spelling of his name. Most of the diction- 
 aries call him Carmontelle ; he is Carmontelle to 
 Grimm, whose portrait he drew ; and he is Car- 
 montelle on some of the engravings after his de- 
 signs. He is also (and this is, perhaps, most to 
 the point) Carmontelfe in the official record of his 
 death. But Walpole, Miss Mary Berry, Mme. 
 du DefFand, and Mme. de Genlis, the last of 
 whom says she had known him uninterruptedly 
 for fifteen years at Paris or at the Orleans court 
 of Villers-Cotterets, all call him 'Carmontel.' In 
 either case, the name was assumed. The late 
 M. Auguste Jal, of whom one may truly say, as 
 Johnson said of Cave, that he was * nullis fessus 
 laboribus,' discovered conclusively that the patro- 
 nymic of Carmontelle was Louis Carrogis; and 
 that Louis Carrogis was the son of Philippe Car- 
 rogis, shoemaker, and of Marie-Jeanne Eybelly, 
 his wife, a shoemaker's daughter, both resident in 
 Paris at their shop in the rue du Coeur- Volant, 
 at the corner of the rue des Quatre-Vents. 
 Here, on the 15th of August 17 17, Carmontelle 
 was born, having for godfather a neighbouring 
 grocer. To this modest origin and condition it 
 is doubtless due that no particulars of the first 
 forty years of his career are forthcoming, with 
 
36 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 exception of the fact that, in 1744, he stood 
 sponsor for one of his brother's sons, being then 
 described as Louis Carrogis, 'engineer' — a voca- 
 tion presupposing, not only a specific technical 
 training, but in addition some familiarity with 
 geometry and mechanical drawing. He must at 
 the same time have possessed, or afterwards ac- 
 quired, the arts of etching and engraving, since 
 there are said to be etchings signed L. Carro- 
 gis. Having for some time acted as tutor to the 
 children of the Marquis d'Armenti^res, on the 
 outbreak of the Seven Years' War he was carried 
 by the commander of the Orleans regiment of 
 dragoons, M. de Pons-Saint-Maurice, who was 
 also Governor to the Due de Chartres, into 
 Westphalia, in the capacity of aide-de-camp. 
 Here his chief duties were to draw military plans, 
 carve cold turkey dexterously for his general 
 officer, and make sketches — or, as they were then 
 loosely styled, 'caricatures' — for the Due de Chev- 
 reuse, of the respective officers of the Chevreuse, 
 Bauffremont, Orleans, and Caraman troops of 
 horse. These performances had already become 
 numerous and popular, when, with the conclusion 
 of the war, he was definitely attached to the 
 household of the Due d'Orl6ans, Louis-Philippe 
 the First, familiarly known as the 'gros Due,' under 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 37 
 
 the title of Reader to his son, Louis-Philippe 
 Joseph, Due de Chartres, afterwards 'Egalit6,' and 
 then about sixteen. * Quoique honorable,' says 
 Mme. de Genlis, this was a post * en quelque 
 sorte subalterne,' and did not permit its holder 
 even in the undress atmosphere of the Duke's 
 country seats of St. Cloud or Villers-Cotterets, 
 to take his meals with the family, although he 
 seems later to have shared with the famous 
 Tronchin, his Grace's physician-in-chief, the 
 special privilege of eating ices in the evening 
 with the rest of the court. But Carmontelle, for 
 by this time he must long since have adopted his 
 pseudonym, coupled with the much-suspected 'de' 
 employed by Voltaire, was no ordinary man. He 
 had, as we shall see, an imposing presence ; his 
 manners, without subserviency, were good; and, 
 besides being exceptionally well-informed, he 
 possessed many agreeable literary and social accom- 
 plishments, which must speedily have rendered 
 him invaluable to a shifting and restless com- 
 munity of titled idlers, whose ceaseless inquiry, 
 like that of Mme. de Genlis' M. Dam^zague, was 
 ' Que f6rons-nous demain matin ? ' Foremost 
 among these popular talents were the dramatic 
 sketches, or 'Proverbes,' which later made him the 
 Scribe of his epoch. It is, however, with his art- 
 
38 The Portraits of Carmontelk 
 
 istic gifts that we are here exclusively concerned. 
 * II peignoir parfaitement [the epithet is of course 
 exaggerated] a la gouache le paysage et la figure,' 
 says his panegyrist; and he had the happy knack 
 of taking full-length portraits, after the fashion 
 introduced by Cochin, in profile, which made 
 him much in requisition by the high-born or 
 distinguished personages with whom he came in 
 contact. Mme. de Genlis, whom he drew play- 
 ing on the inevitable harp, says that he repre- 
 sented her as very ugly, and needlessly em- 
 phasized the height of her forehead. But there 
 must assuredly have been some compensating 
 qualities in the picture, for she shows no sign in 
 her writing of the ' injuria spretae formae.' An- 
 other of Carmontelle's devices for amusing his 
 contemporaries must have anticipated the modern 
 moving-picture; and in some sort resembled 
 those ' Ombres Chinoises' which Monsieur S6ra- 
 phin was later to make so attractive a diversion of 
 the reconstructed Palais Royal. Mme. de Genlis 
 vaguely defines this as ' a sort of magic lantern.' 
 Luckily, other reporters are more explicit. It 
 consisted of a sequence of transparencies, or con- 
 tinuous designs on thin paper, the unrolling of 
 which behind a glass revealed to the spectators 
 on the other side an unending procession of figures 
 
The Portraits of Carniontelle 39 
 
 of all sorts, occupied in all kinds of ways, and 
 set in suitable landscapes or localities. Some of 
 these transparencies are said to have been a 
 hundred, or even a hundred and sixty feet long; 
 and they afford an extraordinary testimony to 
 the untiring industry and fertility of their con- 
 triver/ It is no wonder that such a man be- 
 came in brief space ' Ordonnateur des fetes en 
 general ' to the Duke of Orleans. For this office, 
 coupled with his readership, he received the 
 modest annual stipend of 1,800 livres, which, 
 taking the livre to represent \Qd. would mean 
 {j]S- But he was apparently only on duty dur- 
 ing ' la belie saison,' and it is but reasonable to 
 assume that he was sometimes paid for his portraits. 
 For more than twenty years Carmontelle con- 
 tinued his unwearied and unambitious activities. 
 Then, in 1785, the 'gros Due' died, and was suc- 
 ceeded by Philippe ' Egalit6.' By this date Car- 
 montelle was nearing seventy. He seems, tempo- 
 
 ^ Angelo claims that his father did something of the 
 same kind on the model of a pictorial drama entitled the 
 * Tableau mouvant,' which he had seen at Venice. ' He was 
 so delighted with its effect, the scenes being painted as 
 transparencies, and the figures being all black profiles, 
 that he constructed a stage on the same plan, and it was 
 greatly admired by Gainsborough, Wilson and other land- 
 scape painters.' ('Reminiscences,' 1830, i, 10.) 
 
40 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 rarily at all events, to have passed to the service of 
 the new Duke. But in 1785 the Revolution w^as 
 in the near future; and henceforth w^e knov^^ 
 little of his proceedings. He must, however, have 
 contrived to preserve a 'juste milieu,' for, while 
 most of his sitters emigrated or were guillotined, 
 the storm rolled harmlessly over his head, leaving 
 him impoverished but unscathed. He survived 
 until December 1806, dying quietly at No. 22, 
 Rue Vivienne, aged eighty-nine. In the register 
 of the arrondissement, consulted by M. Jal, he is 
 described as Louis Carrogis Carmontelle, ' c^liba- 
 taire' and 'rentier.' Of what his 'rentes' could 
 have consisted, it is hard to conceive, if, as stated by 
 some authorities, it be true that his closing years 
 were spent in a state bordering on indigence; and 
 that he was even obliged to pledge his MSS. at 
 the Mont de Pi6t6 in order to meet a pressing 
 necessity — one of those exceptional cases, adds 
 the narrator sardonically, in which it has been 
 found possible to raise money upon wit. It is 
 further related that he often figured at the 
 periodical free dinners which Mme. de Frenilly 
 gave to her ' old and ruined friends ' — dinners at 
 which each guest ' ate to satisfy himself for the 
 next few days.' ^ This was c. 1798. On the other 
 ^ * Recollections of the Baron de Frenilly,' 1909, Heine- 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 41 
 
 hand, Mme. de Genlis, who saw Carmontelle 
 frequently after 1802 at the apartments which 
 Bonaparte had assigned to her in the Arsenal, 
 declares that ' il jouissoit d'une honndte aisance.' 
 ' Son caractere etoit si doux, ses moeurs si pures, 
 ses talens si aimables, qu'il n'excita jamais la 
 haine et I'envie. ... II fut toujours lou6, aime, 
 considere; et, dans un age tr^s avanc6, il termina 
 paisiblement ses jours au sein de sa patrie,' 
 
 He had been in the habit of preserving the 
 originals of his sketches, and of giving only copies 
 to those of his sitters who wanted them. Conse- 
 quently, at his death he possessed a large number 
 of drawings, which were sold by auction in April 
 1807, a lengthy catalogue being printed at the 
 Imprimerie des Sciences et des Arts. It described 
 the collection as including ' seven hundred and 
 fifty portraits of Princes and Lords, Princesses 
 and titled Ladies, Ministers, Soldiers, Magis- 
 trates, Ecclesiastics, Savants, and illustrious Per- 
 sonages under the reign of Louis XV, painted in 
 gouache from the life, and about eight or nine 
 inches high.' M. Joly, the Keeper of the Prints 
 at the Biblioth^que Imp^riale, was desirous that 
 this unique gallery should be acquired by the 
 
 mann, p. 155. The hostess called these Saturday feasts 
 ' jour d'ogres,' which her cook turned into ' jour de dogues.' 
 
42 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 Government ; but he unfortunately died before 
 the purchase could be effected. Thereupon, * a 
 friend of Carmontelle, the Chevalier Richard de 
 L6dans, a retired military man, vv^ell knovi^n to 
 the Orleans family, determining that they ought 
 not to be dispersed, borrowed the money to buy 
 them, hoping he might be able to transfer them 
 as a whole to one of Carmontelle's sitters, 
 Talleyrand, by that time Bonaparte's Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs. In this he was disappointed. 
 He therefore sold a few of them separately,* thus 
 reducing their number to five hundred and thirty 
 sketches, comprising six hundred and thirty-five 
 portraits. These he catalogued and classified, 
 adding some prefatory account of Carmontelle, 
 still preserved at the Mus6e Cond6. As he him- 
 self had been familiar with many of the persons 
 depicted, he was generally able to identify them. 
 In i8i6 Ledans died, and the collection passed 
 into the hands of a certain Pierre de La M6san- 
 gere, a ci-devant priest and professor of belles- 
 lettres at La Fleche, whom the Revolution had 
 
 ^ Possibly some of these reached the British Museum, 
 which possesses four : the Due de Chevreuse (hereafter 
 mentioned), Mme. de Vermenoux, the Marquise de la 
 Croix (a charming recumbent figure), and the ' Coureur 
 (messenger) of St. -Cloud. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 43 
 
 transformed into the editor of the * Journal des 
 Dames at des Modes.' His knowledge of costume 
 enabled him to add details to the labours of his 
 predecessor, and to rectify minor mistakes; and 
 he carefully mounted the drawings in their exist- 
 ing form. Then, in February 1831, La Mesan- 
 gere also died, and on the i8th July his property, 
 including the Carmontelle portraits, was dispersed 
 by auction. At the Mesangere sale they were 
 bought by the Gordon Duff family, and came to 
 Banff, Here they remained until 1877, when 
 their then-owner. Major Lachlan Gordon Duff 
 of Drummuir, sold the majority of them ^ to 
 Messrs. Colnaghi, from whom they eventually 
 passed to Henri d'Orldans, Due d'Aumale, King 
 Louis-Philippe's fourth son, and the heir to the 
 last of the Cond^s. The Duke had already con- 
 trived to secure some of Carmontelle's produc- 
 tions,^ and he afterwards bought a few more. 
 
 • Major Gordon DufF retained a certain number, which 
 are now in possession of his son, Mr. Thomas Gordon 
 Duff. These include, among others, drawings of Hume, 
 Talleyrand, the Duke of York, Bougainville the Elder, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes, the Princesse de Salm and her son, 
 the Duchesse de Chaulnes, and a very attractive ' laitiere ' 
 of Villers-Cotterets. 
 
 ^ Some of these came from the sale of the concierge of 
 the old Park or Garden of Monceau, which, in 1778, was 
 
44 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 This brought the total up to four hundred and 
 eighty-four drawings and five hundred and sixty- 
 one portraits, which were re-arranged by a Brus- 
 sels binder named Claessens in ten large red 
 morocco volumes. These in 1897 the Duke be- 
 queathed with the rest of his art treasures to the 
 Institute of France. They are now in the Or- 
 leans salon of the Musee Cond6, constituting a 
 ' vast collection in which the second half of the 
 eighteenth century lives again, with all its ele- 
 gances and some also of its trivialities.' 
 
 The last words are quoted from the introduction 
 
 laid out for the Due de Chartres by Carmontelle, who, 
 though he declined to regard it as an English garden, 
 decorated it freely with the temples, obelisks, Chinese 
 bridges, and artificial ruins popular at Kew and Stowc. 
 One of these structures, the Naumachia, an oval piece of 
 water, partly encircled by a Corinthian colonnade, the 
 fluted pillars of which came from the Valois tomb at 
 St. Denis, still exists (Baedeker's 'Paris,' 1904, p. 217). 
 The place was one of Carmontelle's favourite resorts, and 
 he did numerous views for a volume describing it in 1779. 
 In the delightful ' Nouvelles Promenades dans Paris ' of 
 M. Georges Cain, the curator of the Musee Carnavalet 
 (p. 320), there is a plan showing that the original Pare 
 Monceau, from which ' Egalite ' and Lafayette heard the 
 cannon announcing the fall of the Bastille, was as large 
 again as the pretty well-kept pleasure-ground that now 
 bears the name. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 45 
 
 to a sumptuous quarto which, under the title of 
 * Chantilly: Les Portraits de Carmontelle,' Mons. 
 F. A. Gruyer, the late accomplished curator of 
 the Musee Conde, devoted to this particular 
 branch of its riches; and to which we are indebted 
 for many of the foregoing facts, since, although 
 we have consulted numerous authorities (includ- 
 ing of course our own favourite M. Jal), we have 
 found it difficult to add much but those minor 
 explanations always required in treating a French 
 theme for English readers. Like the savant he was, 
 M. Gruyer did his work ' savamment.' Besides 
 all needful preliminaries, he gives ample informa- 
 tion respecting the persons represented by Car- 
 montelle, a task entailing no small labour: and 
 what is more, he adds a number of photographic 
 reproductions, which, to those who cannot make 
 the pilgrimage to Chantilly, are of considerable 
 value. That Carmontelle was an amateur must 
 be admitted. But he certainly was not an amateur 
 in the sense of the adage 'Qui dit amateur, dit 
 ignorant.' On the contrary, he was abundantly 
 instructed. His backgrounds and accessaries are 
 always informing and appropriate; and his details 
 of costume minutely studied. As to his likenesses, 
 although he may not have satisfied the enthusiasm 
 of Walpole or the vanity of Mme. de Genlis, there 
 
46 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 is no lack of testimony that he sufficiently met 
 the requirements of ready recognition. As to this 
 we may trust the ever-critical Grimm. ' He has 
 the special gift of seizing the air, the carriage, the 
 spirit of the figure rather than the resemblance of 
 the features.' . . , Every day I find myself recog- 
 nizing in society persons vi^hom I have never seen 
 except in his collections.' ' These, which he aug- 
 ments daily, also give an idea of the different 
 states of life, as men and women of all degrees 
 and ages enter into them indiscriminately, from 
 Monsieur the Dauphin to the fioor-polisher of 
 St.-Cloud.' The quotation suggests a certain 
 affinity with the work of the German Daniel 
 Chodowiecki, and particularly with the sequence 
 of drawings in theBerlin Academy which illustrate 
 that artist's 'Journey to Danzig' in 1773, so 
 excellently facsimiled by Messrs. Amsler and 
 
 ^ In confirmation of this M. Gruyer quotes from the 
 Carmontelle sale catalogue of 1807 the description of a 
 picture which represents six persons in the red St.-Cloud 
 livery looking at a garden, with their backs to the spectator, 
 each of whom it was easy to identify from his posture and 
 general appearance. The very existence of such a drawing 
 shows what was regarded as one of Carmontelle's special 
 ingenuities. One remembers the wonderful hats in Hogarth's 
 "Election Entertainment," all of which suggest different 
 owners. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 47 
 
 Ruthardt. Chodowiecki, with a wider inventive 
 range, has all the sedulous fidelity to dress and 
 accessary which distinguish his French contem- 
 porary. Indeed, at one point there is an actual 
 though accidental connection between their 
 labours. About 1765 Carmontelle made a design 
 arising out of the well-known Calas case. iVIarc- 
 Antoine Calas, a moody young fellow, had com- 
 mitted suicide; and the Roman Catholic fanatics 
 of Toulouse persuaded themselves that, to prevent 
 his turning Roman, he had been murdered by his 
 Protestant father. The hapless old man was conse- 
 quently broken on the wheel; but the rest of the 
 family were exonerated; and Carmontelle's com- 
 position shows them receiving in prison the an- 
 nouncement of their acquittal. It is singularly 
 effective, Mme. Calas and her two daughters being 
 most sympathetically rendered, as well as their 
 staunch fellow sufferer, the Roman Catholic ser- 
 vant. Of this drawing an excellent engraving by 
 de La Fosse, published for the benefit of the 
 sufferers, found its way to Berlin, and Chodowiecki 
 copied it in oil. He then set about a pendant, 
 depicting the condemned man's farewell to his 
 family. This he himself engraved; and, as the 
 print called the ' Adieux de Calas,' or ' Der grosse 
 Calas ' (to distinguish it from a smaller copy), it 
 
48 The Portraits of Caj'montelle 
 
 became one of the most famous of his produc- 
 tions. 
 
 M. Gruyer skilfully distributed the Carmontelle 
 Gallery into groups of Princes and Princesses, 
 Courtiers and Court Officials, Soldiers and Sailors, 
 Great Ladies, Statesmen, Ecclesiastics, Authors, 
 Musicians, and so forth. From so potent and rev- 
 erend an assembly, one can but select for recogni- 
 tion, as one does in real life, a few of those whom 
 one knows best or likes most. In such circum- 
 stances, we naturally look first for the person who, 
 if not precisely the host, is certainly the ' ordonna- 
 teur de la fete ' : to wit — Carmontelle himself. 
 He is not difficult to find, as he naturally figures 
 in the group attached to the Orleans household. 
 Seated on a terrace, with garden trees in the back- 
 ground, he is depicted in the act of taking one of 
 the portraits to which, according to tradition, 
 he was seldom able to devote more than a couple 
 of hours. He is magnificently attired in a suit of 
 garnet velvet, with green spots, and wears a bag 
 of the same material. His hair is elaborately 
 dressed in the fashion of 1762 or thereabouts, 
 which would make him between forty and fifty. 
 Before him, on an elegant Louis-Quinze table, 
 lies the large book or album which Mme. de 
 Genlis describes him as bringing into the room 
 
CARMONTELLE: BY HIMSELF 
 
 (from gruyer's "chantilly: les portraits de carmontelle," 
 
 BY permission OF MM. PLON-NOURRIT ET CIE.) 
 
The Portraits of Cannontelle 49 
 
 at Villers-Cotterets after dinner in order to sketch 
 the most recent arrivals. His artistic stock-in- 
 trade is of the simplest. Red chalk for the flesh, 
 black chalk for the dress j a little water or body- 
 colour for the final tints — this is all he wants. His 
 appearance is that of a singularly methodical and 
 self-possessed person, with comely features, and the 
 air of a careful but calm investigator, of whom one 
 may well believe, in Mme. de Genlis' words, that 
 Ml joignait beaucoup de bonhomie a I'esprit le plus 
 observateur, deux choses bien rarement reunies.' ^ 
 In royalties Carmontelle's gallery is not rich. 
 Louis the Well-Beloved did not apparently figure 
 among the sitters, nor need his absence be re- 
 gretted. On the other hand, there is an excellent 
 portrait of the unfortunate Dauphin, in queue and 
 cadogan, with his hands buried in a muff. He is 
 placed, like Carmontelle himself, on a terrace, 
 with ominous cypresses in the background, 
 although, in 1760, when this sketch was made, 
 he had still five years before him; and was 
 
 ^ In 1762 he would be in his prime. Later reports 
 describe him in advanced years somewhat differently. 'He 
 was a thin man, with a long and severe face,' says Frenilly, 
 * a sardonic laugh, an imperious and choleric disposition ; 
 but hidden under this rugged exterior were a very good 
 heartandasingularly lofty soul.' ('Recollections,' 1909, p. 5.) 
 E 
 
50 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 apparently far from being the living ghost whom, 
 not long before his death, Horace Walpole saw 
 at Versailles. Carmontelle also drew the Dauphin's 
 devoted German wife, mother of the sainted 
 Mme. Elizabeth, and of three kings (Louis X\^I, 
 Charles X, and Louis XVIII); but her picture 
 is not among the treasures of the Musde Conde. 
 Other portraits in this group are Carmontelle's 
 patron, the 'gros Due,' that benevolent, albeit 
 somewhat dull and prematurely portly personage, 
 who afterwards married Mme. de Montesson, the 
 aunt of whom Mme. de Genlis gives a so frankly 
 feline account in her ' Memoirs ' (' Elles se detest- 
 aient cordialement,' says Mme. d'Oberkirch); 
 the Due de Chartres, the ' gros Due's ' son, ' dans 
 sa belle jeunesse,' which must have been the only 
 thing beautiful that could ever be attributed to 
 Philippe 'Egalite'; the Prince de Conde, not yet 
 the leader of the Emigres of 1789, but the boy- 
 hero of Johannisberg and the Seven Years' War, 
 and 'Egalite's' sister, Therese-Bathilde d'Orleans, 
 or ' Mademoiselle,' a very arch and winsome little 
 lady, in all the bravery of panniers, powder, and 
 begarlanded 'grand habit.' ^ But the most memor- 
 
 ^ 'Mademoiselle' married the Due de Bourbon. Her 
 only son was the ill-fated Ducd'Enghien, shot at Vincennes 
 in 1804. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 5 1 
 
 able pair in this category are ' Egalit^'s ' sister-in- 
 law, the hapless Princesse de Lamballe (of whom 
 M. Gruyer does not reproduce the portrait), and 
 her father-in-law, the good Due de Penthievre, 
 about whose practical rather than pastoral benevo- 
 lence his secretary Florian wrote : 
 
 Bourbon n'invite pas les folatres bergeres 
 
 A s'assembler sous les ormeauxj 
 II ne se mele pas a leurs danses legeres, 
 
 Mais il leur donne des troupeaux. 
 
 It was the Duke's emissaries who tried to save 
 the Princess at the terrible September massacres, 
 but the butchers fell upon them with cries of 
 ' Death to the disguised lacqueys of the Due de 
 Penthievre,' and they themselves barely escaped. 
 
 From the dispersed and miscellaneous crowd 
 of 'Personnages attached to the House of Orleans.' 
 it is difficult to make selection. But it may be 
 noted that several of them were English or Irish. 
 Of Colonel Barre (perhaps the Isaac Barre who 
 served under Wolfe against Rochfort), little is 
 said beyond the fact that, besides being a gambler, 
 he was a good amateur actor. General Clarke is 
 another; but of the special functions of these two 
 nothing is stated. There are also Lord Farnham, 
 and the ' gros Due's' preceptor, M. the Abbe 
 
52 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 O'Mdlan (?) — a 'tr^s digne eccl^siastique,' and a 
 *tr^s bon gentilhomme, comme tous les Irlandais 
 du monde,'says L6dans,withaburst of enthusiasm. 
 Then there are portraits of Count d'Adhdmar, 
 sometime ambassador to England; of another 
 reader to the Duke d'Orleans, the vaudevillist, 
 C0II6, at this date a septuagenarian ; of Mme. 
 du DefFand's friend Pont-de-Veylej of the 
 Academician, La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, the 
 author of the ' Dictionnaire des Antiquites 
 Fran^aises.' But the most notable, and perhaps 
 the most noteworthy historical figure is the famous 
 Bailli de SufFren, one of the noblest names in 
 French naval history, and the doughty opponent 
 of Sir Edward Hughes in that long and changing 
 struggle in East Indian waters which ended with 
 the Peace of Versailles. The Bailli must have 
 been among the last of Carmontelle's Orleans 
 sitters, if his portrait be rightly dated 1785, since 
 that was also the year of the 'gros Due's ' death. 
 The number of portraits in this class is already 
 too large to deal with ; but it may be added that 
 it is exceedingly comprehensive in its range, for 
 it includes likenesses of the negroes, Narcisse and 
 Auguste, of the latter of whom M. Gruyer says 
 happily that ' il s'abandonne avec d61ices au plaisir 
 de ne rien faire'; of Liennard Beller, the Suisse, 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 53 
 
 whose duty, like that of Bousk at Versailles, was 
 to fling open the folding doors and announce visitors 
 in a stentorian voice; of the maitre d'hotel and 
 the first valet de chambre; of the court tailor, 
 and even the bird-boy (' garde-bl^s ') of Villers- 
 Cotterets. 
 
 To these worthies M. Gruyer devotes a number 
 of pages, and there are more than three hundred 
 in his bulky quarto volume. Of course, many of 
 the personages described are obscure, and de- 
 servedly so. But with such a mass of material it 
 is hopeless to cope in brief compass ; and we must 
 henceforth confine ourselves to the attractive 
 section of ' Grandes Dames,' and to a few miscel- 
 laneous portraits, which, for one reason or another, 
 present especial interest. In depicting the great 
 ladies, Carmontelle, with his sense of grace, and 
 his feeling for frippery must have taken unending 
 delight. Many of his models were justly renowned 
 for their beauty — the Duchesse de Chevreuse,^ 
 Mile, de Bernay, Mme. du Tartre, the Comtesse 
 
 ' The Duke's portrait is not at Chantilly, but, as already 
 stated at p. 42 «., in the British Museum. Husband and wife 
 are each represented by simple drawings in black and red 
 crayon; and both are dated 1758, during the Seven Years' 
 War. The Duke's portrait was engraved by Auguste de 
 Saint-Aubin. 
 
54 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 d'Egmont, Marshal Richelieu's daughter and 
 Walpole's friend, of whom, with her guitar, there 
 is a graceful picture. Some, living life well even 
 in a court, deserve our admiration for their purity: 
 witness that admirable Comtesse de S6ran — the 
 Arethusa, or Margaret Godolphin, of a vicious 
 Versailles, for all that she was witty as Mme. 
 de Sevign6 ; others, the Duchesse de Lauzun, the 
 Duchesse de Gramont, the Marquise du Plessis- 
 Belliere, and Mme. de Saint-Amarant, compel 
 consideration by the magnificent serenity with 
 which they suflFered on the scaffold. In a few of 
 the drawings here reproduced, the composition 
 includes several figures. One is an attractive 
 group, consisting of the Presidente Lamoignon, 
 a charming young mother of seven-and-twenty, 
 with her four children, three girls and a boy — 
 engaging little figures which not even lace caps 
 and the proprieties of a Louis-Quinze costume 
 can wholly deprive of their native artlessness; the 
 other shows the Comtesse de Rumain, her eldest 
 daughter the Comtesse de Polignac, and Mile, de 
 Rumain. This is a *sc6ne de salon.' The mother 
 bends over the younger girl as she sits stiffly practis- 
 ing at what Tony Lumpkin calls the * haspicolls ' ; 
 the elder sister, a graceful figure, is working 
 quietly on a tambour. Between the columns at 
 
The Portraits of Carniontelh 55 
 
 the back you get a glimpse of a park. Turn the 
 leaf, and you come on that emotional, clever 
 Mile, de Lespinasse, who behaved so ungratefully 
 to Mme. du Deffand.^ And very clever she looks 
 in her dark dress and white lace, suggesting all 
 the intellectual alertness for which she was re- 
 nowned. ' She talked for the most part on plain 
 subjects,' says the insensible Comte de Guibert 
 for whom she sighed in secret, 'but she did not 
 express herself in a common way, and this art, 
 which seemed to be a second nature with her, 
 never obtruded itself upon notice, and never led 
 her into affectation.' Turn the leaf once more, 
 and it is a stately Comtesse de Vauban, ' gathering 
 rosebuds while she may,' in a ' robe, a double jupe 
 et a volants,' with a stupendous ' head ' and teles- 
 cope curls (* rouleaux '), surmounted by a garland 
 of eglantine, which again is crowned by a flutter 
 of bone-lace lappets. But the details of costume 
 would be interminable. Satins and taffeties, frills 
 and furbelows, ribbons and flowers, ruches and 
 ' pliss6s ' — the bare enumeration would tax all the 
 exact terminology of the Goncourts and the 
 
 ' It is just possible that this portrait, a great favourite 
 with Carmonteile, was done for Mme. du DeiFand, as it 
 is dated 1760, which comes within the ten years (1754-64) 
 when the two ladies were still friends. 
 
56 The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 elegant science of M. Octave Uzanne. We must 
 pass to our miscellaneous figures. 
 
 It has already been stated that Ledans, failing 
 to find a purchaser for the Carmontelle gallery in 
 Talleyrand, sold some of the drawings separately, 
 which should account for the conspicuous absence 
 of certain notable names. There is no portrait of 
 Voltaire, for instance, in M. Gruyer's catalogue. 
 But Carmontelle certainly drew Voltaire, since, 
 as we shall see, the drawing has been engraved. 
 Again, one might reasonably have looked for 
 Rousseau, who was in Paris at the close of 1766. 
 The only Rousseau mentioned, however, is Mme. 
 Rousseau, wife of the famous ' maitre d'armes des 
 enfants de France,' to whom one of his judges, 
 dismissing him to the guillotine, had the heartless- 
 ness to add 'Pare celle-ci, Rousseau !' — a barbarity 
 worthy of Stevenson's Braxfield. Then there was 
 certainly a Benjamin Franklin, for although it is 
 not here reproduced, we have seen a copy of the 
 engraving made from it, which is declared to be 
 an excellent likeness, and represents him about 
 1780, when he was United States Minister.^ But 
 
 ' It is to be found among the portraits of Franklin 
 included in the interesting facsimile of 'Poor Richard's 
 Almanack for 1733,' issued by 'The Duodecimos' of 
 New York, 1894, p. 4.8. The engraver was D. Nee. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 57 
 
 where there is so much, it is needless to note omis- 
 sions. If there is no Voltaire, there is the Abbe 
 de Voisenon, whom Voltaire perfidiously flattered; 
 there are Grimm and Holbach, philosophes ; there 
 are Bachaumont and Duclos of the 'Memoirs'; 
 there is M. de Buffon (in his literary velvet and 
 laced ruffles, and wearing the Order of St. 
 Michael) ; there is that patron of the arts, Mme. 
 de Pompadour's brother, the Marquis de Marigny; 
 there is the amiable Louis Racine, whose* Memoir' 
 of his now somewhat discredited father ^ was the 
 favourite book of Rogers. Among the musicians 
 is Rameau, a characteristic and long-legged figure, 
 scribbling a score in front of his spinet; there is 
 also a well-known Mozart group. The little boy 
 of seven in an elaborate suit of sky-blue, trimmed 
 with lace, and perched on a chair, the seat of 
 which has been temporarily raised by cushions, 
 is at the harpsichord; his sister, a girl of twelve, 
 sings sedately by his side, while the father, Leopold 
 Mozart, in red velvet, accompanies on the violin.* 
 
 1 See 'Racine in the Dock,' by M. Augustin Filon, 
 'Fortnightly Review/ September 1911 — a review of the 
 recent study of the author of ' Athaiie ' by his great- 
 grandson, M. Masson Forestier. 
 
 - ' Mozart, as a child,' also appears in B. Olivier's ' The 
 a I'Anglaise chez le Prince de Conti' (that is— at the 
 
58 T lie Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 But, to the English student, perhaps the most 
 interesting portraits will be those of Garrick and 
 Sterne. The two figures in the former represent 
 the Garrick of Tragedy confronted by his second 
 self, the Garrick of Comedy. Grimm's contem- 
 porary description puts this clearly: ' M. de 
 Carmontelle,' he writes in July, 1765, 'has drawn 
 Garrick in a tragic attitude, and facing this 
 Garrick, he has placed, between two folding 
 doors, a comic Garrick, who bursts upon the 
 tragic Garrick and makes fun of him,' ^ Such a 
 presentment of the great actor's dual personality 
 is certainly a happy thought. The Sterne, which 
 belongs to a somewhat earlier date (1762), is 
 referred to in that writer's correspondence : ' The 
 Duke of Orleans,' he tells Garrick, ' has suffered 
 my portrait to be added to the number of some 
 odd men in his collection ; and a gentleman who 
 lives with him has taken it most expressively.' 
 
 Palace of the Temple), now in the Musee du Louvre. He 
 is playing the harpsichord, accompanied on the guitar by 
 the singer Jelyotte. Several of Carmontelle's sitters are 
 also present: the two Countesses d'Egmont, the Countess 
 de Boufflers, the Duchess de Lauzun, the Prince de Conti, 
 and M. Pont-de-Veyle. 
 
 ' Grimm's ' Correspondance Littdraire.' Ledans says 
 Carmontelle's drawing was made at the Orleans chateau of 
 Le Raincy. 
 
The Portraits of Cannontelle 59 
 
 Expressive it assuredly is, and as fortunate as that 
 of ' Roscius.' ' Yorick ' is shown standing on the 
 terrace of the Palais Royal (?), the dome of the 
 Invalides (?) in the background. A tall, spare 
 figure, with a sub-humorous look, he leans easily 
 on a chair-back, one hand in his pocket, and he is 
 decorously attired in a black suit, lace ruffles and 
 a loose cravat. He has the long nose and the lips 
 of the Nollekens terra-cotta of four years later, 
 and it is probable that Carmontelle's is a closer 
 likeness than the idealized Reynolds at Lansdowne 
 House.* 
 
 What became of the popular transparencies, is 
 doubtful. One of them is said to have been sold; 
 but others, being included in the catalogue of 
 1807, must have been still undisposed of at Car- 
 montelle's death. From a note byMme. de Genlis, 
 it would seem that negotiations were at one 
 time on foot to sell them advantageously in 
 Russia, though she had no further information on 
 the subject.'"' The illustrations to the description 
 
 ' Sterne speaks of obtaining an etching of the drawing, 
 but this is unknown. The original portrait did not form 
 part of the Ledans collection. It was bought separately 
 in London by the Due d'Aumale for ^^64. A few copies 
 were issued in 1890 by Messrs. Colnaghi. 
 
 ^ See Appendix A (Carmontelle's Transparencies). 
 
6o The Portraits of Carmontelle 
 
 of the Park of Monceau have already been re- 
 ferred to.' But a closing word must be devoted 
 to the other engravings after Carmontelle's dravi^- 
 ings, some of the originals of which are in the 
 Mus6e Cond6, and some not. The bulk of these 
 were by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph de La Fosse, the 
 engraver of ' La Malheureuse Famille Calas.' He 
 is credited among other things with a portrait of 
 the ' gros Due ' on horseback, in hunting costume, 
 and duly furnished with the regulation cor-de- 
 chasse; with portraits of the Duke and the Due 
 de Chartres in a billiard-room; of Rameau; of 
 the Abb6 de Chauvelin, and of the Mozart 
 group. Other engravers who copied Carmontelle 
 were Houel, Miger, Auguste de Saint-Aubin, 
 J. B. Tilliard ('Pas de Deux'), and Nicolas Ran- 
 sonnette. To Carmontelle himself are assigned 
 etchings of the Abb6 Allaire, ' Egalit6's ' precep- 
 tor ; of the Baron de Besenval, familiar in Carlyle ; 
 and of Voltaire, walking in the neighbourhood of 
 '• Les D61ices.' Carmontelle also executed a plate 
 of ' La Bouquetidre ' after Boucher. But his fame 
 as an artist will rest mainly on the series of por- 
 traits in the Mus6e Condd, a standing testimony 
 
 ^ Two of these, the Naumachia and the Temple of 
 White Marble, are reproduced in Cain's ' Nouveiles 
 Promenades dans Paris,' n.d., pp. 322, 326. 
 
The Portraits of Carmontelle 6i 
 
 to his exceptional gift of accurate observation, 
 his extraordinary fertility, and his no less extra- 
 ordinary industry. If his work never attained 
 the level of excellence which gives it the stamp 
 of genius, it was of no small service to his con- 
 temporaries ; and it is still of enduring interest 
 to the historian, the antiquary, and the archaeo- 
 logist.^ 
 
 * Since this paper first appeared in the ' National Review' 
 for June, 191 1, a long and interesting article on Carmon- 
 telle, under the title of ' Un Amuseur Oublie,' has been 
 contributed to the * Revue des Deux Mondes,' by M, 
 Augustin Thierry (15th April, 1912). 
 
GARRICK'S 'GRAND TOUR' 
 
 WITH Davies and Murphy, with Boaden's 
 bulky ' Correspondence,' with the two 
 lives of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, and the compact 
 monograph of the late Joseph Knight, it might 
 not unreasonably be supposed that Garrick 
 material, in spite of its extent, had already been 
 sufficiently exploited. But whether the much- 
 suspected final word has, or has not, been uttered, 
 it must be granted that discussion of a subject from 
 a fresh standpoint is never wholly out of date. 
 While there are German inquirers and French 
 appraisers (and indications are not wanting that 
 each is learnino; somethino; from the methods of 
 the other), we may always be glad to welcome 
 a supplementary study of Garrick, either Teutonic 
 or Gallic, feehng assured that English writers, as 
 well as readers, could not fail of instruction. 
 Great biographers we have, living and dead; but 
 it can scarcely be asserted that in this particular 
 department the general level of craftsmanship is 
 unimpeachable ; or that performances such as the 
 Burns of the late M. Auguste Angeliier, or the 
 62 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 63 
 
 Crabbe of M. Ren6 Huchon, are turned out by 
 the dozen in our favoured land. Then, in addi- 
 tion to the new survey or the neglected aspect, 
 there is the separate treatment of episodes or 
 incidents vv^ith vi^hich a foreigner, should his ow^n 
 country or customs be concerned, is naturally 
 better qualified to deal than an outsider. Rousseau 
 or Voltaire in England are themes more suited to 
 an Englishman than to a Frenchman: Sterne or 
 Garrick in France, on the contrary, may offer 
 greater facilities to a Frenchman than an 
 Englishman. In the case of Sterne, something 
 has been done by the capable volume issued by 
 M. Paul Stapfer in 1870 ; but, in our own day, 
 it has been reserved for Mons. F. A. Hedgcock, 
 ' Docteur-es-Lettres ' of the Sorbonne, to turn 
 his special attention to Garrick's experiences 
 abroad.^ 
 
 To Garrick, then, as seen for the moment 
 through alien glasses, this latest inquiry is con- 
 fined. Its author does not contemplate another 
 
 ' * David Garrick et ses Amis Fran^ais,' by F. A. Hedg- 
 cock, 191 1. This was a thesis presented to the University 
 of Paris for the ' Doctorat-es-Lettres. M. Hedgcock, who 
 is EngHsh by birth, and 'doctus sermones utriusque Hnguae,' 
 has recently translated it, with additions (Stanley Paul and 
 Co.). HeisnowlecturerinFrench literatureintheUniversity 
 of Birmingham. 
 
64 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 life of the great * acteur cosmopolite,' as he styles 
 him; but he professes, from sources published 
 and unpublished, to trace out the story of 
 Garrick's relations with the French comedians 
 who in 1749 visited London, and also of his 
 travels on the Continent in 1763-5. With this 
 object M. Hedgcock has diligently examined 
 the numerous letters written by foreigners in the 
 thirty-five volumes of Garrick's Correspondence 
 at South Kensington — a mine until now more 
 prospected than explored. And to the result of 
 his investigations, he has prefixed such a brief 
 biographical introduction and general estimate as 
 serve to explain and illustrate Garrick's position 
 with respect to his Gallic contemporaries. But 
 even this modest design affords him an opportunity 
 of rectifying some of the undetected lapses of 
 his forerunners. Of these corrections, the most 
 notable is contained in an appendix to his opening 
 chapter, disposing of the claim — never it seems 
 put forward seriously by the actor himself— to 
 noble French extraction. His alleged connection 
 with the Perigourdin De la Garrigues turns out 
 to be as unsupported as Fielding's supposed descent 
 from the Habsburgs, since reference to the mar- 
 riage register of his grandfather, David Garric, 
 proves conclusively that the said grandfather was 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour' 65 
 
 a Protestant ' bourgeois et marchand ' of Bordeaux 
 la Bastide; and that his wife, Jeanne, was the 
 daughter of Jean Sarrazin, also a ' marchand,' of 
 Pons in Saintonge. In other words, the imme- 
 diate ancestors of our English Roscius were 
 frankly middle-class and commercial; and of 
 ' sangre azul,' as the Spaniards call it, there is 
 no distinguishable trace. But Huguenot and Bor- 
 delais, with a dash of Irish vivacity from the 
 maternal side, is by no means a bad histrionic 
 blend. 
 
 Future English writers on Garrick will do 
 wisely to note this little amendment of an oft- 
 repeated statement, unless indeed they are in a 
 position to contradict it — a rather remote con- 
 tingency. But it is beside M. Hedgcock's inten- 
 tion to pick holes in Garrick's pedigree; and 
 this is only a casual detail of the chapter prefacing 
 his main purpose. In the same chapter he also 
 touches briefly on Garrick's aspects as actor, 
 Shakespeare-lover and author. As author he 
 counts least. A fortunate epigram or a happily 
 turned prologue does not make a poet. Nor can it 
 be pretended that adaptations from the French, 
 however adroit, constitute stagecraft; and it is to 
 be noted that, in ' The Clandestine Marriage,' 
 the only one of Garrick's pieces which has passed 
 
 F 
 
66 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 into the repertoire, the elder Colman was his 
 collaborator.^ Of his abridgments and readjust- 
 ments of Shakespeare's text, apart from his im- 
 personation of Shakespeare's characters, the less 
 said the better, although, having regard to the 
 French influence they betray, they cannot be 
 entirely disregarded. But as an actor, there is no 
 doubt as to his undisputed supremacy; and 
 M. Hedgcock's quotations from Grimm and 
 Preville show how thoroughly this was recog- 
 nized by his admirers of Outre-Manche. What 
 seems to have struck them most was the mar- 
 
 ^ It is true that he is credited with more quoted passages 
 than some greater men. But his jewels are mostly old 
 gems re-set. His * fellow-feeling makes one wondrous 
 kind,' comes virtually, like Captain Shandon's Greek and 
 Latin, from Burton's ' Anatomy'; and, as pointed out in 
 a later paper in this volume, his oft-cited couplet on the 
 fugitive nature of the actor's art had been anticipated by 
 Robert Lloyd. One of his less known couplets opens the 
 ' Prologue ' to that hapless ' Virginia ' of Fanny Burney's 
 ' Daddy Crisp': 
 
 PROLOGUES, like compliments, are loss of time; 
 'Tis penning bows, and making legs in rhyme. 
 
 The manuscript of the ' Clandestine Marriage,' it may 
 be added, partly in Colman's and partly in Garrick's hand- 
 writing, was recently on sale in London. It has now gone 
 — where so many good things now go — to America. 
 
 i 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour'' 6y 
 
 vellous versatility which enabled him to pass 
 instantaneously from comedy to tragedy, or vice 
 versa.^ And the additional fact that, like Rousseau, 
 very few of his audience could have understood 
 English, is a standing proof of that extraordinary 
 facial power to which so many have testified 
 from Johnson to Lichtenberg. Grimm's words 
 are not newj but they will bear repetition j and 
 we make a somewhat longer quotation than 
 M. Hedgcock: ' It is easy to contort one's face; 
 that may be conceived; but Garrick knows 
 neither grimace nor exaggeration ; all the changes 
 that take place in his features arise out of the 
 manner in which he is affected internally: he 
 never exceeds the truth ; and he knows that 
 other inconceivable secret of improving his ap- 
 pearance without other aid than passion. We 
 have seen him play the dagger scene in the 
 tragedy of ' Macbeth,' in a room, in his ordinary 
 dress, without any help from theatrical illusion ; 
 and in proportion as with his eyes he followed 
 
 ^ Sterne confirms this in a letter to Garrick. from Paris 
 of loth April 1762 : "Tis the greatest problem in nature, 
 in this meridian, that one and the same man should 
 possess such tragic and comic powers, and in such an 
 equilibrio, as to divide the world for which of the two 
 Nature intended him. ('Works,' 1798, ix, 78.) 
 
68 GarricUs ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 this dagger hanging and moving in the air, his 
 expression became so fine [' il devenait si beau 'J as 
 to extract a general cry of admiration from all the 
 assembly. Will it be credited that this same man, 
 a moment afterwards, imitates with equal per- 
 fection a pastry-cook's boy, who, gaping about 
 him in the street, his stock-in-trade on his head, 
 lets his tray tumble in the gutter, and dumb- 
 founded at first with his accident, ends by bursting 
 into tears.^ 
 
 Another testimony, that of the famous Preville 
 — 'Mercury himself,' Sterne calls him — is less 
 known. After speaking of the actor's obligation 
 to assume all parts, he says : ' Nature is niggard 
 of these phenomena, who appear once in a cen- 
 tury, and such, incontestably, is a comedian so 
 endowed. For our century this phenomenon 
 was reserved to England : Garrick had no rival 
 in any country, and the title [of Roscius] which 
 
 ' Grimm, ' Corr. Litt.,' July, 1765. The pieman's mis- 
 adventures must have been a never failing contemporary 
 jest. In Hogarth's ' Four Times of the Day,' 1738, a boy 
 is shown crying uproariously because he has broken the 
 dish he is bringing from the baker's by setting it down too 
 smartly on a post; and in the ' March to Finchley,' 1750, 
 a pieman, with a tray on his head, is being robbed by a 
 man who is insidiously drawing his attention to a trick 
 played on a milkmaid. 
 
THE TWO GARRICK.S: BY CARMONTEI.LE 
 
 (FROM gruyer's "chantilly: les portraits de carmontelle, 
 
 BY PERMISSION OF MM. PI.ON-NOURKIT ET CIE.) 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 69 
 
 he merited is still unclaimed.' ^ Probably it was 
 this peculiar mobility of feature which led Car- 
 montelle, in his Chantilly portrait, to depict 
 Garrick, in one and the same design, as comedian 
 and tragedian. Indeed (although the point does 
 not appear to have been noted), the posture and 
 gestures of the tragic Garrick are precisely those 
 which he might have been expected to assume in 
 the aforementioned scene from ' Macbeth.' He is 
 certainly looking at something in the air, and not 
 at his comic double.^ 
 
 With Garrick's personality we may now how- 
 ever dispense, and pass to his foreign friends. 
 Foremost of these was one Jean Monnet, whose 
 very chequered experiences as page to the Duchess 
 of Berry, printer, author, Trappist, prisoner in 
 
 1 'Memoirs' of Pr^ville, 1823, 
 
 * See ante, p. 58. There is a passage in Diderot's 
 * Paradoxe sur le Comedien' which is worth quoting in 
 this connection : ' Garrick will put his head between two 
 folding doors, and in the course of five or six seconds his 
 expression will change successively from wild delight to 
 temperate pleasure, from this to tranquillity, from tran- 
 quillity to surprise, from surprise to blank astonishment, 
 from that to sorrow, from sorrow to the air of one over- 
 whelmed, from that to fright, from fright to horror, from 
 horror to despair, and thence he will go up again to the 
 point from which he started. (W. H. Pollock's translation, 
 1883, p. 38.) 
 
70 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 the Bastille, Director of the Theatre de la Foire 
 (de Saint Germain), and so forth, had brought him 
 at last in 1749 to London with a troupe of French 
 actors. He had come at the invitation of John 
 Rich, the manager of Covent Garden ; but Rich, 
 alarmed by some ominous indications of Gallo- 
 phobia, withdrew from his bargain. Thereupon 
 Monnet, at a nonplus, turned to Garrick, who 
 befriended him, with the result that Monnet and 
 his company opened the little theatre in the 
 Haymarket. Rich's apprehensions were by no 
 means groundless. The first representation closed 
 ignobly with a dispute between the boxes and the 
 gallery; and silence was only secured for the 
 second by a formidable cohort of hired butchers 
 and watermen. Finally the Lord Chamberlain 
 stopped the performance; and Monnet had to 
 console himself as he could with the subventions 
 of his supporters, and a benefit generously bestowed 
 on him by Garrick. The result of these things 
 was a lifelong friendship between the two men; 
 and there are some fifty of Monnet's letters to 
 Garrick in the Forster Collection. Henceforth it 
 is Monnet who becomes, so to speak, Garrick's 
 indefatigable agent and Paris correspondent. 
 ' Coiffures ' and laces for Mrs. Garrick ; new plays 
 and engravings for her husband ; dancers, cooks, 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 7 1 
 
 jeweller?, professors of French — in all these 
 matters Monnet is the adviser and universal pro- 
 vider; and the more devoted and assiduous, be- 
 cause, before a few^ years are over, his regained 
 position as Director of the Opera Comique has 
 left him an enriched and unoccupied man.^ He 
 gave Garrick invaluable aid in the lighting and 
 decorating of Drury Lane; and it w^as to Monnet 
 that Garrick vv^as indebted for an introduction to 
 one of his most useful coadjutors, Casanova's 
 pupil, the painter Philip de Loutherbourg, w^ho 
 eventually became superintendent of the scenery 
 and machinery of the theatre. More than one of 
 Garrick's occasional pieces ow^ed their existence, 
 if not their origin, to the effective picture-setting 
 of de Loutherbourg, A second notability whom 
 Monnet sent to Garrick was the pyrotechnist, 
 Torr^, to whose Marylebone Garden fireworks 
 Dr. Johnson unkindly, and quite indefensibly, 
 compared the metrical ' coruscations ' of the author 
 of ' An Elegy in a Country Church Yard.' Lastly, 
 it was through Monnet that Garrick made the 
 acquaintance of yet another luminary of Maryle- 
 bone, Haydn's friend, Barthel^mon the violinist, 
 
 ^ One of C, N. Cochin's profiles, excellently engraved 
 by Saint- Aubin, gives an attractive idea of Monnet. It has 
 also a neatly appropriate motto: ' Mulcet, mo'vet, monet.^ 
 
72 Garrick's ' Grand Tour^ 
 
 who, beginning as leader of the band there, ended 
 by conducting the orchestra at Vauxhall. 
 
 To visit Monnet, Garrick, in all probability, 
 made his first journey to Paris, taking with him 
 his wife, Eva Maria Violette, to whom he had 
 been married two years before; and 'who (adds 
 Davies) from the day of her marriage to the death 
 of her husband, had never been separated from 
 him for twenty-four hours.' One of his fellow 
 travellers is said to have been Sir George Lewis, 
 afterwards murdered in the Forest of Bondy/ 
 Another 'compagnon de voyage' was 'M. Denis,' 
 who may have been that Charles Denis, the later 
 friend of Churchill and Robert Lloyd, whom the 
 latter fondly regarded as ' La Fontaine by trans- 
 migration ' — a description which, judging from 
 the versions in the ' St. James's Magazine,' sug- 
 
 ^ With this event is associated one of the numerous 
 legends arising out of Garrick's remarkable mimetic 
 powers. The suspected murderer, an Italian count, was 
 on the point of being released for want of evidence, when 
 Garrick, making up as the dead man, extorted from the 
 terrified criminal an admission of his guilt. The story is 
 on a par with that later fable of the journalist de la Place, 
 which represents Garrick as impersonating Fielding long 
 after his death, in order to prove that, in this way, he had 
 helped Hogarth to recall the features — the very marked 
 features, be it added — of his former friend. 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour' 73 
 
 gests an imperfect estimate of the supreme art 
 of the French ' conteur.' It is unfortunate that 
 Garrick's journal of 1751 has been lost, as this 
 fact, coupled with the fact that the record was 
 probably restricted to Monnet's circle, has of 
 necessity limited M. Hedgcock's investigations. 
 As regards Garrick's presentation to Louis XV, 
 M. Hedgcock has discovered no confirmatory evid- 
 ence. But he has disinterred from the ' Journal ' 
 of the vaudevillist, Charles Colle — who is his 
 authority for the mention of Denis, and who, like 
 Carmontelle, was one of the readers to the ' gros 
 Due ' of Orleans — an entry relating to a meet- 
 ing on 1 2th July, between the 'French Anacreon' 
 and the ' English Roscius.' Garrick acted for 
 Colle the famous dagger-scene, of which Grimm's 
 account has already been quoted ; and Colle's 
 recollections fully bear out Grimm's report. ' He 
 [Garrick] filled us with terror; it is not possible 
 to depict a situation better, to render it with 
 greater warmth, and at the same time to be more 
 self-possessed.' * ' He considers all our actors more 
 
 1 At this date, it should be observed that, although 
 some of Shakespeare's plays had been poorly translated by 
 de la Place, Shakespeare was little known in France gener- 
 ally. The inadequate ' Hamlet ' of Duels (who had no 
 English) was not acted until 1769; his ' Romeo et Juliette ' 
 in 1772 J his 'Lear 'in 1783, and his ' Macbeth' in 1784. 
 
74 Garrick's ' Grand Tour^ 
 
 or less bad (C0II6 continues); and in this respect 
 we say ditto to him,' But Garrick must have 
 made exception in favour of Mile. Clairon, w^hose 
 merits afterwards conquered both Goldsmith and 
 Gibbon.^ With some professional reservations, 
 he greatly admired her; and predicted for her 
 the more distinguished future she achieved. 
 
 His correspondence contains but one reference 
 to this expedition ; and that is in a letter to his 
 brother Peter, apparently written, after his re- 
 turn to England, from Lord Burlington's house 
 at Chiswick: 'You ask mc (he says) hov/ I like 
 France? It is y^ best place in the World to make 
 a Visit to & I was indeed much satisfy'd with 
 my Journey. ... I had much honour done me 
 both by French & English j & Every body and 
 Thing contributed to make me happy. The 
 great fault of our Countrymen is, y* when they 
 go to Paris, they keep too much among them- 
 selves, but if they would mix w^^ y® French as 
 I did, it is a most agreeable Jaunt.' When Gar- 
 rick left Paris, and whether his departure was in 
 any way connected with a frustrated project for 
 attracting French talent to London, an enterprise 
 in which the ' pr6v6t des marchands ' found it 
 
 ' Goldsmith's 'Bee,' 1759, No. 25 Gibbon's 'Auto- 
 biographies,' 1896, pp. 204, 262. 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour' 75 
 
 necessary to intervene, it is impossible to say. In 
 any case, he was back in England in July 1751. 
 A period of more than twelve years elapsed 
 before he again crossed the Channel. But in the 
 interval he added two to the list of his French 
 friends, of whom one, by the promise of his brief 
 life, deserves a passing mention. This was Claude- 
 Pierre Patu, a consumptive young advocate and 
 dramatist, much interested in England, and an 
 enthusiast in Shakespeare and Garrick. At the 
 end of 1754, in spite of the fogs, he came to 
 London for a few weeks, assiduously frequenting 
 Drury Lane Theatre. He speedily grew intimate 
 with the accessible actor, who received him with 
 'une politesse vraiment fran^aise'; and, going 
 back to France, began, like Monnet, to corre- 
 spond regularly with his new friend on matters 
 theatrical and literary. He showed much atten- 
 tion to Garrick's colleague, Mrs. Pritchard, when 
 she visited Paris with her daughter; he assisted 
 in negotiating between Garrick and the dancer 
 Noverre. One of his projects, anticipating John- 
 son, was to write, in conjunction with Garrick, 
 a ' Parnasse Anglois,' or Lives of the British 
 Poets, which was to reveal to his benighted 
 countrymen the unsuspected riches of our insular 
 muse. To Fr6ron's 'Journal Etranger' he con- 
 
76 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 tributed papers on many English subjects — Mrs. 
 Charlotte Lenox's ' Shakespeare Illustrated,' the 
 * Barbarossa ' of Dr. Brown of the ' Estimate ' 
 (that 'Barbarossa' whose midnight bell was so 
 dear to Johnson's 'Dick Minim'!), the altera- 
 tions of Garrick in 'Romeo and Juliet,' and 
 (perhaps) a version of Garrick's adaptation of 
 Motteux, the 'Lying Valet.' But in 1756, he 
 certainly issued anonymously, under the title 
 ' Choix de Petites Pieces du Theatre Anglais,' ^ 
 two volumes of translations of English Plays, the 
 second of which consisted of the ' Beggar's 
 Opera' and the 'What d'ye Call It' of Gay, 
 whom he greatly admired. Patu must have 
 been a singularly engaging personage, since he 
 succeeded in conciliating both Voltaire and Fre- 
 ron ; and he even contrived, at the Delices, to 
 
 ^ This was not the first translation, for, strangely 
 enough, it was with a version made (says Patu) * by a 
 German who knew neither English nor French,' that in 
 1749 Monnet's company had attempted to attract an 
 English audience. Patu's rendering (now before us) is a 
 creditable production, usefully annotated. He also trans- 
 lated, in his first volume, Dodsley's 'Toy-Shop,' 'King 
 and the Miller of Mansfield,' and ' Blind Beggar of Bethnal 
 Green,' as well as Coffey's popular ' Wives Metamorphosed,' 
 some of which pieces found imitators in France. Sedaine's 
 ' Diable a Quatre,' for instance, is based on Coffey. 
 
Garrtck^s ' Grand Tour' yy 
 
 champion that 'amiable barbarian,' Shakespeare. 
 Until M, Hedgcock and M. Huchon discovered 
 him, little seems to have been know^n of him; 
 and though Boaden prints his letters, French 
 and English, Garrick's English biographers never 
 mention his name. Unhappily, he w^as of those 
 whom the Fates but show to mankind, for he 
 died prematurely of decline in 1757. To Eng- 
 land he never returned; but he retained his pre- 
 dilection for us to the end; and his final missive 
 to Garrick from Naples in November 1756, the 
 last of a packet which the actor had labelled ' Poor 
 Patu's Letters,' closes with the Ghost's farewell 
 in ' Hamlet ' — ' Adieu ! Remember me ! ' 
 
 Jean-Georges Noverre, or the ' Chevalier ' 
 Noverre, another of Garrick's French friends at 
 this date, is not at the altitude of Patu, although 
 as a popular ' maitre-de-ballet,' he was naturally 
 more widely known. He had been introduced 
 to Garrick by Monnet, one of whose company 
 he had been at the Theatre de la Foire. In 1754 
 he had delighted the Parisians by two elaborate 
 choregraphic entertainments, both described as 
 triumphs of artful variety and ingenious com- 
 bination — the 'Fetes Chinoises' and the 'Fon- 
 taine de Jouvence.' Garrick endeavoured to se- 
 cure the ' Chinese Festival ' troupe for Drury 
 
78 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 Lane ; and after protracted preliminaries with 
 Noverre, who, being a Swiss, developed all the 
 mercenary aptitudes of his race, they arrived in 
 London in November 1755. But the moment 
 was singularly ill chosen. England was on the 
 eve of that Seven Years' War whose origin so 
 perplexed the eminent historian, Mr. Barry 
 Lyndon; and animosity to 'insulting Gaul' was 
 — especially among the lower classes — in its 
 acutest stage. It was idle to protest to an un- 
 reasoning mob that Noverre was of another 
 nationality; as Foote said later in the 'Minor,' 
 the ' patriot gingerbread baker from the Borough ' 
 vv^ould not sufFer ' dancers from Switzerland, 
 because he hated the French.' Even though 
 George II attended the first representations of 
 the ' Chinese Festival,' there were disturbances 
 at the outset, which increased in intensity with 
 every renewal of the performance. Constant 
 collisions took place between the rival factions; 
 blows were exchanged, swords drawn, benches 
 torn up, mirrors and lustres smashed, and not a 
 few persons maimed or injured. On the i8th, 
 the disorder reached its culminating point. The 
 unfortunate dancers were assailed with a storm 
 of peas and tin-tacks; and as soon as the pit was 
 cleared by the boxes, it was re-captured by the 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour' 79 
 
 gallery. At last a battalion of hired bruisers, 
 entering the theatre, ejected the malcontents, 
 who hurried off vindictively to smash Garrick's 
 windows, and, if possible, burn his house in 
 Southampton Street. So ended a fortnight's scan- 
 dal. Garrick seems nevertheless to have behaved 
 liberally to Noverre, although he had suffered 
 heavily by the damage to his property; and it is 
 to Noverre's subsequent ' Lettres sur les Arts 
 imitateurs ' that we owe one of the best and 
 most detailed accounts of Garrick's acting. It is 
 too lengthy to reproduce entire j but it is the 
 report of an expert eye-witness ; and one or two 
 passages confirming what has already been said 
 may find a place here: 'He [Garrick] was so 
 natural, his expression had so much truth, his 
 gestures, his physiognomy, and his looks were so 
 eloquent and so persuasive, that they placed even 
 those who knew no English in possession of the 
 facts of the story. He could be followed easily; 
 he touched in the pathetic; in the tragic he 
 aroused all the successive emotions of the most 
 violent passions. ... In the higher comedy he 
 captivated and entranced ; in the lesser kind he 
 amused ; and he transformed himself in the theatre 
 with so much art that he was often unrecognized 
 by persons who habitually lived with him. . . . He 
 
8o Garrick's ' Grand Tour^ 
 
 may, without partiality, be regarded as the Roscius 
 of England, because with diction, delivery, fire, 
 nature, wit and delicacy, he combined that 
 pantomime and that rare expression of dumb 
 show which characterize the great actor and the 
 complete comedian.' 
 
 Noverre, it is safe to infer, owed much to 
 Garrick; and it was from Garrick that he learned 
 the sovereign use of gesture and expression, even 
 in dancing. 
 
 With May 1756 the Seven Years' War began, 
 and further trips to France had to be indefinitely 
 postponed, though Garrick often cast a longing 
 eye across the Channel, and even during the 
 progress of hostilities cherished vague projects 
 for re-visiting his French friends. At the Peace 
 of Paris all these inclinations revived with new 
 pertinacity, heightened by the reports of Sterne, 
 who preceded him by several months. He was 
 grievously in want of change ; his sleepless energy 
 had impaired his health; he was fretted by petty 
 cabals and jealousies, and, excellent actor though 
 he was, the fickle public had grown a little weary 
 of him. Consequently, leaving Drury Lane to 
 his partner Lacy and his brother George, with 
 Colman for literary assessor, he started for the 
 Continent in September 1763, carrying with him 
 
Garrick's * Grand Tour* 8i 
 
 Mrs. Garrick and his pet dog, Biddy. Four days 
 later he reached the French capital. His first 
 visit was to the Theatre fran^ais, of which he 
 was straightway made free. Here Mile. Dumesnil 
 was acting in La Chaussee's ' crying comedy ' of 
 ' La Gouvernante'; and apparently struck Gar- 
 rick chiefly by what Gibbon calls her ' intem- 
 perate sallies.' ' She made use,' Garrick wrote, 
 ' of little startings and twitchings, which are 
 visibly artificial, and the mere mimicry of the 
 free, simple, and noble working of the passions.' ^ 
 He called on Preville; and on Mile. Clairon, of 
 whose marked advance in her new manner he 
 had heard from Sterne. ' She is highly improved 
 since you saw her,' Yorick had said. But the 
 * Blanche et Guiscard ' of Saurin, then being 
 played at the Comedie, a version of Thomson's 
 'Tancred and Sigismunda' in which Garrick him- 
 self had often acted Tancred, was not one of 
 her successes, although, if we are to believe 
 Bachaumont's ' Memoires Secrets,' he gave her 
 hints. This may have been the case, as the re- 
 hearsals were in progress when he arrived. But 
 he is discreetly silent as to the piece and her part 
 in it. 
 
 Shortly after its production at the close of 
 ^ Fitzgerald's * Garrick,' 1899, p. ^^4' 
 G 
 
82 Garrick's * Grand Tour ' 
 
 September, he must have left Paris for Italy, 
 going first to Lyons; and it was more than a 
 year before he saw Paris again. Making his way 
 from Lyons to Turin, he sent a gossiping letter 
 to his brother George, asking for news of the 
 theatre; begging him to forward Churchill's 
 * Ghost' (presumably Book IV, the last pub- 
 lished); warning him not to let the sun spoil 
 Hogarth's Election pictures (then hanging in the 
 bow-room at Hampton House), and so forth. 
 Perhaps the most important item of intelligence 
 in this communication is the announcement that 
 Voltaire has warmly invited him to visit Ferney, 
 a pleasure which he proposes to defer until his 
 return from Italy. But he is clearly much dis- 
 turbed by Voltaire's declaration, in the ' Essai 
 sur les Moeurs et I'Esprit des Nations,' ^ that 
 there was ' more Barbarism than Genius in Shake- 
 speare's works.' From Turin the Garricks passed 
 to Milan ; next to Genoa and Florence, where 
 they were welcomed by Frederick the Great's 
 Chamberlain, the poet Francesco Algarotti, then 
 ill and failing. Garrick recommended him to try 
 that rival in popularity to Dr. James's Fever 
 Powder, the Tar Water of Bishop Berkeley. 
 But tar water helped the poor * Swan of Padua ' 
 ^ Works, 1819, vol. XV, p. 94. 
 
Garrick^s ' Grand Tour ' 83 
 
 as little as it had helped Fielding, for Algarotti 
 died in the following year, on the very day that 
 he had written for Garrick an introduction to 
 some of his friends at his old home, Bologna. 
 After a fortnight's sight-seeing in Rome the 
 travellers went on to the Christmas festivities at 
 Naples, whence arrive to George Garrick fresh 
 accounts of the grand people who were every- 
 where feting and flattering his illustrious brother 
 — Lord and Lady Spencer, Lord Exeter, Lady 
 Orford (Horace Walpole's erratic sister-in-law). 
 Lord Palmerston — and of endless balls, suppers 
 and masquerades. He has ' forgot England, and 
 all his trumpery at Drury Lane.' He is collect- 
 ing musical data for Burney ; he has made the 
 acquaintance of the two Dances, one of whom 
 Nathaniel (afterwards Sir Nathaniel Dance Hol- 
 land), was to paint him most successfully — far 
 more successfully than Hogarth — as Richard HL 
 He has seen all the curiosities of the neighbour- 
 hood; and in the Elysian Fields at Baiae has 
 been so * very near wet to the skin,' that he was 
 incapacitated for enjoying either Caesar's Palace 
 or TuUy's villa.^ 
 
 ^ Garrick's little foibles are so familiar that it is only 
 fair to clear him of things ' not proven.' He had been 
 annoyed, this letter shows, by some gossip in the * St. 
 
84 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 April finds him once more at Rome, where 
 Dance paints, and Nollekens (then six-and- 
 twenty) models a first bust of him. In May he 
 is at Parma, doing the dagger scene for the Duke 
 of York and an illustrious party — ' mouthing for 
 snufF-boxes,' as one of his company afterwards 
 irreverently put it, in reference to a present he 
 received on this occasion. Then he follows the 
 Duke to Venice, from which place he writes 
 again in June to George Garrick. Both he and 
 his wife are unwell; and they are to try the mud 
 baths of Abano. The regime seems to have 
 suited the lady ; but her husband was not equally 
 fortunate. ' I eat and drink too much and laugh 
 from morning to night,' he had written from 
 Naples. The reviser of ' Romeo and Juliet ' 
 should have remembered that Violent delights 
 have violent ends.' By the time (August 1764) 
 he had reached his next stage, Munich, he was 
 
 James's Chronicle ' about his ' dancing with y^ Duke of 
 Devonshire.' Hitherto it has been too hastily assumed 
 that ' Duke ' was a mistake for ' Duchess,' with the corol- 
 lary that Garrick himself sent the story to press. But 
 M. Hedgcock, conscientiously consulting the statement in 
 situ, discovers it to be an entirely fictitious account of an 
 imaginary fete in honour of the Peace, at which, among 
 other things, Mr. Garrick and his Grace were to figure in 
 a country-dance! 
 
Garrick's * Grand Tour' 85 
 
 seriously ill. ' The excellent Continental cookery, 
 the long sequence of banquets in which he had 
 taken part, Florence wine, and the hours spent 
 in a gondola under the oppressive Venetian atmo- 
 sphere [these are M. Hedgcock's inexorable 
 words !] had ended by producing their effect.' 
 That is to say — he was laid up for five weeks 
 with severe bilious fever. He was so bad that he 
 sketched his own epitaph, which would have 
 been more affecting, were it not probable that 
 the whole twelve lines were composed for the 
 sake of the last two: 
 
 Much-honoured Camden was my friend, 
 And Kenrick was my foe. 
 
 His illness pulled him down considerably, and 
 he was apparently growing homesick. September 
 found him at Augsburg debating whether he 
 should join the Duke of Devonshire at 'The 
 Spaw,' or pay his promised visit to Voltaire. 
 The sudden death of the Duke on 3rd October 
 settled one proposition ; and, owing to the state 
 of his health, he determined to abandon the other. 
 In a highly alembicate epistle, the much-cor- 
 rected drafts of which are at South Kensington, he 
 excused himself to the autocrat of Ferney, who, 
 among other things, had politely offered his ex- 
 
S6 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 pected guest the use of his little private theatre. 
 He should have been happy indeed (Garrick 
 wrote) could he have been the means of bringing 
 Shakespeare into some favour with M. de Vol- 
 taire. ' No enthusiastick Missionary who had con- 
 verted the Emperor of China to his religion 
 would have been prouder than I, could I have 
 reconcil'd the first Genius of Europe to our 
 Dramatick faith.' To this, after his fashion, he 
 added a qualifying postscript : ' Tho I have called 
 Shakespeare our dramatick faith yet I must do 
 my country-men the Justice to declare that not- 
 withstanding their deserv'd admiration of his 
 astonishing Powers they are not bigotted to his 
 errors, as some French Journalists have so con- 
 fidently afiirm'd.' 
 
 In the course of October he arrived at Paris, 
 the air of v/hich, says Grimm, perfectly restored 
 him : and for the next six months, despite the 
 strain of his illness, he continued a flattered centre 
 of attraction. He took a convenient first floor in 
 the Rue St. Nicaise close to the Tuileries ; and 
 the salons of philosophedom at once flung open 
 their doors to him. At the rue Sainte Anne, 
 Helv6tius and his wife welcomed him in their 
 masnificent hotel, then the rendezvous of all the 
 notabilities. 'There,' says M. Hedgcock, in a 
 
GarricMs ' Grand Tour ' Sy 
 
 carefully wrought passage, ' he meets Diderot, 
 the irrepressible, the inquiring, ready to discuss 
 everything, flitting from one subject to another 
 with astounding rapidity ; D'Alembert, the decoy- 
 bird of the dinner-table, the wittiest of talkers, 
 who, after a morning spent over mathematical 
 problems, came to chat of acting with the Eng- 
 lish visitor; the handsome Marmontel, moder- 
 ately gifted but much satisfied with himself j Saint- 
 Lambert, cold, affected, very picked of speech ; 
 Grimm, the keen critic, collecting on all sides 
 the material for his " Correspondance Secrete"; 
 the Abb^ Morellet, whom Voltaire, for his 
 causticity, nicknamed " the Abb^ Mord-les," and 
 others beside who composed [what Garat calls] 
 the "Etats g^n^raux de I'esprit humain." ' ' 
 
 Another of the houses where he was cordially 
 received was that of the author of the ' Syst^me 
 de la Nature,' Baron d'Holbach, where, in addi- 
 tion to most of the foregoing, he met the im- 
 pressionable ex-actress and author, Mme. Ricco- 
 boni, afterwards a firm friend and one of the most 
 constant, if most impulsive, of his correspond- 
 ents. A third rallying-place was the historic salon, 
 in the rue St. Honor6, of that ' m^re nourrice 
 
 ^ In his English edition M. Hedgcock has expanded 
 this; but we preserve our version of the original passage. 
 
88 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 des philosophes,' Mme. Geoffrin, whose wit and 
 conversation attracted not only Hume and Wal- 
 pole, but Wilkes and Adam Smith. Here Gar- 
 rick found sculptors and artists ; and it was doubt- 
 less to this time that he owed his acquaintance 
 with Joseph Vernet, the friend of Mme. Vig6e- 
 Lebrun ; with Hubert Bourguignon, otherwise 
 Gravelot, and with the statuary, J. B. Le Moyne, 
 who exhibited a bust of him at the Salon of 1 765. 
 In this congenial company Garrick was thor- 
 oughly at home. He was of French extraction; 
 he spoke French as fluently as his wife spoke 
 German; his vivacity, his tact, his insatiable 
 ' desir de plaire,' were all recommendations to ad- 
 mirers already prepossessed in his favour. He 
 wanted no pressing to exhibit his talents — made 
 no pretence of hesitation ; but was ready at a 
 moment's notice to gratify a sympathetic audience. 
 * Without waiting for the wish to become a 
 petition, alone and surrounded by faces that almost 
 touched his own, he played the greatest scenes of 
 the English stage. His ordinary coat or cloak, his 
 hat and his boots or shoes, as he arranged them, 
 became the best conceivable costumes for every 
 possible role.'^ For the benefit of listeners his 
 
 ^ Garat, * Memoires historiques sur le XVIII Siecle, 
 etc.,' 1 82 1, Bk. V. 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 89 
 
 words were sometimes rapidly paraphrased in 
 French by the journalist Suard ; but it was need- 
 less. * The pantomime of Garrick was the noblest, 
 the most energetic, the most pathetic of transla- 
 tions.' In regard to this, M. Hedgcock relates 
 once more the oft and variously told story of the 
 friendly contest between Garrick and Mile. 
 Clairon at the house of Mr. Neville of the Em- 
 bassy. Mile. Clairon, to draw Garrick out, recited 
 passages from Racine and Voltaire: Garrick re- 
 sponded with the dagger scene and the soliloquy 
 in ' Hamlet.' Then, going on to the madness of 
 Lear, he incidentally informed the company what 
 had first taught him to depict it. It was the re- 
 collection of the poignant distress of an unhappy 
 father who, by accident, had dropped his child 
 from a window. And presently, leaning over the 
 back of a chair, he re-enacted the whole scene — 
 the father's agony, horror, insanity — with such 
 tremendous effect that, as Murphy says, ' tears 
 gushed from every eye in the room.' ' Never 
 have I seen anything more dreadful,' writes 
 Grimm, who was present; and Marmontel, an- 
 other guest, after a night's rest, was still tremu- 
 lously under the spell. 'If we had actors like 
 you,' he told Garrick next day, ' our scenes would 
 not be so diffuse j we should let their silence 
 
90 Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 
 
 speak, and it would say more than our verses.' 
 The image of Macbeth, he declared, would be 
 for him ' the intellectual model of theatrical de- 
 clamation at its highest point of energy and 
 truth '; and he seems to imply that he should 
 utilise his memories for a study of ' Declamation ' 
 in the ' Encyclopedic.' But the intention must 
 have faded with the impression, for the article 
 contains no mention of Garrick, 
 
 Lapses of this sort are not unusual in light and 
 mercurial natures; and even Garrick himself has 
 been accused of forgetting some of his former 
 French associates of fourteen years earlier. C0II6, 
 in particular, bitterly resented what he regarded as 
 the difference between the ' bon enfant' of 1751 
 and the pampered favourite of the philosophes 
 whom he met again in 1765. But this complaint, 
 as M. Hedgcock points out, is an isolated one, 
 and there are numerous instances to prove that 
 Garrick by no means neglected his French 
 friends. He celebrated the success of his former 
 prognostications respecting Mile. Clairon with an 
 engraving after a drawing by Gravelot entitled 
 ' La Prophetic Accomplie,' where Melpomene is 
 represented crowning the actress, and to which 
 is appended a quatrain by himself: 
 
Garrick^s ' Grand Tour' 91 
 
 J'ai predit que Clairon illustrerait la scene, 
 
 Et mon espoir n'a point ^t^ d^9Uj 
 Elle a couronne Melpomene, 
 
 Melpomene lui rend ce qu'elle en a re^u. 
 
 If it be replied, that Clairon was a far more im- 
 portant figure than the author of ' La V^rit^ 
 dans le Vin,' ' who was diverted with everything, 
 and laughed at nothing;' it may be added that 
 Garrick certainly did not forget Monnet. When 
 Monnet publishes a book, Garrick gets Becket to 
 take a hundred copies; when Monnet has losses, 
 Garrick offers him his purse; when he comes to 
 London, Garrick places both the Thames villa 
 and the Southampton Street house at Monnet's 
 disposal, carries him to Bath, and sends him, 
 jubilant, on his way. Ingratitude should be made 
 of sterner stuff"; and probably Garrick did not 
 greatly care for C0II6, who, moreover, grew with 
 age intolerably cross-grained. His correspondence 
 with Monnet ceased only with life. Garrick 
 died on 20th January, 1779; and Monnet's last 
 letter in the Forster collection is dated 4th Dec- 
 ember, 1778. It refers to the then recent deaths 
 of Voltaire and Rousseau — of the comedian 
 Bellecour and the tragedian Le Kain. * We 
 learn,' says the same letter, *by our public 
 prints that one of your compatriots has put an 
 
92 Garrick's ' Grand Tour^ 
 
 end to the Vicomte Du Barry with a pistol shot. 
 If the race of the last had been exterminated ten 
 years ago, France would be better, and Louis XV 
 would be still alive.' But that surely was not a 
 consummation to be wished ! 
 
 Garrick returned to England in April 1765, 
 and never revisited France. In the closing 
 chapter M. Hedgcock devotes some pages to 
 the actor's foreign correspondence, much of 
 which is most interesting. D'Holbach writes of 
 Walpole's sham letter from Frederick the Great 
 to Voltaire, and of Sedaine's recent ' Philosophe 
 sans le Savoir'; Chastellux expatiates on the 
 beauty of Hampton and its weeping willow; 
 Beaumarchais acknowledges hints for the ' Barber 
 of Seville,' and Suard and de la Place deal with 
 themes theatrical and literary. But, for the 
 present, our limits are reached. M. Hedgcock, 
 referring to Garrick's protracted stay in Paris, 
 endeavours to account for his extraordinary popu- 
 larity — a popularity which no English contem- 
 porary, Hume and Sterne not excepted, had 
 enjoyed in like measure, and of which the echoes 
 and memories survived long after his leaving the 
 country. That Garrick possessed many delightful 
 social qualities specially grateful to Frenchmen — 
 'II ^tait fait pour vivre parmi nous,' they were 
 
Garrick's ' Grand Tour ' 93 
 
 accustomed to say — is something: that, in a 
 mimetic nation he was a superlative master of 
 what Scott calls * gestic art,' is something more. 
 But the main reason is probably that here sug- 
 gested. He represented at its highest the school 
 of natural acting which the influence of the 
 English stage and the English novel was gradually 
 substituting on French boards for the hide-bound 
 formalities of the old theatre classique. He stood 
 for truth against tradition — for the emancipating 
 andinnovating drame serieuxof Diderot as opposed 
 to the rigid and retrograde tragedie of Voltaire; 
 and in these respects he supplied an object lesson 
 at once opportune and overpowering. There 
 may have been — nay, there cannot fail to have 
 been — other contributing causes for his success ; 
 but, in that success, this at any rate must have 
 played a considerable part. 
 
LOUTHERBOURG. R.A. 
 
 ON the left bank of the Thames at Ham- 
 mersmith, about halfway between Chis- 
 wick Church and the north end of Hammer- 
 smith Bridge, stand some dozen old-fashioned 
 houses, turning their backs to the river, and 
 known as Hammersmith Terrace. According to 
 Faulkner, they were built ' about the year 1770,' 
 but they were undoubtedly inhabited in the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth century; and instead 
 of being crowded around, as at present, by 
 structures of all sorts, must, at that date, have 
 looked uninterruptedly over open fields or market- 
 gardens towards the high road from Brentford to 
 Kensington. To the indifferent spectator they 
 say nothing; but with a little goodwill, it is not 
 difficult to detect in them a certain air of faded 
 distinction which seems to shrink vaguely from 
 vulgar encroachment. Moreover, the neighbour- 
 hood is not without its associations. Hard by, in 
 the Upper Mall, once dwelt Catherine of Bra- 
 ganza, until she quitted this country for Portugal, 
 to find her final resting place at Belem; farther 
 94 
 
LOUTHERBOURG 
 (FROM THE PORTRAIT BY GAINSBOROUGH IN THE DULWICH GALLERY) 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. 95 
 
 away, in Chiswick Churchyard, Hogarth lies 
 buried. On one side are the 'new Buildings' 
 (Mawson's Row) in which Pope translated the 
 ' Iliad ' ; on the other is the Doves Tavern, 
 where (or in the adjoining cottage once forming 
 part of it) Thomson, according to a time-honoured 
 tradition, worked upon his 'Winter.' The old 
 Terrace, too, has its personal and particular 
 memories. At No. 5 was the residence of that 
 whilom idol of Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden, 
 Mrs. Mountain; at No. 15 (the 'westernmost 
 house ') lived the biographer of Garrick, Arthur 
 Murphy, the ' Mur.' of Dr. Johnson's compressed 
 code of endearment; and at Nos. 7 and 8, for 
 more than a quarter of a century, the artist and 
 enthusiast, Philip de Loutherbourg. With this 
 last we are here immediately concerned. Nothing 
 very precise is known about him; and it is pro- 
 bable that he must always be more of a name than 
 a person. Yet, in the absence of readily ac- 
 cessible information, he has certainly been too 
 unceremoniously dismissed. In religion, he has 
 been described as a ' charlatan ' ; in art, he has 
 been bracketed with Zuccarelli as an 'artificial 
 painter of so-called landscape.' Both of these 
 characterizations do him demonstrable injustice. 
 Philip James de Loutherbourg, or Louther- 
 
96 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 bourgh, sometimes called the Younger, was long 
 supposed to have been born at Strasburg. But 
 that ' Old Mortality ' of letters, the indefatigable 
 M. Jal, ascertained definitely that his real place 
 of nativity w^as Fulda in Hesse-Nassau. Here, 
 on 31st October, 1740, he entered the w^orld. 
 His father, a Pole of noble extraction, was a 
 miniaturist. He was court-painter at Darmstadt, 
 and intended his son to become an engineer. 
 The boy's mother (born Catherine Barbe Heitz) 
 desired, on the contrary, to make him a Lutheran 
 pastor, to which end he was educated at the 
 College of Strasburg. But his personal bent was 
 to art; and, after some preliminary tuition from 
 his father and the elder Tischbein, he came to 
 Paris in his teens to study under Carle Vanloo, 
 from whose atelier he passed to that of the battle- 
 painter Francois Casanova, a clever but indolent 
 and erratic younger brother of the notorious 
 Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, some of whose 
 more reputable adventures are woven into the 
 pages of Thackeray's ' Barry Lyndon,' With 
 Casanova, Loutherbourg remained several years, 
 since, from a remark of Diderot, who apparently 
 knew him personally, he must have been domi- 
 ciled with his master as early as 1758 or 1759. 
 So rapid was his progress that (again according to 
 
Loutherbourg, R,A. 97 
 
 Diderot) he was soon qualified to render sub- 
 stantial aid to Casanova by finishing up his 
 pictures, a task he performed to such good pur- 
 pose, that when, about 1762, his pupilage came 
 to an end, the absence of his handiwork from 
 Casanova's canvases was unmistakable. Later, in 
 1763, Casanova, becoming an Academician, ex- 
 hibited his reception-piece, a' Combat of Cavalry '; 
 and Loutherbourg, then not more than two and 
 twenty, made his debut with a large number of 
 contributions, four of which, the ' Hours of the 
 Day,' he afterwards engraved, and it is notable, 
 looking to his latest performances, that there are 
 ships in all of them. Unfortunately, Diderot, in 
 his ' Salon ' of 1763, confines himself to rhapso- 
 dizing over one only of Loutherbourg's perform- 
 ances, a * forest scene,' which he does not name 
 more explicitly. But his commendations of this 
 have all the Diderot exuberance. He extols the 
 breadth, the harmony, the excellent animal-paint- 
 ing of this youthful prodigy, who, at a bound, had 
 raised himself to the level of Nicolas Berchem; 
 and, it was whispered, surpassed his preceptor, 
 Casanova, in his own special field. For one of 
 Loutherbourg's exhibits — hung craftily between 
 two restful landscapes — was a most spirited little 
 battle-piece, signed largely ' Loutherbourg ' on 
 
 H 
 
98 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 the frame — *as if (writes Diderot) the artist had 
 said to all the world : " Gentlemen, recall those 
 efforts of Casanova which so much astonished you 
 two years ago;^ look closely at this, and decide 
 to whom belongs the credit of the others ! " ' 2 
 
 Before the next exhibition had come round, 
 Loutherbourg married. Beyond the facts that the 
 marriage took place on loth January 1764; that 
 the name of the lady, probably an Alsatian, was 
 Barbe Burlat; that she was a widow of five-and- 
 twenty, and that, in due time, she bore him six 
 children, we know nothing with certainty. Dide- 
 rot, indeed, speaks of Mme. Loutherbourg as a 
 *compagne charmante,' but this is a mere banality. 
 It is clear, however, that her husband was indus- 
 trious; that he wrought rapidly, and found will- 
 ing purchasers. He sent a number of paintings to 
 the exhibition of 1765, 'many of which,' says 
 his critic, 'were excellent, and none without 
 some merit.' It is significant that the piece least 
 commended, a ' Rendez-vous de Chasse ' of the 
 Prince de Cond6 in the Forest of Chantilly, was 
 
 * At this date, the exhibitions of the French Academy 
 were biennial. 
 
 * Assezat's * CEuvres de Diderot,' x, 200. In his later 
 * Salons,' Diderot qualified this opinion, and gave greater 
 praise to Casanova. 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. 99 
 
 a commission. In Diderot's words, * the site and 
 the subject were prescribed, and the Muse of the 
 painter imprisoned.' In August 1767, Louther- 
 bourg, although under age, was made an Acade- 
 mician, his diploma-work being a ' Combat sur 
 Terre.' Battles, sea-pieces and storms, landscapes, 
 and drawings made up the remainder of his con- 
 tributions, eighteen in all. Diderot is still lauda- 
 tory, but he notes one characteristic, which might 
 be anticipated by those who have already re- 
 marked the painter's fertility. Loutherbourg 
 works too much in the studio. Exceptional as 
 his talent is, ' although he has seen much of 
 Nature, it is not " chez elle"; it is in visits to 
 Berchem, Wouverman, and Joseph Vernet.' The 
 same criticism recurs in the * Salon ' of 1 769, where 
 it is also implied that prolific production is 
 bringing about its ordinary results, monotony and 
 repetition; and that the semblance of vigour is 
 dearly bought by over-emphasis, in which con- 
 nection a partiality for too-green fields and too- 
 red sunsets is becoming pronounced. Of this 
 tendency, noticed later by Horace Walpole and 
 the remorseless ' Peter Pindar,' Diderot says 
 eleewhere: 'There is one of these pictures by 
 Loutherbourg where the sun is so fervid, so hot 
 on the horizon, that it is more like a conflagra- 
 
lOO Loutherooufg, R.A. 
 
 tion than a sunset, and one is tempted to cry to 
 its sitting shepherdess: " Run, if you don't want 
 to be burned."' This comes from the 'Salon 'of 
 1 77 1. In commending a painting in the previous 
 exhibition, Diderot had also reverted to the need 
 of out-door study, ending his praise with a regret- 
 ful : ' Ah ! si jamais cet artiste voyage et qu'il se 
 determine a voir la nature ! ' 
 
 Diderot's utterance belongs to 1769, and those 
 who have written of Loutherbourg concur in 
 saying that he did travel — in Switzerland, Ger- 
 many, Italy. Whether this took place subsequent 
 to, and in consequence of, his critic's counsel 
 must be matter of conjecture; and after 1771 
 Diderot never again had the opportunity of sit- 
 ting in judgement upon his work. For from that 
 year Loutherbourg belongs to England, whither 
 he came as a man of thirty, ' uniquement pour 
 son plaisir,' says one account, and according to 
 another, ' dans I'esperance d'y trouver de I'occupa- 
 tion, etd'y remplirses poches de guin6es,'^ which 
 is probably nearer the mark. In this country, 
 with occasional visits to the Continent, he con- 
 tinued to reside, a naturalized subject, until his 
 death, forty years afterwards. He lodged first in 
 Great Marlborough Street, having for companion 
 ^ Mariette, ' Abecedaiio.' 
 
Loutkerbourg, R.A. lOi 
 
 a French enameller named Pascet who had ac- 
 companied him to London; and in 1772, he sent 
 several contributions from this address to the 
 Royal Academy. Over and above his artistic 
 gifts, he had considerable mechanical aptitude; 
 and already in France his inventive faculty had 
 been exercised in the development of pictorial 
 effects and stage appliances. He had devised cun- 
 ning expedients for simulating sunlight and star- 
 light, and the appearance of running vi^ater. It 
 was natural that, in England, he should seek to 
 open relations with the enterprising manager of 
 Drury Lane, who was also keenly interested in 
 improving theatrical decoration ; and for this pur- 
 pose he had come provided with an introduction 
 from Garrick's French friend, Jean Monnet of 
 the Opera Comique,^ who styles him ' un de nos 
 plus grands peintres.' In the Garrick Corre- 
 spondence at South Kensington there are two 
 unpublished documents which show the progress 
 of the intercourse thus initiated. Neither of the 
 papers is dated ; and both suggest that the painter, 
 as regards style, was more German than French. 
 
 * Hedgcock's ' David Garrick et ses Amis Fran9ais,' 
 I9ii,p. 223 «. Angelo says (' Reminiscences,' 1830, i, 265; 
 ii, 326) that his father introduced Loutherbourg to Gar- 
 rick 5 but the statements are not necessarily inconsistent. 
 
I02 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 From what is apparently the earlier, it must be 
 inferred that Loutherbourg had made to Garrick 
 certain suggestions which Garrick had requested 
 him to put into writing. He is ready, he says, 
 with a proposition, which should profit them 
 both, for redecorating Drury Lane. It will of 
 necessity involve fresh methods of lighting and 
 scene-shifting, and new machinery. For all this 
 he will prepare a working model to guide the 
 artists, artificers and machinists concerned. He 
 will design and colour all the costumes, and co- 
 operate with the composer and 'maitre-de-ballets' 
 in such a way as to ensure harmony of action. 
 He will also provide a trustworthy scene-painter 
 to execute his designs, which, if need be, he will 
 personally retouch.' Garrick is to pay all ex- 
 penses; and he himself, for his three months 
 labour and trouble, is to have a modest honorarium 
 of ^300. 
 
 His scheme, it will be seen, was very general 
 in terms; and, without knowledge of the writer's 
 
 ' This is confirmed by Angelo, who says: 'It was 
 conditioned that De Loutherbourg should do nothing 
 more than design the scenes, which were painted from his 
 small, coloured sketches under his superintendence, by the 
 scene-painters already on the theatrical establishment. I 
 have often seen him at his easel composing these pictorial 
 prototypes' ('Reminiscences,' 1830, i, 16). 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. 103 
 
 previous communications to Garrick, not par- 
 ticularly easy to comprehend. But, from its refer- 
 ence to a specific though otherwise unspecified 
 ' piece,' it is not unreasonable to connect it with 
 the * Christmas Tale,' an indifferent ' dramatic 
 entertainment ' based on Charles Favart's ' F6e 
 Urg61e,' which Garrick ' by His Majesty's Com- 
 mand,' brought out at Drury Lane on Mon- 
 day, 27th December 1773, with 'new Scenes, 
 Dresses, Music, Machinery, and Decorations.' 
 Although its purpose was ' to promote Virtue,' it 
 had little literary merit ; and if Garrick were 
 its author, proved, as Walpole said, how poor 
 a figure a great actor may make as a writer.^ 
 The music was by Dibdin ; the scenery ' in- 
 vented by Mr. De Loutherbourg.' As this in- 
 volved a thunderstorm, a palace in flames, a 
 'richly illuminated cloud,' a magnificent seraglio, 
 a rising sun and a rising moon, it is obvious that 
 the artist must have been thoroughly at home; 
 and it may be concluded that his efforts gave 
 novelty and vogue to what otherwise would prob- 
 ably have been a very tame performance. Some- 
 
 • Transcripts of" the < Christmas Tale,' and its pre- 
 decessor, 'Cymon' (1767), with passages in Garrick's 
 handwriting, recently (19 12) figured in a Catalogue of 
 Mr. Bertram Dobell of Charing Cross Road. 
 
I04 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 thing, however, must have been due to the act- 
 ing of Weston, the inimitable ' Scrub ' of the 
 
 * Beaux' Stratagem,' v^^ho, as 'squire to the good 
 magician, Bonoro, had an excellent Low Comedy 
 character, which ' kept the audience in a Horse 
 Laugh all the Time he was on the Stage'; and 
 the published play (1774) has an etching of him 
 by Loutherbourg, who also contributed Weston's 
 portrait to the Pall Mall Exhibition of the same 
 year. But, for our purpose, the essential outcome 
 of 'A Christmas Tale' was that Loutherbourg 
 made further overtures to Garrick. 
 
 These are embodied in a second and more 
 lengthy document at South Kensington, headed 
 
 * Propositions de Mr. Philippe Jacque de Louther- 
 bourg Peintre du Roy de france et membre de 
 Son Accademie Royalle de Peinture & Sculpture 
 aux Messieurs Garrick & L[acy] propridtaires du 
 Spectacle de Drury lane a Londres.' They are 
 decidedly verbose, and, in any case, too detailed 
 for more than a summary. Beginning with a 
 reference to the proof of the writer's ability 
 which he has already given (to wit, in the 
 
 * Christmas Tale'), he goes on to a particular ac- 
 count of what he is further disposed to do for 
 Drury Lane — and Drury Lane exclusively — in 
 order to place it in the first rank as regards the 
 
Loutkerbourg, R.A. 105 
 
 congruity of its costumes and appointments with 
 the subjects of its pieces. He desires to take 
 entire charge of the decorations, including the 
 inventing, h'ghting and working of them. He 
 will, when necessary, design suitable dresses; will 
 provide, every winter, new effects for a piece to 
 be concerted beforehand with the managers; and 
 will, moreover, make sure that all arrangements 
 for the winter season are ready betimes. As re- 
 gards what the late Anthony Trollope used to 
 call the ' interesting financial details,' he is pre- 
 pared, for all this, to accept an annual payment, in 
 monthly instalments, of six hundred guineas, 
 being no more, his correspondents are given to 
 understand, than Panini's pupil Servandoni had 
 received at the Opera-house in the Haymarket 
 for the winter season alone. 
 
 On this last point of payment, there must 
 have been compromise, for it is admitted that his 
 salary was settled at five hundred a year, a larger 
 sum than Garrick had ever paid before. That 
 the new superintendent of scenery and machinery 
 performed his duties efficiently, there can be little 
 doubt. He made many valuable alterations in 
 the illumination of the stage, then very inade- 
 quate, for even sunk footlights, with their ' in- 
 effectual fires,' were of comparatively recent 
 
io6 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 date;^ and by employing coloured silks in the 
 flies, which turned on a pivot, and behind which 
 lights were placed, he managed to obtain the 
 most wonderful transitions. He got rid of the old 
 stationary background; and by a skilful use of 
 perspective contrived to give a better idea of 
 distance. He is also credited with originating the 
 
 * set-scene' or built-up picture — though perhaps 
 
 * originating' should rather be developing' or 
 ' elaborating.' He strove to end the glaring ana- 
 chronisms of costume which Hogarth had ridi- 
 culed in the plates to the ' Analysis'; and which, 
 in tragedy, permitted Mrs. Pritchard to play 
 Lady Macbeth in a hoop-petticoat, perched the 
 lacquered helmet of Alexander on an elegant 
 Ramillies wig, and attired Othello (blackened to 
 order) in the laced red coat of King William's 
 ' Gentlemen of the Guard.' ^ But of these things 
 the chronicle is scant and dispersed ; and we can 
 
 ^ Besant's 'London in the Eighteenth Century,' 1902, 
 
 431- 
 
 2 * Wine and Walnuts,' by * Ephraim Hardcastle ' 
 
 (W. H. Pyne, the painter and etcher), 2nd ed. 1 824, i, 279. 
 
 These irregularities must, nevertheless, have died hard, for, 
 
 according to Mangin's 'Parlour Window,' 184.1, p. 123, 
 
 John Kemble still fought Bosworth Field in silk stockings 
 
 and dancing shoes, and played Lear or Macbeth in a 
 
 Louis-Quinze nightgown of flowered satin. 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. loy 
 
 here do no more than pick out, from the public 
 prints and elsewhere, a few of the pieces with 
 which he seems to have been intimately concerned. 
 In 1774 he helped to bolster up Burgoyne's 
 mediocre * dramatic entertainment,' the ' Maid of 
 the Oaks,' ^ and in the two following years lent 
 effective aid both to Bickerstaffe's ' Sultan ' and 
 Collier's Persian Tale of ' Selima and Azor.' In 
 1776 he is also credited by the 'Morning 
 Chronicle' with 'a very beautiful scene' of the 
 Pantheon at Spa Fields for Colman's farce of 
 'The Spleen'^ in the Prologue to which Garrick 
 gave the first public intimation of his approaching 
 retirement; and the late Sir Henry Irving had 
 
 * First acted at ' The Oaks,' Epsom, on the marriage 
 of Burgoyne's nephew, Lord Stanley, to Lady Betty 
 Hamilton. Both Walpole and Hannah More mention 
 this piece. It is *as fine as scenes can make it,' says 
 Horace to Conway in Nov. 1774, 'and as dull as the 
 author could not help making it.' St. Hannah is kinder. 
 ' The scenery is beautiful — the masquerade scene as good 
 as at the Pantheon. The piece is only intended as a 
 vehicle for the scenery; yet there is some wit and spirit in 
 it, being written by General Burgoyne, and embellished, 
 etc., by Garrick' (' Memoirs,' 1834, i, 39). Loutherbourg 
 was referred to in it as 'Mr. Lanternbug' — which his 
 artist friends corrupted into ' Leatherbag.' 
 
 * Loutherbourg painted a portrait of Colman, of which 
 there is a print by Cheesman. 
 
lo8 Loutherhourg^ R.A. 
 
 several sketches which Loutherbourg had prepared 
 for the final performances of 'Richard III.' When, 
 later, Drury Lane passed to Sheridan, Louther- 
 bourg for a brief period retained his office, paint- 
 ing, according to Baker and Reed, who styled 
 him ' the first scene painter in Europe,' an excel- 
 lent representation of Cox Heath, near Maid- 
 stone, for Linley's ' Camp' (1778); and for the 
 'Critic' of 1779, another of Tilbury Fort, 
 which procured his inclusion in the ' pufF direct' 
 of that piece. ' The miraculous powers of Mr. de 
 Loutherbourg's pencil are universally acknow- 
 ledged,' says this panegyrist. He also contributed 
 to keep alive the insipid pantomime of ' Robinson 
 Crusoe J or. Harlequin Friday,' which Sheridan 
 patched together for 1781. After this, it was un- 
 gratefully proposed to reduce his salary by half, 
 an arrangement which he indignantly refused to 
 accept. His last stage-work seems to have been 
 in connection with O'KeefFe's ' Omai ; or, A 
 Trip round the World,' produced at Covent 
 Garden in 1785, the decorations of which are 
 directly attributed to him by the authors of the 
 'Biographia Dramatica.' Omai, or Omiah, who 
 gives his name to the piece, was an Otaheitan, 
 brought ten years earlier from the Society 
 Islands, on Cook's second voyage, by Fanny 
 
Loutkerbourg, R.A. 109 
 
 Burney's brother James ; and, in designing ap- 
 propriate costumes, Loutherbourg had the assist- 
 ance of sketches made by John Webber, the 
 landscape painter, and draughtsman of the expedi- 
 tion. He got ;^I00 for his services, which must 
 have afforded him ample opportunity for volcanoes 
 and other congenial phenomena. The perform- 
 ance closed with an apotheosis of the great cir- 
 cumnavigator, which was afterwards engraved. 
 ' Omai ' ran forty nights; and, we are told, was 
 frequently 'commanded by Their Majesties.' 
 
 But this is to anticipate. In 1774 Louther- 
 bourg had moved to 45, Great Titchfield Street, 
 Oxford Market, where one of his later neigh- 
 bours was to be Richard Wilson, another land- 
 scapist whose works lay under the imputation of 
 being ' screeny,' that is, ' stagey,' in character. 
 During the period of Loutherbourg's connection 
 with Garrick he had gone on exhibiting annually 
 at the Royal Academy in his former manner — 
 landscapes with cattle, mornings, evenings, ban- 
 ditti, and the like. 'We have a Swede [German],' 
 says Walpole in April 1775, 'one Loutherbourg, 
 who would paint landscape and cattle excellently 
 if he did not in every picture indulge some one 
 colour inordinately.' ^ This, as the reader will 
 
 1 Wright, in his life of Wilson (1824), while speaking 
 
no Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 observe, had been one of the objections of 
 Diderot; and it was heavily underlined a little 
 later by 'Peter Pindar ' in his ' Odes to the Royal 
 Academicians" of 1782: 
 
 And, Loutherbourg, when Heav'n so wills, 
 
 To make brass skies and golden hills. 
 With marble bullocks in glass pastures grazing, 
 
 Thy reputation too will rise, 
 
 And people, gaping with surprise, 
 Cry • Monsieur Loutherbourgh is most amazing ! ' 
 
 He diversified his contributions by an occasional 
 portrait, one of which was of course that popular 
 impersonation, ' Roscius ' as ' Richard III.' His 
 only military compositions were two representing 
 a review and manoeuvres at Warley Camp in 
 1778. (Lovers of Boswell may be reminded that 
 Dr. Johnson came to Warley in this very year, 
 on a visit to Bennet Langton, then doing duty 
 as an officer of the Lincolnshire Militia, on which 
 occasion the great man made minute inquisition 
 into the weight of musket balls; and was highly 
 
 of Loutherbourg as scarcely ever surpassed in execution, 
 refers to the ' very glaring and oftentimes unharmonlous 
 tints' his pictures displayed, as 'unaccountable in an 
 artist of so much practice and experience, and who, in 
 many respects, was certainly a delightful painter' (p. 153). 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. iii 
 
 impressed by the dexterity with which the Cor- 
 poral Trim of the period handled his 'Brown 
 Bess.') It may have been these last productions 
 which, in 1780, procured for Loutherbourg his 
 associateship; and in 178 1, when he exhibited 
 nothing, the further distinction of R.A. At this 
 date his leisure must have been employed in pro- 
 jecting and perfecting that curious product of his 
 combined ingenuities as scene-painter and ma- 
 chinist, the 'EiDOPHUsiKON; or, Various Imita- 
 tions of Natural Phenomena, represented by 
 Moving Pictures.' 
 
 From some of the accounts of this long-vanished 
 exhibition, it might easily be concluded that it 
 was little more than an elaboration of those pic- 
 torial ' Waterworks ' at Vauxhall which Gold- 
 smith's pawnbroker's widow did not see, when, 
 under the experienced guidance of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Tibbs, she visited the Surrey gardens for that 
 special purpose. But this is to rate Louther- 
 bourg's performance far too low. It was a really 
 clever and novel attempt by an artist of very 
 varied equipment to represent landscape and 
 locality as subjected to all the changes of light 
 and darkness, time and season, heat and cold. 
 Its first home, in 178 1-2, was a large house in 
 Lisle Street, fronting Leicester Street, Leicester 
 
112 Loutkerbourgy R.A. 
 
 Square. But in the early months of 1786, when 
 described by Pyne,^ it was located in Old Exeter 
 'Change, Strand, where the body of John Gay 
 had once lain in state. Here it occupied an upper 
 floor previously used for Dibdin and Stoppelaer's 
 puppet Patagonian Theatre and afterwards given 
 over to those wild beasts whose hungry roarings, 
 in Leigh Hunt's day, terrified the horses in the 
 Strand. During Loutherbourg's tenancy, the 
 place was arranged by Bateman as a tiny theatre, 
 with a stage about six feet wide and eight feet 
 deep. But Pyne, as a professing eye-witness, 
 may now be quoted ; 
 
 'The opening subject of the Eidophusikon 
 represented the view from the summit of One- 
 Tree Hill, in Greenwich Park, looking up the 
 Thames to the metropolis; on one side, con- 
 spicuous upon its picturesque eminence, stood 
 Flamsteed House [the Observatory] ; and below, 
 on the right, the grand mass of building, Green- 
 wich Hospital, with its imposing cupolas, cut out 
 of pasteboard, and painted with architectural cor- 
 rectness. The large groups of trees formed 
 another division, behind which were the towns 
 of Greenwich and Deptford, with the shore on 
 each side stretching to the metropolis, which was 
 ' ' Wine and Walnuts,' 2nd ed. 1824, i, ch. xxl. 
 
Loutherhourg^ R.A . 113 
 
 seen in its vast extent from Chelsea to Poplar. 
 Behind were the hills of Hampstead, Highgate, 
 and Harrow; and the intermediate space was 
 occupied by the flat stage, as the pool or port of 
 London, crowded with shipping, each mass of 
 which being cut out in pasteboard, and receding 
 in size by the perspective of their distance. The 
 heathy appearance of the foreground w^as con- 
 structed of cork, broken into the rugged and 
 picturesque form of a sand-pit ^ covered w^ith 
 minute mosses and lichens, producing a capti- 
 vating effect, amounting indeed to reality. 
 
 ' This scene, on the rising of the curtain, was 
 enveloped in that mysterious light which is the 
 precursor of day-break, so true to nature, that the 
 imagination of the spectator sniffed the sweet 
 breath of morn. A faint light appeared along the 
 horizon ; the scene assumed a vapourish tint of 
 grey; presently a gleam of saffron, changing to 
 the pure varieties that tinge the fleecy clouds 
 that pass away in morning mist; the picture 
 brightened by degrees; the sun appeared, gilding 
 the tops of the trees and the projections of the 
 lofty buildings, and burnishing the vanes on the 
 cupolas; when the whole scene burst upon the 
 
 * One of Loutherbourg's exhibits of 1782 was ' A Sand- 
 Pit.' 
 
1 14 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 eye in the gorgeous splendour of a beauteous 
 day.' 
 
 At this time gas was not in use, and Louther- 
 bourg's illuminating power was restricted to a 
 brilliant row of the then newly introduced Ar- 
 gand lamps, which lighted the stage from above. It 
 would take too long to describe the ingenious con- 
 trivances by which the artist obtained his various 
 effects : the stained glass that altered the colour- 
 ing of his scene; the expedients for imitating 
 thunder and lightning, hail and rain, the changes 
 of cloud-form, the tumbling of waves, the sound 
 of signal-guns at sea. One of his most striking 
 tableaux reproduced the loss, with all its appal- 
 ling circumstance, off the coast of Dorset, on 
 the 6th January 1786, of the * Halsewell' East 
 Indiaman,^ so feelingly sung in ' Lewesdon Hill ' 
 by Rogers's Miltonic friend, William Crowe; 
 and the representation was realistic enough to 
 satisfy even the most exacting nautical critics. 
 The finale travelled beyond sublunary judgment, 
 for it exhibited ' the region of the fallen angels, 
 with Satan arraying his troops on the banks of 
 
 ^ This 'late dreadful Catastrophe,' accoi-ding to the 
 advertisements in the newspapers of the day, was one of 
 the reasons for reviving the Eidophusikon at the begin- 
 ning of 1786. 
 
Loutkerbourg, R.A . 115 
 
 the Fiery Lake,' and also the uprising of that 
 Palace of Pandemonium described in the first 
 book of ' Paradise Lost ' : 
 
 Anon out of the earth a Fabrick huge 
 Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound 
 Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, 
 Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round 
 Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 
 With Golden Architrave; nor did there want 
 Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n, 
 The roof was fretted gold. 
 
 Here, from Pyne, is the pictorial materializa- 
 tion of the lines; and it will be seen that the 
 subject elicited all Loutherbourg's faculty for lurid 
 effects : ' In the foreground of a vista, stretching 
 an immeasurable length between mountains, 
 ignited from their bases to their lofty summits, 
 with many coloured flame, a chaotic mass rose in 
 dark majesty, which gradually assumed form until 
 it stood, the interior of a vast temple of gorgeous 
 architecture, bright as molten brass, seemingly 
 composed of unconsuming and unquenchable fire. 
 In this tremendous scene, the effect of coloured 
 glasses before the lamps was fully displayed ; 
 which, being hidden from the audience, threw 
 their whole influence upon the scene, as it rapidly 
 changed, now to a sulphurous blue, then to a 
 
ii6 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 lurid red, and then again to a pale vivid light, 
 and ultimately to a mysterious combination of 
 the glasses, such as a bright furnace exhibits, in 
 fusing various metals.' 
 
 During the last phases of this manifestation, we 
 are told, resounding peals of thunder added a 
 preternatural horror, heightened by ' a variety of 
 groans, that struck the imagination as issuing 
 from infernal spirits.' For those accustomed to 
 the cinematograph and the elaborate combinations 
 of modern stage machinery, such an exhibition 
 may well seem primitive and rudimentary; but 
 it was not so to Loutherbourg's public; and a 
 convincing proof of the fidelity of the above de- 
 scription lies in the fact that the most devoted 
 admirers of the Eidophusikon were its inventor's 
 most distinguished brethren of the brush. Rey- 
 nolds praised it warmly, and recommended all 
 his friends to take their daughters to see it ; while 
 Gainsborough, who for some time spent his even- 
 ings there, could talk of nothing else.^ Between 
 
 ' He even made a toy Eidophusikon or peep-show box 
 for himself, which was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery 
 in 1885. It then belonged to Mr. G. W. Reid, its former 
 possessor having been Dr. Monro. The slides were painted 
 on glass, were lighted from behind, and looked at through 
 a magnifier (' Somerset House Gazette,' 1824,1!, pp. 8, u). 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. 117 
 
 the scenes, it should be added, there was, at the 
 outset, music and singing, a feature of the enter- 
 tainment which led to Loutherbourg's being 
 summoned for purveying unlicensed harmony. 
 But the sitting justices showed their sense of the 
 triviality of the charge by forthwith granting the 
 required permit without penalty, and for a space 
 the show continued to prosper. Like most other 
 things, however, it had its day; and when at last 
 it was disposed of by its projector, the door- 
 money had fallen so low as to be insufficient to 
 cover the lighting expenses.^ 
 
 By 1783 Loutherbourg had moved from 
 Titchfield Street to Prince's Street, Hammer- 
 smith ; and two years later he was in residence 
 at Hammersmith Terrace. At this date he 
 seems to have temporarily abandoned the old 
 studio-pictures on the model of Berchem and 
 Wouverman, and devoted his attention to the 
 natural scenery of his adopted crountry. 'No 
 English landscape painter,' he is reported to have 
 said, 'needed foreign travel to collect grand 
 prototypes for his study.' His own contributions 
 to the Academy for the next few years prove 
 that he paid repeated visits to the Lakes, to York- 
 
 ^ See, for further details, Appendix B (Exhibitions of 
 the Eidophusikon). 
 
ii8 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 shire, Derbyshire ^ and Wales. He must also 
 have visited Switzerland, for his solitary exhibit 
 in 1788 was a view of the Grand Cataract of the 
 Rhine at Schaffhausen. In 1789 he sent nothing; 
 and with this defection is connected a curious 
 and rather unexpected episode in his career. 
 After settling down permanently at Hammer- 
 smith, his restless energies seem to have involved 
 him in that cloud of occultism which brooded 
 heavily over revolutionary Europe in the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth century. He grew 
 interested in Mesmer's Animal Magnetism; and 
 became a pupil of the Dr. de Mainauduc whose 
 * demoniacal mummery ' fluttered the pious ap- 
 prehensions of Hannah More. He is also said to 
 have travelled in Switzerland with the Sicilian 
 impostor and mountebank, Giuseppe Balsamo, 
 otherwise Cagliostro, whom he may have met in 
 Strasburg in 1783, where His Quackship was 
 dosing, among others. Gibbon's friend Deyver- 
 dun.^ Or he may have made his acquaintance 
 
 ^ He had already visited Derbyshire previous to 1779, 
 when he utilized his experiences for the Drury Lane panto- 
 mime ' The Wonders of Derbyshire. 
 
 * ' On ne salt qui il est, d'ou il est, d'ou il tire son argent; 
 il exerce gratis ses talens pour la medicine ; il a fait des cures 
 admirablesj mais c'est d'ailleurs le compose le plus etrange. 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A . 119 
 
 on one of his visits to England — notably that 
 final sojourn when Cagliostro, after the Neck- 
 lace Scandal, resided here in 1786-7, leaving 
 his wife, on his departure, in the temporary 
 charge of the Loutherbourgs. In any case, it 
 should have been Cagliostro who set Louther- 
 bourg on the search for the philosopher's stone, 
 an enterprise which he pursued assiduously until 
 an exasperated female relative, not otherwise 
 identified, ruthlessly wrecked his crucibles — of 
 course at the critical moment of projection. Later 
 he persuaded himself that he possessed super- 
 natural healing powers. A room in his house was 
 set apart for patients, and special days were ad- 
 vertised for their attendance. ' Loutherbourg, the 
 painter,' says Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory in 
 July 1789, 'is turned an inspired physician, and 
 has three thousand patients. His sovereign pan- 
 acea is barley-water. I believe it is as efficacious 
 as mesmerism.' A more material testimony to 
 Loutherbourg's doings is supplied by a nine-page 
 quarto pamphlet on the subject, written by one 
 Mary Pratt, of No. 41, Portland Street, Maryle- 
 bone, described as a * lady of deep and original 
 
 J'ai cesse de prendre ses remedes qui m'echaufFaient — 
 I'homme d'ailleurs me gatoit le medecin.' (' Deyverdun to 
 Gibbon,' [June 1783].) 
 
I20 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 piety.' It was published in 1789; is dedicated to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, and is entitled, 
 ' A List of a few Cures performed by Mr. and 
 Mrs. De lyoutherbourg, of Hammersmith Ter- 
 race, without Medicine.' Mrs. De Louther- 
 bourg (a second wife),^ participated, as will be 
 seen, in her husband's gift, and, for a time, 
 patients, *deaf, dumb, lame, halt, and blind,' 
 crowded to the free ministrations of the con- 
 sulting room, while, in the public prints, 'Amicus' 
 and ' Fame ' hotly discussed the validity of the 
 results. Then came the inevitable reaction. 
 Something went wrong; and the fickle mob pro- 
 ceeded to smash the windows of the hapless 
 philanthropists, who, for a season, had to retire 
 ' into the country,' and the ' Public Advertiser ' 
 announced that ' the Magnetising Doctor of 
 Hammersmith had given over practice.' 
 
 After this, we hear no more of Loutherbourg's 
 ' wonder-working,' though it is not unlikely that 
 he continued to dabble in medicine, since, from 
 a letter we have seen, even as late as 1803, he 
 was still preoccupied with diet-drinks. And he 
 must always have been mixed up with visionaries 
 of some sort. One of his associates, later a resid- 
 
 ^ Angelo says she was a beautiful widow named Smith 
 ('Reminiscences,' 1830, ii, 330). 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. 121 
 
 ent of Chiswick, was the engraver-enthusiast, 
 William Sharp, a Swedenborgian, and the re- 
 publican friend of Tom Paine and Home Tooke. 
 Sharp was also a devotee of the self-styled 
 ' Prince of the Hebrews ' and ' prophet,' Rich- 
 ard Brothers, whose portrait he engraved, append- 
 ing to it a signed inscription expressing full belief 
 in his mission and powers. Brothers, in 1 795, went 
 so far as to predict the death of George the Third, 
 an unfortunate vaticination which, coupled with 
 his personal pretensions to the succession, led to 
 his incarceration as a treasonable lunatic. It is 
 sometimes alleged that his influence brought about 
 the disclosure of the painter's alleged curative 
 gift. But Brothers, a retired lieutenant in the 
 navy, who had been present in 1782 at the 
 famous action between Rodney and de Grasse, 
 did not receive his prophetical ' call ' until a much 
 later period; and the Hammersmith healing-room 
 belongs demonstrably to 1789, since Mrs. Pratt's 
 pamphlet is dated July in that year, and covers 
 the previous six months. The whole of this part 
 of Loutherbourg's biography is nevertheless ob- 
 scure. Its connection with his art-life is purely 
 incidental; and one turns willingly to the story 
 of his pictures, pausing only to note that there is 
 no reason to suppose he was insincere, a circum- 
 
122 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 stance which should of itself suffice to absolve 
 him from any charge of charlatanry. 
 
 For the next few years he reverted to his 
 former fashion of studio-landscapes. Then, in 
 1793, came the tragedy of Louis XVI, and 
 France's declaration of war with England. 
 Loutherbourg's eftbrts at Warley Camp were no 
 doubt remembered ; and at the opening of the 
 campaign he was despatched to Flanders, with 
 Gillray the caricaturist, to make graphic celebra- 
 tion of the anticipated exploits of that not-too- 
 distinguished commander, King George's soldier 
 son, the Duke of York. At what particular 
 sieges Loutherbourg assisted does not appear, but 
 he certainly painted the Grand Attack on Valen- 
 ciennes in July, for it was engraved by Bromley. 
 In the following June (1794), when Howe's suc- 
 cess in the Brest waters served, to some extent, 
 as a set-ofF to the land triumphs of the French at 
 Tournay and elsewhere, Loutherbourg was com- 
 missioned to prepare a companion canvas com- 
 memorating the opening encounter of the rival 
 flagships, the 'Queen Charlotte' and the ' Mon- 
 tagne.' He must have executed his task with his 
 usual rapidity, for in March of the next year both 
 pictures were exhibited at the Historic Gallery in 
 Pall Mall, James Fittler, the King's marine 
 
Loutherbourg, R.A. 123 
 
 engraver, made a fine print of the 'glorious 
 victory' J and the original is still to be seen in 
 the Painted Hall at Greenw^ich Hospital/ to 
 which, by the gift of George IV, it was trans- 
 ferred from St. James's Palace. After Howe's 
 engagement came Duncan's great battle off 
 Camperdown with De Winter, which besides 
 preventing the invasion of Ireland by the Dutch, 
 provided a fresh subject for Loutherbourg's pen- 
 cil. In the Print Room at the British Museum, 
 carefully catalogued by Mr. Laurence Binyon, 
 are a number of minutely finished studies and 
 sketches for these works, particularly an album 
 containing many plans of actions, views of local- 
 ities, details of sword-hilt and ammunition- 
 pouch, mizen-top and cat-head, flags, guns, sails, 
 rigging, and a host pf artistic ' marginalia,' which 
 prove how little, in his marine pieces at all 
 events, the painter relied on his imagination for 
 his facts. 
 
 His remaining story may be abridged. He 
 
 ^ In the Painted Hall is another of Loutherbourg's 
 efforts, ' The Defeat of the Spanish Armada,' which was 
 presented to the Hospital by Lord Farnborough, and has 
 been called ' one of the finest sea-fights ever realized on 
 canvas.' This, like the Stratton ' Great Fire of London,' 
 was doubtless executed for Bowyer's ' History of England.' 
 ' The Attack on Valenciennes' is in the Royal collection. 
 
124 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 painted the ' Battle of the Nile' (1798), familiar 
 in Fittler's engraving. He continued to exhibit 
 at the Royal Academy, somewhat irregularly, 
 until his death, two of his most important efforts 
 being the 'Landing of the British Troops at 
 Aboukir Bay,' and the 'Battle of Alexandria,' 
 both of which events belong to March 1801, al- 
 though the pictures were not shown until later. 
 In 1 80 1 and 1805 were issued two large volumes 
 of 'Romantic and Picturesque Scenery in Eng- 
 land and Wales,' containing a series of coloured 
 plates after his paintings. To Macklin's great 
 seven-volume Bible, besides many head and tail- 
 pieces, he contributed the ' Universal Deluge ' 
 and the ' Destruction of the Assyrian Host,' the 
 former of which is by many regarded as his 
 chef-d'oeuvre. He was also employed as an illus- 
 trator on Bowyer's ' History of England,' Bell's 
 * British Theatre,' and other publications. Ex- 
 amples of his work are not common ; but besides 
 those at Greenwich Hospital there are specimens 
 in the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the 
 Glasgow Gallery, andat South Kensington, Vienna, 
 and Bordeaux. He resided to the last in his house 
 at Hammersmith, where he was well known and 
 popular; and where he was occasionally visited 
 by George III. Gainsborough painted his per- 
 
Loutherbotirg^ R.A. 125 
 
 trait, which, with two of his landscapes, is at 
 Dulwich.^ He died on nth March 1812, and 
 was buried on the 25th at the north-west end of 
 Chiswick Churchyard, under an unattractive 
 monument by Sir John Soane, and an inordinate 
 epitaph by the Rev. Dr. Christopher Lake 
 Moody, which lays special stress on his ' piety ' 
 and ' suavity of manners,' and closes with the 
 following quatrain: 
 
 Here, Loutherbourg, repose thy laurel'd head ; 
 While art is cherished thou canst ne'er be dead: 
 Salvator, Poussin, Claude, thy skill combines, 
 And beauteous nature lives In thy designs. 
 
 The registers also record the interment at 
 Chiswick, in 18 13 and 1828 respectively, of 
 Salome and Lucy de Loutherbourg, his sister and 
 his second wife.^ 
 
 As implied at the outset, it is difficult to make 
 of Loutherbourg that picture of the man which 
 is often so lightly demanded by the irresponsible 
 
 ' Sir Francis Bourgeois, R.A., the founder of the 
 Dulwich Gallery, was a pupil of Loutherbourg. Another 
 was De Quincey's brother. 
 
 * These last details were contributed by Colonel Chester 
 in 1 88 1 to 'Notes and Queries,' from whose indispensable 
 and all-preserving pages we have derived some other 
 particulars in this paper. 
 
126 Loutherbourg, R.A. 
 
 critic. Besides a few early and dubious *on dits ' 
 of Diderot, an anecdote or two from Angelo, and 
 the final statement of Faulkner that ' he was held 
 in great esteem for the uniform propriety of his 
 conduct,' but little exists on which to build a 
 personality. There is, of course, the healing 
 episode. But concerning this, fuller information 
 is desirable ; and at present the evidence is mainly 
 confined to Mrs. Pratt's pamphlet, which was 
 published against Loutherbourg's wishes. In 
 dealing with Loutherbourg as an artist, however, 
 the ground is surer, and general deductions may 
 safely be drawn. Not to speak of his proficiency as 
 an etcher and caricaturist, it is clear that he was a 
 painter of unusual precocity, dexterity, and fer- 
 tility of resource. Combined with these qualities 
 was a certain constructive ingenuity which lends 
 a special character to his productions ; and more- 
 over, served him exceptionally in his efforts as a 
 scene-painter. On the other hand, his success as a 
 scene-painter, since it probably increased his 
 tendency to forced contrasts and imaginative 
 colouring, was unfavourable to his gifts as a land- 
 scapist. Yet he could sometimes forget hot reds 
 and vivid greens. From his * Picturesque Scen- 
 ery ' it is plain that he could follow Nature 
 closely enough when he chose to keep his eye on 
 
Loutkerbourg, R.A. 127 
 
 the object ; and he possessed powers by no means 
 to be despised. Had he lived twenty years later 
 he might, with his mastery of technique and his 
 assimilative talent, have figured in the forefront 
 of the coming English landscape school. As it 
 is, he was not without his influenceion Turner.^ 
 And the more considerable of his great naval 
 compositions are still justly regarded as extra- 
 ordinary tours de force in their very adventurous 
 kind. 
 
 ' It is said that Turner first went to live in the Upper 
 Mall at Hammersmith in 1808 in order to be near Louther- 
 bourg (Monkhouse's 'Turner,' 1879, P- ^^)- 
 
A FIELDING 'FIND' 
 
 FIELDING'S autographs and letters are ad- 
 mittedly few in number. 'Where,' asked 
 an inquiring daily paper the other day, apropos 
 of the unprecedented sale of a Fielding receipt 
 and agreement for more than a thousand pounds 
 — ' where is the manuscript of ' Tom Jones ' or 
 of 'Amelia'? The answer is not far to seek. 
 Probably neither now exists, since in Fielding's 
 day authors were not so careful to preserve their 
 ' copy ' as Thackeray and Dickens and Trollope 
 in ours. With respect to the absence of letters, 
 there are two explanations, each of which is 
 almost sufficient to account for their rarity. The 
 bulk of Fielding's correspondence, it is under- 
 stood, was destroyed early in the last century; 
 and it is suggested that such of his papers as, after 
 the sale of his library in February 1755 still re- 
 mained in the custody of Sir John Fielding, his 
 blind half-brother and successor, perished when, 
 in 1780, the Bow Street house was wrecked by 
 the Gordon rioters. Thus it comes about that 
 not many specimens of Henry Fielding's episto- 
 128 
 
A Fielding ' Find' 129 
 
 lary efforts have been printed or preserved. Some 
 of these are frankly formal, and consequently 
 barren of interest; so that, w^ith exception of one 
 to be reproduced presently, and another to his 
 publisher, John Nourse of the Strand, in regard 
 to the leasing of a house near the Temple which 
 was to include ' one large eating Parlour ' ^ (a 
 very characteristic touch !), there are practically 
 no utterances in this kind which can be said to 
 have any direct bearing on his biography or per- 
 sonality. 
 
 A fortunate circumstance has brought to light 
 two of his latest if not his last letters, the exist- 
 ence of which has hitherto been overlooked ; and, 
 by the kindness of members of the Fielding 
 family, transcripts of these have been courteously 
 placed in our hands for publication. They relate 
 to that voyage to Lisbon in search of health of 
 which Fielding wrote the 'Journal' published 
 posthumously in 1755; and they succeed and 
 supplement the very valuable letter dating from 
 the same period, already referred to. This has 
 been printed in recent biographies of Fielding j 
 but its close connection with the newly-discovered 
 
 ^ This must have been eighteenth-century for ' dining- 
 room.'' Miss Burney speaks of the 'eating-parlour' in the 
 Queen's Lodge at Windsor ('Diary,' iv (1905), 277). 
 K 
 
1 30 A Fielding * Find ' 
 
 documents makes it convenient to print it once 
 more. Fielding, it will be remembered, left 
 Ealing for Lisbon on 26th June 1754. He was 
 suffering from ' a complication of disorders ' — 
 asthma, jaundice, and dropsy. He had tried 
 ' Spot ' Ward's remedies and Bishop Berkeley's 
 tar-water without permanent relief; and when 
 finally, having made his will, he started for 
 Portugal, he had little real hope of regaining his 
 strength.^ It is needless to recapitulate the trials 
 and vexations of his protracted voyage, which are 
 fully detailed in the 'Journal';^ but the above- 
 mentioned letter, it should be stated, was addressed 
 to John Fielding Esq., at Bow Street, Covent 
 Garden, when its writer, in the course of his 
 travels, had reached the Isle of Wight. 
 
 ' On board the Queen of Portugal, Rich^ Veal 
 at anchor on the Mother Bank, off Ryde, to the 
 care of the Post Master at Portsmouth — this is 
 my Date and y'' Direction. 
 
 ^"Ju/y 12 1754. 
 ' Dear Jack, After receiving that agreeable 
 Lre from Mess'"^ Fielding and C°., we weighed 
 
 1 His death was actually announced in one of the evening 
 papers (Godden's 'Henry Fielding,' 1910, 285). 
 
 "■ An edition, with numerous notes by the author of this 
 paper, is inckided in the 'World's Classics' for 1907. 
 
A Fielding ' Find ' 131 
 
 on monday morning and sailed from Deal to the 
 Westward Four Days long but inconceivably 
 pleasant passage brought us yesterday to an 
 Anchor on the Mother Bank, on the Back of the 
 Isle of Wight, where we had last Night in Safety 
 the Pleasure of hearing the Winds roar over our 
 Heads in as violent a Tempest as I have known, 
 and where my only Consideration were the Fears 
 which must possess any Friend of ours, (if there 
 is happily any such) who really makes our Well- 
 being the Object of his Concern especially if such 
 Friend should be totally inexperienced in Sea 
 Affairs. I therefore beg that on the Day you 
 receive this Mrs. Daniel may know that we are 
 just risen from Breakfast in Health and Spirits 
 this twelfth Instant at 9 in the morning. Our 
 Voyage hath proved fruitful in Adventures all 
 which being to be written in the Book you must 
 postpone y*" Curiosity. As the Incidents which 
 fall under y*" Cognizance will possibly be con- 
 signed to Oblivion, do give them to us as they 
 pass. Tell y" Neighbour I am much obliged to 
 him for recommending me to the care of a most 
 able and experienced Seaman to whom other Cap- 
 tains seem to pay such Deference that they 
 attend and watch his Motions, and think them- 
 selves only safe when they act under his Direction 
 
132 A Fielding ' Find' 
 
 and Example. Our Ship in Truth seems to give 
 Laws on the Water with as much Authority and 
 Superiority as you Dispense Laws to the Public 
 and Example to y'' Brethren in Commission. 
 Please to direct y*" Answer to me on Board as in 
 the Date, if gone to be returned, and then send 
 it by the Post and Pacquet to Lisbon to 
 'Y'" afFect Brother 
 
 ' H. Fielding.' 
 
 This letter, apart from its manly, cheerful tone, 
 affords a good deal of minor information. It 
 mentions the writer's mother-in-law, Mrs. Daniel, 
 who had probably remained at Ealing in charge 
 of his remaining children ; it gives the names of 
 the captain and of the ship, not given in the 
 'Journal'; it refers to the 'Journal' itself as in 
 progress or contemplation; and it confirms the 
 fact that John Fielding (and not Saunders Welch, 
 as Boswell thought) was his brother's immediate 
 successor at Bow Street. From the Isle of Wight, 
 the ' Queen of Portugal ' proceeded to Tor Bay, 
 whence the earlier of the two new letters is 
 dated. It is addressed as before to John Fielding : 
 
 'ToRR Bay, July 22, 1754. 
 ' Dear Jack Soon after I had concluded my 
 Letter of Business to Welch yesterday, we came 
 
A Fielding ' Find' 1 33 
 
 to an Anchor in this Place, which our Capt says 
 is the best Harbour in the World. I soon re- 
 membered the Country and that it was in the 
 midst of the South Hams a Place famous for 
 Cyder and I think the best in England, in great 
 Preference to that of Herefordshire. Now as I 
 recollect that you are a Lover of this Liquor when 
 mixed with a Proper Number of Midd^ Turneps, 
 as you are of Port Wind well mixed likewise, I 
 thought you might for the Sake of Variety be 
 pleased with once tasting what is pure and 
 genuine, I have therefore purchased and paid for 
 2 Hddsof this Cyder when they will be delivered 
 in double Casks to y' Order transmitted by any 
 Master of a Coasting Veflel that comes from 
 London to these Parts. You must send the 
 very Paper inclosed that being the Token of the 
 Delivery. The Freight of both by a Coaster of 
 Devon or Cornwall will be 8 shillings only, 
 which is I believe y*" whole Expence. They 
 stand me within a few shillings at 4^^, and the 
 learned here are of Opinion they are the finest 
 of their kind, one being of the rougher the other 
 of the sweeter Taste. Welch will easily find al- 
 most every Day one of these Coasters in London, 
 which the Uncertainty of our Stay here and the 
 Hurry which every Veering of the Wind puts us 
 
1 34 A Fielding * Find' 
 
 in prevents my providing here. It will be fit for 
 drinking or bottling a Month after it hath lain in 
 your Vault. I have consigned it in the following 
 manner. Haifa Hdd to yourself, half to Welch? 
 half to Hunter and half to JVIillar, and I wish you 
 all merry over it. 
 
 * In your last, there is only one Paragraph 
 which I wish better explained. If Boor be trusty. 
 Pray let me know any Shadow of a Doubt : for 
 the very Supposition gives me much Uneasiness. 
 If he is not trusty he is a Fool ; but that is very 
 possible for him to be, at least to catch at a lefTor, 
 and dishonest Profit, which is present and certain 
 in Preference to what is in all Respects its Re- 
 verse. Pray give me as perfect Ease as you can 
 in this Particular. I begin to despair of letting 
 my House this Summer. I hope the Sale of my 
 Wine may be more depended on: for the almost 
 miraculous Dilatoriness of our Voyage, tho it 
 hath added something to the Pleasure, hath added 
 much more to the Expense of it. In so much 
 that I wish Welch would send a 20^^ Bill of 
 Exch^ by [word illegible'] means immediately after 
 me ; tho I fear Boor^ Demands for Harvest 
 Labourers have greatly emptied his hands, and I 
 would not for good Reasons be too much a 
 Debtor to the best of Friends, I hope at the 
 
A Fielding ' Find ' 135 
 
 same time to see a particular Account of the 
 State of Affairs at Fordhook, and the whole Sum 
 of Payments to Boor from my leaving him to the 
 date of such Letter, when I presume the Har- 
 vest, as to England, will be pretty well over. I 
 beg likewise an exact Account of the Price of 
 Wheat p Load at Uxbridge. I have no more of 
 Business to say, nor do I know what else to write 
 you: for even the Winds with us afford no 
 variety. I got half a Buck from the New Forest, 
 while we lay at the Ifle of Wight, and the Pasty 
 still sticks by us. We have here the finest of 
 Fish, Turbot, vast Soals and Whitings for less 
 than you can eat Plaise in Mdd^. So that Lord 
 Cromarty^ Banishment from Scotland hither was 
 somewhat less cruel than that of Ovid from Rome 
 to Pontus.^ We may however say with him — 
 " Quam vicina est ultima Terra mihi ! " Ultima 
 Terra you know is the Land^ End which a ten 
 Hours Gale from North or East will carry us to, and 
 where y*" Health with all our Friends left behind 
 us in England will be most cheerfully drunk by 
 ' Y' affect*^ Brother 
 
 ^H. Fielding. 
 ' All our loves to my sister.' 
 
 ^ This reference to Lord Cromarty is doubtless due to 
 Fielding's connection with the anti-Jacobite press. 
 
136 A Fielding ' Find' 
 
 This very characteristic epistle is to the full as 
 interesting, and almost as informing as that 
 written ten days earlier from the Isle of Wight. 
 A few sentences need brief comment. In the 
 'Journal ' the reference to 'Middlesex Turneps' 
 is made clear by the statement that this ' watry ' 
 vegetable entered largely into the composition of 
 the metropolitan 'Vinum Pomonas.'^ Thepeculiar 
 description of wine as ' wind,' was, besides being 
 a popular vulgarism,^ a curiosity of the Ryde 
 landlady's little account. From the ' Journal ' it 
 also seems that Fielding purchased a third hogs- 
 head of cider for himself, which brought his ex- 
 penditure up to ^5 10^. 'Cheeshurst,' given in the 
 printed record as the address of Mr. Giles Lever- 
 ance, the salesman, should have been the name 
 of his farm, for in the letter, or rather at the back 
 of it, he is described in another script as of Chur- 
 ston, that is — Churston-Ferrers, a village on the 
 Devon Coast near Brixham. Welch was Saun- 
 
 ^ ' But this I warn Thee, and shall alway warn, 
 No heterogenous Mixtures use, as some 
 With watry Turneps have debas'd their Wines, 
 Too frugal.'— (Philips' ' Cyder,' 1708, Bk. ii.) 
 
 - The 'fine gentleman' in ' Humphry Clinker,' it may 
 be remembered, offers to treat Miss Winifred Jenkins with 
 'a pint of wind' (2nd ed., i, 231). 
 
A Fielding ' Find' 137 
 
 ders Welch, High Constable of Holborn, the 
 friend of Johnson and Hogarth as well as of 
 Fielding, and the father-in-law of Nollekens, the 
 sculptor; Hunter was William Hunter, the 
 'great surgeon and anatomist of Covent garden'; 
 and Millar was Andrew Millar, Fielding's pub- 
 lisher, of ' Shakespear's Head over-against Kath- 
 erine Street in the Strand.' Boor, whose trust- 
 worthiness is under suspicion, must have been 
 the Richard Boor who was one of the witnesses 
 to the undated Will executed by Fielding at 
 Ealing before his departure from England. He 
 was also, in all likelihood, the bailiff or agent-in- 
 charge of the ' little house ' at Ealing (Fordhook),^ 
 which if it involved harvesting and wheat crops, 
 should have had farm-land attached to it. The 
 ' buck,' and the pasty which Mrs. Fielding made 
 therefrom, are both mentioned in the 'Journal.' 
 Lord Cromarty was George Mackenzie, the 
 
 * Fordhook no longer exists; and the site, on the Ux- 
 bridge Road, opposite the Ealing Common Station of the 
 Metropolitan District Railway, is now covered by houses. 
 A sketch of it, as somewhat altered and enlarged by sub- 
 sequent occupants, is to be found in the Guildhall Library. 
 From a plan in the Ealing Town Hall, dated 1741, there 
 were then fields to the north and east, and later tenants 
 seem to have held land. ' Fielding Terrace ' and ' Ford- 
 hook Avenue' preserve its memory. 
 
138 A Fielding ' Find' 
 
 third earl, sentenced to death after the '45, but 
 respited. He was allowed to reside at Layhill in 
 Devonshire. The apposite Latin quotation which 
 Fielding makes in this connection is a fresh in- 
 stance of that natural habit of letters on his part 
 which a cheap criticism is accustomed to stig- 
 matize as pretentious erudition; and the lady 
 referred to in the postscript was probably John 
 Fielding's first wife, Elizabeth Whittingham, 
 whose adopted daughter, Mary Ann, afterwards 
 married the novelist's son Allen. 
 
 The seal of this document, part of which re- 
 mains, displays the double-headed Austrian eagle 
 bearing a coat-of-arms on its breast.^ The second 
 letter differs considerably from those which have 
 been quoted hitherto. In the first place, it is 
 much longer; and in places exhibits signs of haste 
 and a perturbation of spirit which are absent 
 from its predecessors, although now and again the 
 old joy of life and natural cheerfulness break out 
 irrepressibly. The writing is sometimes scarcely 
 decipherable ; and the paper in places is torn and 
 mutilated — a condition of things which fully 
 
 1 This shows that Fielding would probably have dis- 
 approved the modern discoveries of Mr. J. Horace Round 
 in regard to the relations of the Denbighs and the Habs- 
 burgs. 
 
A Fielding * Find ' 1 39 
 
 justifies the treatment by paraphrase of part of its 
 matter. From internal evidence it must have 
 been w^ritten about tvi^o or three weeks after 
 Fielding reached Lisbon on August 14. For its 
 better comprehension, it may be well to remind 
 the reader that Fielding's party, as expressly 
 stated in the ' Journal,' consisted of j/x persons: 
 namely — Fielding himself; his wife; his eldest 
 daughter, Harriot; Mrs. Fielding's * friend,' Miss 
 Margaret Collier; and two servants, a footman, 
 William, whose ignoble surname has not sur- 
 vived, and a maid, Isabella Ash, who, with Miss 
 Collier and Richard Boor, had witnessed the 
 Ealing will. Miss Collier, who was a daughter 
 of Arthur Collier, the metaphysician and author 
 of ' Clavis Universalis,' was doubtless well ac- 
 quainted with the family, for her sister, Jane, had 
 collaborated with Sarah Fielding in the ' New 
 Dramatic Fable' of 'The Cry,' published by 
 Dodsley in the March of this year. Though ad- 
 dressed as before to John Fielding, Esq.: 'p. the 
 Lisbon Packet,' the letter begins without further 
 ceremony as follows : 
 
 ' I am willing to waste no Paper as you see, 
 nor to put you to the Expense of a double Letter 
 as I write by the Packet, by which I would have 
 you write to me every Letter of Consequence, if 
 
140 A Fielding' Find' 
 
 it be a single Sheet of Paper only it will not cost 
 the more for being full and perhaps you have not 
 time even to fill one Sheet for as 1 take it the 
 idlest Man in the World writes now to the 
 busiest, and that too at the Expence of the latter. 
 ' I have rec^ here two Letters from you and 
 one from Welch. The money I have tho I was 
 forced to discount the Note, it being drawn at 
 36 days Sight upon a Portugese who never doth 
 anything for nothing. I believe as it was in 
 Portugese neither you nor Welch knew this, 
 and it was the Imposition of the Drawer in 
 London. Your Letter of Business I have not 
 yet seen. Perhaps it is lost, as if it came by a 
 Merchant Ship it easily may : for the Captains of 
 these Ships pay no Regard to any but Merchants 
 for which Reason I will have all my Goods even 
 to the smallest Parcel consigned to John Stubbs 
 Esq"" (as I mentioned before, and hope will be 
 done long before y° receive this) marked with the 
 large red F. — Pardon Repetition for abundans 
 Cautela non nocet, and tho I mentioned my 
 orders, I did not give the Reason I believe either 
 to y° or Welch, at least all my Reasons for these 
 are Several but this is most worth y' Notice, 
 The Truth is that Captains are all y® greatest 
 Scoundrels in the World but Veale is the greatest 
 
A Fielding '' Find'' 141 
 
 of them all. This I did not find out till the Day 
 before he sailed, which will explain many Things 
 when you see him as perhaps you may for he is 
 likewise a Madman, which I knew long before I 
 reached Lisbon and he sailed a few Days ago. I 
 shall not, after what I have said, think him worth 
 my Notice, unless he should obiter fall in my Way. 
 
 ' In answer to yours, if you cannot answer . . . 
 yourself, I will assure you once for all I highly 
 approve and thank you, as I am convinced I 
 always shall when y° act for me, I desire there- 
 fore you will always exert unlimited Power on 
 these Occasions. 
 
 ' With regard to the principal Point, my Health, 
 which I have not yet mentioned, I was tapped 
 again (being the 5th time) at Torbay . . . and 
 possibly here I left the Dropsy, for I have heard 
 nothing of it since. . . . 
 
 In Short as we advanced to the South, it is in- 
 credible how my Health advanced with it, and I 
 have no Doubt but that I should have perfectly 
 recovered my Health at this Day, had it not been 
 obstructed by every possible Accident which For- 
 tune could throw in my Way.' 
 
 Here a part is missing ; and we may take leave 
 to summarize. The first ' accident' was that his 
 whole family, ' except myself [!], Harriot and 
 
142 A Fielding ' Find' 
 
 Bell ' (the maid, Isabella), fell ill. William, the 
 footman, a poor creature, having increased his 
 disorder by indulging too freely in the cheap 
 wines of the country, was seized with a panic 
 apprehension of dying in a foreign land, and be- 
 coming an object of unmeasured contempt to his 
 deserted master, took ship in the ' Queen of Por- 
 tugal' for London. The letter proceeds: 
 
 ' In the next Place I found myself in the dear- 
 est City in the World and in the dearest House 
 in that City. I could not for my Soul live for 
 less than 2 Moidores a day [^2 i\s. — the old 
 moidore being about 27^.] and saw myself likely 
 to be left Pennyless i,ooo miles from home, 
 where I had neither Acquaintance nor Credit 
 among a Set of People who are tearing one 
 another's Souls out for money and ready to de- 
 posite Millions with Security but not a Farthing 
 without. In this Condition moreover I saw no 
 Likelihood nor Possibility of changing my Posi- 
 tion. The House I was in being the cheapest of 
 the three in which alone I could get a Lodging 
 with*' being poisoned. 
 
 ' Fortune now seemed to take Pity on me, and 
 brought me by a strange Accident acquainted 
 with one Mr. Stubbs,^ the greatest Merchant of 
 ' V. supra, p. 140. 
 
A Fielding^ Find' 143 
 
 this Place, and the greatest Corn factor in the 
 World. He hath a little Kintor [quinta ^] or Villa 
 at a Place called Jonkera [Junqueira], 2 miles 
 from Lisbon and near Bellisle [Belem]^ which is 
 the Kensington of England [Portugal ?], and 
 where the Court now reside. Here he likewise 
 got me a little House with*^ any manner of Furni- 
 ture not even a Shelf or even a Kitchin Grate. 
 For this I am to pay 9 Moidores a year, and 
 hither I boldly came with scarce sufF* Money to 
 buy me the Necessar[ies] of Life. . . .' 
 
 At this point we may again abridge. In furnish- 
 ing the ' villakin,' Fielding's funds sank to the 
 lowest ebb. But a well-timed bill arriving from 
 his brother, the tables were turned, and his ex- 
 penses became moderate. Instead of two moidores 
 a day, he found he could live for less than a 
 moidore per week, and with difficulty exceed it. 
 ' Where then,' he asks, * was the Misfortune of 
 all this? or what was there which could retard 
 
 ^ A quinta, in Spanish and Portuguese, is a small farm 
 or country-house, so called because the tenant pays to the 
 landlord a fifth part of the produce. 
 
 2 Fielding makes the same odd slip in the 'Journal,' 
 adding another by saying that Catherine of Arragon is 
 buried there, whereas he should have written Catherine of 
 Braganza, widow of Charles II. Junqueira is a suburb of 
 Lisbon. 
 
144 A Fielding ^ Find' 
 
 my Recovery, or shock a Philosophy so estab- 
 lished as mine which had triumphed over the 
 Terrors of Death when I thought it both certain 
 and near.' The answer is — that Mrs. Fielding, 
 who, as we know, had fallen ill on landing, was 
 still ailing in spirit. The climate of Portugal did 
 not suit her: she was home-sick; and probably 
 yearning for her little family at Fordhook. ' She 
 is,' says Fielding, 'I thank God recovered; but 
 so dispirited that she cries and sighs all Day to 
 return to England,' where she believed her hus- 
 band might complete his convalescence just as 
 well as at Lisbon, since he could not there 
 readily command a coach, or see after his children 
 and his home. This, to Fielding, who felt him- 
 self daily growing stronger, was most disquieting; 
 and far more wearing than it would have been to 
 a more selfish or less warm-hearted man. Mat- 
 ters, moreover, were further complicated by the 
 proceedings of that ambiguous ' another ' (the 
 word is Fielding's own), who, either as com- 
 panion or confidante, plays so disturbing a part in 
 many domestic difficulties. She is not named ; but 
 she must, we fear, be identified with Margaret 
 Collier, She was poor; she was pushing and 
 clever; she had become a 'Toast of Lisbon'; 
 and she was apparently steadily setting her cap at 
 
A Fielding ^ Find' 145 
 
 the English Resident, one Williamson, a friend 
 of Andrew Millar. Probably knowing that if 
 Fielding went home with his wife and daughter 
 she also would have to accompany them, she 
 seems to have originated the insidious suggestion 
 that Mrs. Fielding should go back alone; and that 
 she (Miss Collier) should remain behind in charge, 
 as companion to Harriot. One can easily imagine 
 the intense vexation that, as hope revived and the 
 pressure of necessity decreased, these unpalatable 
 propositions must have caused to Fielding. ' ^y 
 these means,' he says, ' my Spirits which were at 
 the Top of the House are thrown down into the 
 Cellar.' ^ 
 
 The passages immediately succeeding deal with 
 plans for defeating Miss Collier's machinations. 
 They show much excusable irritation — and even 
 some incoherency. It is obvious, however, that 
 Fielding has not the slightest intention of preju- 
 dicing his last chances of recovery by returning 
 prematurely to England. One of the things he 
 wishes his brother to do, is to send him out a 
 * conversible Man to be my companion in an 
 Evening, with as much of the Qualifications of 
 Learning, Sense, and Good humour as y° can 
 
 1 This must have been a common eighteenth-century 
 figure, for Cradock uses it to describe Sterne. 
 L 
 
146 A Fielding ^ Find' 
 
 find, who will drink a moderate Glass in an Even- 
 ins: or will at least sit with me till one when I 
 do.' He does not know, he goes on, anybody 
 more likely to grow better than himself; he has 
 now vigour and elasticity in his limbs ;^ gets 
 easily in and out of a carriage ; when in it, can 
 ride the whole day; but all this will be lost if he 
 
 ffoes back, or if the schemes of ' another ' are al- 
 to ? 
 
 lowed to prevail. The letter closes with dispersed 
 particulars of presents, chiefly eatables, which he 
 has despatched to friends in England. The list 
 includes Dr. Collier — ' whose very name [he 
 adds] I hate'; and who may have been Miss Col- 
 lier's brother, as her father had long been dead. 
 Then come directions for clothes he desires to have 
 sent out to him, ' for the Winters here are short 
 but cold.' The tailor is to make them wider in 
 the shoulders — a proof that he is putting on 
 flesh. But he must speak for himself: 
 
 ' Let me have likewise my Tye and a new 
 Mazer Perriwig from Southampton Street, and a 
 new Hat large in the Brim from my Hatter, the 
 corner of Arundel S*. I have had a Visit from a 
 Portugese Nobleman, and shall be visited by all 
 as soon as my Kintor is in order. Bell follows 
 
 ' In taking ship at Rotherhithe, he had ' no use of his 
 limbs,' and was hoisted like a log over the side. 
 
A Fielding' Find' i^y 
 
 Capt Veale to England where he hath promised 
 to marry her. My Family now consists of a 
 black Slave and his Wife, to which I desire you 
 to add a very good perfect Cook, by the first ship, 
 but not by Veale. Scrape together all the Money 
 of mine you can and do not pay a Farthing with- 
 out my Orders. My Affairs will soon be in a fine 
 Posture, for 1 can live here, and even make a 
 Figure for almost nothing. In Truth the Produce 
 of the Country is preposterously cheap. I bought 
 three Days ago a Leafe of Partridges [leash — 
 that is, three] for ab' 1.4 English and this Day 5 
 young Fowls for half a Crown. What is imported 
 from abroad is extravagantly dear, especially what 
 comes from England as doth almost all the pro- 
 vision [?] of Lisbon. I must have from Fordhook 
 likewise 4 Hams a very fine Hog fatted as soon 
 as may be and being cut into Flitches sent me 
 likewise a young Hog made into Pork and salted 
 and pickled in a Tub. A vast large Cheshire 
 cheese and one of Stilton if to be had good and 
 mild. I thank Welch for his, but he was cheated: 
 God bless you and y'^H. P'ielding mil annos &c.' 
 A postscript, of which the end is wanting, re- 
 veals further iniquity on the part of William, the 
 footman, who, after his inglorious departure, is 
 found to have cheated his master of ^3 12s. by 
 
148 A Fielding ' Find' 
 
 pretending that he had discharged an unpaid bill. 
 This sum is to be deducted from any draft he 
 may present for payment; and as a mild punish- 
 ment, he is to be stripped of his livery. As for 
 Isabella, she is ' only a Fool 'j and Fielding 
 wishes her to be provided for at that Universal- 
 Registry-Office in which he and his half-brother 
 were jointly concerned. 
 
 Of all these matters there is nothing in the 
 'Journal,' which ends abruptly with the arrival of 
 the ' Queen of Portugal ' at Lisbon. What more 
 came to pass in those brief weeks that followed 
 the despatch of the foregoing letter, will now 
 probably never be revealed. At this date, Field- 
 ing, it is clear, firmly believed he should recover. 
 But early in October 1754 his joys and sorrows, 
 his frank delight of living and his unconquerable 
 hopefulness, found their earthly close in the quiet 
 English Cemetery. His widow survived him 
 many years, dying at Canterbury as late as March 
 1802. Harriot, his daughter, eventually married 
 Colonel James Gabriel Montresor, and lived a 
 brief wedded life. As for Miss Margaret Collier, 
 she retired to Ryde; but scarcely, one would 
 imagine, to meditate the memories of her Penin- 
 sular manoeuvres. In 1755 she wrote to Richard- 
 son, complaining that she had been reported to be 
 
A Fielding ' Find' 149 
 
 the author of the 'Journal,' because 'it was so 
 very bad a performance' — a verdict vi^hich the 
 excellent Samuel no doubt heartily approved. 
 Another tradition concerning her is, that a profile 
 she cut in paper supplied the initial hint for 
 Hogarth's posthumous portrait of the author of 
 ' Tom Jones.' As if the marvellous eye-memory 
 of Hogarth could possibly have needed such a 
 stimulus! Whether Captain Richard Veal ever 
 married Isabella Ash, the maid, is not recorded; 
 but from what we know of the antecedents of 
 that septuagenarian lady-killer and ex-privateer, 
 he probably did not. It is, however, to be hoped 
 that the feeble and fraudulent William was duly 
 mulcted in the full amount of which he had 
 sought to ' bubble ' his confiding employer.' 
 
 ^ The two letters referred to in this paper were sold 
 at Sotheby's on Friday, 15th March, 1912, for ^^305, 
 being Lots 360 and 361 (' Athenaeum,' 23rd March). 
 
THE BAILLl DE SUFFREN 
 
 ' Pourquol n'en ai-je pas trouve un> de sa trempe? j'en 
 aurais fait notre Nelson, et les affaires eussent pris un autre 
 tournure!' — Napoleon to Las Cases at St. Helena. 
 
 MONSIEUR PHILIP JAMES DE 
 LOUTHERBOURG, Painter to the 
 King of France, and R.A. of London and Paris, 
 although a naturah'zed British subject, has been 
 roundly taken to task for depicting, on a canvas 
 at Greenwich Hospital, that ' glorious victory ' 
 of the 1st of June 1794, when Richard, Earl 
 Howe, beat the French off" Ushant. ' It is dis- 
 graceful,' says one of Loutherbourg's French 
 critics, 'for a Frenchman to have made such a 
 picture, when his compatriots, who manned the 
 " Vengeur " at that battle, went down singing the 
 " Marseillaise " rather than lower their colours.' ^ 
 Such, no doubt, was Barrere's boastful report to 
 the National Convention ; but modern English 
 historians will hardly accept his version, seeing 
 that the colours were lowered and that some three 
 hundred and thirty of the 'Vengeur's' crew were 
 
 1 Dussieux, ' Les Artistes Fran^ais a I'Etranger/ 3rd 
 ed. 1876, p. 285. 
 
 150 
 
THE BAILLI DE SUFFRKN 
 (from the portrait by GIlRARD) 
 
The\Bailli de Suffren 151 
 
 rescued by the English boats. The remainder did 
 however sink crying 'Vive la Republique ! ' like 
 the gallant Frenchmen that they w^ere. And as 
 for Loutherbourg, even if he had not been for 
 twenty years an Englishman by adoption, he was 
 surely justified in painting what he pleased. At 
 any rate, we propose for the moment to take a 
 leaf from his book. It is not to the exploits of 
 Hawke or Boscawen, or Rodney or Duncan or 
 Jervis, that we shall now turn our attention, but 
 to those of a farnous French pre-revolutionary 
 sailor, the Bailli de Suffren, who, about 1782- 
 1783, gave us so much trouble in the Bay of 
 Bengal. Valour, decision, energy, initiative — 
 these things have no nationality ; and the old 
 Provencal ' sea-hero,' as Carlyle calls him, pos- 
 sessed, in full measure, the great qualities of a 
 great naval commander. 
 
 In the opinion of M. Charles Cunat of St. 
 Malo,^ Suffren's first biographer, himself a retired 
 naval officer, the Bailli's doings by sea and land 
 wholly overshadow those minor details of his 
 career which appeal to * puerile curiosity ' alone. 
 
 ^ 'Histoire du Bailli de Suffren," Rennes, 1852. 'Bailli,' 
 it should be explained, is a superior grade in the Knights 
 of St. John of Jerusalem, or Knights of Malta, to which 
 Order Suffren belonged. 
 
152 The Bailli de Stcffren 
 
 ' My book,' M. Cunat writes, ' will not contain 
 any of those private facts for which the idle 
 reader seeks in the lives of great men.' Owing to 
 this reserve — which is wise or otherwise accord- 
 ing as the reader elects to class himself — the 
 account of the Bailli's early years occupies but a 
 small place in his chronicler's pages. Pierre-Andr6 
 de Suffren Saint-Torpez (later corrupted into 
 Tropez) was the third son of Paul de Suffren, 
 Marquis de Saint-Torpez; and was born on 17th 
 July 1729, at the Chateau of Saint-Cannat, near 
 Lambesc, in the present department of the 
 Bouches-du-Rhone. Destined from his birth to 
 the sea and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, 
 he was educated to this end ; and at the age of 
 fourteen was sent to Toulon. Entering the navy as 
 a ' garde de la marine ' or cadet, he received orders 
 to join the ' Solide,' 64 guns, one of a squadron 
 which the Cabinet of Versailles was equipping to 
 aid the Spanish vessels shut up in Toulon by the 
 Mediterranean fleet under Admiral Mathews. In 
 the indecisive action, or battle of Hyeres (Feb- 
 ruary 1744), which followed, ending with the 
 retreat of Mathews, young Suffren received his 
 'baptism of fire,' the 'Solide' engaging the 'North- 
 umberland ; ' and, according to M. Cunat, he al- 
 ready displayed the bravery for which he was 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 153 
 
 afterwards so renowned. From the ' Solide ' he 
 passed to the ' Pauline,' part of a fleet under Cap- 
 tain Macnamara bound for America. Here again 
 he had fresh experiences of naval warfare. The 
 * Pauline ' laid up, he was transferred to the 
 'Trident,' 64 guns, Captain d'Estourmel, which, in 
 1746, set out from Brest with a fleet of thirteen 
 sail, destined to re-capture Cape Breton and break 
 up the English colony of Annapolis. But the ex- 
 pedition was a hopeless failure. * The Count de 
 Maurepas, then in charge of the Department of 
 the Marine, had placed at its head the Due 
 d'Anville, a possibly competent land-ofl'icer but a 
 manifestly fresh-water sailor, whose inexperience 
 was not aided by the disloyal officers who re- 
 sented his command, and even wilfully betrayed 
 him into error. Scurvy, too, broke out in the 
 crews ; a storm dispersed the ships, many of which 
 fell into the hands of the enemy; and the dis- 
 credited remnant returned to Brest. This deplor- 
 able disclosure of incapacity, insubordination and 
 general mismanagement mkde a profound impres- 
 sion on the already observant ' garde de la marine * 
 of the ' Trident,' whose ship was one of those that 
 escaped. But d'Estourmel reported so well of him 
 that he was promoted to a sub-lieutenancy, and 
 in 1747 joined the ' Monarque ' (74 guns). 
 
154 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 In October of the same year, the ' Monarque ' 
 with eight other ships set out from Aix island, at 
 the mouth of the Charente, in charge of 252 sail 
 bound for America, The commander of the little 
 fleet was M. de I'Etandu^re, a brave and experi- 
 enced officer. OiF Belle-Isle they were en- 
 countered by a British fleet under Admiral 
 Hawke (who had fought as a captain in the 
 battle of Hyeres), and on this occasion had 
 Rodney among his subordinates. The English 
 ships greatly outnumbered those of I'Etanduere, 
 who nevertheless contrived to secure the safety 
 of the convoy. On the other hand, six of his 
 ships were captured, one of them being the 
 ' Monarque,' which, beset by three of the enemy 
 at once, and with a dead or dying captain, had 
 been forced to surrender. L'Etanduere's ship, the 
 '•Tonnantj'with the 'Intrepide '(Captain deVaud- 
 reuil), by which he had been most ably seconded, 
 succeeded in getting safely to Brest. Sub-lieu- 
 tenant de Suffren, who, in after days, never tired 
 of talking of the exploits of the 'Tonnant' andthe 
 'Intr6pide,' was carried as a prisoner to England, 
 vv^here he remained until the Peace of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle. He found us ' arrogant,' a not unusual 
 complaint against conquerors; and, it is deplorable 
 to think, henceforth grew to hate us cordially. 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 1 5 5 
 
 There was little reason for love, since the Belle- 
 Isle battle, coupled with Anson's victory ofF Cape 
 Finisterre in the preceding May over a French 
 fleet carrying supplies to the East Indies, had 
 practically effaced the French fighting navy for a 
 season. And Anson's victory, it is held, had much 
 to do with the establishment of British supremacy 
 in India. 
 
 Released in 1748 at the Peace, SufFren, as he 
 had always intended, entered the Order of St. 
 John of Jerusalem; and, being at once admitted 
 as a Knight, was for the next six years occupied 
 in ' caravanning ' or convoying trading ships, and 
 fighting the unspeakable Turk. In 1754 he 
 quitted Malta to return to Toulon ; and shortly 
 afterwards joined the ' Dauphin Royal.' Sailing in 
 the following year with a squadron for Canada he 
 narrowly escaped being once more taken by the 
 English. The Seven Years' War was brewing 
 though not begun ; and Hawke and Boscawen 
 were already engaged in those acts of naval war- 
 fare which — according to the point of view — are 
 regarded either as piracy or reprisals. After this, 
 SutFren, now a full lieutenant, was at his own 
 request appointed to the ' Orph^e,' one of twelve 
 ships which, with Marshal Richeheu and several 
 thousand men in transports, left Toulon in 
 
156 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 April 1756, under Admiral de la Galissoniere, in 
 order to invest Minorca — an enterprise success- 
 fully accomplished. On i8th May, England 
 definitely declared war ; and two days later took 
 place that calamitous engagement in which Byng, 
 with a fleet of thirteen ships and four thousand 
 men, failed both to relieve the garrison of the 
 already-breached fortress of St. Philip at Port 
 Mahon and to defeat la Galissoniere. Minorca 
 passed to the French ; and Byng retired to 
 Gibraltar. Into the justice or injustice of his 
 subsequent fate on the quarter-deck of the ' Mon- 
 arque,' it is needless to enter here. A court-martial 
 had acquitted him of cowardice or disaffection, 
 but he could scarcely be cleared from lack of 
 enterprise. La Galisonniere did not long enjoy 
 his first and last triumph, for on his way to the 
 Court at Fontainebleau with the news of his 
 success he died. 
 
 Happily for us, however, this French victory 
 was not followed by others. Of Suffren's part in 
 it no record survives, though Byng's deplorable 
 fiasco must assuredly have attracted the attention 
 of an observer whose own defects, as he proved 
 later, were certainly not those of supineness or 
 imperfe£t energy. He was to have further illustra- 
 tion of these failings in his new commander, 
 
Tlie Bailli de Suffren 1 57 
 
 Admiral de la Clue, to whose flagship, the *Oc6an,' 
 he passed from the ' Orph^e.' M. de la Clue 
 allowed himself to be shut up by Admiral Osborne 
 in Cartagena, from which coign of vantage he, to 
 the intense disgust of SufFren, passively witnessed 
 the capture by the enemy of two of the fleet sent 
 to his assistance. This was in February 1758. A 
 year later the French King's new minister, 
 Choiseul, was equipping his flotilla of flat-bot- 
 tomed boats to invade England; and England, on 
 her side, was preparing to receive and defeat it. 
 In order to escort it to our shores it was necessary 
 that the Brest and Toulon squadrons should effect 
 a junction. To prevent this, Hawke blockaded 
 Brest; and Boscawen, Toulon; while Rodney 
 busied himself in bombarding Havre de Grace, 
 where the bulk of the flat-bottoms were congre- 
 gated together. In August, while Boscawen 
 was refitting at Gibraltar, de la Clue escaped 
 from Toulon, to be chased almost immediately. 
 Either by disaffection or misadventure five of his 
 vessels sought refuge in Cadiz. His rear ship, the 
 'Centaure,' Captain de Sabran-Grammont, made a 
 most gallant resistance ; but two more of the fleet 
 stole away at nightfall. With the four remaining 
 vessels the French admiral ran ashore between 
 Lagos and Cape St. Vincent, where, notwith- 
 
158 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 standing the neutrality of Portugal, Boscawen 
 burned two and captured the others. One of 
 those burned was the 'Oc(^an'; and Suffren once 
 more saw the inside of an English prison. The pro- 
 jected invasion was of course at an end. More 
 fortunate than Byng, those of the French captains 
 who behaved badly had no worse punishment 
 than the hisses of the mob when they returned to 
 Toulon. Things are not always ordered better 
 in France — though not many years later ' Mr. 
 Yorick ' was to say so. 
 
 On this second occasion Suffren's confinement 
 in England was brief, and in due time he was 
 released. After some years of inactivity we next 
 find him protecting the commerce of the Medi- 
 terranean as commander of a xebec. Then, in 
 1767, he was promoted to the rank of capitaine 
 de frigate.' Slowly gaining the confidence of 
 his superiors, after four more years of fighting the 
 Barbary sea-rovers, a service which earned him 
 the rank of Commander of his Order, he be- 
 came, in 1772, a 'capitaine de vaisseau,' and 
 in this capacity took part in the evolutions by 
 which the Cabinet of Versailles, still smarting 
 under the humiliations of the Peace of Paris, 
 sought to fortify and train its navy for the further 
 developments of war. In 1776 he commanded the 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 159 
 
 'Alcm^ne; ' in 1777, the ' Fantasque,' 64 guns. 
 When, in the following year,hostilities again broke 
 out, the ' Fantasque ' had joined the squadron of 
 twelve ships of the line and five frigates,which, un- 
 der the command of Admiral the Count d'Estaing, 
 sailed in April from Toulon to aid the Americans 
 in their struggle for independence. D'Estaing's 
 progress was slow and cautious, and twelve weeks 
 had passed before he reached the Delaware, from 
 which the more expeditious Howe, duly advised 
 of his approach, had retired ten days earlier. In 
 August, Suffren, with the ' Fantasque' and three 
 frigates, was employed to clear Newport Harbour 
 of the little English flotilla stationed there ; and 
 the captains burned or sank their vessels to save 
 them from capture by the enemy. During d'Es- 
 taing's subsequent operations in the West Indies 
 the 'Fantasque' led the line in the engagement with 
 Admiral Byron before Grenada, receiving the fire 
 of the ' Boyne ' and the ' Royal Oak ' and losing 
 sixty-two men in killed and wounded. Suffren was 
 afterwards employed by d'Estaing in securing the 
 capitulation of some of the lesser Antilles. With 
 the collapse of d'Estaing's expedition to Georgia, 
 in which Suffren earned further laurels, the 
 French fleet returned home; and in March 1780 
 Louis XVI, on the report of the French admiral, 
 
1 60 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 gave SufFren a pension of 1,500 livres, special 
 stress being laid on his gallantry at Grenada. 
 
 His rise had been slow and his recognition 
 tardy, for by this time he was a man of fifty. But, 
 as the old motto in the Tower has it, ' Tout 
 vient a point a qui peult attendre'j and whether he 
 had waited for his opportunity or not, it had come 
 at lengtii. Louis XVI, who took more interest 
 in naval affairs than his contemptible grandfather, 
 had recognized Suffren's worth ; and d'Estaing, a 
 brave man if a bad sailor (he had been an officer 
 of cavalry), magnanimously admitted the ability 
 of a frank subordinate who had bluntly criticised 
 the shortcomings of his chief. We may pass 
 briefly over Suffren's next success, the capture of 
 an English convoy off Cape St. Vincent, to pause 
 at what really constitutes the beginning of the 
 most brilliant part of his career. With five ships 
 of the line, a corvette, and a i(t\N transports, he 
 was ordered early in 1781 to proceed to the 
 Cape, then a colony of the Dutch, with whom 
 England had just declared war. The French 
 government had learned indirectly that an ex- 
 pedition, under the well-known Commodore or 
 ' Governor ' George Johnstone, was fitting out 
 to seize this coveted halting-place on the road to 
 India J and Suffren's mission was to secure its 
 
The Bailli de Suffren i6i 
 
 safety. On March 22 he sailed from Brest with 
 the Count de Grasse's fleet, which was bound for 
 the West Indies. Off the Azores they parted 
 company, de Grasse going westward, Suffren to 
 the south. One of his ships, the ' Art(§sien,' was 
 found to be short of water; and Suffren, now 
 ' chef d'escadre ' or commodore, decided to put in 
 at the Portuguese colony of Porto Praya in the 
 Cape Verd Islands. Here Johnstone, making for 
 the Cape, had arrived a k\v days earlier, with five 
 ships, several frigates and a number of armed 
 transports. Relying too implicitly on the sup- 
 posed secrecy of his enterprise and the neutrality 
 of the port, he lay quietly at anchor, wholly un- 
 prepared for attack. Both commanders were 
 naturally taken by surprise. But Suffren was 
 neither a d'Anville nor a de la Clue, and his de- 
 cision was promptly arrived at. Porto Praya, it 
 is true, was in neutral water. But the lieutenant 
 of the ' Oc6an ' remembered Boscawen and Lagos 
 Bay. Signalling promptly to his captains to fol- 
 low, he steered straight into the harbour; 
 anchored as close as he could to the English 
 flagship; and, regardless of the guns of the Eng- 
 lish squadron, the armed transports, and the Por- 
 tuguese fortress, opened a vigorous fire. Unhappily 
 he was not seconded with equal alacrity. The 
 M 
 
1 62 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 ' Annibal,' which came close after him and whose 
 captain was soon killed, by some misconception 
 lost time J the ' Vengeur'and the 'Sphinx,' the two 
 rear ships, scarcely got into action at all; while the 
 ' Art^sien,' mistaking in the smoke an East India- 
 man for a man-of-war, drifted out of the combat 
 altoo-ether. At the end of an hovir's fighting:, 
 SufFren, having battered the enemy to his heart's 
 content, and finding himself with only two ships, 
 one of which, the 'Annibal,' had lost her main- 
 and mizen-masts, judged it expedient to cut his 
 cables and make off. This he did, as swiftly as 
 he came, followed by the 'Annibal,' which, in es- 
 caping, lost her remaining mast, but was fortun- 
 ately taken in tow by the unoccupied ' Sphinx.' 
 The ' Heros ' herself had been roughly handled. 
 But Suffren had accomplished more than he knew. 
 For though Johnstone, recovering himself, started 
 in pursuit, he was prudent enough to abandon his 
 designs on the Cape; and Suffren's bold resolve 
 to fight then and there was amply justified by the 
 event. Had he been effectually supported by his 
 subordinates, he would probably have succeeded 
 in wholly destroying Johnstone's squadron. 
 
 On 2ist June 1781 he reached Simon's Bay, 
 and having satisfied himself of the immunity of 
 the Cape from further attack, sailed for the 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 163 
 
 Mauritius, arriving in October. Here the Count 
 d'Orves, aman broken in health and of declining 
 energy but a senior in rank, took over the 
 cpnimand of the combined fleet, vi^hich consisted 
 of eleven ships of the line, three frigates, three 
 corvettes and a fire-ship. When SufFren's needful 
 repairs were completed, it set sail for India to help 
 the famous Sultan of Mysore, Haidar Ali, in his 
 efforts to drive the English out of the Carnatic. 
 On the way (22nd January 1782) SufFren chased 
 and captured an English fifty-gun ship, the ' Han- 
 nibal,' the command of which eventually fell to 
 the de Galles, who after the captain's death had 
 so gallantly fought the French ' Annibal ' at Porto 
 Praya. This prize added another battleship to the 
 side of the French. On 9th February d'Orves 
 died, and his death placed Suffren in supreme com- 
 mand. A few days later Suffren sighted Madras, 
 where he hoped to surprise the English fleet 
 before it could shelter itself under the formidable 
 batteries of Black Town and Fort St. George. But 
 as things fell out, by this time the English fleet, 
 numbering nine large ships of war, was already 
 occupying the desired position; and was lying, not 
 dispersedly, as at Porto Praya, but in order of battle. 
 The leader, too, was of tougher temper than 
 Johnstone, and a foe in many respects worthy of 
 
164 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 Suffren's steel. Sir Edward Hughes, Knight of 
 the Bath, and Vice-Admiral of the Blue, had 
 been Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies 
 since 1778, and at sea had hitherto had matters 
 very much his own way. Two years earlier he 
 had destroyed Haidar's fleet at Mangalore. Sub- 
 sequently, on hearing of the outbreak of war 
 between England and Holland, he had helped 
 Sir Hector Munro to reduce the Dutch settle- 
 ment of Negapatam on the Coromandel coast. 
 He had then proceeded to Trincomali in Ceylon, 
 which he reached in January 1782, at once oc- 
 cupying the town. The Dutch, however, with- 
 drew to Fort Osnaburg, which Hughes stormed 
 successfully a few days later. Returning after 
 this exploit to Madras, he reached it a few days be- 
 fore the already recorded arrival of Suffren. His 
 fleet had been reinforced by three more ships 
 from England, and when he anchored under the 
 guns of the Madras forts he had been forewarned 
 of the advent of the French. And thus began the 
 series of remarkable naval engagements which, 
 inconclusive though they proved, reflected honour 
 on both sides, and which only came to an end 
 with the Peace of Versailles. Both commanders 
 were men of exceptional ability. Hughes was a 
 skilled seaman with a great deal of cautious ten- 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 165 
 
 acity; and Suffren, with all the ardour and verve 
 of his nation, was ' brave as his sword.' His tactics 
 and strategy are admitted to have been far superior 
 to those of his opponent; but Hughes had an ad- 
 vantage in the better discipline and steadiness 
 of his subordinates. 
 
 Rightly regarding the English admiral's position 
 as unassailable, Suffren, after a council of war, 
 weighed anchor, and went south to Trincomali, 
 guessing, no doubt, that Hughes would follow, 
 which he did. Slipping past the French fleet in 
 the night, he found at daybreak on 17th Febru- 
 ary that, by the carelessness of one of the French 
 captains, the convoy had become separated from the 
 fleet. Chasing it forthwith, he took six ships, five 
 of which were English prizes. The sixth, the 
 French transport ' Lauriston,' was more valuable 
 still, since, besides a train of artillery and military 
 stores, destined for Haidar Ali, she had on board 
 three hundred soldiers of the Lausanne regiment. 
 As Hughes expected, Suffren came swiftly to the 
 rescue; and a struggle ensued between the French 
 van of seven ships and the English rear and centre 
 of five, the four foremost of the English line never 
 being able to tack and come into action. Suffren 
 himself in the ' Heros ' engaged Hughes's flagship 
 the * Superb,' but the brunt of battle was borne by 
 
1 66 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 the ' Exeter,' the sternmost English ship, which 
 was assailed successively by several of the enemy, 
 the * Orient ' and the ' Petit Annibal ' (the ' Han- 
 nibal' prize)distinguishing themselves particularly. 
 Much damage was done on both sides, though 
 the English suffered most. The ' Superb ' lost her 
 captain and two lieutenants, and owing to shot- 
 holes in the hull had five feet of water in the 
 hold ; while the unfortunate 'Exeter' was pounded 
 to a hulk. Hughes' tactics, if not ill-judged, at 
 least proved unfortunate; his rear was terribly 
 overmatched ; but the ships were fought splen- 
 didly, and it was not overwhelmed. Suffren had 
 again to complain of the inadequate support he 
 received from his captains. Five of his twelve 
 ships remained inactive 'spectateurs du combat,' 
 disregarding the signals to come to close quarters, 
 and firing ineffectively from a distance. Towards 
 six in the evening, therefore, when a change of 
 wind made it probable that the English van- 
 guard could intervene, Suffren ceased fighting. 
 The total loss on the French side amounted to 
 thirty killed and a hundred wounded; and it is 
 naturally contended by Suffren's French bio- 
 grapher that Suffren, even without the support 
 of his rearguard, could have destroyed or hope- 
 lessly crippled the English fleet. There must 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 167 
 
 however have been other considerations w^hich 
 induced him to close the action/ 
 
 This was the first of what Carlyle calls his 
 'six non-defeats'' — for Carlyle includes Porto 
 Praya with the five actions which subsequently 
 took place with Hughes. After that just described, 
 which is spoken of indifferently as off Sadras or 
 Fort St. George, Hughes went to refit in the 
 sheltered harbour of Trincomali, and Suffren 
 sailed to Pondicherry to effect negotiations with 
 Haidar Ali. His desire was that the land forces 
 from France should re-capture that Negapatam 
 which not many months before the English 
 admiral had helped to wrest from the Dutch. But 
 M. Duchemin, who commanded the troops, pre- 
 ferred to attack the nearer Cuddalore or Goudelour. 
 With the consent of the Sultan this course was 
 
 ^ We may here recall — since M. Cunat is generous 
 enough to do so — an English incident of this engagement 
 off Sadras, as related in Beatson (' Naval and Military- 
 Memoirs of Great Britain,' 1804, p. 576). When Com- 
 modore King of the * Exeter,' whose second-in-command, 
 Captain Reynolds, had been killed at his side by a cannon- 
 shot, was asked by the Master what could possibly be done 
 with a ship little better than a floating wreck, he answered 
 calmly: 'There is nothing to be done but fight her till 
 she sink! ' It is pleasant to think that George III made 
 King, Sir Richard 5 and that he survived till 1806. 
 
1 68 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 accordingly taken. The soldiers were landed at 
 Porto Novo, taking Cuddalore on 4th April. 
 These transactions had necessarily occupied some 
 time; and in the interim Hughes, rapidly recoup- 
 ing at Trincomali, had returned to Madras, where 
 his fleet was augmented from England bythe 'Mag- 
 nanime' and the 'Sultan.' He then again started 
 for Trincomali with troops and stores. On the 
 8th he sighted the French fleet, of whom he had 
 hitherto heard nothing, and on the 12th a second 
 action took place near the island of Providien, ofF 
 Ceylon. ' This,' says Admiral Mahan, ' was the 
 hardest fight between these two hard fighters'; 
 and it happened on the very day that Rodney 
 defeated and captured de Grasse off Dominica. 
 The French had twelve ships, the English eleven. 
 After some preliminary manoeuvring, the battle 
 began a little after noon. Hughes's line was 
 formed in good order, at two cables' length dis- 
 tance, the ' Superb ' (74) occupying the centre of 
 the line, with the ' Monmouth ' (64) ahead and 
 * Monarca ' (74) astern. Five of the French en- 
 gaged the English van ; while the remaining 
 seven, led by Suffren himself, bore down on the 
 three ships mentioned above. The ' H6ros,' and its 
 second, the 'Orient,' attacked the 'Superb' within 
 pistol shot, and for nine minutes a furious fire was 
 
The Bailli dc Stiffren 169 
 
 exchanged. Then Suffren, leaving his rear to 
 continue the conflict with the 'Superb ' and the 
 *Monarca,'devoted his energies to the lesser 'Mon- 
 mouth,' whose captain, James Alms, had fought 
 under Johnstone at Porto Praya, and, under 
 Hughes, had captured the six prizes at Fort 
 St. George. Already assailed by one of the French 
 fleet, the ' Monmouth ' was speedily reduced to a 
 wreck. With her wheel shot away and her masts 
 gone, her flag nailed to one stump and a rag of 
 sail hoisted on another, she lay like a log on the 
 water, until a lucky gust of wind enabled Captain 
 Hawker of the English ' Hero ' to tow her into a 
 position of comparative security. Out of an 
 eff'ective crew of 400 she had 147 killed and 
 wounded; in fact, the bulk of the casualties were 
 divided between the 'Monmouth' and the flagship. 
 The French ' Heros ' must also have fared badly, 
 for SuflTren had to transfer his flag to another ship. 
 Later in the day the fleets fell apart, and the 
 battle was not renewed. Each side claimed the 
 advantage; but, once again, either from disaffec- 
 tion, or that excessive caution which SufFren 
 stigmatized as ' the veil of timidity,' he was ill 
 served by his captains. 
 
 The next two actions between SufFren and 
 Hughes may be more briefly dealt with. The 
 
I/O The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 first, on 6th July, took place ofF Negapatam, 
 which was still a cherished French objective. 
 Hughes, contrary to his custom, began the attack 
 on this occasion; and the fleets engaged line to 
 line, only to be thrown into hopeless disorder, 
 after an obstinate two hours' struggle, by a sudden 
 change of wind in which they drew off, as before, 
 with contradictory results. Suffren regarded him- 
 self as master of the field : Hughes reported to the 
 Admiralty that he had obtained a decisive superi- 
 ority. But in either case the French operations 
 against Negapatam were for the time abandoned. 
 In this fight occurred the equivocal incident of 
 the 'Severe' (64), which, finding herself opposed 
 to the ' Sultan ' (74) and other English ships, 
 hauled down her colours by order of her com- 
 mander, M. de Cillart. They were immediately 
 rehoisted by his indignant subordinates, and the 
 *S6v^re' recommenced firing. An interchange of 
 recrimination ensued between the admirals on 
 the subject; but M. de Cillart was suspended 
 and eventually dismissed the service. He was not 
 the sole offender, for no fewer than four French 
 captains were broke by Suffren and sent to the 
 Mauritius.^ 
 
 ^ In the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital there is a 
 picture of the action off Negapatam by Dominic Serres, R. A. 
 
The Bailli de Suffrcn iji 
 
 Hughes retired to Madras to refit, and the 
 French went to Cuddalore. Having been ba'Uked 
 in the attempt on Negapatam, Suffren turned his 
 attention to Trincomali ; and in this instance con- 
 trived to anticipate Hughes. Reinforced at Bat- 
 ticaloa from France on 21st August/ he sailed 
 for Trincomah", before v^^hich he arrived on the 
 25th. Vigorously attacked, the place speedily sur- 
 rendered; and when, on 3rd September, Hughes 
 made his appearance, the French flag was floating 
 from Fort Osnaburg. The fight that followed was 
 again indecisive. The fleets were fifteen French 
 to twelve English. Suifren's tactics, as at Sadras 
 and Providien, were to assail the enemy's rear. 
 But excellent as they had proved, they were fruit- 
 less in face of the jealousy or ill-will of some of 
 his captains, whose discontent by this time had 
 grown to a cabal. After a precipitate and dis- 
 orderly combat, the French fighting falling almost 
 wholly on the flagship * Heros,' the ' lUustre ' and 
 the ' Ajax,' the wind changed, and the fleets separ- 
 
 As Serres had been a seaman, and as the picture was the 
 bequest of Admiral Hughes, it may be presumed to be 
 accurate. Hughes, who survived until 1794, also left his 
 portrait by Reynolds to the Hospital. 
 
 ^ On the 19th of this month he had received, from the 
 Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, his 
 commission as Bailli, the next grade to that of the head. 
 
1 72 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 ated, the French going back to Trincomali and 
 the English to Madras. SufFren's disappointment 
 knew no bounds, and his words have all the 
 emphasis of his anger: 
 
 ' My heart [he wrote] is wrung by the most 
 general defection. I have just lost the opportunity 
 of destroying the English squadron. . . All — 
 yes, all — might have got near, since we were to 
 windward and ahead, and none did so. Several 
 among them had behaved bravely in other com- 
 bats. I can only attribute this horror to the wish 
 to bring the cruise to an end, to ill-will and to 
 ignorance ; for I dare not suspect anything worse. 
 The result has been terrible. I must tell you, 
 Monseigneur, that officers who have been long at 
 the Isle of France are neither seamen nor military 
 men. Not seamen, for they have not been at sea ; 
 and the trading temper, independent and insub- 
 ordinate, is absolutely opposed to the military 
 spirit.^ 
 
 The fight off Trincomali took place in Septem- 
 ber 1782, and it was nearly nine months before 
 the rivals met again. In returning to Trincomali, 
 Suffren, by the fault of the commander, lost the 
 'Orient,' one of his best ships; and he afterwards 
 
 ^ Quoted in Admiral Mahan's ' Influence of Sea Power 
 upon History,' 6tii ed. p. 4.35. 
 
TJie Bail It de Suffren 173 
 
 lost another at Cuddalore. Hughes, having no 
 longer a base in Ceylon, had to go round to 
 Bombay — not without difficulties in the stormy 
 season. Consequently he missed Sir Richard 
 Bickerton, who, arriving from England with 
 reinforcements and stores, and failing to find 
 Hughes in the Bay of Bengal, had to follow him 
 to Bombay/ SufFren, on the other hand, wintered 
 in Sumatra, where he was more on the spot than 
 his adversary. In December 1782 Haidar Ali 
 died, and the succession passed to his arrogant 
 son, Tipu Saib. With June 1783 the fortune of 
 war had centred round Cuddalore, where, by land, 
 Coote's successor, Stuart, with a superior force, 
 was beleaguering the Marquis de Bussy; and off 
 Cuddalore on the 20th, Hughes and Suffren met 
 for the last time. The encounter 'was of the 
 commonplace eighteenth century order — save for 
 two details.' One was, that in pursuance of orders 
 from Versailles arising out of the capture of the 
 Count de Grasse at Dominica by Rodney, Suffren 
 directed operations, not from the flagship in the 
 line, but from the ' C16opatre,' a frigate outside it. 
 The other was that ' the French fleet of fifteen 
 
 ^ One of Bickerton's relief fleet was the * Bristol,' whose 
 captain was Fanny Burney's brother James. In the battle 
 of Cuddalore the 'Bristol' engasred the ' Hardi.' 
 
1 74 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 sail attacked the British fleet of eighteen from 
 windward — and it was the British fleet which 
 retired.' ^ Five days later Hughes wrote to SufFren 
 announcing the conclusion of peace, and suggest- 
 ing a suspension of hostilities. 
 
 Hughes was probably not sorry for the turn 
 things had taken, for the struggle had been diffi- 
 cult and protracted, and some of his crews had 
 suffered terribly from sickness. There are also 
 indications that SufFren himself did not regard 
 the future outlook as hopeful. ' God be praised 
 for the peace ! ' he wrote, ' for it was clear that 
 in India, though we had the means to impose the 
 law, all would have been lost.' ' War alone,' he 
 added significantly, ' can make bearable the weari- 
 ness of certain things.' Fighting, however, was 
 now for the time at an end; and in October 
 1783, he set out for France, stopping at the 
 Mauritius and the Cape. The passage home was 
 a prolonged triumph. Everywhere 'the winds 
 Blew his own praises in his eyes.' Especially was 
 he gratified by the frank cordiality of his old 
 opponents, the English. At Table Bay the cap- 
 tains of nine of Hughes's ships, with Commodore 
 King of the ' Exeter ' at their head, called eagerly 
 
 * Hannay's ' Short History of the Royal Navy,' 1909, 
 ii, 291. 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 175 
 
 upon him. ' The good Dutchmen have received 
 me as their dehverer,' he wrote ; ' but among the 
 tributes which have most flattered me, none has 
 given me more pleasure than the esteem and con- 
 sideration testified by the EngHsh who are here.' 
 At Paris, which he reached in April 1784, the 
 story is the same. When he appeared at Ver- 
 sailles, the ' gardes-du-corps,' hearing his name, 
 rose in a body and, quitting their weapons, es- 
 corted him to the audience. Louis XVI received 
 him most warmly; and Marie Antoinette herself 
 presented him to the Dauphin with the words, 
 'This is M. de SufFren, one of the men who has 
 best served the King.' And when the little boy 
 (it must have been the first Dauphin, then four 
 years old) hesitated in repeating the name: 'My 
 son,' said the Queen, 'you must learn early to 
 hear pronounced, and yourself to pronounce the 
 name of the hero-defenders of their country.' 
 The Countess d'Artois, and her son, the young 
 Duke d'Angoul^me, were equally amiable; and 
 there was a universal rain of compliments. At a 
 dinner given by the Minister of Marine, d'Estaing, 
 the Bailli's old commander, being addressed as 
 'mon general,' replied, with happy adroitness, 
 that M. de SuflTren was the only ' general ' pre- 
 sent. The King created for him a special and 
 
I ^6 The Bailli de Siiffren 
 
 personal office of Vice-Admiral of France; and 
 made him a Knight of the Order of the Saint- 
 Esprit. Carmontelle sketched him for the Orleans 
 collection; his portrait was painted by Francois 
 Gerard, and at Salon, near his Provencal birth- 
 place, his bust by Foucou was placed in the Hotel 
 de Ville. Lastly, the Estates of his native Pro- 
 vence struck a magnificent medal in his honour, 
 crediting him largely with the protection of the 
 Cape, the taking of Trincomali, the relief of 
 Cuddalore, the defence of India, and six glorious 
 combats. The States-General of Holland also 
 presented him with a medal.^ 
 
 To all these distinctions there came in short 
 space a mournful sequel. The Bailli's duties as 
 Vice-Admiral detained him in Paris, where, for a 
 few years, he lived quietly in the Hotel Mont- 
 morency at the entrance of the rue de la Chauss^e 
 d'Antin. With 1788 the war-cloud again began 
 to darken the horizon ; and he was deputed by 
 
 ' That ships should be called after him was to be ex- 
 pected; and in 1793 a 'SiifFren' of seventy-four guns was 
 launched at Brest. But, in 1794, it was decided that 'the 
 name of a ci-devant noble ' could not properly figure 
 among republican designations, and the * SufFren ' became 
 the ' Redoutable.' The 'Redoutable' (Captain Lucas) 
 took part in the battle of Trafalgar, and from her mizen- 
 top came the musket-ball that killed Nelson. 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 177 
 
 Louis XVI to superintend the equipment of a 
 considerable fleet at Brest. In December, while 
 engaged on these duties, he died unexpectedly, 
 and was buried quietly on the lOth in the Church 
 of Sainte-Marie-du-Temple. The cause of death 
 was declared to be apoplexy — in his case only too 
 probable. No suspicion seems to have been 
 aroused at the time; and it was not until more 
 than forty years afterwards that M. Jal, the his- 
 toriographer of the French navy, published a 
 different account. According to this, SufFren was 
 killed in a duel by the Prince de Mirepoix, who 
 had invoked his good offices on behalf of two 
 nephews then under sentence for dereliction of 
 duty in India. The Bailli had refused to inter- 
 vene ; and refused in such terms as, in those days, 
 could only provoke a demand for satisfaction. 
 Honour forbade him to decline the challenge, al- 
 though his age (he was in his sixtieth year), and 
 his excessive corpulence, wholly unfitted him for 
 any encounter of the kind. As a result, he was 
 mortally wounded, and succumbed in a couple 
 of days. This version of his fate is now generally 
 accepted. The solitary witness, it is true, is 
 Dehodencq, an old servant in SufFren's household, 
 who repeated his story for many years with- 
 out variation. There were no motives on his part 
 
 N 
 
178 The Bailli de Suffren 
 
 for inventing it, while there were several for 
 its suppression; and it was a plausible feature 
 of the narrative that the Bailli himself had, on 
 his deathbed, enjoined those about him to pre- 
 serve absolute secrecy in the matter.' 
 
 But whether the Bailli de SufFren died in 
 deference to a deplorable social code, or in the 
 ordinary course of nature, he was a man of whom 
 France has every reason to be proud. In the 
 period of moral disintegration, of incompetence 
 in high places, of inequitable privileges and 
 tyrannous traditions, which heralded the outbreak 
 of the French revolution, it was something to be 
 a single-minded patriot, putting duty before titles 
 of distinction, and love of country before personal 
 advancement. SufFren was this — and more. He 
 may have been brusque and eccentric — he was a 
 blunt seaman, with his heart in his work; he may, 
 as Admiral Mahan thinks, have * expected too 
 much of his captains' — without training them to' 
 do better; but he was a great military genius, 
 having all the indispensable equipment of rapid 
 perception, clear judgment, prompt decision and 
 
 ^ Jai, 'Scenes de la Vie Maritime,' 1832, vol. iii, p. 161 ; 
 Cunat, 345 et seq.; and Jal again, ' Diet. Critique,' etc., 
 2nd ed. 1872, pp. 1155-7. See Appendix C (Death of the 
 Eailli de SufFren). 
 
The Bailli de Suffren 179 
 
 inflexibility of purpose. The old dilatory methods 
 of maritime warfare were too slow for his fiery 
 and impetuous southern temperament. Restive 
 under inaction — as he had often reason to be — he 
 trusted to attack rather than defence ; and though 
 a skilful strategist on occasion, preferred bold and 
 even hazardous measures to formal evolutions, 
 manoeuvres, and 'bookish theoric' Had he been 
 better backed from home — had he been better 
 served afloat, he might, as he hoped, have suc- 
 ceeded in ' destroying the English squadron,' with 
 results to our supremacy in the East which, for- 
 tunately, it is now only possible to conjecture. 
 
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY 
 STOWE 
 
 ' A Work to wonder at — perhaps a Stowe.' — Pope. 
 
 IN one of Horace Walpole's letters to George 
 Montagu, dated July 1770, there is a passage 
 which might well serve as a perpetual preface to 
 any account of the once-famous Buckinghamshire 
 mansion known as Stowe. The letter relates how 
 the writer was ' requisitioned ' by his beloved 
 ' Princess Am6Iie,' George II. 's daughter, to ac- 
 company a select party on a five days' visit to 
 Lord Temple's country-seat. They walked or 
 drove about the grounds, drank coffee at the 
 triumphal arch which their host had erected in 
 the Princess's honour, fished fitfully in the lake, 
 ' played at pharaoh till ten,' and altogether 
 amused themselves consumedly. ' We laughed a 
 great deal, and had not a cloud the whole time.' 
 Then comes the particular passage indicated 
 above: 'The number of buildings and variety of 
 scenes in the garden made each day different 
 from the rest; and my meditations on so historic 
 180 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe i8i 
 
 a spot prevented my being tired. Every acre 
 brings to one's mind some instance of the . . . 
 greatness or miscarriages of those that have in- 
 habited, decorated, planned, or visited the place. 
 Pope, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Kent, Gibbs, Lord 
 Cobham, Lord Chesterfield, the mob of nephews, 
 the Lytteltons, Grenvilles, Wests, * Leonidas ' 
 Glover and Wilkes, the late Prince of Wales, the 
 King of Denmark, Princess Amdlie . . . [all these, 
 says Walpole,] add visionary personages to the 
 charming scenes, that are so enriched vi^ith fanes 
 and temples, that the real prospects are little less 
 than visions themselves.' To revive Walpole's 
 reminiscences — reminiscences, it should be added, 
 not always consistent — one must be Walpole. 
 But we may fairly attempt to recall some of 
 the people and things he mentions. 
 
 The Temples of Stowe in Bucks and of Cobham 
 in Kent traced their lineage, if not to Inachus, 
 at least to that historic Leofric, Earl of Chester 
 and Mercia, who had to wife the Godgifu or 
 Godiva of legend. For the moment, however, we 
 need go no farther back than the reign of James I, 
 when, after various vicissitudes, the estate of 
 Stowe had passed definitely to the Temples in the 
 person of Thomas Temple of Stowe and Burton 
 Dasset, Knight and Baronet. This Sir Thomas 
 
1 82 Eighteenth- Century Stowe 
 
 Temple married Hester, daughter of Miles Sandys 
 of Latimers on the Chess, a lady who, herself 
 having a family of thirteen, and surviving through 
 four generations, w^as privileged to behold no 
 fevv^er than seven hundred of her descendants, a 
 fact for the veracity of which Thomas Fuller in 
 his 'Worthies' vouches quaintly by declaring 
 that he bought the knowledge with the loss of a 
 wager. To Sir Thomas succeeded his son. Sir 
 Peter, who enclosed some two hundred acres of 
 ground for a park ; while the next heir. Sir 
 Richard Temple the first, rebuilt what had been 
 the Manor House. From him, in 1697, the 
 property passed to Sir Richard Temple the 
 second, later the Lord Cobham of whom Walpole 
 speaks; and with this Sir Richard, a distinguished 
 soldier and statesman, the history of Stowe is 
 connected for more than half a century. Entering 
 the army early, he was present at the sieges of 
 Ruremondeand Venloo; and when, in 1708, Lille 
 was taken by the Allies, his bearing as Brigadier- 
 General justified Marlborough in making him 
 the messenger to Queen Anne of the fall of that 
 fortress. He was created Baron Cobham at the 
 accession of George I, and to announce that fact 
 went as Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary 
 to Charles VI, Emperor of Germany. In 17 18 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 183 
 
 he became a Viscount. But it is needless to 
 rehearse his further honours, which were many. 
 Among other things, he was Colonel of the 
 'King's Own,' or Cobham's troop of horse (ist 
 Dragoon Guards), in which his connection, 
 William Pitt, afterwards first Earl of Chatham, 
 but then engrossed in the study of military 
 manuals, rode as a cornet. After becoming Con- 
 stable of Windsor Castle and Governor of Jersey, 
 Cobham fell into disgrace under George II for 
 his opposition to the Excise Bill. This turned 
 him into the Coryphaeus of the little knot of 
 youthful politicians, generally his own relatives, 
 whom Sir Robert Walpole contemptuously called 
 the 'Boy Patriots.' By 1742 he was a Field- 
 Marshal ; and during the King's absence in 
 Hanover, was appointed one of the Regents. 
 He died in 1749, and was buried at Stowe. Most 
 of the intervals of his active life had been passed 
 there in entertaining his friends, enlarging the 
 buildings, and elaborating those spacious gardens 
 which, even in an epoch of magnificent rural 
 ' retirements,' rendered the place a permanent 
 centre of attraction. 
 
 At the close of the eighteenth century, the 
 ornamental grounds of Stowe (with which, follow- 
 ing the old contemporary guide-books, it is con- 
 
184 Eight eenth-Centmy Stowe 
 
 venient to begin, occupied some four hundred 
 acres, and were in part surrounded by a sunk 
 fence, on the inner side of which was a wide, 
 elm-shaded gravel-walk. When Sir Richard 
 Temple first entered on his tenancy, the formal 
 horticultural models favoured by William and 
 Anne were in full vogue ; and the place was laid 
 out much after the Dutch fashion adopted by 
 London and Wise at Kensington Palace and 
 elsewhere. But under the first George, Charles 
 Bridgeman, the royal head-gardener, became also 
 the presiding spirit at Stowe. He it was who 
 probably instituted the above-mentioned sunk 
 fence, a device borrowed from the military art; 
 and he went on gradually to blend the landscape 
 with the garden, and to substitute lawns and 
 vistas for pleached alleys and precise flower beds.^ 
 When, in 1738, Bridgeman died, he was suc- 
 ceeded by Lancelot, afterwards known as ' Capa- 
 bility' Brown, who, beginning modestly, ulti- 
 mately attained the position of resident gardener- 
 in-chief. Under Brown, the ruralising of the 
 place continued ; and the opening of effective 
 points of view, the planting out of unpicturesque 
 
 ^ In 1848 his original plans and drawings for Stowe 
 were still in existence. They had been engraved by Rigaud 
 and Baron in 1739. 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 185 
 
 objects, the creation of hollows and hillocks, 
 cascades and lakes, were carried forward system- 
 atically. Lastly, or rather concurrently, were 
 erected those characteristic ' fanes and temples ' 
 spoken of by Walpole, rendering the spot, in 
 the words of another chronicler, 'when beheld 
 from a distance . . . like a vast grove, interspersed 
 with columns, obelisks, and towers, which 
 apparently emerge from a luxuriant mass of 
 foliage.' 
 
 In promoting these developments it is probable 
 that Bridgeman and Brown were largely advised 
 and aided by another eminent votary of the new 
 methods in gardening, the multifarious William 
 Kent, who is also primarily responsible for most 
 of the dispersed buildings, although it is not 
 always easy to fix the exact date of their con- 
 struction. But as Vanbrugh, to whom some 
 of them confessedly belong, died in 1726, and 
 Kent himself in 1748, it may safely be concluded 
 that the structures associated with their names 
 are contemporary with Lord Cobham, as he, too, 
 died in 1 749. The squat little Temple of Bacchus 
 overlooking the lake, and decorated by the ' alti- 
 rilievi ' of that elder Nollekens who died from 
 terror of the '45; the Rotundo, with its dome 
 and delicate Ionic columns ; and the two Boycott 
 
1 86 Eighteenth-Century Stowe 
 
 pavilions,^ were certainly designed by Vanbrugh, 
 although they appear to have been modified in 
 construction by the Signor Borra (sometime 
 architect to the King of Sardinia), who accom- 
 panied ' Palmyra ' Wood in his Syrian re- 
 searches. But the majority of the other Cobham 
 erections emanated from the fertile brain of Kent. 
 Kent it was who planned the entrance Lodges, the 
 artificial Ruins, the Hermitage, the Grotto; the 
 temple of Venus, adorned appropriately with 
 frescoes by Joseph Slater from Spenser's * Faerie 
 Queene '; the temple of Ancient Virtue, equipped 
 with full-length statues by Peter Scheemakers of 
 Homer, Socrates, Lycurgus, and Epaminondas; 
 and the temple of British Worthies. Other build- 
 ings were the temple of Friendship, consecrated 
 to the somewhat variable company of Lord Cob- 
 ham's friends, and including busts of Pitt, Chester- 
 field, and Lyttelton ;^ the monument to his 
 nephew. Captain Thomas Grenville, who died 
 fighting the French under Anson in May 1747, 
 and the monument erected in 1736 ' moribus ur- 
 
 ^ So called from a hamlet which had been absorbed in 
 the Stowe property. 
 
 ^ ' The marbles were usually designated by the labourers 
 who showed the gardens as the " Bustesses of my lord's 
 acquaintances" ' (' Stowe Catalogue,' 1848, p. xxxii). 
 
Eighteenth- Century Stowe 187 
 
 banis, candidis, facillimis ' of William Congreve. 
 This stood on an island in the upper lake. Sur- 
 mounted by a monkey inspecting himself in a 
 mirror, and ornamented with dramatic acces- 
 saries, it was one of the least happy of Kent's 
 performances, though it perhaps scarcely deserved 
 the condemnation of Macaulay, who calls it, in 
 his best sledge-hammer manner, ' the ugliest and 
 most absurd of the buildings at Stowe.' The 
 Latin quotation reminds us that all the aforesaid 
 edifices were lavishly decorated with similar in- 
 scriptions ; and that some of those in English were 
 by Sir George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, who 
 was the son of Lord Cobham's sister, Christian. 
 One of the love-poems addressed by Lyttelton to 
 that charming Lucy Fortescue, whom he after- 
 wards married, and beginning 
 
 Fair Venus, whose delightful Shrine surveys 
 Its front reflected in the silver lake, 
 
 was a direct invocation of the Stowe divinity. 
 
 Lord Cobham seems to have regarded the 
 monument of Congreve as an adequate memorial, 
 for he figured neither in the temple of British 
 Worthies nor the temple of Friendship. But they 
 were close friends nevertheless, although the 
 records of their intercourse are apparently con- 
 
1 88 Eighteenth- Century Stowe 
 
 fined to a couple of entries in the * Journal to Stella.' 
 In 1730 an unknown rhymer composed, and Curll 
 printed, a long and rather dreary ' Epistle to Lord 
 Viscount Cobham, in Memory of his Friend, the 
 late Mr. Congreve,' in which he says: 
 
 Thee early, and thee last his tuneful Breath 
 Addrest with grateful Notes — till stopt by Death j 
 
 the references being to Congreve's ' Art of Pleas- 
 ing' and to his imitation of Horace's 'Epistle to 
 Tibullus,' one inscribed to Cobham early in Con- 
 greve's career, the other composed not long before 
 his death. Johnson, whose attitude to Congreve, 
 if intelligible, is extremely unsympathetic, flatly 
 condemns the ' Art of Pleasing.' "It is founded,' 
 he says, 'on a vulgar but perhaps impracticable 
 principle, and the staleness of the sense is not 
 concealed by any novelty of illustration or ele- 
 gance of diction.' But, even though it be no 
 more than an imitation, there is surely aphoristic 
 compactness in the couplet, 
 
 None are, for being what they are, in fault, 
 
 But for not being what they wou'd be thought, — 
 
 which has also the subordinate merit of illustrat- 
 ing that old eighteenth-century pronunciation of 
 ' fault ' to be found in Pope, Prior, and Gold- 
 
Eighteenth- Century Stowe 189 
 
 smith. Johnson is, besides, mistaken in saying 
 that Congreve, apart from his plays, never penned 
 a memorable couplet. Even as regards the poems, 
 this is not borne out by modern dictionaries of 
 quotations ; while the playwright who has en- 
 dowed the language with ' Music has charms to 
 soothe a savage breast,' and the line as to ' marry- 
 ing in haste' and 'repenting at leisure,' can afford 
 to rest upon his laurels as a crystallizer of the 
 ' wisdom of many.' The epistle also refers to 
 Cobham's gifts as a critic, gifts to be presently 
 illustrated in his correspondence with Pope. But 
 with the statement that Cobham was a pall-bearer 
 at Congreve's burial in Westminster Abbey, we 
 have exhausted the record of their relations. 
 
 The 'Journal to Stella,' however, suggests the 
 name of Swift. Was Swift one of Stowe's 
 habitues? He certainly knew Temple in 17 10, 
 for he speaks of meeting him in October of that 
 year at a ' blind tavern,' ^ where he was drinking 
 bad punch with Congreve and Dick Estcourt the 
 player. ' The knight [Temple] sent for six flasks 
 of his own wine for me, and we staid till twelve,'* 
 Ten days later he is dining at Temple's house 
 
 * This seems to mean no more than an obscure house. 
 ^ The custom of drinking one's own wine at a tavern 
 seems peculiar; but there are several references to it in 
 
190 Eighteenth- Century Stowe 
 
 with Congreve and Vanbrugh. As regards the 
 latter he says, ' We were very civil and cold,' 
 which is perhaps to be expected. It is hard to 
 be effusively cordial to a critic who has likened 
 one's architectural efforts to a ' goose pie,' ^ as 
 Swift had, a year or two before, in those sar- 
 castic Hnes on the house in Scotland Yard which 
 Vanbrugh had thrown together for himself out 
 of the ruins of Whitehall Palace. What made 
 matters worse was, that the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough, for whom Vanbrugh was already build- 
 ing Blenheim under difficulties, persisted in 
 teasing him on the subject, which, says Swift, 
 had made him angry, ' though he be a good- 
 natured fellow.' There is only one more refer- 
 ence to Temple in the 'Journal,' and after 1727 
 Swift never returned to England. But of Cob- 
 ham's intercourse with Pope there are further 
 particulars, though of a later date. In Pope's last 
 
 the ' Diary' (Ashton's 'Social Life in the Reign of Queen 
 Anne, 1883, 177). Readers of * Pendennis' may remember 
 that, according to Mr. Wagg, Lord Steyne was in the 
 habit of sending his own wine to people with whom he 
 was in the habit of dining (ch. xxxv). 
 
 *• At length they in the Rubbish spy 
 
 A Thing resembling a Goose Py. 
 
 ' Vanbrugh's House,' 1706. 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 191 
 
 letter to Swift he speaks of himself as " generally 
 rambling in the summer for a month to Lord 
 Cobham's, the Bath, or elsewhere,' and in a letter 
 of 1735 to Caryll, we get some hint of the be- 
 ginning of the friendship. Pope has known Lord 
 Cobham ten years, he says, without writing three 
 letters to him; and he adds that he esteems him 
 as much as any friend he has, and that he is 
 going to stay three weeks with him, namely, at 
 Stowe, which he did, meeting Lady Suffolk.^ 
 From another letter he had been there in the 
 previous year; and earlier still he tells Martha 
 Blount how he is drawn about by an ancient 
 horse, then used in rolling the gardens, but which 
 had once carried James Radcliffe, third Earl of 
 Derwentwater, when he was made prisoner at 
 Preston.^ In 1739 another letter informs her that 
 he is staying at Stowe' en petit comit^ ' with 
 Lady Cobham, and her relative, that Henrietta 
 Jane Speed whose charms and ' bric-a-brac,' — to 
 say nothing of j^3 0,000 — seem, a few years after- 
 wards, to have had a transitory attraction for 
 Gray. ' Ail the mornings we breakfast and dis- 
 
 ^ 'Suffolk Correspondence,' 1824., ii, 143. 
 
 ^ Probably an old trooper's-horse, for Cobham's dragoons 
 seem to have been at Preston (' Diary of Lady Cowper,' 
 1864, 188), 
 
192 Eighteenth- Century Stowe 
 
 pute; after dinner, and at night, music and har- 
 mony; in the garden, fishing; no politics and no 
 cards, nor much reading. This agrees exactly 
 with me ; for the want of cards sends us early to 
 bed.' As to the garden, it 'is beyond all descrip- 
 tion.' He is in it every hour but dinner and 
 night, and every hour envying himself the delight 
 because not partaken by his correspondent, who 
 would see it better, ' Adieu,' he says at the close 
 ' I am going to the Elysian Fields [a part of the 
 grounds], where I shall meet your idea ' — by 
 which, no doubt, he means her Platonic arche- 
 type. 
 
 In the Epistle to Lord Burlington that satirizes 
 the vacuous magnificence of ' Timon's villa ' at 
 Edgware, Pope, by contrast, sketches at once the 
 rival beauties of Stowe, and lays down the laws 
 of landscape gardening: 
 
 To build, to plant, whatever you intend, 
 To rear the Column, or the Arch to bend, 
 To swell the Terrace, or to sink the Grot; 
 In all, let Nature never be forgot. 
 But treat the Goddess like a modest fair, 
 Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare; 
 Let not each Beauty ev'rywhere be spy'd, 
 Where half the Skill is decently to hide. 
 He gains all Points, who pleasingly confounds, 
 Surprises, varies and conceals the Bounds. 
 
Eighteenth- Century Stowe 193 
 
 Consult the Genius of the Place in all; 
 That tells the Waters or to rise, or fall; 
 Or helps th' ambitious Hill the heav'ns to scale, 
 Or scoops in circling theatres the Vale; 
 Calls in the Country, catches op'ning glades, 
 Joins willing Woods, and varies shades from shades; 
 Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending Lines; 
 Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. 
 
 Still follow Sense, of ev'ry Art the Soul, 
 Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole, 
 Spontaneous beauties all around advance. 
 Start ev'n from Difficulty, strike from Chance ; 
 Nature shall join you. Time shall make it grow 
 A Work to wonder at — perhaps a Stowe. 
 
 Two years later, in 1733, Pope inscribed to 
 Cobham a special Epistle , ' On the Knowledge 
 and Characters of Men,' afterwards printed as 
 the first of the Moral Essays; and to this relate 
 the only two letters from Lord Cobham to the 
 poet which have been preserved. In both, Cobham 
 shows the critical faculty with which Congreve 
 had credited him; and Pope seems to have acted 
 on his suggestions. ' As I remember, when I saw 
 the " Brouillon " of this epistle,' writes Cobham, 
 ' it was perplexed ; you have now«made it the con- 
 trary, and 1 think it isthe clearest and the cleanest^ 
 
 ' This is an odd word, and one almost fancies that 
 RufFhead ('Life of Pope,' 1769, 275), who first printed 
 these letters, mis-copied. 'Cleanest,' in the sense of least 
 O 
 
194 Eighteenth-Century Stowe 
 
 of all you have wrote. From a sentence in the 
 second letter it would almost appear that Pope's 
 famous Oldfield couplets (' Odious ! in woollen ! 
 'twould a Saint provoke ! ') ' were the result of a 
 hint by Cobham that the poet should introduce 
 ' an old Lady dressing her silver locks with pink, 
 and ordering her coffin to be lined with white 
 quilted sattin with gold fringes.' But the most 
 material lines are those in which, by an adroit 
 transition from censure to compliment, Pope con- 
 cludes his impeachment of the ' ruling passion ' : 
 
 And you! brave Cobham, to the latest breath, 
 Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death : 
 Such in those moments as in all the past, 
 ' Oh, save my Country, Heav'n! ' shall be your last. 
 
 ' Whatever were the precise last words of 
 
 objectionable, is unlikely; and in the sense of 'clearest,* 
 would be tautological. Can Cobham have written 'r/^i'^r^j/'? 
 ' It may be noted that the sentiments attributed to 
 Mrs. Oldfield are but an echo of those of ' Lady Brump- 
 ton' in Steele's 'Funeral,' 1701, a comedy in which Mrs. 
 Oldfield had herself taken a minor part. Mme. de Sevigne, 
 who objected to the Provencal method of burying with the 
 hair dressed, and with the addition of a 'Fontange' or 
 'Commode,' would not have agreed with Narcissa; ' Cela 
 sent le paganisme!' she said. (Faguet's ' Sevigne,' p. 180.) 
 
Eighteenth- Century Stowe 195 
 
 William Pitt,' says the Master of Peterhouse, 
 'this was the spirit which dictated them.' ^ 
 
 Pitt, Chesterfield, and Lyttelton, it has been 
 said, were inmates of Cobham's temple of Friend- 
 ship; and it is probable that some of the poet- 
 frequenters of Stowe, especially if they belonged 
 to the Leicester House faction, or shared the 
 principles of the 'Boy Patriots,' followed in their 
 train. James Hammond, who was one of the 
 Prince of Wales' equerries, certainly visited at 
 Stowe, since he died there in June 1742. He 
 refers specifically to the place in one of his imita- 
 tions of Tibullus : 
 
 To Stowe's delightful scenes I now repair. 
 
 In Cobham's smile to lose the gloom of care, — 
 
 the 'care' being presumably that unrequited 
 passion for an obdurate Neaera-Delia (Miss Kitty 
 Dashwood) which was supposed to have shortened 
 his life — either metaphorically or actually. In 
 either case, although he died young, dissolution 
 must have been dilatory, since there are ten years 
 between the completion of his ' miserabiles elegos ' 
 and the date of his consequent decease. Another 
 guest and Leicester House adherent, mentioned 
 by Horace Walpole, was Richard Glover, the 
 
 ^ ' Globe ' ' Pope,' p. 235 n. 
 
196 Eighteenth- Century Stowe 
 
 first books of whose deep-mouthed and liberty- 
 vaunting epic of 'Leonidas' were inscribed to 
 Cobham ; and whose opportune ballad of ' Ad- 
 miral Hosier's Ghost ' made Vernon's capture 
 of Porto Bello at once a whip for the Prime 
 Minister and a spur to the popular hatred of 
 Spain. This latter performance, indeed, which 
 survived the epic, and found its w^ay into the 
 second volume of Percy's ' Reliques,' was actually 
 composed at Stowe. 
 
 Hammond was the protege of Chesterfield, 
 who prefaced his posthumous poems. But after 
 Pope, the greatest oi the Stowe minstrels was 
 Thomson, whose particular patron was Lyttelton. 
 In the earlier versions of 'The Seasons' there is 
 no mention of Stowe; but when, about 1743, 
 the author was revising that work, he not only 
 inserted in 'Winter' passages relating to Chester- 
 field and the recent death of Hammond, but 
 added to ' Spring ' a long description of Hagley 
 (Lyttelton's Worcestershire home), and to ' Au- 
 tumn,' a corresponding glorification of Stowe, 
 couched in terms which imply personal acquaint- 
 ance both with its beauties and its inhabitants. 
 ' Oh ! lead me,' he exclaims to its garden gods, 
 
 Oh! lead me to the wide extended walks, 
 The fair majestic paradise of Stowe. 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 197 
 
 Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore 
 E'er saw such sylvan scenes; such various art 
 By genius fired, such ardent genius tamed 
 By cool judicious art; that, in the strife. 
 All-beauteous Nature fears to be outdone. 
 
 References to the temple of Virtue, the Elysian 
 Fields, the 'enchanted round' (Bridgeman's 
 walk ?) all point to an experimental knowledge 
 of the locality, while there is express record of 
 prolonged conversations with Pitt, and of the 
 magnetism of the 
 
 pathetic eloquence that moulds 
 The attentive senate, charms, persuades, exalts. 
 Of honest zeal the indignant lightning throws. 
 And shakes corruption on her venal throne. 
 
 The closing lines, as is fitting, are devoted to 
 the host: 
 
 While thus we talk, and through Elysian vales 
 Delighted rove, perhaps a sigh escapes : 
 What pity, Cobham! thou thy verdant files 
 Of ordered trees shouldst heie inglorious range, 
 Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field. 
 And long embattled hosts! when the proud foe. 
 The faithless vain disturber of mankind, 
 Insulting Gaul, has roused the world to war; 
 When keen, once more, within their bounds to press 
 Those polished robbers, those ambitious slaves. 
 The British youth would hail thy wise command. 
 Thy tempered ardour and thy veteran skill. 
 
198 Eighteenth-Century Stowe 
 
 In 1743 'insulting Gaul ' had been, or was 
 soon to be, badly beaten by George II. at Det- 
 tingen ; and for Field-Marshal Lord Cobham, at 
 seventy-four years of age, although there were 
 still honours, there could be little of arbori- 
 culture save the ' hated cypresses ' of an older 
 bard than Thomson.' Lord Cobham died in 
 September 1749. Pope's quatrain, and part of 
 his lines on Stowe, were duly transferred to the 
 fluted column designed by James Gibbs to his 
 lordship's memory, a column which not only 
 testifies to his civil and military exploits, but 
 adds that ' elegantiori Hortorum cultu His pri- 
 mum in agris illustrato Patriam ornavit.' This, 
 surmounted by a statue, was erected by Lady 
 Cobham, who survived her husband until 1760. 
 How long she continued to live at Stowe is not 
 stated; but in the days of Gray's 'Long Story,' 
 she was domiciled at the Manor House, Stoke 
 Poges, which had belonged to her father, Edmond 
 Halsey of Southwark. As Lord Cobham had no 
 issue, the estate of Stowe reverted to his sister 
 Hester, widow of Richard Grenville of Wotton- 
 
 ' ' Neque harum, quas colis, arborum 
 
 Te praeter invisas cupressos 
 
 Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.'" 
 (' Hon,' ii, 14.) 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 199 
 
 Underwood in Bucks, who was promptly created 
 Countess Temple. She died in 1752, and was 
 succeeded by her eldest son, Richard. Her only 
 daughter, also Hester, became the wife of 
 William Pitt the Elder, and her second son, 
 George, was Prime Minister to George HI. Of 
 the monument of another son, Thomas, the 
 heroic captain of the ' Defiance,' an account has 
 already been given; and of the remainder of the 
 ' mob of nephews,' in Walpole's disrespectful 
 words, nothing more need be said. Earl Temple 
 survived his Prime Minister brother, but dying 
 childless in 1779, Stowe passed to that brother's 
 eldest son George, who later became Marquess 
 of Buckingham and married Mary Nugent, the 
 daughter of Goldsmith's Lord Clare, by his third 
 wife. With the Marquess of Buckingham we 
 enter the nineteenth century, and cross the limits 
 of our chronicle of Stowe. 
 
 Whether Hester, Countess Temple, is respon- 
 sible for any additions to the house or grounds, is 
 not apparent. Her tenure of the place only lasted 
 three years. Her son. Earl Temple, continued to 
 carry out his uncle's designs, several of which 
 had been originally planned by Kent. Such, for 
 example, was the temple of Concord and Victory, 
 an exact reproduction of the beautiful Roman 
 
200 Eighteenth-Century Stowe 
 
 relic at Nimes known popularly as the Maison 
 Carrie. Cobham's copy was completed in 1763, 
 when it was made to serve as a memento of the 
 English victories of the Seven Years' War — vic- 
 tories which were profusely illustrated by appro- 
 priate medallions. Other buildings were the 
 Ladies' temple, also devised by Kent and eventu- 
 ally dedicated to Queen Charlotte; the Gothic 
 temple; the Palladian bridge, a reproduction of 
 that of Inigo Jones at Wilton; the Doric arch in 
 honour of the Princess Amelia, and the memorials 
 to Cook and Wolfe. The former, dated 1778, 
 stood on an islet in the Grotto River; the latter 
 was in the Park, and bore the motto from Virgil 
 which Gladstone later applied to Arthur Hallam, 
 ' Ostendunt terris hunc tantum Fata.' To the 
 matter-of-fact reader, it may seem that the place 
 must have looked a little like an over-monumented 
 cemetery ; and indeed something of the kind is 
 hinted by Horace Walpole, when, perhaps re- 
 membering the Greek aphorism, he said para- 
 doxically in 1753 that * half as many buildings, 
 I believe, would be too many; but such a pro- 
 fusion gives inexpressible richness.' A later 
 visitor, Mrs. Lybbe Powys, speaking in 1775, is 
 less ambiguous : ' The buildings [she writes] used, 
 I know, to be thought too numerous, but in such 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stoive 201 
 
 an extent I do not think even that, and the fine 
 plantations now grown up to obscure them 
 properly, must add infinitely to many picturesque 
 views of porticoes, temples, &c., which when 
 originally were expos'd at once, with perhaps three 
 or four more seen from the same point, must have 
 had a very different and crowded effect.' In re- 
 gard to ' extent,' it must be explained that Stowe 
 was larger than Kew Gardens by more than one 
 hundred acres ; and. as Mrs. Lybbe Powys notes, 
 the circuit of the grounds was ' a five-mile walk.' 
 Even Walpole allows that the vastness pleased 
 him more than he could defend.' 
 
 He had been at Stowe on several occasions 
 between 1753 and 1785, evidently with mixed 
 feelings of interest in the spot and distaste for its 
 owner — to say nothing of his own mutability of 
 temperament. Naturally he was on the side of 
 the landscapists, though he ridiculed the pre- 
 mature commemoration of living notabilities. ' I 
 will not,' he writes, ' place an ossuarium in my 
 
 ^ M. Pierre -Jean Grosley, of ' Londres,' who apparently 
 went to Stowe in 1765 on the invitation of Lord Temple, 
 mentions in his account one or two objects omitted in the 
 above list, as Vanbrugh's pyramid, the fountain of Helicon, 
 etc. At this date the Rotundo was occupied by a statue 
 of Venus, and not, as later, by one of Bacchus (1771, iii, 
 pp. 491-502). 
 
202 Eighteenth-Century Sfowe 
 
 garden to my cat, before her bones are placed in 
 it' — a palpable hit at certain significant changes 
 in the tenants of the temple of Friendship. But 
 for many of the buildings he had a genuine ad- 
 miration. The temple of Ancient Virtue he calls 
 * glorious.' ' This,' he says, ' I openly worship.' 
 And, as might be expected from the Abbot of 
 Strawberry, he was enraptured with the Gothic 
 ' pastiche,' parcel-Gothic though it were. ' In the 
 heretical corner of my heart I adore the Gothic 
 building, which by some unusual inspiration 
 Gibbs has made pure and beautiful and venerable. 
 The style has a propensity to the Venetian or 
 mosque Gothic, and the great column near it 
 [presumably the Cobham pillar, from which you 
 could see into four counties] makes the whole 
 put one in mind of the Place of St. Mark.' But 
 his best account of Stowe is contained in the 
 letter to Montagu referred to at the outset of this 
 paper, written when he went with the Princess 
 Amelia to visit Lord Temple. 
 
 The party consisted of Her Royal Highness, 
 an affable and talkative ' grande dame,' then in 
 her sixtieth year ; two of her ladies-in-waiting. 
 Lady Ann Howard and Mrs. Middleton; that 
 pragmatic ' poseuse ' and royalty-hunter. Lady 
 Mary Coke; Lord Bessborough, and Walpole. 
 
PRINCESS AMELIA'S ARCH AT STOWE 
 (from the engraving by THOMAS MEDLAND) 
 
Eighteenth- Century Stowe 203 
 
 Some of their diversions have already been de- 
 scribed. But the main object of the expedition 
 must have been to renew the Princess's acquaint- 
 ance with the Doric Arch which specially con- 
 cerned her. Walpole's picture of this is in his 
 best manner : ' The chief entertainment of the 
 week, at least what was so to the Princess, is an 
 arch, which Lord Temple has erected to her 
 honour in the most enchanting of all picturesque 
 scenes. It is inscribed on one side "Amelia E 
 SoPHiAE Aug. [mdcclxvii]," and has a medal- 
 lion of her on the other. It is placed on an emi- 
 nence at the top of the Elysian Fields, in a grove 
 of orange-trees. You come to it on a sudden, 
 and are startled with delight on looking through 
 it: you at once see, through a glade, the river 
 winding at the bottom; from which a thicket 
 rises, arched over with trees, but opened, and dis- 
 covering a hillock full of hay-cocks, beyond which 
 in front is the Palladian bridge, and again over 
 that a larger hill crowded with the castle [of 
 Stowe]. It is a tall landscape framed by the arch 
 and the over-bowering trees, aud comprehending 
 more beauties of light, shade, and buildings, than 
 any picture of Albano I ever saw. ' ^ 
 
 ' Between the flattery and the prospect,' he 
 ^ Toynbee's 'Walpole's Letters,' vii, 1904, 393. 
 
204 Eighteenth-Century Stowe 
 
 goes on, 'the Princess was really in Elysium; 
 she visited her arch four or five times every day, 
 and could not satiate herself with it. The statues 
 of Apollo and the Muses stand on each side. 
 And then follows one of Walpole's verse tributes 
 to the great lady's gratification. A week later 
 comes the reverse of the medal. He is feeling 
 twinges of gout and his retrospect is losing its 
 rose-colour: 'I am come back very lame [he 
 tells Lord Strafford], and not at all with the 
 bloom that one ought to have imported from the 
 
 Elysian Fields It made me laugh as we 
 
 were descending the great flight of steps from 
 the house to go and sup in the grotto on the 
 banks of Helicon : we were so cloaked up, for 
 the evening was very cold, and so many of us 
 were limping and hobbling,' that Charon would 
 have easily believed we were going to ferry over 
 in earnest.' 
 
 Three days later he is in bed, reposing not 
 
 ' Elsewhere he says: 'The Earl, you know, is bent 
 double, the Countess very lame, I am a miserable walker, 
 and the Princess, though as strong as a Brunswic lion, 
 makes no figure in going down fifty stone stairs. Except 
 Lady Ann — and by courtesy Lady Mary, we were none 
 of us young enough for a pastoral.' (Toynbee's ' Wal- 
 pole's Letters,' vii, 1904., 392.) 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 205 
 
 * under his laurels,' but ' his own tester,' and re- 
 flecting ruefully that he should die of fatigue if 
 he were 'to be Polonius to a Princess for another 
 week. Twice a day we made a pilgrimage to 
 almost every heathen temple in that province 
 that they call a garden, and there is no sallying 
 out of the house without descending a flight of 
 steps as high as St. Paul's. . . . To crown all, be- 
 cause we live under the line, and that we were 
 all of us giddy young creatures, of near threescore, 
 we supped in a grotto in the Elysian Fields, and 
 were refreshed with rivers of dew and gentle 
 showers that dripped from all the trees, . . . Not 
 but, to say the truth, our pagan landlord and 
 landlady were very obliging, and the party went 
 off much better than I expected.' If, as he says, 
 he had no delight ' in the Seigneur Temple,' he 
 liked Lady Temple; and had already printed 
 some of her poems at the ' Officina Arbuteana.' ^ 
 The 'flight of steps,' here twice mentioned, 
 serves to conduct us at last from Stowe Gardens 
 to Stowe House. To be precise, there were not 
 fifty steps, as Walpole says, but thirty-one, and 
 they were flanked at the base by pedestals bearing 
 lions copied from those in the Villa Medici at 
 
 ^ ' Poems ' by Anna Chamber, Countess Temple, Straw- 
 berry Hill, 1764. 
 
2o6 Eighteenth-Century Stowe 
 
 Rome. Thence they ascended to a portico or 
 loggia of six lofty Corinthian pillars supporting a 
 pediment. To left and right of this central 
 portion extended colonnades, ending in pavilion 
 wings, the whole presenting a magnificent front- 
 age of more than nine hundred feet, freely decor- 
 ated with columns, statues, and medallions. This 
 is the aspect which the south-east or garden front 
 presents in Thomas Medland's print of 1797; 
 and in general, it differs little from modern photo- 
 graphs. The north-west view, or park facade, is 
 less impressive. There is a second portico with 
 four Ionic columns and a shorter flight of steps; 
 and from this sweep out two circular colonnades, 
 enclosing a wide gravelled space. The construc- 
 tion of the entire building must have extended 
 over a long period. The middle part was probably 
 built first; a conjecture supported by Celia 
 Fiennes, who, writing under William and Mary, 
 speaks of going from Thornton to see the new 
 house of ' S*" Rich^ Temple.' 1 This was the first 
 of that name. Sir Richard Temple, the second 
 (Lord Cobham), is said to have rebuilt the facade, 
 and added, or added to, the wings. The original 
 architect is nowhere distinctly named — most 
 likely it was Vanbrugh. Throughout the entire 
 ' 'Through England on a Side Saddle,' 1888, 22. 
 
Eighteenth-Century Stowe 207 
 
 eighteenth century one hears of continual additions 
 and alterations, or the completion of decorations. 
 When Mrs. Lybbe Powys visited the place in 
 1775, reconstruction was still going on; and the 
 house was surrounded by scaffolding. This was 
 in Earl Temple's day; and further changes were 
 made by the Marquess of Buckingham. Writing 
 ten years later to Conway, Walpole continues to 
 criticise fresh developments, and to comment on 
 modifications in the wings. 
 
 To the attentive student of the excellent plan 
 and views which are contained in Seeley's charm- 
 ing little quarto of 1797, dedicated floridly to 
 George Grenville Nugent Temple, Marquess of 
 Buckingham, the first thought will probably be 
 
 ' Thanks, sir,' cried I, ' 'tis very fine, 
 But where d'ye sleep, or where d'ye dine ? 
 I find, by all you have been telling, 
 That 'tis a house, but not a dwelling.' 
 
 Swift's biting lines on Blenheim certainly apply 
 in a sense to Stowe, as they do to other eighteenth- 
 century mansions. Spacious ' rooms of state ' 
 abound ; but the living accommodation is starved 
 proportionately. All along the garden front are 
 vast reception chambers. To left and right of the 
 great oval saloon entered from the portico, with 
 its splendid processional frieze, its choice statues. 
 
2o8 Eighteenth- Century Stowe 
 
 and its Carrara marble pavement, these apartments 
 open into each other to the farthest extremity of 
 the wings; while on the northern side is a hall 
 corresponding to the portico, and decorated by 
 Kent with a ceiling which celebrates the martial 
 exploits of Lord Cobham. There is a chapel 
 wainscoted with cedar carved by Grinling Gibbons, 
 and having a roof to match that of the Royal 
 Chapel at St. James's; there are a library and 
 ante-library filled with more than ten thousand 
 volumes, chiefly collected by the Marquess of 
 Buckingham; there is a ' Grenville Room ' ^ 
 crowded with family portraits, some of them by 
 Reynolds and Kneller, others by that clever 
 amateur, the Marchioness. The great billiard 
 room is filled with miscellaneous portraits. Van 
 Dycks and Lelys and Gainsboroughs. In the 
 dining and drawing rooms and state closet are 
 famous Rembrandts and Rubens's, Claudes and 
 Poussins, Titians and Leonardos, DUrers and 
 Metzus. In other rooms are Gobelin tapestries 
 — triumphs of Bacchus and Ceres, triumphs of 
 the Allies in the Low Countries under Marl- 
 borough : and everywhere there are busts, and 
 
 ^ Seeley's account of 1797 is here followed. In the Stowe 
 auction catalogue of 1848 the rooms are differently named 
 and disposed. 
 
Eighteenth- Century Stowe 209 
 
 bronzes, and vases, and tables in ' verde antico ' ; 
 sphinxes and sarcophagi; chests inlaid with mother 
 of pearl and cunningly carved chimney-pieces; 
 lustres and pier-glasses ; green damask and crimson 
 velvet; 'china and old Japan infinite.' 
 
 Such w^as ' eighteenth-century Stow^e.' Seen 
 through the fine Corinthian arch at the north 
 end of the two-mile avenue leading from Bucking- 
 ham, the garden-front still presents to the latter- 
 day spectator much the same aspect as it presented 
 to his predecessor of a hundred years ago. But 
 most of the valuable contents of the house enumer- 
 ated above, together with other treasures added by 
 later owners, were dispersed in the time of the 
 second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, at 
 the great sale of 1 848, which lasted forty days, 
 and realized more than seventy-five thousand 
 pounds.^ After the death of the third and last 
 Duke, Stowe House was leased to the Comte de 
 Paris, who died there in September 1894. It be- 
 longs at present to the last Duke's daughter, the 
 eighth Baroness Kinloss. 
 
 ^ 'Stowe Catalogue,' by H. R. Forster, 1848. The 
 Library and Manuscripts were sold separately in 184.9. 
 
ROBERT LLOYD 
 
 ON the afternoon of Tuesday, 24th May 1 763, 
 Boswell, for whose praiseworthy particu- 
 larity we can never be sufficiently thankful, paid 
 his first formal visit to Dr. Johnson at his 
 Chambers in Inner Temple Lane. The incidents 
 of this interview, which followed hard upon 
 Boswell's presentation to his new friend in Davies' 
 back-parlour, are sufficiently familiar. But as a 
 preparatory 'wind-up' (in the sense of the elder 
 Weller) to the altitude of the more important 
 business to come, Boswell had taken the pre- 
 caution of spending the morning in the stimulat- 
 ing society of a little company of wits — ' Mes- 
 sieurs Thornton, Wilkes, Churchill and Lloyd.' 
 Wilkes, whose squinting portrait, sketched by 
 Hogarth in Westminster Hall, was at this date 
 only a few days old in the print shops; and 
 Churchill, probably already meditating his retri- 
 butory Epistle to the painter — require no intro- 
 duction. Bonnell Thornton, late of the ' Con- 
 noisseur,' was speedily to delight the visitors to 
 Ranelagh with his burlesque of the Antient 
 
Robert Lloyd 2 1 1 
 
 British Musick — that ' Ode on St. Caecilia's 
 Day,' the Jews' harp and salt-box accompani- 
 ment to which so hugely tickled the unmusical 
 ear of Johnson. The fourth of the group, Robert 
 Lloyd, the editor of the ' St, James's Magazine,' 
 is less known. His brief career, soon to end pre- 
 maturely in the Fleet prison, needs no Trusler to 
 moralize its message. But his fate, deserved or 
 undeserved, conveniently illustrates that lament- 
 able ' Case of Authors by Profession or Trade ' 
 which, not many years earlier, Fielding's colleague, 
 James Ralph, had submitted to the consideration 
 of an indifferent public.^ 
 
 Lloyd's father, Dr. Pierson Lloyd, whom 
 Southey describes not only as * a humourist,' but 
 as 'a kind-hearted, equal-minded, generous, good 
 man,' occupied honourably for some seven and 
 forty years the posts of usher and second master 
 at St. Peter's College, Westminster, otherwise 
 Westminster School. His son Robert, born in 
 1733, was admitted as a Queen's scholar in 1746, 
 being then thirteen. Among his contemporaries 
 were William Cowper, Charles Churchill, George 
 Colman the Elder, Richard Cumberland, Warren 
 
 ^ Ralph's arguments were, in many respects, subse- 
 quently enforced by Goldsmith's ' Enquiry into the Present 
 State of Polite Learning in Europe.' 
 
212 Robert Lloyd 
 
 Hastings and Elijah Impey. Another of his inti- 
 mates in later life was Bonnell Thornton, who, 
 in 1743, had been elected from Westminster to 
 Christ Church, Oxford. During the first year of 
 his school-days, the fifth form usher was that de- 
 lightful, irresponsible, and indolent Vincent 
 Bourne, so many of whose ' Poematia,' human 
 and modern through all their elegant Latinity, 
 Cowper, fondly ranking his old master with 
 Tibullus and Ovid, was afterwards to render into 
 excellent English. Young Lloyd had marked 
 abilities; and speedily became a more than respect- 
 able classical scholar. In 1751, he was captain of 
 the school; and figured at the head of those elected 
 to Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his university 
 studies, there is little record; and his life, remote 
 from the parental eye, is said to have been ex- 
 travagant and ' irregular.' But he had already 
 shown a bias towards verse. As early as 1751 he 
 had written a long poem in the Spenserian stanza, 
 entitled ' The Progress of Envy,' dealing allegoric- 
 ally with Lauder's attack on the originality of 
 Milton; and he must also have acquired some 
 precocious reputation as an exceptionally fluent 
 versifier, since, in 1754, Cowper addressed to him 
 an Epistle in which, himself writing in octo- 
 syllabics, he hails his old schoolfellow as 
 
Robert Lloyd 213 
 
 sole heir, and single, 
 Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle; 
 
 and even goes as far as to give him the praise, if 
 not of superior finish, at least of superior facility.^ 
 While Lloyd was still at Trinity, Thornton 
 and Colman established the weekly paper known 
 as the ' Connoisseur,' one of the brightest and 
 most entertaining of the mid-century Essayists. 
 Not many of its occasional writers are now knownj 
 but Cowper certainly assisted, and so did Lloyd. 
 Lloyd's first attempt, in May 1755, was an Epistle 
 to a friend 'about to publish a Volume of Mis- 
 cellanies,' in which, as introductory to some 
 colloquial characterization of the leading models 
 and a paradoxical commendation of Hawkins 
 Browne's 'Pipe of Tobacco,' he warns his corre- 
 spondent not to let his verse, 
 
 ^ Lloyd was sensible enough to disclaim this too friendly 
 commendation. He knew he had not, as Johnson says of 
 Butler and Prior, the ' bullion ' of his model ; and he 
 frankly recognizes the fact in a later epistle on 'Rhyme' : 
 
 ' Here, by the way of critic sample, 
 I give the precept and example. 
 Four feet, you know, in ev'ry line 
 Is Prior's measure, and is mine; 
 Yet Taste wou'd ne'er forgive the crime 
 To talk of mine with Prior's rhyme.' 
 
214 Robert Lloyd 
 
 as verse now goes, 
 Be a strange kind of measur'd prose; 
 Nor let your prose, which sure is worse. 
 Want nought but measure to be verse. 
 Write from your own imagination, 
 Nor curb your Muse by Imitation, 
 For copies shew, howe'er exprest, 
 A barren genius at the best. 
 
 Another piece pleads urgently for some revolt 
 against the depressing domination of the pedantic 
 dullard. Not that its writer despises the great 
 legislators of Parnassus : 
 
 Although Longinus' full-mouthM^ prose 
 With all the force of genius glows j . . . 
 Though judgment, in Quintiiian's page. 
 Holds forth her lamp for ev'ry age; 
 Yet Hypercritics I disdain, 
 A race of blockheads dull and vain, 
 And laugh at all those empty fools, 
 Who cramp a genius with dull rules, 
 And what their narrow science mocks 
 Damn with the name of Het'rodox. 
 
 Two of his remaining contributions are fables; 
 and there is an imitation of a Vauxhall song 
 which effectively reproduces what Mrs. Riot in 
 
 ^ In No. 125 of the 'Connoisseur' ('British Classicks,' 
 1788, vol. vi), quaintly enough, this is printed 'foul- 
 mouthed.' 
 
Robert Lloyd 215 
 
 Garrick's ' Lethe ' would call the ' very Quince- 
 tence and Emptity ' of that popular form of art. 
 The last paper has a prose introduction, dated 
 from 'Trin. Coll. Can., June 6 [1756];' and 
 contains a passage which may perhaps be regarded 
 as autobiographical. Speaking of the Abuse of 
 Words, the writer says : ' I myself. Sir, am griev- 
 ously suspected of being better acquainted with 
 Homer and Virgil than Euclid or Saunderson [the 
 blind Professor of mathematics]; and am univers- 
 ally agreed to be ruined^ for having concerned my- 
 self with Hexameter and Pentameter more than 
 Diameter.' From which, whatever significance 
 be attached to the word ' ruined,' it may fairly be 
 inferred that he shared with some greater men 
 their distaste for mathematics. And if we are to 
 believe Cowper, there had been too much classics 
 and mathematics at Westminster, and too little 
 religious instruction. 
 
 When, in September 1756, ' Mr. Town ' of the 
 ' Connoisseur ' bade farewell to his public, he made 
 due acknowledgment of the assistance he had re- 
 ceived from his Cambridge contributor. Accord- 
 ing to Welch's ' Alumni Westmonasterienses,' 
 Lloyd ' took the two degrees in Arts in 1755 and 
 1758.' But, apart from his literary pursuits, his 
 university career, as we have said, had been 
 
2i6 Robert Lloyd 
 
 unsatisfactory, and there was little likelihood of his 
 obtaining a fellowship. To bring him once more 
 under domestic supervision, his father, now second 
 master, obtained for him the post of usher at his 
 old school, a post for which, as far as scholarship 
 was concerned, he was, natvu"ally, abundantly 
 qualified. That the deadening drudgery of the 
 life would not appeal to him, may perhaps be 
 anticipated; and one remembers the heartfelt out- 
 bursts of Goldsmith on this particular topic. ^ In 
 Lloyd's ' Author's Apology,' afterwards printed 
 at the head of his collected poems, he dwells 
 bitterly on his memories: 
 
 — Were I at once impower'd to shew 
 My utmost vengeance on my foe, 
 To punish with extremest rigour, 
 I could invent no penance bigger 
 Than using him as learning's tool 
 To make him Usher of a school; 
 
 the duties of which office, he says, 
 
 but ill befit 
 The love of letters, arts, or wit. . . . 
 Better discard the idle whim, 
 What 's He to Taste ? or Taste to Him ? 
 
 ^ 'Bee,' 1759, No- ^'5 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 1766, 
 eh. XX. 
 
Robert L loyd 217 
 
 For me, it hurts me to the soul 
 To brook confinement or controul; 
 Still to be pinion'd down to teach 
 The syntax and the parts of speech ; 
 Or, what perhaps is drudging worse, 
 The links, and joints, and rules of verse j 
 To deal out authors by resale 
 Like penny pots of Oxford ale ; 
 — Oh ! 'Tis a service irksome more 
 Than tugging at the slavish oar. 
 
 Yet such his task, a dismal truth, 
 Who watches o'er the bent of youth ; 
 And while, a paltry stipend earning. 
 He sows the richest seeds of learning, 
 And tills their minds with proper care, 
 And sees them their due produce bear, 
 No joys, alas ! his toil beguile. 
 His o'wn lies fallow all the while. 
 
 He admits that, before him, both Samuel Wesley 
 and Vincent Bourne had contrived to double the 
 parts of usher and author; but pleads his in- 
 capacity to do likewise. Consequently, it was not 
 long before he resigned his position; and, to his 
 prudent father's distress, threw himself on letters 
 for a livelihood. 
 
 Granted his aversion from the calling which 
 had been thrust upon him, it must be confessed 
 that his desire to essay a more congenial, if more 
 
2 1 8 Robert Lloyd 
 
 hazardous career, was not unintelligible. He had 
 many friends in the writing world. Already, at 
 Cambridge, he must have become a member of 
 the select little ' Nonsense Club ' of old West- 
 minsters which met weekly for literary purposes 
 combined with conviviality. Of these, Cowper, 
 who by this time had been called to the Bar, was 
 one. Another was Cowper's lifelong friend, Joseph 
 Hill, that ' honest man, close-button'd to the chin, 
 Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within,' 
 of whom he subsequently wrote.^ Then there 
 were Bonnell Thornton and Colman, for whom 
 he worked on the ' Connoisseur,' and Bensley, to 
 whom from Cambridge he had addressed two 
 epistles. From one of these it is clear that even 
 in 1757, he had no illusions as to the traditional 
 perils of a literary life: 
 
 You say I shou'd get fame. I doubt it : 
 
 Perhaps I am as well without it. 
 
 For what 's the worth of empty praise ? 
 
 What poet ever din'd on bays ? 
 
 For though the Laurel, rarest wonder! 
 
 ^ Hill's unmarried sisters, Theodosia and Frances, figure 
 as the ' Modern Antiques ' of Miss Mitford's ' Our Village.' 
 According to Southey, they were inveterate sightseers, and 
 supplied an illustrative note to Goldsmith's 'Essays' by 
 sitting up all night Tor the Coronation of George III. 
 
Robert Lloyd 219 
 
 May screen us from the stroke of thunder, 
 This mind I ever was, and am in. 
 It is no antidote to famine. 
 And poets live on slender fare, 
 Who, like Cameleons, feed on air, 
 And starve, to gain an empty breath. 
 Which only serves them after death. 
 
 It is quite possible that the Epistle from which 
 these lines are taken — lines the truth of which their 
 writer was later to illustrate in his own person — 
 was one of the Thursday contributions to the pro- 
 ceedings of the ' Nonsense Club.' But the only- 
 other pieces traditionally connected with it which 
 survive, have a diflFerent origin. In August 1757, 
 Walpole had ' snatched ' from Dodsley, as the 
 first-fruits of the private press at Strawberry Hill, 
 ' two amazing Odes ' by Gray, subsequently en- 
 titled ' The Progress of Poesy ' and ' The Bard.' 
 ' They are Greek, they are Pindaric, they are 
 sublime!' wrote the enraptured Horace to his 
 correspondent Mann ; but ' consequently,' he 
 added, ' I fear a little obscure ' — an obscurity 
 which, at first, Gray loftily refused to dispel. 
 Under pressure, he appended four short notes to 
 'The Bard'; but declared he would not have 
 put another for 'all the owls in London.' His 
 epigraph, ' (pmawa cruveToiai ' — ' vocal to the intelli- 
 
220 Robert Lloyd 
 
 gent ' — was, he insisted, ' both his Motto and 
 Comment.' This being so, it is perhaps not un- 
 reasonable that the perplexed recipients of a dark 
 saying should complain that it was hard to com- 
 prehend; and the first readers of the Odes, Gold- 
 smith among the rest, undoubtedly so complained. 
 In 1760, following the ' Critical Review ' by fill- 
 ing up Gray's motto with a qualifying clause 
 which he had purposely withheld,^ namely — ' but, 
 for the generality, requiring interpreters,' Lloyd 
 and Colman set themselves light-heartedly to 
 burlesque 'The Progress of Poesy' by an 'Ode 
 to Obscurity,' and Mason's ' Ode to Memory ' 
 by an ' Ode to Oblivion.' The former is some- 
 times attributed to Colman; the latter to Lloyd; 
 but on either side they were both admittedly 
 'written in concert.' Here is the first strophe of 
 the ' Ode to Obscurity ': 
 
 Daughter of Chaos and old Night, 
 
 Cinimeriam Muse, all hail ! 
 That wrapt in never-twinkling gloom canst write, 
 
 And shadowest meaning with thy dusky veil! 
 
 ^ In 1768, when James Dodsley reprinted Gray's poems, 
 the author at last condescended, with subacid contrition, 
 to add some explanatory notes, which include an analysis 
 of ' The Progress of Poesy.' He also, in the circumstances, 
 completed his original epigraph, the latter clause being 
 then relevant. 
 
Robert Lloyd 22 1 
 
 What Poet sings, and strikes the strings? 
 It was the mighty Theban spoke. 
 He from the ever-living Lyre 
 With magic hand elicits fire. 
 
 Heard ye the din of Modern Rhimers bray? 
 
 It was cool M[i7Jo]n : or warm G[r«]y 
 Involv'd in tenfold smoke. 
 
 At this date it is needless to quote more. The 
 parodies are certainly clever; they successfully 
 reproduce some of the poet's peculiarities, as, for 
 instance, his liking for compound epithets, and 
 they could only have been written by scholars. 
 But Gray's unrivalled Pindaric Odes are still 
 babbled by schoolboys ' in extremis vicis,' while 
 the caricatures of Lloyd and Colman, notwith- 
 standing Southey's fantastic proposal that they 
 should form a standing appendix to their models, 
 have now to be sought for in charitable anthologies. 
 Meanwhile, it is interesting to note with what 
 diversity of welcome they were received by Gray's 
 contemporaries. To Warburton they were but 
 miserable buffoonery; to Walpole (friend of both 
 Gray and Mason) ' trash, spirted from the kennel.' 
 On the other hand, Johnson, who preferred Gray's 
 life to his Muse, would have agreed with Southey. 
 ' A considerable part ' of the ' Ode to Obscurity ' 
 might, he declared, ' be numbered among those 
 felicities which no man has twice attained.' It 
 
222 Robert Lloyd 
 
 was the better of the two, he told Boswell on 
 another occasion; but they were both good. 'They 
 exposed a very bad kind of writing.' As for Adam 
 Smith's 'canard,' that Gray was so much hurt 
 ' that he never afterwards attempted any consider- 
 able work,' the latter assertion is obviously in- 
 correct, while the former is not supported by Gray's 
 correspondence. Where Gray understands his 
 assailant, he agrees that his assailant ' makes very 
 tolerable fun with him,' though he thinks there 
 is more anger with Mason (to whom he is writ- 
 ing). Elsewhere he says of Colman, then the 
 reputed sole author, 'I believe his Odes sell no 
 more than mine did, for I saw a heap of them lie 
 in a Bookseller's window, who recommended 
 them to me as a very pretty thing.' It is only fair 
 to add that Colman and Lloyd afterwards very 
 frankly recanted to Joseph Warton; and that one 
 of Lloyd's most ambitious Latin imitations was 
 a version of the ' Elegy.' He also specially refers 
 to Gray in his Epistle to Churchill: 
 
 What Muse like Gray's shall pleasing pensive flow, 
 Attemper'd sweetly to the rustic woe? 
 Or who like him shall sweep the Theban lyre, 
 And, as his master, pour forth thoughts of fire? 
 
 When the ' Nonsense Club ' was first estab- 
 
Robert Lloyd 223 
 
 lished is not apparent, nor is it clear when it 
 broke up, though Southey supposes that its dis- 
 persion followed upon the defection of Cowper a 
 year or two later. But almost concurrently with 
 the burlesque Odes, to be exact, a few weeks 
 before, Lloyd had issued, in the form of an ad- 
 dress to Bonnell Thornton, his first considerable 
 poem, 'The Actor,' an effort of which the 
 ' Gentleman's Magazine ' affirmed that 'the Poetry 
 would have pleased, even without the Sentiment, 
 and the Sentiment without the Poetry.' It is, in 
 truth, the most serious of Lloyd's efforts. Its 
 heroics, for he deserts on this occasion his usual 
 octo-syllabics, are neatly wrought; it wisely 
 avoids the criticism of living people by name, 
 paying only careful compliments to Garrick ; and 
 it lays its finger upon several obvious stage errors. 
 In action it upholds nature as opposed to tradi- 
 tion ; puts (with the late M. Coquelin) the 
 modulation of the voice before excessive gesture, 
 and condemns those popular starts and attitudes 
 which Goldsmith had just been ridiculing in his 
 ' Chinese Letters.' ^ Further, it deplores the ' vile 
 stage-custom ' which ' drags private foibles on the 
 public scene,' a palpable hit at Foote, and cen- 
 sures generally over-acting, tricks of dress, 
 ^ 'Public Ledger,' March 21, 1760, 
 
224 Robert Lloyd 
 
 ghosts, and the absurd entertainments of pan- 
 tomime. Finally, it takes leave with a graceful 
 lament over the perishable character of the his- 
 trionic art: 
 
 Yet, hapless Artist ! tho' thy skill can raise 
 
 The bursting peal of universal praise, 
 
 Tho' at thy beck Applause delighted stands, 
 
 And lifts, Briareus-like, her hundred hands, 
 
 Know, Fame awards thee but a partial breath! 
 
 Not ail thy talents brave the stroke of death. 
 
 Poets to ages yet unborn appeal, 
 
 And latest times th' Eternal Nature feel. 
 
 Tho' blended here the praise of bard and play'r, 
 
 While more than half becomes the Actor's share, 
 
 Relentless death untwists the mingled fame, 
 
 And sinks the player in the poet's name. 
 
 The pliant muscles of the various lace. 
 
 The mien that gave each sentence strength and grace, 
 
 The tuneful voice, the eye that spoke the mind, 
 
 Are gone, nor leave a single trace behind. 
 
 Gibber's ' Apology ' is credited with the germ- 
 inal form of this somewhat self-evident truth. In 
 1 766, half-a-dozen years later, Garrick compressed 
 it into a well-known couplet of his Prologue to 
 the 'Clandestine Marriage';^ and Sheridan, with 
 much facile ' fioriture,' included it in that 
 
 * Nor Pen nor Pencil can the Actor save \ 
 
 The Art, and Artist, share one common Grave. 
 
Robert Lloyd 225 
 
 'Monody' which was spoken by Mrs. Yates at 
 Drury Lane, on the great actor's death. But it 
 was Lloyd who first elaborated the idea. Its latest 
 form, as regards the vocalist, is to be found in 
 de Musset's admirable ' Stances a la Mali bran.' 
 
 With Lloyd's judicious commendation of the 
 autocrat of Drury Lane must no doubt be con- 
 nected the performance, at that theatre, of his 
 Ode on the death of George II, entitled the 
 'Tears and Triumph of Parnassus,' 1760, to be 
 succeeded, in the following year, by the dramatic 
 pastoral of 'Arcadia; or, the Shepherd's Wed- 
 ding,' in honour of the august nuptials of Charlotte 
 of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and George III. Both 
 of these occasional, and nowise remarkable, pro- 
 ductions had the advantage of the music of John 
 Stanley, the blind organist of the Temple Church. 
 Lloyd also supplied Garrick with several pro- 
 logues: for the King's birthday; for Colman's 
 'Jealous Wife' (in which he seems to glance at 
 the author's obligations to Fielding's 'Tom 
 Jones ') ; and for the ' Hecuba ' of Miss Burney's 
 eccentric Brighton friend, Dr. John Delap. But 
 the most definite and important outcome of ' The 
 Actor ' was, unquestionably, ' The Rosciad ' of 
 Charles Churchill. Disqualified for a university 
 career by an early and imprudent Fleet marriage, 
 Q 
 
226 Robert Lloyd 
 
 Churchill, by ' need, not choice,' had been lead- 
 ing a precarious life on the ' forty pounds a year ' 
 of a country living, eked out by tuition. In 1758, 
 at his father's death, he had been elected, by 
 favour of the parishioners, to the curacy and 
 lectureship of St. John the Evangelist, West- 
 minster. Dr. Pierson Lloyd, his former master, 
 had helped him more than once in money diffi- 
 culties, as Churchill afterguards acknowledged/ 
 by mediating with his creditors ; and Robert 
 Lloyd, unhappily for himself, was also warmly 
 attached to his old class-mate. The favourable 
 reception of 'The Actor' roused the dormant 
 faculties of Churchill, whose first metrical essays 
 were unfortunate. A Hudibrastic poem called 
 ' The Bard ' was declined by the booksellers as 
 worthless ; a second, ' The Conclave,' satirizing 
 the Dean (Dr. Zachary Pearce) and Chapter of 
 Westminster, was regarded as too libellous for 
 publication. But in these tentative efforts, Churchill 
 had found his strength ; and for a fresh subject 
 he selected the Stage, in which he had always 
 been interested. * After two months' close attend- 
 
 ' Dr. Lloyd was the ' kind good man ' of ' The Con- 
 ference/ who, 
 
 ' Image of him whom Christians should adore, 
 Stretch'd forth his hand, and brought me safe to shore.' 
 
Robert Lloyd 227 
 
 ance on the theatres,' he completed *The Rosciad.' 
 Even for this he was refused the trifling fee of 
 five guineas. Thereupon he boldly issued the 
 poem at his ow^n expense. 
 
 The result in the theatrical world has been 
 aptly compared to that caused by the discharge of 
 a gun in a rookery. Churchill being utterly un- 
 known, the anonymous writer was at first sup- 
 posed to be Lloyd, assisted possibly by Thornton 
 and Colman ; but apart from the fact that one of 
 the most serious passages in the piece, a plea for 
 the moderns against the ancients, is placed in 
 Lloyd's mouth, the ascription showed little critical 
 acuteness. There was no resemblance whatever 
 between Lloyd's easy generalities and the direct 
 cudgel-play of his more fearless friend. Such 
 lines as 
 
 He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone, 
 
 which is said to have driven Davies from the 
 boards to the book-shop; the remorseless 
 
 Pritchard's for Comedy too fat and old; 
 
 and the 
 
 Mossop, attach'd to military plan, 
 
 Still kept his eye fix'd on his right-hand man, 
 
 were, compared with Lloyd, as the roaring of the 
 
228 Robert Lloyd 
 
 tiger to that of the sucking dove ; and neither the 
 dove nor the tiger was at first particularly pleased 
 by the turn vs^hich things had taken. Churchill, 
 how^ever, in the second edition, openly claimed 
 the authorship: and, in a shorter poem entitled 
 ' The Apology,' proceeded, with an energy which 
 left no doubt as to his staying power as a satirist, 
 to trounce his chief assailant, the ' Critical Re- 
 view,' then edited by Smollett; while Lloyd's 
 affectionate and unenvious nature speedily forgot 
 its own annoyance in admiration for the superior 
 gifts of his friend — gifts to which, moreover, he 
 paid admiring homage in more than one epistle : 
 
 Pleas'd I behold superior genius shine. 
 
 Nor ting'd with envy wish that genius mine. 
 
 To Churchill's muse can bow with decent awe, 
 
 Admire his mode, nor make that mode my law; 
 
 Both may, perhaps, have various pow'rs to please : 
 
 Be his the Strength of Numbers, mine the Ease. 
 
 Elsewhere, in * The Poet,' Lloyd draws 
 Churchill's portrait with all the fervency of 
 friendly enthusiasm : 
 
 Is there a man, whose genius strong 
 Rolls like a rapid stream along, 
 Whose Muse, long hid in chearless night, 
 Pours on us like a flood of light, 
 Whose acting comprehensive mind 
 Walks Fancy's regions, unconfin'd j 
 
Robert Lloyd 229 
 
 Whom, nor the surly sense of pride. 
 
 Nor affectation, warps aside; 
 
 Who drags no author from his shelf. 
 
 To talk on with an eye to self; 
 
 Careless alike, in conversation, 
 
 Of censure, or of approbation ; 
 
 Who freely thinks, and freely speaks. 
 
 And meets the Wit he never seeks; 
 
 Whose reason calm, and judgment cool. 
 
 Can pity, but not hate a fool; 
 
 Who can a hearty praise bestow, 
 
 If merit sparkles in a foe; 
 
 Who bold and open, firm and true, 
 
 Flatters no friends — yet loves them too : 
 
 Churchill will be the last to know 
 
 His is the portrait, I would show. 
 
 By ' The Rosciad ' and ' The Apology ' 
 Churchill made more than a thousand pounds, 
 with which, to his credit, he paid his debts. But 
 at this stage, discarding first his clerical garb for 
 gold lace and ruffles, and next, for he resigned his 
 cure, his clerical character, he unhappily em- 
 barked with all the ardour of a vigorous constitu- 
 tion, upon those pleasures of the town which, in 
 the measured words of Gibbon, ' are within the 
 reach of every man who is regardless of his 
 health, his money, and his company.' Into the 
 train of this worst of Mentors, Lloyd, docile and 
 unstable, was only too readily drawn ; and 
 
230 Robert Lloyd 
 
 people who were still smarting from the strokes of 
 Churchill's criticism, were not slow to comment 
 upon such unworshipful developments of literary 
 success. As may be imagined, the tale lost no- 
 thing in the telling; and it is quite conceivable, 
 as suggested by William Tooke, the earliest 
 editor of Churchill, that irregularities which, in 
 some of his contemporaries, would have passed 
 unnoticed, or been indulgently condoned as mere 
 eccentricities of genius, were magnified by the 
 victims of his pen into acts of unbridled de- 
 pravity. More thin-skinned than most satirists — 
 which is saying a good deal — Churchill bitterly 
 resented this inquisition into his ' midnight con- 
 versations'; and, in a poem called ' Night,' ad- 
 dressed to Lloyd, endeavoured to defend himself 
 against his traducers. But his defence, based upon 
 the then-current fallacy that honest vices are 
 more excusable than hypocritical virtues — as if, 
 says a modern critic, there were no possible third 
 course — is not convincing; while it seems be- 
 sides to indicate incidentally that the 'sons of 
 Care,' as they curiously styled themselves, did 
 not always derive from their dissipations the dis- 
 traction they sought. Nor is the later apology of 
 their boon-companion and evil-genius, Wilkes, 
 drawn speciously from the precedents of anti- 
 
Robert Lloyd 231 
 
 quity, any more to the point. Of Wilkes, how- 
 ever, we may safely say, ' Non tali auxilio'; and, 
 moreover, we are not writing, nor design to 
 write, a paper on Churchill, being, for the pre- 
 sent, busied only with his friend Lloyd. 
 
 Lloyd, unlike Churchill, had not found verse 
 a monetary success; and although he never at 
 any time overcame his rooted antipathy to tui- 
 tion, he must also have soon discovered that one 
 form of servitude was no better than another; 
 and that by octo-syllabics, however easily they 
 jingled, it was difficult to live. His prologues 
 and theatrical pieces can have produced but little. 
 For some months previous to the appearance of 
 ' Arcadia,' he had been acting as editor of the 
 poetical department of ' The Library,' a periodi- 
 cal conducted by Dr. Andrew Kippis, later to be 
 better known as projector of an interrupted 'Bio- 
 graphia Britannica.' Lloyd's connection with 
 'The Library' lasted until May 1762, when he 
 issued a quarto volume of ' Poems ' including 
 'The Actor,' the Epistle to Churchill, the Burl- 
 esque Odes, and a number of minor pieces. 
 From the lengthy list of subscribers,^ it would 
 
 ^ Besides the ' great vulgar and the small,' many notable 
 names appear in its columns. Not to mention Henry Fox 
 and Charles Townshend and Richard Owen Cambridge, 
 
232 Robert Lloyd 
 
 seem that this collection should have been the 
 most lucrative of his publications ; but although 
 he appears to have aWays performed his daily 
 task with mill-horse regularity, it is clear that his 
 gains, as a man of vi^it, never sufficed to his ex- 
 penditure as a man of pleasure, and that from the 
 outset he vv^as embarrassed. With September 
 1762 he issued the first number of the ' St. 
 James's Magazine,' Davies being one of the pub- 
 lishers. Of course it was to be like nothing else. 
 It was to deal exclusively with Belles Lettres. It 
 was to be original and various; it was to be 
 scholarly; it was to be soundly critical. The 
 hackeyed attractions of the ordinary monthly 
 
 there is ' Mr. Samuel Johnson ' (he was not yet Doctor) ; 
 there are ' William Hogarth, Esq ; ' (to whom Lloyd had 
 addressed a laudatory epistle concerning ' Sigismunda'), 
 and Messieurs Reynolds and Wilson, 'Painters '5 there is 
 the sculptor, Roubillac. There are Newbery and Dodsley, 
 booksellers; there are those curious clergymen, the Rev. 
 Charles Churchill and the Rev. Laurence Sterne ; there 
 are Garrick and Foote, and Cowper and Akenside, and 
 the two Wartons, and Laureate Whitehead. For Gray 
 and Mason and Horace Walpole it would be idle to seek. 
 Whether all the names meant money, it is hard to affirm. 
 Six months later, the book was still announced in the 
 ' St. James's Magazine ' as 'just published ' ; and Kenrick, 
 Lloyd's editor, says in 1774. that a remainder had been 
 ' lately disposed of at an inconsiderable value.' 
 
Robert Lloyd 233 
 
 were to be studiously avoided. It would contain 
 
 No pictures taken from the life, 
 
 Where all proportions are at strife; 
 
 No Humming-Bird, no painted Flower, 
 
 No Beast just landed in the Tower, 
 
 No wooden Notes, no colour'd Map, 
 
 No Country-Dance shall stop a gap; .... 
 
 No Crambo, no Acrostic fine,"; 
 
 Great letters lacing down each line; 
 
 No strange Conundrum, no invention 
 
 Beyond the reacli of comprehension, 
 
 No Riddle, which whoe'er unties. 
 
 Claims twelve Museums for the Prize, 
 
 Shall strive to please you, at th' expence 
 
 Of simple taste, and common sense. 
 
 Some of these promises were kept, but even 
 in the first number there was departure from the 
 programme, inasmuch as its final pages were oc- 
 cupied by an account, ' lifted ' bodily from the 
 ' London Gazette,' and certainly not Belles 
 Lettres, of the great event of 1762, the taking of 
 the Havannah from the Spaniards, with other oc- 
 currences, Foreign and Domestic. As usual, the 
 editor had many disappointments from the ' emin- 
 ent hands ' who had promised their assistance. 
 Churchill, whose fast-following productions were, 
 with copious extracts, rapturously reviewed, sent 
 nothing J and Garrick is only represented by a 
 
234 Robert Lloyd 
 
 prologue and epilogue. On the other hand, 
 Cowper contributed an ironical ' Dissertation on 
 the Modern Ode'; and also, it is supposed, a 
 subsequent exemplification of it, though this is 
 initialed ' L,' and may have been by Lloyd. ^ 
 From the introductory remarks, Cowper, it would 
 seem, had contemplated an Art of Poetry on the 
 same plan ; but his intentions were prevented by 
 that second derangement to which belong those 
 terrible Sapphics beginning ' Hatred and venge- 
 ance, my eternal portion.' From Falconer of 
 ' The Shipwreck ' came ' The Fond Lover ' a 
 song * written at sea,' and dated ' Royal George'; 
 from Christopher Smart, a eulogistic epitaph on 
 Fielding, and a fable." Bonnell Thornton sent, 
 
 ^ Southey thought it by Cowper, and Mr. H. S. Milford, 
 though not without hesitation, includes it in his excellent 
 Oxford edition of that poet, pp. 288-9. The form resembles 
 Mason's, and it is possible that the following lines are 
 obliquely aimed at him : 
 
 ' Come placid Dullness, gently come, 
 
 And all my faculties benumb. 
 Let thought turn exile, while the vacant mind 
 To trickle words, and pretty phrase confin'd. 
 
 Pumping for trim description's art, 
 
 To win the ear, neglects the heart.' 
 
 ^ One of the occasional contributions (which must have 
 issued from the shades) consists of two Greek epigrams by 
 
Robert Lloyd 235 
 
 among other things, some specimens of an in- 
 tended translation of Plautus, being portions of 
 the 'Miles gloriosus,' a task to which he had 
 been stirred by emulation of Colman's Terence. 
 Colman again, copying Lloyd's own epistle from 
 the Cobbler of Tissington to Garrick, pens a 
 companion letter to Lloyd himself, in which, with 
 great good humour, and no little truth, he rallies 
 his old schoolfellow for trusting overmuch to his 
 metrical facility. He warns him that if he 'cramps 
 his Muse in four-foot verse,' he will ultimately 
 find ' his ease his curse.' Why does he not ' write 
 a great work! a work of merit'? Otherwise, 
 
 Too long your genius will lie fallow 
 
 And Robert Lloyd be Robert Shallow. 
 
 The advice was more easy to give than to 
 take, especially by an editor whose contributors 
 were voluntary ; and who, in their default, was 
 pledged to fill five sheets per month with printed 
 
 Fielding's ' Parson Adams,' then the late Rev. William 
 Young of Gillingham. Another writer adapts to the 
 memory of Shenstone, who died in February 1763, his 
 own epitaph — the 'most beautiful of epitaphs,' Landor 
 calls it — on his cousin, Maria Dolman — ' Ah ! Gulielme, 
 Vale ! " Quanto minus est. Cum aliis versari, Quam tui 
 meminisse." ' 
 
236 Robert Lloyd 
 
 matter, and that matter more verse than prose. 
 No wonder Lloyd was weary of the task, and 
 had already written: 
 
 Continual plagues my soul molest, 
 
 And Magazines disturb my rest. 
 
 While scarce a night I steal to bed. 
 
 Without a couplet in my head, 
 
 And in the morning, when I stir. 
 
 Pop comes a Deojil, ' Copy, sir.' 
 
 I cannot strive with daring flight 
 
 To reach the brave Parnassian Height, 
 
 But at its foot, content to stray. 
 
 In easy unambitious way 
 
 Pick up those flowers the muses send, 
 
 To make a nosegay for my friend. 
 
 One of his most assiduous colleagues, a certain 
 equally facile but forgotten rhymer, Mr. Charles 
 Denis, who was a brother of the famous admiral 
 and patron of Thackeray's ' Denis Duval,' fur- 
 nished translations of La Fontaine, Marmontel, 
 Voltaire, Boileau and other versions or paraphrases 
 from the French. Lloyd himself padded his pages 
 with a long prose rendering of the ' Nouvelle 
 Ecole des Femmes ' of M. Moulier de Moissy, his 
 ostensible pretext being to show to what extent 
 Churchill's enemy, Arthur Murphy, had relied 
 upon that comedy for his own piece, ' The Way 
 
Robert Lloyd 237 
 
 to Keep Him.' There are also ominous proposals 
 for a complete translation of Racine, to be pub- 
 lished as a monthly make-weight. Lloyd seems 
 to have struggled doggedly with his ' metier de 
 format,' for he says in his general Preface to vol. i, 
 that he is personally responsible for upwards of 
 seven hundred lines in every number; but it cannot 
 be denied that he is often open to the charge of 
 being * shallow.' He nevertheless shows constant 
 capabilities for better things. One of his dia- 
 logues, ' Chit-chat,' is a bourgeois paraphrase of 
 the ' Two Ladies of Syracuse ' in Theocritus. 
 A Cheapside Gorgo and Praxinoe, Mrs. Brown 
 and Mrs. Scot, go (in their sacks and cardinals) to 
 see, not the Adonis festival, but that memorable 
 contemporary show, the opening of Parliament 
 by George III, with the gingerbread splendours 
 of whose state-coach, recently designed by 
 Chambers the Architect, they are duly impressed. 
 The close imitation of an original demands a 
 certain restraint, which was good for Lloyd; 
 and though it is not easy to select a quotation, 
 ' Chit-chat ' is a very satisfactory specimen of his 
 better manner. But long before the ' St. James's 
 Magazine ' had reached its closing blue numbers, 
 that ill-fated serial was plainly, in its projector's 
 words, dragging out 
 
238 Robert Lloyd 
 
 a miserable being, 
 Its end still fearing and foreseeing; 
 
 and when, in February 1764, the long-threatened 
 end came, Lloyd had for some time surrendered 
 the work to other hands, and was himself, *for 
 debts contracted during its progress,' an inmate 
 of the Fleet. 
 
 What his liabilities were we know not; but 
 they need not have been large. In those days, in 
 spite of Oglethorpe's Committee, a beneficent 
 legislature still permitted a vindictive creditor to 
 seize the body of an unhappy debtor for a trifling 
 sum, casting him into a custody from which he 
 might never again emerge;^ and, as we know 
 from Johnson's * Rambler,' the Fleet, the King's 
 Bench and the other prisons, were at this date 
 crowded with many such miserable captives, who 
 were exposed to all the discomforts arising from 
 dirt, disease, foul air, bad food, and the grinding 
 rapacity of tyrannical keepers. Why Lloyd, 
 whose father was still a master at Westminster 
 
 ^ But I liave also heard a sweet Bird sing, 
 
 That Men, unable to discharge their Debts 
 
 At a short Warning, being sued for them. 
 
 Have, with both Power and Will their Debts to pay, 
 
 Lain all their Lives in Prison for their Costs, 
 
 Fielding's Pasquin, 1736, 
 
Robert Lloyd 239 
 
 School, was suflFered to remain for a moment in 
 such a degrading environment, may perhaps be 
 explained by the supposition that, freed by one 
 claimant, he would only be arrested by another ; 
 and that, while he remained in the Fleet, or the 
 limits known as its Rules or Liberties, he could 
 not be arrested at all. Churchill, on hearing of 
 his incarceration, at once hastened to his assist- 
 ance, and provided for his immediate wants by 
 supplying him with a servant and a guinea a week. 
 This sum (unless it was spent as promptly as the 
 similar allowance made to Richard Savage) should 
 have sufficed to save Lloyd from the squalors of 
 * Mount-scoundrel,' and to secure him decent 
 food and lodgment. Churchill also attempted to 
 set on foot a subscription for his eventual release. 
 But from mismanagement, or other causes now 
 too obscure to make intelligible, the proposals 
 came to nothing; and Lloyd remained in durance, 
 receiving numerous visitors, though apparently 
 abandoned by most of his old associates. ' I have 
 many acquaintances,' he wrote mournfully to 
 Wilkes in France, ' but now no friends here.' 
 He continued to drudge hopelessly for the book- 
 sellers, finishing a version of Klopstock's *■ Death 
 of Adam '; translating, with Charles Denis, Mar- 
 montel's * Contes Moraux ' ; and endeavouring to 
 
240 Robert Lloyd 
 
 console himself philosophically by the reflection 
 that irksome as confinement was, it was * not so 
 bad as being usher at Westminster.' He even 
 produced ' The Capricious Lovers,' a little comic 
 opera from the French of Favart's * Ninette a la 
 Cour,' which Garrick accepted for Drury Lane. 
 On 4th November 1764 Churchill, who in his 
 ' Independence ' ^ made indignant reference to 
 Lloyd's continued confinement, ended his own 
 meteoric course at Boulogne, where he died of 
 fever. The rest may be told in Southey's words: 
 ' Lloyd had been apprised of his [Churchill's] 
 danger; but when the news of his death was 
 somewhet abruptly announced to him as he was 
 sitting at dinner, he was seized with a sudden 
 sickness, and saying, "I shall follow poor 
 Charles," took to his bed, from which he never 
 rose again ; dying, if ever man did, of a broken 
 heart. The tragedy did not end here; Churchill's 
 favourite sister, who is said to have possessed 
 much of her brother's sense and spirit and genius, 
 and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended 
 him during his illness; and, sinking under the 
 double loss, soon followed her brother and her 
 lover to the grave.' 
 
 ^ * Hence, Ye vain Boasters, to the Fleet repair, 
 And ask, with blushes ask, if Lloyd is there.' 
 
Robert Lloyd 241 
 
 When Robert Lloyd was buried in the church- 
 yard of St. Bride's parish he was thirty-one, and 
 his premature end is sad enough. At the same 
 time, it is impossible to give to the tale of his 
 misfortunes more than the commiseration usually 
 conceded to those who, in common parlance, are 
 * nobody's enemy but their own.' The record of 
 his personality is scant and indistinct. He is said 
 to have been modest, affectionate, generous, and 
 devoted to those he liked. Truth constrains us to 
 add that he was also weak-willed, fond of pleasure, 
 and easily led away by companions whose social 
 gifts were not ballasted with more solid merits. 
 As a poet, either from lack of ambition, or from 
 a conscious sense of limitation, he never fulfilled 
 the promise of his youth. He was a sound 
 scholar, without the least touch of pedantry ; he 
 had a fertile fancy, considerable humour, and 
 an excellent judgment. The too-ready fluency on 
 which he so much relied was nevertheless un- 
 favourable to 'fundamental brain-work'; and 
 the pressure of necessity frequently hurried him 
 into reckless over-production. Hence, in a short 
 paper, it is difficult to borrow from his work 
 more than a few autobiographical and literary 
 passages. His melancholy story exemplifies most 
 of those ills which his great contemporary had 
 R 
 
242 Robert Lloyd 
 
 gloomily declared to be the allotted portion of 
 letters : 
 
 Toil, Envy, Want, the Patron and the Jail, 
 
 But he was spared the Patron. 
 
GRAY'S BIOGRAPHER 
 
 CONNECTED with Mason's ' Memoirs of 
 the Life and Writings of Gray ' is one of 
 those odd freaks of circumstance by which the 
 whirligig of Time occasionally diverts the philo- 
 sophic inquirer. Dr. Johnson was a Tory; 
 Mason was a Whig — therefore Johnson did not 
 like Mason. Johnson, moreover, did not like 
 Gray, whom, in conversation, he bracketed with 
 Mason as inferior to Akenside; and this was 
 another reason why he was prejudiced against 
 Mason's biography of Gray. Consequently, one 
 is not surprised to learn that, though he forced 
 himself to read the book because it was ' a com- 
 mon topick of conversation,' he found it ' mighty 
 dull.' ' As to the style (he added), it was fit for 
 the second table ' — a figure of disparagement 
 which is included, though not explained, in Dr. 
 Birkbeck Hill's list of ''Dicta Philosophi.' But 
 the piquant point about the great man's judg- 
 ment is, that it was this very life of Gray by 
 Mason which Boswell made his model for what 
 Macaulay has called, on this occasion without 
 243 
 
244 Gray's Biographer 
 
 contradiction, the first of all biographies. 'I have 
 resolved,' says Boswell in his introductory pages, 
 ' to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of 
 Mr. Mason in his Memoirs of Gray ' — in other 
 vv^ords, to intersperse the text with letters which 
 exhibit the man. 'I am absolutely certain,' he 
 had already written to his friend Temple, ' that 
 my mode of biography, which gives ... a view 
 of his [Johnson's] mind in his letters and con- 
 versations, is the most perfect that can be con- 
 ceived.' Thus the book that Johnson found 
 ' mighty dull,' supplied the proximate pattern for 
 Bos well's masterpiece; and as Horace Walpole 
 was not slow to perceive, marked the starting 
 point of a new departure in literary portraiture. 
 While rejoicing — for Walpole too had views on 
 style — that the *■ Memoirs ' did not imitate ' the 
 teeth-breaking diction of Johnson,' he wrote on 
 its first appearance in 1775 that Mts merit did 
 not depend on the competence of the present 
 age.' ' You have,' he told Mason, ' fixed the 
 method of biography, and whoever will write a 
 life well must imitate you.' Walpole's precept 
 and the practice of Boswell fairly justify some 
 brief parley with that now occulted ' Person of 
 Importance in his Day ' — Gray's biographer. 
 For, although in our time the Rev. William 
 
Gray's Biographer 245 
 
 Mason, Rector of Aston and Precentor of the 
 Cathedral Church of St. Peter in York, is ahnost 
 entirely forgotten, in his own he was undoubtedly 
 a ' person of importance.' Even Hartley Cole- 
 ridge, who has written of him at large in the 
 ' Northern Worthies,' more, it is to be suspected, 
 because he came within the scheme of that 
 Boreal Biography than from any special admira- 
 tion for his character and achievement, is con- 
 strained to admit that, besides being the friend 
 and biographer of Gray, he was, at the time of 
 writing, ' the most considerable poet that York- 
 shire had produced since Marvell,' and the hun- 
 dred-page estimate winds up with the statement 
 that ' for many years of his life he was England's 
 greatest living poet.' This latter, to be sure, is not 
 saying much, though it is difficult to dispute it. 
 Mason was a placid, amiable, well-educated man, 
 and also a highly-respectable specimen of the com- 
 fortably-beneficed ecclesiastic of that apathetic 
 Georgian epoch, when, it has been said, little re- 
 mained in the larger part of the English Church 
 but ' a decorous sense of duty and a sleepy routine 
 of practice.' His clerical functions left him ample 
 leisure for ' Shakespeare and the musical glasses '; 
 and his literary tastes secured him the friendship 
 of Gray and Walpole, of whom he was the 
 
246 Gray's Biographer 
 
 diligent correspondent. Without exceptional ima- 
 gination, he had considerable facility and metrical 
 accomplishment. He wrote elegies and Pindaric 
 odes, tragedies on Greek models with English 
 subjects, satires which are neat but not deadly, 
 and blank verses on gardening — in all of which 
 he ' neither sinks nor soars.' ^ Most of his work 
 is difficult reading now, although we know one 
 septuagenarian who remembers studying ' Car- 
 actacus ' in his boyhood with romantic interest; 
 and we have little doubt that ladies of quality 
 once wept as freely over ' Elfrida ' as did Lady 
 Hervey over Home's ' Douglas ' or Lady Brads- 
 haigh over Richardson's *• Clarissa.' But it would 
 need complicated hydraulics to extract a solitary 
 tear of sensibility from the present generation. 
 Autres temps, autre s pleurs I 
 
 However this may be, the ' rural Pan ' of the 
 period (doubtless a Pan in a Periwig!) appears to 
 have ' breathed ' benignly on the ' helpless cradle ' 
 of the future author of ' The English Garden.' 
 
 ^ Mason himself professed to claim no more than this : 
 
 ' So, through life's current let me glide, 
 
 Nor sink too loav, nor rise too high. 
 Sate if Content my progress guide, 
 And golden Mediocrity.'' 
 But we must not take modesty too much at its word. 
 
Gray's Biographer 247 
 
 Mason's father, the Vicar of Holy Trinity in King- 
 ston-upon-HuU, where, in 1724, Mason was 
 born, not only personally superintended his educa- 
 tion, but fondly fostered his bias towards verse- 
 writing and painting — a course which. Hartley 
 Coleridge observes, made it unnecessary for him 
 to add ' the curse of disobedience to the calamities 
 of poetry,' and which, in his twenty-second year, 
 he dutifully acknowledged in heroic couplets. 
 At St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was 
 entered in 1743, he found a congenial tutor in 
 Dr. Powell, who, besides directing his attention 
 to classic models, encouraged him in cultivating 
 what Thomas Warton calls ' the warblings of the 
 Doric oate.' Other Cambridge friends were his 
 uncle. Dr. Balguy, and later, Hurd, afterwards 
 Bishop of Worcester. His first model was Milton; 
 and his earliest essays, ' II Bellicoso ' and ' II Paci- 
 fico,' published years afterwards in the first vol- 
 ume of Pearch's ' Miscellany,' were obviously 
 prompted by ' L' Allegro ' and ' II Penseroso.' A 
 more ambitious performance, ' Musaeus, a Mon- 
 ody to the Memory of Mr. Pope,' was a professed 
 imitation of ' Lycidas.' This, Gray, then living 
 at Cambridge, was, by the good offices of a 
 friend, induced to revise, although he was as yet 
 unknown to the author; and on Dr. Powell's 
 
248 Gray's Biographer 
 
 advice it was published by Dodsley in April 1747. 
 It had no small success, and passed into a third 
 edition. To the reader of to-day, in spite of the 
 neatness of the versification, it will seem a rather 
 mechanical ' melodious tear ': but, it may be ad- 
 mitted that the poet shows a certain originality 
 by making Milton, Chaucer, and Spenser visit 
 Pope, * in the trance preceding his departure,' for 
 the purpose of assuring him of their own poetical 
 unworthiness. This they do in character. 
 Chaucer, the Tityrus of the deputation, thanks 
 Pope for making his ' sely rymes,' ' ren right sote.' 
 Milton, its Thyrsis, addresses him Miltonically 
 in sonorous blank verse; while Spenser (Colin 
 Clout), after the fashion of M. Edmond Rostand, 
 borrows the imagery of his stanza from the farm- 
 yard: 
 
 Like as in village tioop of birdlings trim, 
 Where Chanticleer his red crest high doth hold, 
 And quacking ducks, that wont in lake to swim, 
 And turkeys proud, and pigeons nothing bold; 
 If chance the peacock doth his plumes unfold, 
 Eftsoons their meaner beauties all decaying, 
 He glist'neth purple and he glist'neth gold, 
 Now with bright green, now blue himself arraying. 
 Such is thy beauty bright, all other beauties swaying. 
 
 To which Pope replies in a valedictory allocu- 
 
Gray's Biographer 249 
 
 tion which shows that Mason could also success- 
 fully echo the Popesque note. Whether, as his 
 critic maliciously suggests, the speakers' mode of 
 speech be, or be not, studied from Pope's para- 
 phrases rather than the originals, these imitations 
 certainly serve to explain why, in after years, 
 Mason was so quick to decide on the fictitious 
 element in Chatterton's Rowley poems. 
 
 According to Mr. Ralph Straus's recent life of 
 Dodsley, the reception of ' Musaeus ' made Mason 
 anxious to undertake the task, afterwards so 
 liberally performed by Thomas Warton, of edit- 
 ing Milton's Minor Poems. ' I have often thought 
 it,' he writes, ' a great pitty that many of the 
 Beautiful Peices it [the " 3rd vol. of Milton "] 
 contains shou'd be so little read as they certainly 
 are, I fancy this has arisen from the bad thing 
 they are tack'd to [?]. I want vastly to have a 
 seperate edition of the Tragedy, Mask, Lycidas 
 & Lallegro, &c.' But Tonson, to whom the 
 copyright belonged, proved intractable, and the 
 idea came to nothing. Meanwhile, early in 1748, 
 Dodsley brought out the first three volumes of 
 his ' Collection of Poems by Several Hands,' in 
 the last of which he reprinted ' Musaeus ' (with a 
 ridiculous illustration by Frank Hayman); and 
 included a fresh piece by Mason, an ' Ode to a 
 
250 Gray's Biographer 
 
 Water-Nymph.' With this arises Gray's first 
 written reference to Mason, who was seven years 
 his junior : ' Mr. Mason [he writes from Stoke to 
 Dr. Wharton of Durham] is my Acquaintance. 
 I liked that Ode very much [the ode just men- 
 tioned], but have found no one else, that did. he 
 has much Fancy, little Judgement, & a good 
 deal of Modesty. I take him for a good & well- 
 meaning Creature; but then he is really in 
 Simplicity a Childy & loves everybody he meets 
 with: he reads little or nothing, writes abundance 
 & that with a design to make his fortune by it.' ' 
 Mason had the courage to reprint this not en- 
 tirely flattering picture in his later ' Memoirs ' of 
 Gray, remarking only on the last words that, at 
 the period referred to, he was, in truth, ' per- 
 fectly well satisfied if his publications furnished 
 him with a few guineas to see a play or an opera.' 
 But evidently he did not share Gray's nervous 
 horror of being paid for his productions. As re- 
 gards the ' Ode to a Water-Nymph,' it may here 
 be noted that Dodsley's version closes with a 
 laudation of Lyttelton and Lyttelton's eloquence, 
 of the beauties of Lyttelton's seat at Hagley, and 
 
 ^ Tovey's 'Letters of Thomas Gray,' 1900, i, 178. 
 This extract illustrates Gray's employment and neglect of 
 capitals, as also his use of the ampersand. 
 
Grays Biographer 251 
 
 of the monody on the death of his charming first 
 wife, which had come out in Dodsley's second 
 volume. All this was afterwards suppressed, and 
 the poem ' concluded according to the Author's 
 original idea ' — a proceeding for which no ex- 
 planation is vouchsafed, though it is easy to sug- 
 gest one. Whether Mason was already acquainted 
 with Lyttelton does not appear. But if, as stated 
 by i\lr. Courtney ^ in his attractive little study of 
 Dodsley's collection, most of the pieces it con- 
 tained were submitted to Lyttelton before they 
 were ' passed for printing,' nothing would be 
 more natural than that it should occur, or should 
 even be suggested by Dodsley, to one of the con- 
 tributors that an opportunity might be found for 
 gracefully flattering a distinguished statesman and 
 patron of letters. And Mason, if not a strikingly 
 original thinker, was quite acute enough to anti- 
 cipate and act upon the worldly-wise injunction 
 of Martin Routh of Magdalen: 'Attach yourself 
 to some great man. Sir! Many have risen to 
 eminence in that way.' 
 
 Gray's letter to Wharton is dated 5th June 
 1748; and in another to Walpole he speaks of his 
 new friend's ' Musaeus ' as seeming * to carry 
 
 ^ ' Dodsley's Collection of Poetry : its Contents and 
 Contributors.' By W. P. Courtney, 19 10, p. 2. 
 
252 Grays Biographer 
 
 with it a promise at least of something good to 
 come.' In 1745 Mason had taken his B.A., and 
 quitted St. John's with a valedictory Ode to Dr. 
 Powell. In the following year a second Ode 
 commemorated his expectation to return to Cam- 
 bridge, since, chiefly on the recommendation of 
 Gray, he had been nominated to a Fellowship in 
 Pembroke Hall. Owing, however, to the opposi- 
 tion of the Master, Dr. Long, he was not elected 
 until early in 1749. In February of the same 
 year he published a monologue entitled ' Isis,' 
 directed against the supposed spirit of Jacobitism 
 prevailing at Oxford, as evidenced by recent dis- 
 orderly demonstrations amongst the gownsmen in 
 favour of King James the Third. In this the 
 goddess, tearful and dilapidated, or, as her poet 
 puts it, * in all the awful negligence of woe,' is 
 made to invoke the shades of Sidney and Hamp- 
 den, of Addison and Locke, to console her for the 
 disloyalty of her seditious sons. The piece was 
 promptly parodied by Byrom, and being also 
 answered with considerable vigour by the future 
 laureate, Thomas Warton, then of Trinity Col- 
 lege, Oxford, Mason, perhaps not uninfluenced 
 by a polite reference to ' Musaeus,' had the good 
 sense to admit himself outdone. His next effort 
 was a composition to be set to music, written, at 
 
Gray's Biographer 253 
 
 the request of the authorities, for the installation 
 as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge of 
 that egregious personage, Thomas Pelham Holies, 
 Duke of Newcastle, then Secretary of State for 
 the Northern Department in the Pelham Admin- 
 istration. The musician was Dr. Boyce; and it 
 was performed in the Senate House on ist July 
 1749; as part of what Gray, making report to 
 Wharton, calls a 'Week of Wonders': 'Every 
 one, while it lasted, was very gay, & very busy 
 in the Morning, & very owlish & very tipsy at 
 Night. I make no exception [he adds] from the 
 Chancellour to Blew-Coat [the Vice-Chancellor's 
 servant]. Mason's Ode was the only Entertain- 
 ment, that had any tolerable Elegance ; & for my 
 own Part, I think it (with some little abatements) 
 uncommonly well on such an Occasion.' 
 
 By this time its author is ' growing apace into 
 his good Graces, as he knows him more.' ' He is 
 very ingenious with great Good-Nature & Sim- 
 plicity, a little vain, but in so harmless & so 
 comical a Way, that it does not ofFend one at all; 
 a little ambitious, but withall so ignorant in the 
 World & its Ways, that this does not hurt him 
 in one's Opinion, so sincere & so undisguised 
 that no Mind with a Spark of Generosity would 
 ever think of hurting him, he lies so open to 
 
254 Gray's Biographer 
 
 Injury, but so indolent, that if he cannot overcome 
 this Habit, all his good Qualities will signify- 
 nothing at all. after all I like him so well, I could 
 wish you knew him.' Some of these ' character- 
 istics of the poetical temperament,' as Chalmers 
 calls them, seem to have adhered to Mason 
 through life; others, it is significantly added, were 
 * effaced by a closer intimacy with the world.' 
 But from Gray's words, it is clear that Mason was 
 already in a fair way to become the familiar 
 *■ Skroddles ' of their future correspondence. 
 
 That correspondence, nevertheless, did not be- 
 gin until July 1753, when Gray's first published 
 letter to Mason is dated. In the interval Gray's 
 famous ' Elegy ' came out; and in the same letter 
 in which he writes to Walpole of its premature 
 publication, he mentions a play, ' wrote by a per- 
 son he has a very good opinion of.' He proposes 
 to send Walpole the beginning : * It is (unfortun- 
 ately) in the manner of the ancient drama, with 
 choruses, which I am to my shame the occasion 
 of; for, as great part of it was at first written in 
 that form, I would not suffer him to change it to 
 a play fit for the stage, and as he intended, be- 
 cause the lyric parts are the best of it, they must 
 have been lost. The story is Saxon, and the lan- 
 guage has a tang of Shakespeare, that suits an old- 
 
Gray's Biographer 255 
 
 fashioned fable very well.' In a later letter he 
 tells Walpole that the author and the piece are in 
 town together; and begs for Walpole's observa- 
 tions, engaging not to betray more of his ver- 
 dict than may be 'fit for the ears of a tender 
 parent,' who, he adds, ' has ingenuity and merit 
 enough (whatever his drama may have) to bear 
 hearing his faults very patiently.' Whether Wal- 
 pole's criticism was favourable or unfavourable is 
 not recorded ; but the play was published by 
 Knapton in March 1752, under the title of ' El- 
 frida; a dramatic poem, written on the model of 
 the antient Greek Tragedy. By Mr. Mason.' 
 
 Prefixed to ' Elfrida ' is a sequence of letters in 
 which the author sets forth his attempt to write 
 an English play on Greek lines, a contradiction 
 in conception to which, in spite of all opposition, 
 he continued obstinately attached. Hartley 
 Coleridge discusses these prolegomena, as well as 
 the play itself, with much learning and at con- 
 siderable length; but it is useless to reproduce 
 here his arguments for or against a work no 
 longer under discussion. The real i^lfthryth or 
 Elfrida, daughter of Orgar, ealdorman of Devon- 
 shire, became the second wife of Edgar, king of 
 England. Subsequently, according to William of 
 Malmesbury, she entered upon a wedded career 
 
256 Gray's Biographer 
 
 quite discreditable enough to qualify her for the 
 highest walks of Attic tragedy. Mason, however, 
 did not needlessly hamper himself with historical 
 accuracy. He makes Edgar send his minister 
 Athelwold to offer his crown to Elfrida. But 
 Athelwold falls in love with the lady himself; 
 marries her, and hides her — with a convenient 
 chorus of British virgins — in a secluded castle in 
 Harewood Forest. To this retreat she is tracked 
 by her father and Edgar. Athelwold is killed by 
 the king in single combat; and dies murmuring 
 (like Richardson's Lovelace), 'This atones for 
 all.' Thereupon Elfrida promptly gets her to a 
 nunnery. The play contains many careful lyric 
 passages, especially in the choruses; and 'the 
 Shakespearean tang ' is often not unskilful. But 
 the primary and fundamental difficulty — the re- 
 conciling of English sentimental drama with the 
 atmosphere and machinery of the Greek stage — 
 is not satisfactorily overcome. In book form 
 ' Elfrida ' had, notwithstanding, considerable suc- 
 cess, but at the date of issue no attempt was made 
 to put it on the boards.^ 
 
 ^ Some of its admirers must have been extravagant 
 enough to satisfy the most exacting literary self-esteem. A 
 rhymer in the ' Gentleman's Magazine' for March 1752 — 
 with a profusion worthy of Browning's Italian sonneteer — 
 
Gray's Biographer 257 
 
 Towards the close of 1753, Mason lost the 
 father who had so carefully watched over his 
 boyish studies. From his correspondence with 
 Gray, it would seem that a second marriage had 
 practically deprived him of his paternal estate, 
 and reduced his means to his Pembroke Hall 
 Fellowship. He consequently took orders in 1 754; 
 and being fortunate enough to secure a patron in 
 the Earl of Holderness (a Secretary of State), was 
 appointed, not only his domestic chaplain, but 
 was presented to the living of Aston, near Rother- 
 ham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In the 
 
 contrives in six lines to compare Mason to (i) Sophocles, 
 (2) Plato, (3) Pindar, (4) Homer, and (5) Virgil. Then, 
 pausing to regret that his 
 
 'noble scenes should stand no chance 
 With a dull Pantomime, or paltry dance ! 
 he goes on to predict that 
 'Elfrida still shall shine, and Mason's name 
 Distinguish'd stand in the bright roll of fame, 
 Till time shall stop, 'till nature's frame decay, 
 And earth, and sea, and heav'n pass in one blaze away.' 
 And yet Mason's name is not included in Mr. Humphry 
 Ward's Pantheon of ' English Poets ' ! Nor — ode-maker as 
 he was — does he gain a place in Mr. Edmund Gosse's 
 anthology of that form; although, of necessity, he finds 
 judicial record in Mr Courthope's monumental ' History 
 of English Poetry.' The lines in the ' Gentleman ' are 
 signed ' R. D.' (Query — Robert Dodsley.) 
 S 
 
258 Gray's Biographer 
 
 former of these capacities his duties carried him 
 to the Continent, where he met another Cam- 
 bridge man, William Whitehead, then travelling 
 as governor, or tutor, to Lord Villiers and Lord 
 Nuneham. All three are mentioned in a letter to 
 Gray from Hanover of June 1755, in which 
 Mason regales his correspondent with a burlesque 
 kit-cat of the local librarian (who might have 
 served as a model for Chodowiecki), and an 
 account of a Hamburg lady with the uneupho- 
 nious name of Belcht, who had read the ' Elegy ' 
 with mild enthusiasm, but was entranced by the 
 'Nitt Toats' of Young. In March of the following 
 year, reverting to the choric measures with which 
 ' Elfrida ' had originated. Mason printed four 
 odes — on Memory, Independency, Melancholy, 
 and the Fate of Tyranny. 
 
 It is said that the odes were not well received, 
 and that the tendency of the author to purple 
 epithets and alliterative art was freely criticized. 
 Nevertheless, a second edition followed in April. 
 Of the four pieces named that on Memory is the 
 best, though Gray regarded as as ' superlative ' 
 a Gray-like couplet in ' Melancholy ' (' To a 
 Friend'): 
 
 While thro' the west, where sinks the crimson Day, 
 Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her banner gray. 
 
Gray's Biographer 259 
 
 'The Fate of Tyranny' is a paraphrase of 
 part of the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah — a task 
 which might well have overburdened even a bolder 
 bard than Mason; and whether 'Independency' 
 is better or worse than Smollett is, as Hartley 
 Coleridge says, no matter. In August 1757 
 Horace Walpole printed at Strawberry Hill, and 
 Dodsley published Gray's ' Progress of Poesy ' 
 and 'The Bard'; after which, in March 1758, 
 Gray's Odes and two of Mason's were included 
 in the sixth and final volume of Dodsley 's Col- 
 lection. How, not long afterwards, both Mason 
 and his friend were assailed by the parodists 
 Lloyd and Colman, has already been related in 
 the preceding paper; ^ and it is only necessary to 
 add now, what was not then stated, that Mason 
 seems to have taken the matter much more to 
 heart than Gray, who, having apparently assimi- 
 lated Lanoue's precept ' la plainte est pour le sot,' 
 philosophically declined to ' combustle ' about it. 
 But Mason had more to lose ; for the ' Bard ' is 
 still studied, and few have even heard of the 
 'Ode to Memory.' 
 
 By this date, Mason must already have been 
 far advanced with ' Caractacus,' another and 
 more ambitious dramatic poem ' on the model of 
 ^ See ' Robert Lloyd,' pp. 220-2. 
 
26o Gray^s Biographer 
 
 the ancient Greek tragedy,' for Gray is already 
 criticizing some form of it in December 1756; 
 and by September of the next year has read over 
 the MS. twice ' not with pleasure only, but with 
 emotion.' ' The contrivance, the manners, the 
 interests, the passions, and the expression go (he 
 considers) beyond the dramatic part of" Elfrida " 
 many leagues'; and he proceeds to devote one of 
 the longest of his letters to close criticism of the 
 details. * Caractacus ' was published in May 
 iy59, and deals with the story of that King 
 of the Silures who, taking sanctuary with the 
 Druids in Anglesea, was afterwards captured and 
 sent to Rome. The Chorus, still a salient feature 
 of Mason's plan, is composed of Druids and 
 Bards. The background is one that lends itself 
 to impressive landscape painting; the fable is 
 stronger ; the characterization more firm ; and 
 the lyric parts more finished than in ' Elfrida.' 
 Indeed, it would not be difficult to make quota- 
 tions, could they be more than dislocated frag- 
 ments. But the insuperable difficulty remains, 
 that, however effective as a dramatic poem, 
 ' Caractacus,' like its predecessor, is no more an 
 acting play than, according to Sir Arthur Pinero, 
 is Browning's 'Blot in the 'Scutcheon.' In 1772 
 Colman brought out an adapted ' Elfrida,' against 
 
Gray's Biographer 261 
 
 the author's will, threatening him, when he ex- 
 postulated, with a chorus of Grecian washer- 
 women. Mason afterwards altered it himself; 
 and it was again performed, without success, in 
 1776. A somewhat better fate attended the con- 
 current production of ' Caractacus,' but even 
 that never obtained any permanent place on the 
 stage/ 
 
 After ' Caractacus,' Mason's next publication 
 was a shilling pamphlet of three elegies issued by 
 Dodsley in December 1762, though dated 1763. 
 Two of these, the elegy * Written in the Garden 
 
 ^ Walpole's opinion of ' Caractacus ' was not as favour- 
 able as Gray's. ' Mr. Mason [he tells George Montagu in 
 June, 1759] has published another drama, called 'Car- 
 actacus'; there are some incantations poetical enough, and 
 odes so Greek as to have very little meaning. But the 
 whole is laboured, uninteresting, and no more resembling 
 the manners of Britons than of Japanese.' On the other 
 hand, the ' Biographia Dramatica ' is almost as hysterical 
 as Mr. Urban's critic of ' Elfrida.' Conceding that * Car- 
 actacus ' was never intended for the English stage, ' in the 
 closet ' — it goes on — ' it lays the strongest claim to im- 
 mortality, and is one among a few instances, that poetical 
 genius is so far from its decline at this time in these 
 realms, that we have writers now living, some of whose 
 works no British bard whatsoever, Shakspeare, Spenser 
 and Milton not excepted, would have reason to blush at 
 being the author of.' 
 
262 Grays Biographer 
 
 of a Friend ' (Robert Wood, the author of 
 ' Pahnyra ' and ' Baalbec '), and that ' On the 
 Death of a Lady ' (Maria, Lady Coventry), 
 which was so great a favourite with Rogers — are 
 among his best efforts in this kind. Another 
 Elegy, not included in the trio, and inscribed to 
 Dr. Hurd, then rector of Thurcaston in Lei- 
 cestershire, figures as a dedication to ' Caracta- 
 cus.' Here Mason develops his dramatic purpose. 
 His desire, he says, had been to persuade the 
 tragic Muse of Sophocles, with her * golden lyre' 
 and ' buskin'd pomp,' to bring to Britain her 
 ' choral throng,' and ' mingle Attic art with 
 Shakespeare's fire.' To which the Muse replies 
 
 oracularly : 
 
 Mistaken suppliant, know, 
 To light in Shakespeare's breast the dazzling flame 
 
 Exhausted all Parnassus could bestow. 
 True; Art remains; and, if from his bright page 
 
 Thy mimic power one vivid beam can seize, 
 Proceed; and in that best of tasks engage. 
 Which tends at once to profit and to please. 
 
 In 1764 these pieces, with all his previous 
 poems, except the 'Isis' and the 'Installation 
 Ode ' (which latter was probably withheld be- 
 cause the author had got nothing out of ' Old 
 Fobus,' as he and Gray profanely called the Duke 
 of Newcastle), were collected in one volume. The 
 
Gray's Biographer 263 
 
 former reference to Lyttelton in the ' Ode to a 
 Water Nymph ' was withdrawn,' Mason having 
 now a practicable patron in Lord Holderness, to 
 whom the book was dedicated, and who, besides 
 giving him the Aston living and helping to procure 
 him a chaplainship to George II, had recently 
 obtained for him the precentorship of York Cathe- 
 dral. This, with a York residentiary canonry, 
 which he owed to another friend, Frederick 
 Montagu, increased his means by about ^400 
 per annum, so that his hunger for advancement — 
 his ' insatiable repining mouth,' Gray called it — if 
 not satisfied, should, for the moment at least, 
 have been appeased. The next important occur- 
 rence in his life was his marriage on 25th Sept- 
 ember 1 765,^ to Miss Mary Sherman of Kingston- 
 upon-HuU, a beautiful and amiable young woman, 
 to whom he seems to have been genuinely attached. 
 His happiness, however, was of brief duration. 
 Mrs. Mason proved consumptive, and in spite of 
 sedulous nursing, died at the Bristol Hot Wells 
 in March 1767, being then twenty-eight. She is 
 
 ^ In a letter of June 1760 Gray speaks of Lyttelton as 
 ' your old patron,' so that, at some time, Mason must have 
 had hopes from that quarter. 
 
 ^ An extract from the register of St. Mary Lowgate was 
 communicated to 'Notes and Queries ' in October 1881 by 
 the late Arthur Munby. 
 
264 Gray's Biographer 
 
 buried in the north aisle of Bristol Cathedral 
 under an epitaph composed by her husband 
 which, like most of Mason's work, has been 
 praised and dispraised, ^j one modern critic of 
 distinction it is frankly denounced as 'fustian'; 
 but the popular voice — influenced probably by the 
 occasion — is in its favour/ Mason's own part of 
 it, the first twelve lines, may be conventional 
 enough;'^ but the beauty of the final quatrain, 
 contributed by Gray, who also wrote an admirable 
 letter to his bereaved friend, would be sufficient to 
 efface far better lapidary work than Mason's: 
 
 Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die, 
 
 ('Twas ev'n to thee) yet the dread path once trod, 
 
 Heav'n lifts its everlasting portals high, 
 
 And bids ' the pure in heart behold their God.' 
 
 * A sentimental eighteenth-century admirer, and votary 
 of the ' Sorrows of Werther,' Miss Eliza Dawson of Oxton 
 in Yorkshire, liad long cherished the hope of seeing Mason 
 on account of this epitaph. But when her hopes were at 
 last realized, she was dismayed to find him 'a little fat old 
 man of hard-teatured countenance,' entirely absorbed in 
 his game of whist. (Paston's ' Side-Lights on the Georgian 
 Period,' 1902, p. 259.) 
 
 - Of one expression : * She bow'd to taste the wave,' it 
 is but fair to state that, according to Pearch's ' Miscellany,' 
 1775, i, 217, Mrs. Mason actually died 'while drinking 
 a glass of t!ie waters.' 
 
Gray's Biographer 265 
 
 Gray says that Hurd objected to the third line. 
 But the imagery is legitimately Biblical, and it is 
 hard to see why objection was raised. In any 
 case, it is fortunate that Mason did not avail him- 
 self of Gray's generous permission to ' make 
 another ' line in its place if he pleased. 
 
 That Mason deeply felt his loss there is no 
 doubt. Although long, in Gray's phrase, 'in a 
 " mariturient " way,' he had been over deliberate 
 in deciding. He was forty when he became a 
 husband, and his wedded life lasted no longer 
 than eighteen months. But it gave him some- 
 thing to think of besides himself; it was his 
 happiest time; and, as Southey says, being happy 
 he was cheerful. After his wife's death, he lapsed 
 again into his old listless habit of discontent — a 
 discontent no doubt intensified by the remembered 
 ' tempo felice.' His chief distraction seems to 
 have been gardening. Already, in the dedicatory 
 sonnet to Lord Holderness prefixed to the poems 
 of 1764, he had referred to this: 
 
 Here, as the light-wing'd moments glide serene, 
 I weave the bower, around the tufted mead 
 In careless flow the simple pathway lead, 
 
 And strew with many a rose tlie shaven green.' 
 
 He was a fervent adherent of the new landscape 
 school; and for the further solace of his mind 
 
266 Gray's Biographer 
 
 began, soon after his wife's death, to work at his 
 most prolonged poetical effort, the ' English 
 Garden,' of which the first book, setting forth 
 the pervading principle, appeared in 1772. The 
 three remaining books, containing practical direc- 
 tions and making some two thousand five hundred 
 lines in all, followed at leisurely intervals, the last 
 appearing in 1782, when an Irish friend, Dr. 
 Burgh, added an elaborate commentary and notes. 
 Warton, who did not like Mason, nevertheless 
 describes the 'English Garden ' as ' didactic poetry 
 brought to perfection by the happy combination 
 of judicious precepts with the most elegant orna- 
 ments of language and imagery.' The verdict is 
 a little machine-made ; but it was no doubt 
 honest. Hartley Coleridge, writing many years 
 later, thought it ' one of the dullest poems he had 
 ever attempted to read,' and he, obviously was 
 equally in earnest. Which is right? A not un- 
 reasonable answer would be * Both.' Warton was 
 judging the ' English Garden 'as an eighteenth 
 centry didactic poem. To-day we do not care 
 greatly for didactic poetry, however ingeniously 
 decorated. Yet we should hardly go as far as 
 Hartley Coleridge. Those who are curious in 
 landscape gardening (and there are still a i^\N\)\ 
 those who love to read of bowling-greens, and 
 
Grays Biographer 267 
 
 Ha Ha's, and cascades, and hermitages, and the 
 temples of Signer Borra, and the sham ruins of 
 Sanderson Miller, to say nothing of that wise 
 Sidonian king whom Fanny Burney called * Ab- 
 dolomine ' — might well find their account in 
 Mason's pages. It is true that blank verse offered 
 pitfalls to his taste for redundancy; it is true also 
 that, before the first book appeared, he had lost 
 the patient and judicious critic who had so often 
 pruned his luxuriances and 'castigated' his vocabu- 
 lary. To this he himself refers in opening Book iii : 
 
 Clos'd is that curious ear, by Death's cold hand. 
 That mark'd each error of my careless strain 
 With kind severity; to whom my Muse 
 Still lov'd to whisper, what she meant to sing 
 In louder accent; to whose taste supreme 
 She first and last appeal'd, nor wish'd for praise, 
 Save when his smile was herald to her fame. 
 
 And so forth. Some lines that follow refer to a 
 special memorial which he erected to his friend 
 at Aston. This was a rustic alcove, or summer- 
 house, which contained an urn and medallion 
 portrait of Gray. Over the entrance was a lyre 
 surmounted by the poet's motto from Pindar to 
 his Odes; and below, on a tablet, with slight 
 variation, came one of the discarded stanzas of 
 the 'Elegy': 
 
268 Grafs Biographer 
 
 Here scatter'd oft, the loveliest of the year, 
 
 By hands unseen, are showers of violets found j 
 
 The red-breast loves to build and warble here^ 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 
 
 According to Murray's Handbook of Yorkshire 
 for 1904, at that date this historic summer-house 
 was still in existence at Aston, where the garden 
 continued to preserve the old stretches of green- 
 sward, the winding walks between the trees, and 
 the openings which revealed the ' distant blue' of 
 the Derbyshire hills referred to in Mason's last 
 and best anniversary sonnet: 
 
 Yet still my eyes can seize the distant blue 
 
 Of yon wild Peak, and still my footsteps bold, 
 
 Unprop'd by staff, support me to behold 
 
 How Nature, to her Maker's mandate true. 
 
 Calls Spring's impartial heralds to the view. 
 
 The snowdrop pale, the crocus spik'd with gold. 
 
 On 30th July 1 771, Gray died, and was buried 
 on 6th August in Stoke-Poges churchyard. He 
 left to Mason _^500, together with all his ' books, 
 manuscripts, coins, music printed or written, and 
 papers of all kinds, to preserve or destroy at his own 
 discretion.' Out of this bequest Mason began, 
 not long afterwards, to prepare Gray's 'Memoirs.' 
 Borrowing a hint either from his own indolence, 
 or Conyers Middleton's life of Cicero, and dis- 
 carding the stereotyped method of his day, he 
 
Gray's Biographer 269 
 
 proceeded, by printing Gray's letters with a brief 
 connecting narrative and notes, to make him, as 
 far as possible, ' his own biographer,' and in 
 this way to present 'a regular and clear delinea- 
 tion of his life and character.' His plan proved 
 excellent; and it was at once adopted by subse- 
 quent writers as the true method of life-writing. 
 It remains the true method of life-writing still — 
 where there are letters, be it understood; but in 
 Mason's case there was one grave defect, of which 
 his contemporaries were happily ignorant. Regard- 
 ing Gray's correspondence as mere raw material, 
 he treated it in a way which would now be re- 
 garded as disingenuous. A biographer is no doubt 
 entitled to suppress or withhold as he thinks fit, 
 but he is not justified in garbling or falsifying. 
 Mason practically did both. He left out passages 
 without indicating that anything had been 
 omitted ; he turned two letters into one ; and he 
 freely altered the wording in others where he 
 thought alteration was required. He may possibly 
 have held that he was justified in what he did by 
 the custom of his day; and it is not necessary to 
 suppose him wilfully misleading. But he certainly 
 cannot be defended on one plea which has been 
 put forward in his defence, namely — that he could 
 not foresee the future interest which would attach 
 
270 Gray's Biographer 
 
 to Gray as an author. The question is one of 
 editorial good faith; and it remains a serious draw- 
 back to a work which Rogers read and re-read 
 delightedly; which Miss Mitford regarded as 
 * one of the most attractive books ever written; ' 
 and which, sophisticated though it be, does not 
 give an unfavourable or inadequate picture of 
 Mason's friend and critic. 
 
 Little requires to be said of Mason after the 
 appearance in 1775 of Gray's biography. One 
 of the accidents of its preparation was that it 
 brought about a prolonged correspondence with 
 Horace Walpole, only interrupted at last by politi- 
 cal differences. The first book of 'The English 
 Garden ' also led to the ' Heroic Epistle to Sir 
 William Chambers,' already sufficiently treated 
 in a former collection of these papers,^ although 
 it may be stated here, as further proof of the ex- 
 travagant praise which, even when its author 
 wrote anonymously, he received from his contem- 
 poraries, that Hannah More regarded it as, both 
 for matter and versification, ' the best satire since 
 the "Dunciad"!' Mason followed up the 
 ' Heroic Epistle' by some minor satirical pieces, 
 which add little to his reputation, even if they 
 
 ^ 'Old Kensington Palace, and Other Papers,' 1910, 
 p. i22, et seq. 
 
Gray's Biographer 271 
 
 reveal unsuspected power of epigrammatic invect- 
 ive. Beyond dispersed Odes and Sonnets, his 
 chief remainins: work was was a translation into 
 heroic verse of Du Fresnoy's ' De Arte Graphica,' 
 dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who annotated 
 it. He also painted Mason's portrait; and, by 
 will, left him Cooper's miniature of Milton.^ 
 Politics occupied much of Mason's later years, 
 though, besides gardening, he found some time 
 for hobbies such as painting and church music. 
 His musical gifts were fully recognized, and he 
 was one of the favoured persons to whom Dr. 
 Burney presented his book on the ' Present State 
 of Music in France and Italy.' Of his painting, 
 examples are the altar-piece of the ' Good Samari- 
 tan' at Nuneham church, and a not-very-pleasing 
 pencil-sketch of Gray at Pembroke College.^ As 
 
 1 Mason left this to Dr. Burgh, and it is now at Rokeby 
 in the possession of the Morritt family. A letter from 
 Mason to Malone respecting it is printed in Prior's 
 ' Malone,' i860, p. 193. Altiiough it is by Samuel Cooper 
 it is not now held to represent Milton (see Dr. G. C. 
 Williamson on ' The Cooper Miniature ' in the ' Catalogue 
 of the Portraits, Prints, and Writings of John Milton,' 
 exhibited at Christ's College, Cambridge, 1908, pp. 17, 
 ,80-2). 
 
 ^ There is a copy of it in Gosse's ' Works of Gray,' 
 1884, vol. iii. 
 
272 Gray's Biographer 
 
 to politics, the acme of his many glorifications of 
 Freedom and Liberty was a Secular Ode (1788) 
 on the Anniversary of the Landing of King 
 William at Torbay. But the terrible object 
 lesson of the French Revolution proved as dis- 
 turbing to Mason as to Walpole; and in 1797 
 he published a shuddering palinode, bidding 
 * A vaunt!' to 'abhorr'd Democracy.' In April 
 of the same year he died, aged seventy-two. He 
 has a monument in Westminster Abbey, next to 
 Gray, and a tablet in Aston Church. 
 
 Both as a writer and a personality Mason is 
 exceedingly difficult to appraise. That much of 
 the simplicity, modesty and amiability with which 
 Gray credited him on their first acquaintance 
 was not permanently done away by subsequent 
 commerce with the world, is quite conceivable; 
 nor is it necessary to doubt that he ' discharged 
 the common offices of life as a man and a clergy- 
 man, with a uniform propriety and decorum.' 
 In later life he inherited an estate which brought 
 his income up to ^^1,500 a year; and of this he 
 is said to have given away a third in * patronage 
 and charity.' But his correspondence, published 
 by Mitford long after his death, does not exhibit 
 him in an entirely attractive aspect. He praises 
 retirement yet hankers after the * Cambridge 
 
Gray's Biographer 273 
 
 coffee-houses' ; he combines the most lofty view 
 of poetry with the keenest eye for the financial 
 results; he courts criticism and finesses to avert 
 it ; he preaches ' golden mediocrity' (an ill-chosen 
 phrase I), but is always pushing uneasily for fresh 
 preferment. These after all are only human 
 frailties, though they illustrate the inexpediency 
 of following up ' the full voice which circles 
 round the grave' by the frank disclosure of 
 familiar communications. As to his poetry, we 
 should scarcely now be governed by the 'Gentle- 
 man's Magazine ' or even the ' Biographia 
 Dramatica'; but when one realizes that he was 
 praised by a Quarterly Reviewer, as late as 18 16, 
 for * metrical epitaphs ' that rival Dryden, and 
 ' sonnets ' that far surpass Milton, one can only 
 ' stare and gasp.' It is true that the same critic 
 curses as well as blesses, for he credits him (justly) 
 with * superfluity ' and a 'diction florid even to the 
 confines of bombast.' He has sometimes been 
 compared with Gray — and he would not have 
 objected ; but any one who cares to make that 
 comparison experimentally has only to take up 
 Dodsley's last volume (which closes with Mason's 
 Odes to Independency and Melancholy followed 
 by Gray's ' Progress of Poesy ' and ' Bard ') in 
 order to perceive that there is a material difference 
 
 T 
 
274 Gray's Biographer 
 
 between the master and the scholar, the difference 
 of genius.^ Correct, well-equipped, copious, Mason 
 is mainly imitative; and what is best in him he 
 owes to Gray and Gray's criticism. He ranks 
 with those versemen who mistake memory for 
 inspiration, and facility for distinction; who re- 
 ject living humanity, and rejoice in lifeless per- 
 sonification ; whose art, if it sometimes instructs, 
 seldom really moves or elevates. One of his son- 
 nets is addressed to that ' emblem pure of legal 
 liberty,' a ' Gravel Walk.' A great Elizabethan 
 once wrote another to the ' Highway ' which — 
 for the nonce — was his ' chief Parnassus.' But 
 there is nothing of the 'gravel walk' about Sir 
 Philip Sidney. There is too much of it in Wil- 
 liam Mason. 
 
 ^ See also the additions which, as he says, he had the 
 * boldness ' to make to Gray's unfinished ' Ode on the 
 Pleasure arising from Vicissitude ' (' Poems and Memoirs,' 
 2nd ed., 1775, PP- ^35> 1^)- 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 Carmontelle's Transparencies 
 
 TO the particulars given at pp. 38-9 may be 
 added the following from the French edition 
 of Frenilly's ' Memoirs ' : 
 
 'Who,' writes Frenilly, speaking of Carmontelle, 
 ' has not known his transparencies? It was a charm- 
 ing invention, the most original in the world, and 
 which has been badly imitated since : by means 
 of a band of paper which unrolled itself from one 
 cylinder to roll itself again on another, a picture 
 fifteen inches high by about three feet wide renewed 
 itself continually, presenting to the eye landscapes, 
 towns, monuments, balls, illuminations, conflagra- 
 tions — a crowd of scenes from life. Carmontelle did 
 several of this sort, and owed it to them that he did 
 not die in the workhouse. For when he saw the con- 
 spiracies of his detestable prince [Egalite], he nobly 
 resigned his reader's place by which he lived, and 
 would have died of hunger without asking or com- 
 plaining if the excellent Due de Charost, who loved 
 and esteemed him, had not contrived to make him 
 accept an annuity of 4,000 francs as the price of one 
 of his transparencies. In this way his pride was not 
 275 
 
276 Appendix A 
 
 offended. He was very old, and I do not know if he 
 prized a landscape of Claude Lorraine more than his 
 transparencies. Before leaving this man who so much 
 amused my youth, I must say a couple of words con- 
 cerning a magic lantern which he exhibited one 
 night at my father's. Contemporary personages were 
 shown in action. Their appearances, costumes, ad- 
 ventures, peculiarities, were all passed in review, and 
 with this, abundance of anecdotes, bons mots, sly hits, 
 and Savoyard buffoonery. This representation, full of 
 wit and taste, is still perfectly visible to me, though it 
 is sixty years since I saw it ' (' Souvenirs du Baron de 
 Fre'nilly,' 1908, p. 8). 
 
 The above passage, it will be seen, throws further 
 light on the story of Carmontelle's last days and cir- 
 cumstances. It is also possible that Mme. de Genlis 
 was thinking of this special development of the trans- 
 parencies when she likened them to 'a sort of 
 magic lantern' (p. 38). 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 Exhibitions of the Eidophusikon 
 
 CLEVER Mr. Pyne, masquerading in ' Wine and 
 Walnuts ' as Ephraim Hardcastle, shows a 
 curious and censurable coyness in the matter of 
 dates. He carefully refrains from mentioning the 
 year in which he visited the Eidophusikon, described 
 in the twenty-first chapter of his first volume. And 
 thereby arises a difficulty, and hangs a tale. The 
 Eidophusikon is usually supposed to belong to 178 1 
 — or thereabouts. But the storm-scene referred to by 
 Pyne represents the loss at Seacombe, in the Isle of 
 Purbeck, Dorset, on Friday, the 6th of January 1786, 
 •of the 'Halsewell,' outward bound East Indiaman.' 
 The solution is, that there was more than one exhibi- 
 tion of Loutherbourg's ' moving pictures,' and that 
 Pyne was familiar with that of 1786 alone. He was 
 but a boy in 178 1, and he professes to speak 'de visu.' 
 In 1786 he was between sixteen and seventeen; and 
 in that year the wreck of the ' Halsewell ' was part 
 of Loutherbourg's show. 
 
 The ' Eidophusikon ' was exhibited for the first 
 
 ^ 'Annual Register,' 1786, p. 224. 
 277 
 
278 Appendix B 
 
 time on the 26th February 1781 ;' and the place of 
 exhibition, as per advertisement in the public prints 
 of the day, was a large house in Lisle Street, front- 
 ing Leicester Street, Leicester Square. The price of 
 admission was 5^'., and the performance began at 
 seven. It was arranged in five scenes, as follows : 
 
 1. Aurora; or, the the Effects of the Dawn, with a 
 
 View of London from Greenwich Park. 
 
 2. Noon; the Port of Tangier in Africa, with the 
 
 distant View of the Rock of Gibraltar and 
 Europa Point. 
 
 3. Sunset, a View near Naples. 
 
 4. Moonlight, a View in the Mediterranean, the 
 
 Rising of the Moon contrasted with the Effect 
 of Fire. 
 
 5. The Conclusive Scene, a Storm at Sea, and Ship- 
 
 wreck. 
 
 The Music for the performance was composed by 
 Michael Arne, Dr. Arne's son, who played the harpsi- 
 chord. Between Scenes 2 and 3 came one of 
 Schubert's sonatas ; and there was a musical intro- 
 duction to the closing picture. There was also be- 
 tween each scene a Transparency. These repre- 
 sented : 
 
 I. An Incantation. 
 
 ' The particulars that follow are mainly derived from 
 the ' Public Advertiser.' 
 
Appendix B 279 
 
 2. A Sea Port, a conversation of Sailors of different 
 
 Nations. 
 
 3. A View in the Alps, a Woodcutter attacked by 
 
 Wolves; and 
 
 4. A Summer Evening, with Cattle and Figures. 
 
 For Noon (No. 2 Scene) was later substituted a 
 ' topical ' new Scene, The Bringing of French and 
 Dutch Prizes into the Port of Plymouth, with a 
 View of Mount Edgecumbe. 
 
 After fifty-nine evenings, the first season came to 
 an end in May. On Monday, loth December, it 
 opened again in the same place, Lisle Street, Leicester 
 Square. Entirely new music was provided by Mr. 
 Burney, who also accompanied the 'Scenes' on the 
 harpsichord, while the 'vocal Part' was undertaken 
 by that favourite singer at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, 
 Mrs. Sophia Baddeley. On 21st December the show 
 closed for the holidays, with promises of fresh attrac- 
 tions, especially a 'conclusive Scene' from Milton. 
 The new Pictures, which were duly exhibited on 
 31st January, comprised : 
 
 1. The Sun rising in the Fog, an Italian Seaport. 
 
 2. The Cataract of Niagara, in North America. 
 
 3. The Setting of the Sun, after a Rainy Day, with 
 
 a View of the Castle, Town and Cliffs of Dover. 
 
 4. The Rising of the Moon, with a Water Spout, 
 
 exhibiting the Effect of three different Lights, 
 
28o Appendix B 
 
 with a View of a Rocky Shore on the Coast of 
 Japan. 
 
 The Conclusive Scene 
 5. Satan arraying his Troops on the Banks of the 
 Fiery Lake, with the Raising of Pandemonium, 
 from Milton. 
 
 After 7th March, the Storm and Shipwreck scene, 
 which had always been highly popular, was restored 
 ' by particular Desire,' and the performance was 
 divided into Two Acts, the Storm closing the first, 
 and the Miltonic scene the second. As time went 
 on, however, the attendance fell off; and the prices 
 were reduced to 3/. and zs. 6d. On 31st May the 
 show was closed. 
 
 Four years later, on the 30th January 1786, after 
 the wreck of the ' Halsewell ' East Indiaman, the 
 Eidophusikon was reopened, the storm scene being 
 modified so as to give an * exact, awful, and tre- 
 mendous Representation of that lamentable Event,' 
 a narrative of which, based on the accounts of the 
 chief surviving officers, was to be obtained of William 
 Thomson, the popular bookseller of the Exchange ; 
 and for the music and melody of Burney and Badde- 
 ley was substituted English Readings and Recita- 
 tions 'by Mr. Cresswick.' In this way the existence 
 of the exhibition was protracted until 12th May, 
 which was announced as * positively the last night,' 
 a valedictory 'bonne bouche ' being provided by the 
 
Appendix B 281 
 
 appearance, * immediately previous to the Grand 
 Scene from Milton ' of the Polish dwarf, Borulwaski, 
 who performed several pieces on the English guitar. 
 Borulwaski, who survived until 1837, must at that 
 date have been nearing fifty, and probably had 
 reached his full height, about 3 ft. 3 in. After 12th 
 May 1786 there is apparently no further mention of 
 Loutherbourg's famous show, and what became of 
 the properties when sold history has not revealed. 
 
APPENDIX C 
 
 Death of the Bailli de Suffren 
 
 MJAL'S informant was M. Dehodencq, who 
 died on 12th May 1849, aged eighty- 
 seven, at No. 61, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, a 
 house in which M. Jal himself lived for forty-one 
 years. He had known M. Dehodencq for thirty 
 years ; and had frequently heard his account of the 
 Bailli's death. After the Revolution, Dehodencq be- 
 came a ' limonadier,' or coffee-house keeper, and 
 for a long period held the cafe of the Theatre des 
 Varietes, a favoured resort of literary men. Shortly 
 stated, his story was as follows; In 1788, De- 
 hodencq, then about six and twenty, was a member 
 of the Bailli's household, in the modest capacity of 
 * officier de la bouche ' under the ' Intendant,' 
 Jean-Simon Gerard, father of the Francois Gerard 
 who afterwards painted the Bailli's portrait. In the 
 month of December, Dehodencq remembered hear- 
 ing from the Bailli's valet, Duchemin, that his 
 master had been brought home from Versailles with a 
 sword-thrust through the body. By order of a surgeon, 
 who was immediately called in, Dehodencq was sent 
 out to get some nettles in order to ' fouetter,' or 
 282 
 
Appendix C 283 
 
 'debrider (stimulate) la plaie,' an operation which 
 had no success. It was winter ; and Dehodencq was 
 accustomed to say that he found the nettles under 
 the snow in the allee des Veuves of the Champs 
 Elysees, The particulars preceding the tragedy, as 
 gathered by Dehodencq from those about the Bailli 
 in his last hours, were that he had been importuned 
 by the Prince de Mirepoix to interest himself on 
 behalf of two of the Prince's nephews under punish- 
 ment for some dereliction of duty in the East Indies. 
 SufFren, a blunt seaman, and by no means pre- 
 possessed in favour of the class of * marins pour rire' 
 to which they belonged, at first remained silent. 
 Being pressed, he replied at last in negative terms so 
 contemptuous as to provoke a challenge, which he 
 accepted, notwithstanding the fact that he was nearly 
 sixty, and as stout as Marshal de Noailles or the 
 ' Gros Due ' d'Orleans. This encounter took place 
 at Versailles, behind Bernini's equestrian statue 
 of Curtius at the head of the Piece d'Eau des 
 Suisses; and the Bailli, fatally wounded, was carried 
 home to the Hotel Montmorency to die, which he 
 did in three days, leaving strict injunctions that the 
 circumstances should remain profoundly secret. This 
 account, taken down almost entirely from De- 
 hodencq's dictation, M. Jal published in a note to 
 his 'Scenes de la vie maritime,' 1832, iii, p. 161. 
 On the 17th July 1845, M. Cunat, of St. Malo, then 
 engaged on the Bailli's biography, and wishing to 
 
284 Appendix C 
 
 confirm the facts from the witness's own lips, visited 
 Dehodencq at BatignoUes, in company with M. Jal. 
 Dehodencq repeated, much in the same terms, what 
 he had formerly related to Jal, adding a few minor 
 details which duly figure in M. Cunat's pages. The 
 story naturally found no very favourable reception 
 with the Bailli's family; and, as might be expected, 
 other versions were put forward. One, preserved 
 by J. S. Roux (' Le Bailli de SufFren dans I'Inde,' 
 1862, pp. 231-2), makes the duel the result of an 
 altercation at a ball ; according to another, dating 
 from 1866, Sufiren fell a victim to the mistaken 
 treatment of a physician sent to him by order of 
 Mesdames of France. But verisimilitude and con- 
 gruity are on the side of M. Jal. 
 
 Although M. Cunat deprecates what are known as 
 ' faits prives,' both he and M. Roux supply us with 
 some of the Bailli's traits. In action Suffren's habitual 
 head-dress was a wide-brimmed felt hat, which had 
 been given to him by his brother, the Bishop of 
 Nevers and Sisteron, and which was regarded by the 
 common seamen with as much superstitious venera- 
 tion as the historical grey coat of Napoleon inspired 
 in the veterans of the Grande Armee. Like Nelson, 
 negligent of his costume, which in India his excessive 
 corpulence obliged him to reduce as much as possible, 
 he generally appeared in his shirt and a light cotton 
 vest or jacket. He resembled Robinson Crusoe in 
 being frequently accompanied by a favourite parrot ; 
 
Appendix C 285 
 
 and, as may perhaps be inferred from his obesity, 
 was an excellent trencherman, fully recognizing the 
 sanctity of the dinner-hour. His tastes, nevertheless, 
 were simple. He was warmly attached to his family 
 and friends; and in all his campaigns seems to have 
 sighed for the quiet of his Provencal home. But 
 once on ship-board his energy was indefatigable, and 
 he never yielded to the enervating influence of an 
 Eastern atmosphere. 'Je sers,' he wrote to his friend, 
 the Countess d' Alais, ' pour faire la guerre, non ma 
 cour aux femmes de I'Isle de France.' By the able 
 seaman, who knew his work, the Bailli was idolized; 
 by the ' officier a talons rouges,' who did not, he was 
 naturally disliked. A rigorous disciplinarian, he was 
 inexorable to cases of insubordination or imputed 
 cowardice ; and his concise and uncompromising 
 censure, conveyed in a constitutionally nasal tone, 
 must have been an additional terror to delinquents. 
 'Je persiste,' he said, receiving the excuses of a de- 
 faulter, 'je persiste a dire que vous avez entache le 
 pavilion.' Some of his letters to the Countess d'Alais, 
 published by Captain Ortolan in the ' Moniteur ' for 
 1859, §'^^ ^" intimate idea of his individuality. 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 The statement at p. 177 that Dehodencq's story, as 
 related by him to M,M. Jal and Cunat, is ' now 
 generally accepted,' derives its confirmation from the 
 fact that it is repeated in such current works of refer- 
 ence as the dictionaries of Hoefer, Larousse, and 
 Bouillet. But, as it often happens, page 285 had no 
 sooner been returned for press than the writer became 
 aware that another version of the Bailli's death had 
 recently been put forward, not on the side of 
 Dehodencq, but supporting the story of 1866 that 
 the Bailli died of ill-timed blood-letting (' une saignee 
 intempestive '). This story was known to M. Jal. 
 With additional detail, it is retold in the attractive 
 ' Legendes et Curiosites de 1' Histoire ' by Dr. Cabanes 
 [1912], pp. 255-265: 'Comment est mort le Bailli 
 de Suffren.' Dr. Cabanes quotes M. Lacour-Gayet, 
 a member of the Institute, who cites a little treatise 
 on Gout and Rheumatism by Dr. Alphonse Leroy, 
 published in 1805. Dr. Leroy was the friend and 
 medical adviser of the Bailli. According to this 
 authority, the Bailli had gone to Versailles to visit 
 Madame Victoire, the aunt of Louis XVL He had 
 been suffering from gouty erysipelas. He looked so 
 ill that the princess proposed to send him her own 
 286 
 
Postscript 287 
 
 physician, who prescribed bleeding in the arm. 
 It was objected that the Bailli's medical man had 
 ordered leeches on the feet: *Le medecin de cour, 
 rapporte le docteur Leroy, repondit par un petit sar- 
 casme. M. de SufFren, impatiente, ofFrit le bras; mais 
 a peine fut il pique, qu'apres un peu de sang epanche, 
 il perdit connaissance; la goutte fit une metastase 
 rapide sur la poitrine. On reitera la saignee, et lorsque 
 j'allai voir cet illustre ami, qui m'avait promis de se 
 faire appliquer les sangsues aux jambes, je restai stupe- 
 fait en apprenant son agonie . . .' (p. 264). This 
 account, it is but right to state, was not penned to 
 refute the duel story, but is an 'obiter dictum' in 
 a medical work — a fact which adds to its value as 
 evidence. On the other hand, one remembers Jal's 
 first question to Dehodencq in 1 845 : ' D'abord, dites 
 moi, je vous prie, le Bailli est bien mort d'apoplexie, 
 n'est-ce pas? — Non, non, en duel! Et en disant ces 
 mots, M. Dehodencq a vivement porte la main sur son 
 coeur, comme pour affirmer sur I'honneur la verite 
 de ce qu'il disait.' It is difiicult to conceive why 
 Dehodencq,for no appreciable motive, should have in- 
 vented and persisted in the circumstantial story which 
 carried conviction to the minds of MM. Jal and 
 Cunat, Meanwhile, it may be noted that the inter- 
 esting volume of Dr. Cabanes contains an excellent 
 copy of Houdon's bust of the Bailli in the Musee 
 d'Aix. 
 
GENERAL INDEX 
 
 N.B. — The titles of articles are in capitals 
 
 Abdalonymus, 267. 
 Aboukir Bay, Landing at, 
 
 Loutherbourg's, 124. 
 Actor, Lloyd's, 223. 
 Adhemar, Count d', 52. 
 Admiral Hosier's GAost, 
 
 Glover's, 196. 
 A Fielding " Find," 128- 
 
 149- 
 Akenside, Mark, 243. 
 Alembert, Jean le Rond d', 
 
 87. 
 Alexandria, Battle of, Lou- 
 
 therbourg's, 124. 
 Algarotti, Francis, 82, 83. 
 Allaire, Abbe, 60. 
 Allen, Mrs., 5, 13, 14. 
 Alms, Captain James, 169. 
 Amelia, Fielding's, 26, 128. 
 Amelia, Princess (daughter 
 
 of George II), 9, 180, 
 
 202. 
 Angellier, Auguste, 62. 
 Angelo, Henry, 39 n.,ioi n., 
 
 102 n., 120 n., 126. 
 
 Angouleme, Due d', 175, 
 Anson, George Lord, 155, 
 
 186. 
 Anstey, Christopher, 30. 
 Anville, Due d', 153. 
 Apology^ Churchill's, 228. 
 Arcadia, Lloyd's, 225, 
 Armentieres, Marquis d', 
 
 36. 
 Art of Pleasing, Congreve's, 
 
 188. 
 Artois, Countess of, 175. 
 Ash, Isabella, 139, 148 
 
 149. 
 Assyrian Host, Destruction 
 
 of the, Loutherbourg's, 
 
 124. 
 Athelwold, 256. 
 At Prior Park, 1-3 i. 
 Atterbury, Bishop, 16 n. 
 Auguste, the negro, 52, 
 Aumale, Due d' (Henri 
 
 d'Orleans), 43, 59 n. 
 Author^s Apology, Lloyd's, 
 
 216. 
 
290 
 
 General Index 
 
 Bachaumont, 57. 
 Balguy, Dr., 26 n., 247. 
 Baisamo, Giuseppe, 118. 
 Barbarossa^ Brown's, 76. 
 Bar bier de Sf-uille, Beau- 
 
 marchais', 92. 
 Bard, Churchill's, 226. 
 Baretti, Joseph, 220, 23111., 
 
 237. 
 Barr^, Colonel, 51. 
 Barrere, 152. 
 Barthelemon, the violinist, 
 
 71- 
 Bath Postal Service, 3. 
 Bath Stone (oolite), 5. 
 Bathurst, Lord, 13. 
 Battle of the Nile, Louther- 
 
 bourg's, 124. 
 Beaumarchais, Caron de, 
 
 92. 
 Belem, 143. 
 Bellecour, 91. 
 Beller,Liennard, the Suisse, 
 
 52. 
 Bensley, 218. 
 Berchem, Nicolas, 97. 
 Bernay, Mile, de, 53. 
 Berry, Miss, 6, 35. 
 Besenval, Baron de, 60. 
 Bessborough House, 218. 
 Bessborough, Lord, 202. 
 Bickerton, Sir Richard, 173. 
 
 Biographer, Gray's, 
 
 243-274. 
 Binyon, Mr. Laurence, 123. 
 Blanche et Guiscard, 
 
 Saurin's, 81. 
 Blount, Martha, 12, 13, 
 
 191, 192. 
 Boaden's Correspondence of 
 
 Garrick, 62. 
 Boor, Richard, 134, 137. 
 Borra, Signor, 186, 267. 
 Boswell, James, 210, 244. 
 Boufflers, Countess de, 
 
 58 n. 
 Bougainville the Elder, 
 
 43 n. 
 Bouquetiere, La, Boucher's, 
 
 60. 
 Bourbon, Due de, 50 n. 
 Bourgeois, Sir Francis, 
 
 125 n. 
 Bourguignon, Hubert (Gra- 
 
 velot), 88. 
 Bourne, Vincent, 212, 217. 
 Bousk, the Suisse, 53. 
 Boyce, Dr., 253. 
 'Boy Patriots,' The, 183, 
 
 195- 
 Bradshaigh, Lady, 246. 
 Brewster, Dr. Thomas, i. 
 Bridgeman, Charles, 184. 
 British Theatre, Bell's, 124. 
 
General Index 
 
 291 
 
 Brothers, Richard, 121. 
 Brown, 'Capability,' 184. 
 Browne, Hawkins, 213. 
 Browning, 256 n. 
 Buckingham and Chandos, 
 
 second Duke of, 209. 
 Buckingham and Chandos, 
 
 third Duke of, 209. 
 Buffon, M. de, 57. 
 Burgh, Dr., 266, 271 n. 
 Burlat, Barbe (Mme. Lou- 
 
 therbourg), 98. 
 Burlington, Lord, 193. 
 Bussy, Marquis de, 173. 
 Bye-Posts, 4 n. 
 Byrom, John, 252. 
 Byron, Admiral, 159. 
 Byng, Admiral John, 156. 
 
 Cabanes, Dr., 286-7. 
 Cagliostro, Count de, 118, 
 
 119. 
 Calas, Adieux de, Chodo- 
 
 wiecki's, 47. 
 Calas. Der Grosse, Chodo- 
 
 wiecki's, 47. 
 Calas, La Malheureuse 
 
 Famille, Carmontelle's, 
 
 60. 
 Camden, Lord, 85. 
 Camp, Linley's, 108. 
 Campbell, Colin, 8. 
 
 Camperdoavn, Battle of, 
 Loutherbourg's, 123. 
 
 Caractacus, Mason's, 259, 
 261. 
 
 Capricious Lowers, Lloyd's, 
 240. 
 
 Carmontelle, L. C. de, 32- 
 61, 69, 176. 
 
 Carmontelle, The Por- 
 traits OF, 32-61. 
 
 Carmontelle's portrait, 48. 
 
 Carnavalet, Hotel de, 32, 
 44 n. 
 
 Carrogis, Louis. See Car- 
 montelle. 
 
 Carrogis, Philippe, 35. 
 
 Casanova de Seingalt, 
 Jacques, 96. 
 
 Casanova, Francois, 96, 97, 
 98 n. 
 
 Catherine of Braganza, 94, 
 143 n. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., 254. 
 
 Chambers, Sir William, 
 
 237- 
 Champion, Fielding's, 20. 
 Chantilly: Les Portraits de 
 
 Carmontelle, Gruyer's, 45. 
 Characters of Men, Pope's, 
 
 193- 
 Chartres, Due de, 36, 37, 
 60. 
 
292 
 
 General Index 
 
 Chastellux, J.-F. de, 92. 
 Chatelet, Marquis du, 33. 
 Chaucer, 248. 
 Chaulnes, Duchesse de, 
 
 43 n. 
 Chauvelin, Abbe de, 60. 
 Chester, Colonel J. L., 
 
 125 n. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 186. 
 Chevreuse, Due de, 36, 
 
 420., 53. 
 Chevreuse, Duchesse de, 
 
 53- 
 Child, Sir Richard, 8. 
 Chinese Festi'val, Noverre's, 
 
 77, 78. 
 Chit-Chat, Lloyd's, 237. 
 Chodowiecki's Journey to 
 
 Dantzig, 46. 
 Choiseul, Duchesse de, 32, 
 
 33. 
 Christmas Tale, Garrick's, 
 
 103, 104. 
 Churchill, Charles, 19, 210, 
 
 211, 225, 226. 
 Churchill, Patty, 240. 
 Cibber's Apology, 224. 
 Cicero, Middleton's, 268. 
 Cillart, M. de, 170. 
 Clairon, Mile., 74, 81, 89, 
 
 90. 
 Clandestine Marriage^ The, 
 
 Garrick and Colman's, 
 
 65, 66 n , 224. 
 Clare, Lord, 199. 
 Clarissa, Richardson's, 246, 
 
 256. 
 Clarke, General, 51. 
 Cobham, Lady, 191, 198. 
 Cobham, Lord, 13 n., 182, 
 
 183, 188, 193, 208. 
 Cochin, C. N., 38, 71. 
 Coke, Lady Mary, 32, 202, 
 
 204 n. 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 245, 
 
 24-7. 255? 259, 262. 
 Coll^, Charles, 52, 73, 90. 
 Collection of Poems, Dods- 
 
 ley's, 249, 251. 
 Collier, Arthur, 139. 
 Collier, Dr., 146. 
 Collier, Jane, 139, 
 Collier, Margaret, 139, 144, 
 
 145, 146. 
 Colman, George, 80, io7n., 
 
 2TI, 213, 218, 222, 259. 
 Conclave, Churchill's, 226. 
 Conde, Prince de, 50. 
 Conference, Churchill's, 226. 
 Congreve, William, 181, 
 
 187. 
 Connoisseur, The, 213. 
 Contes Moraux, Marmon- 
 
 tel's, 236, 239. 
 
General Index 
 
 293 
 
 Conti, Prince de, 58 n. 
 Cook's monument at Stowe, 
 
 200. 
 Coquelin, M., 223. 
 Coureur de St. Cloud, 4.2 n. 
 Courthope, Mr. W. J., 
 
 2S7n. 
 Courtney, Mr. W. P., 251. 
 Co'vent Garden Tragedy, 
 
 Fielding's, 19. 
 Coventry, Maria, Lady, 
 
 262. 
 Cowper, William, 211,212, 
 
 215, 218, 234. 
 Cradock, Charlotte, i, 19. 
 Critic, Sheridan's, 108. 
 Croix, Marquise de la, 
 
 42 n. 
 Cromarty, Lord, 135. 
 Cross-posts, 4n. 
 Cry, The, Fielding and 
 
 Collier's, 139. 
 Cumberland, Richard, 211. 
 Cunat, M. Charles, 151, 
 
 152, 283, 284, 286, 287, 
 Cyder, Philips', i36n. 
 Cymon, Garrick's, 103 n. 
 
 Dalston, Miss Betty, i. 
 Dance, Sir Nathaniel, 83, 
 
 84. 
 Daniel, Mrs,, 131, 132. 
 
 Dashwood, Miss Kitty, 
 
 193. 
 Dauphin, The (son of 
 
 Louis XV), 49. 
 Dauphin, The (son of 
 
 Louis XVI), 175. 
 Dauphiness, The, 50. 
 Davies, Thomas, 210, 227. 
 Dawson, Miss Eliza, zG^n. 
 De Arte Graphica, Du Fres- 
 
 noy's, 271. 
 Death of Adam, Klopstock's, 
 
 239. 
 Deffand, Mme. du, 32, 33, 
 
 35» 52. 55- 
 Dehodencq, 177,282,283, 
 
 286, 287. 
 Denis, Admiral Sir Peter, 
 
 236. 
 Denis, Charles, 72, 236. 
 Denis Dwval, Thackeray's, 
 
 236. 
 Delany, Mrs., 6 n. 
 Derrick, Samuel, 22, 30. 
 Derwentwater, James Rad- 
 
 cliffe, Earl of, 191. 
 Devonshire, Duke of, 84, 
 
 85. 
 Deyverdun, 118. 
 Diable a Sluatre, Sedaine's, 
 
 76 n. 
 Diderot, 87, 97, 99, 100. 
 
294 
 
 General Index 
 
 Diderot's Drame Serieux, 9 3. 
 
 Di<vine Legation of Moses, 
 Warburton's, 1 5. 
 
 Doric Arch at Stowe, Prin- 
 cess Amelia's, 203. 
 
 Dobell, Mr. Bertram, 103, 
 
 Douglas, Home's, 246. 
 
 Du Barry, Vicomte, 92. 
 
 Duclos, C. P., 57. 
 
 DufF, Major Lachlan 
 Gordon, 43. 
 
 Duff, Mr. Thomas Gordon, 
 
 43 n- 
 Dumesnil, Mile., 81. 
 
 Edgar, King of England, 
 
 255, 256. 
 Edwards, Thomas, 30. 
 Egaltte,'Ph\\\Y', 39, 44n., 50. 
 EgmontjComtesse d' (i), 58. 
 Egmont, Comtesse d' (2), 
 
 54., 58 n. 
 Eidophusikon, Louther- 
 
 bourg's, 111-117, 277- 
 
 281. 
 Eighteenth -Century 
 
 Stowe, 180-209. 
 Elegies, Mason's, 261. 
 Elegy, Gray's, 254. 
 Elfrida, or ^Ifthryth, 255. 
 Elfrida, Mason's, 254, 255, 
 
 256 n., 260, 261. 
 
 Enghien, Due d', 50 n. 
 
 England and JVales, Roman- 
 tic and Picturesque Scenery 
 in, Loutherbourg's, 124, 
 126. 
 
 English Garden, Mason's, 
 266, 270, 
 
 Essai sur les Mceurs, Vol- 
 taire's, 82, 
 
 Estaing, Count d', 159, 
 160. 
 
 Estcourt, Dick, 189. 
 
 Estourmel, Captain d', 153. 
 
 Etanduere, M. d', 154. 
 
 Exeter, Lord, 83. 
 
 Eybelly, Marie-Jeanne, 35. 
 
 Famous Houses of Bath, M r. 
 
 J. F. Meehan's, 6n. 
 Farnborough, Lord, 123 n. 
 Farnham, Lord, 51. 
 Faulkner, Thomas, 94, 126. 
 Favart, C, 103. 
 Fetes Chinoises, Noverre's, 
 
 77. 
 Fielding, Allen, 27. 
 Fielding, Harriot, 139, 141, 
 
 145. 
 Fielding, Henry, i, 2, 19, 
 
 26 n., 72 n., 83, 129. 
 Fielding, Henry, Miss G, M. 
 
 Godden's, i n., i3on. 
 
General Index 
 
 295 
 
 Fielding, Mrs., 139, 144, 
 
 145. 
 Fielding, Sarah, 2, 28, 139. 
 Fielding, Sir John, 128, 
 
 130. 
 Fiennes, Celia, 206. 
 Filon, M. Augustin, 57 n. 
 ♦Find,' A Fielding, 128- 
 
 149. 
 Fittler, James, 122, 124. 
 Fitzgerald, Mr. Percy, 62. 
 Florian, J. P. C. de, 51. 
 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bo- 
 
 vier de, 32. 
 Fordhook, 135, 137 n. 
 Forestier, M. Masson, 57 n. 
 Fosse, J. B. J. de la, 47, 60. 
 Foucou, the sculptor, 176. 
 Frenilly, Mme. de, 40. 
 Fr^nilly's Recollections^ 40, 
 
 49 n-» 275- 
 Fuller, Thomas, 182. 
 funeral^ Steele's, 194 n. 
 
 Gainsborough, Thomas, 29, 
 116, 124. 
 
 Galissoniere, Admiral de 
 la, 156. 
 
 Galles, Captain de, 163. 
 
 Garat's Memoirs^ 88 n. 
 
 Garric, David (of Bor- 
 deaux), 64. 
 
 Garric, Jeanne, 65. 
 Garrick, David, 58, 62-93, 
 
 loi n., 102, 104. 
 Garrick, George, 80, 83, 
 
 84. 
 Garrick, Mrs., 70, 72, 81. 
 Garrick, Noverre on, 79. 
 Garrick, Peter, 74. 
 Garrick's Grand Tour, 
 
 62-93. 
 Garrick's Head, Bath, 6 n. 
 Garrigues, The de la, 64. 
 Gay, John, 112. 
 Genlis, Mme. de, 35, 37, 
 
 38, 4ij 45. 48> 49. 5°, 
 
 59- 
 Geoffrin, Mme, 88. 
 Gerard, Francois, 176, 282. 
 Gibbon, Edward, 74, 81, 
 
 118, 229. 
 Gibbons, Grinling, 208. 
 Gibbs, James, 198, 202. 
 Glover, Richard, 195. 
 Godiva, Lady, 181. 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 12, 74, 
 
 216, 218 n. 
 Goncourts, The, 55. 
 Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 257 n. 
 Gou^ernante^ La Chaussee's, 
 
 81. 
 Gramont, Duchesse de, 
 
 54- 
 
296 
 
 General Index 
 
 Grand Tour,Garrick's, 
 
 62-93. 
 Grasse, Count de, 161. 
 Gravelot (Hubert Bourgig- 
 
 non), 90. 
 Graves, Rev. Richard, 23. 
 Gray, Thomas, 232, 243, 
 
 247, 264, 267. 
 Gray's Biographer, 243- 
 
 274. 
 Gray's Odes, 219. 
 Greatbach, W., 3411. 
 Great Fire of London, 123 n. 
 Grenville, Captain Thomas, 
 
 186. 
 Grimm, Baron, 35, 46, 57, 
 
 58, 66, 67, 73, 86, 87, 
 
 89. 
 Grub Street Journal, 1 9. 
 Gruyer, F. A., 45, 53, 54. 
 Guibert, Comte de, 55. 
 
 Haidar Ali, 163, 164, 165, 
 
 167, 173. 
 Halseivell East Indiaman, 
 
 Loss of, 1 14, 277. 
 Hammersmith Terrace, 94, 
 
 117. 
 Hammond, James, 195. 
 Hannay, Mr. David, i74n. 
 Hastings, Warren, 212. 
 Hawker, Captain, 169. 
 
 Hayman, Frank, 249. 
 Hecuba, Delap's, 225. 
 Hedgcock, Dr. F. H., 63. 
 Heitz, Catherine Barbe, 96. 
 Helvetius, Mme., 32. 
 Helvetius, 86. 
 Henry Fielding, Godden's, 
 
 I n., 130 n. 
 Heroic Epistle, Mason's, 
 
 270. 
 Hervey, Lady, 32, 246. 
 Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, 243, 
 Hill, Joseph, 218. 
 Hill, The Misses, 218 n. 
 History of England, Bow- 
 
 yer's, 124. 
 Hogarth, William, 68 n., 
 
 95, 106, 149, 210. 
 Hogarth's Election Series, 
 
 46 n., 82. 
 Hours of the Day, Louther- 
 
 bourg's, 97. 
 Holbach, Baron d', 57, 87, 
 
 92. 
 Holder, Elizabeth (Mrs. 
 
 Allen), 5, 13, 14. 
 Holderness, Earl of, 257, 
 
 263, 265. 
 Holland, Sir Nathaniel 
 
 Dance, 83, 84. 
 Houdon, J. A., 287. 
 Houel, 60. 
 
General Index 
 
 297 
 
 Howard, Lady Ann, 202, 
 204n. 
 
 Howe, Richard, Earl, 150. 
 
 Howe's Victory (June i, 
 1794), 122. 
 
 Hubert of Geneva, 32. 
 
 Huchon, M. Rene, 63. 
 
 Hughes, Admiral Sir Ed- 
 ward, 52, 163-174. 
 
 Hume, David, 43 n., 88. 
 
 Humphry C//«^^r, Smollett's, 
 136 n. 
 
 Hunter, William, 134, 137. 
 
 Hurd, Richard, 26 n., 247, 
 262, 265. 
 
 // Bellicoso, Mason's, 247. 
 Iliad, Pope's, 20, 22. 
 // Pacifico, Mason's, 247. 
 Impey, Elijah, 212. 
 Independence, Churchill's, 
 
 240. 
 Installation Ode, Mason's, 
 
 253. 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 107. 
 Isis, Mason's, 252. 
 
 Jal, M. Auguste, 35, 40, 
 177, 1780., 282-4, 286-7. 
 
 Jealous Wife, Colman's, 
 225. 
 
 Johnson,Dr., 210,221,243. 
 
 Johnstone, Governor 
 James, 160, i6i, 162. 
 
 Joly, M., 41. 
 
 Jones, Richard, 8. 
 
 Joseph Andrenxjs, Fielding's, 
 20. 
 
 Journal Etranger, Freron's, 
 
 75. 
 Journal of a Foyage to 
 
 Lisbon, Fielding's, 1 29, 
 
 130 n., 132, 136, 139. 
 Journey from this JVorld to 
 
 the Next, Fielding's, 21. 
 Junqueira, 143. 
 
 Kemble, John, 106 n. 
 
 Kenrick, Dr., 85. 
 
 Kent, William, 185, 186, 
 
 208. 
 King, Commodore, 167 n., 
 
 174. 
 Kinloss, The Baroness, 
 
 209. 
 Knight, Joseph, 62. 
 
 Lacour-Gayet, M., 286. 
 Lacy, 80, 104. 
 Lafayette, 44 n. 
 Laitiere de Villers-Cotter- 
 
 ets, 43 n. 
 Lamballe, Princesse de, 51. 
 Lamoignon, Presidente, 54. 
 
298 
 
 General Index 
 
 Langton, Bennet, no. 
 Lauzun, Duchesse de, 54, 
 
 58 n. 
 Leake, James, 30, 
 Ledans, Chevalier de, 4.2, 
 
 58 n. 
 Le Kain, 91. 
 Le Moyne, J, B., 88. 
 Leofric, Earl, 181. 
 Leonidas, Glover's, 196. 
 Leroy, Dr., 286-7. 
 Lespinasse, Mile, de, 55. 
 Lethe, Garrick's, 215. 
 Lettres sur les Arts imita- 
 
 teurs, Noverre's, 79. 
 Lenvesden Hill, Crowe's, 
 
 114. 
 Lewis, Sir George, 72. 
 Library, Kippis's, 231. 
 Lilliput Alley, Bath, 5. 
 Linnaeus, 6 n. 
 Lloyd, Dr. Pierson, 211, 
 
 226. 
 Lloyd, Robert, 66 n., 72, 
 
 259. 
 Lloyd, Robert, 210-24.2. 
 London and Wise, 184.. 
 Londres, GrosJey's, 201 n. 
 Long, Dr., of Pembroke 
 
 Hall, 252. 
 Loutherbourg, Lucy de, 
 
 120, 125. 
 
 Loutherbourg, Philip de, 
 
 71, 150- 
 Loutherbourg, R.A., 
 
 94-127. 
 Loutherbourg, Salome de, 
 
 125. 
 Lucas, Captain J. J. E., 
 
 176 n. 
 Louis XVI, 175. 
 Lying Valet, Garrick's, 76. 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 24, 181, 
 
 187, 196, 250, 263. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 243. 
 Mackenzie, George, Lord 
 
 Cromarty, 135 n., 137. 
 Macklin's Bible, 124. 
 Mahan, Admiral, 172 n., 
 
 178. 
 
 Maid of the Oaks, Bur- 
 goyne's, 107. 
 
 Mainauduc, Dr. de, 118. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 175, 
 
 Marigny, Marquis de, 57. 
 
 Marlborough, Sarah, Duch- 
 ess of, 190. 
 
 Marmontel, 87, 89. 
 
 Mar's Hill (Mount Beacon), 
 Bath, 7. 
 
 Mason, Mrs., 263. 
 
 Mason, William, 32, 234n., 
 243-274. 
 
General Index 
 
 299 
 
 Matthews, Admiral, 152. 
 Maurepas, Count de, 153. 
 Medland, Thomas, 206. 
 Meehan, Mr. J. F,, 6 n. 
 Memoires Secrets, Buchau- 
 
 mont's, 81. 
 Memoirs and Writings of 
 
 Gray, Mason's, 243, 268. 
 Mesmer, F. A., 118. 
 Mesangere, Pierre de la, 42, 
 
 4-3- 
 Middleton, Mrs., 202. 
 Miger, 60. 
 Millar, Andrew, 134, 137, 
 
 145. 
 Miller, Sanderson, 267. 
 Milton, John, 248. 
 Milton miniature. Cooper's 
 
 pretended, 271. 
 Mineral Water Hos})ital, 
 
 Bath, 7, 14. 
 Minor, Foote's, 78. 
 Minor Poems, Milton's, 249. 
 Mirepoix, Prince de, 177, 
 
 283. 
 Mitford, John, 272. 
 Mitford, Miss, 270. 
 Miscellanies,¥\e\A\ng'?,, 21, 
 
 22. 
 MonceaUjPark of, 43 n., 60. 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo, 127 n. 
 Monnet, Jean, 69, 91, loi. 
 
 Monro, Dr., 116 n. 
 Montesson, Mme. de, 50. 
 Moody, Dr. Christopher 
 
 Lake, 125. 
 More, Hannah, 118. 
 MoreJlet, Abbe, 87. 
 Mossop, H., 227. 
 Mountain, Mrs., 95. 
 Mount-scoundrel, 239. 
 Mozart, 57. 
 Mozart, Leopold, 57. 
 'Mr.Allworthy.' 5^^ Allen. 
 Mr. Pope, George Paston's, 
 
 10 n. 
 Munby, Arthur J., 263 n. 
 Munro, Sir Hector, 1 64. 
 Murphy, Arthur, 62, 89. 
 
 Naish, Mr. R. G., 23 n. 
 
 Napoleon, i 50. 
 Narcisse, the negro, 52. 
 Nash, Richard, 6 n. 
 Naumachia, The, 44 n., 
 
 60 n. 
 Neville, Mr., 89. 
 Newcastle, Duke of 
 
 (Thomas Pelham Holies), 
 
 253, 262. 
 Night, ChurchilTs, 230. 
 Ninette a la Cour, Favart's, 
 
 240. 
 Nivernais, Duke de, 30. 
 
300 
 
 General Index 
 
 NoUekens, Joseph, 84, 185. 
 Nonsense Club, The, 218, 
 
 219, 222. 
 Nourse, John, 129. 
 Nou'jelle Ecole des Femmes, 
 
 de Moissy's, 236. 
 Nowvelles Promenades dans 
 
 Paris, Cain's, 44- n. 
 Noverre, Jean Georges, 75. 
 Nugent, Mary, Marchioness 
 
 of Buckingham, 199, 
 Nuneham, Lord, 258. 
 
 Oberkirch, Mme. d', 50. 
 
 Odes, Gray's, 259. 
 
 Odes, Mason's, 258. 
 
 Ode to a Water Nymph, 
 Mason's, 249, 250, 251, 
 263. 
 
 Ode to Memory, Mason's, 
 220. 
 
 Ode to Obscurity, 220. 
 
 Oldfield, Mrs., 194. 
 
 Olivier's The a VAnglaise, 
 57 n. 
 
 Omai, O'Keeffe's, 108. 
 
 Ombres Chinoises, 38. 
 
 O'Melan, Abbe, 52. 
 
 Orford, Lady, 83. 
 
 Oriental Gardening, Disser- 
 tation on, Chambers's, 
 
 221. 
 
 Orleans, Louis - Philippe, 
 Due d', 36, 39, 50, 52, 
 58, 60. 
 
 Orleans, Louis-Philippe Jo- 
 seph, Due d', 37, 39, 50. 
 
 Orleans, Therese-Bathilde 
 d' (' Mademoiselle'), 50. 
 
 Our tillage. Miss Mitford's, 
 218 n. 
 
 Palladian Bridge (Prior 
 
 Park), 8, 9. 
 Palladian Bridge (Stowe), 
 
 8, 200. 
 Palmerston, Lord, 83. 
 Paradoxe sur le Comedien, 
 
 Diderot's, 69 n. 
 Paris, Comte de, 209. 
 Parlour IVindonv, Mangin's, 
 
 106 n. 
 Parnasse Anglois, Patu's 
 
 projected, 75. 
 Pascet, the enameller, loi. 
 Pasquin, Fielding's, 19, 
 
 238 n, 
 Patagonian Theatre, Dib- 
 
 din and Stoppelaer's, 112. 
 Patu, Claude-Pierre, 75-77. 
 Penthievre, Due de, 51. 
 Philosophe sans le Savoir, 
 
 Sedaine's, 92. 
 Pinero, Sir Arthur, 260. 
 
General Index 
 
 301 
 
 Pitt, 28, 183, i86, 197. 
 Place, De la, 7211., 7311., 92. 
 Plain Truth, Fielding's, i. 
 Poems, Lloyd's, 231. 
 Poet, Lloyd's, 228. 
 Polignac, Comtesse de, 54. 
 Pollock, Mr. Walter Her- 
 
 ries, 69 n. 
 Pons-Saint-Maurice, M. de, 
 
 36. 
 Pont-de-Veyle, M., 52, 
 
 58 n. 
 Pope, Alexander, 9-15, 191, 
 
 248. 
 Pope's Letters, 10. 
 Powell, Dr., 24.7, 252. 
 Powys, Mrs. Lybbe, 201, 
 
 207. 
 Pratt, Mrs. Mary, 119, 
 
 121, 126. 
 Preville, G6, 68, 81. 
 Prior, Matthew, 213. 
 Prior Park, At, 1-3 i. 
 Pritchard, Miss, 75. 
 Pritchard, Mrs., 75, 106, 
 
 227. 
 Prologues, Lloyd's, 225. 
 Prophetie Accotnplie, La, 90. 
 Progress of Envy, Lloyd's, 
 
 212. 
 Pyne, W. H., 106 n., 115, 
 
 277. 
 
 j Quin, James, 18. 
 
 Racine, Louis, 57. 
 Ralph, James, 211. 
 Rambler, Johnson's, 238. 
 Rameau, J. P., 57, 60. 
 Reynolds, Captain, 167 n. 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 116, 
 
 271. 
 Riccoboni, Mme., 87. 
 Richardson, Samuel, 2, 29, 
 
 149. 
 Riciielieu, Marshal, 155. 
 Rich, John, 70. 
 Robinson Crusoe, Sheridan's, 
 
 108. 
 Robert Lloyd, 210-242. 
 Rogers, Samuel, 270. 
 Rosciad, Churchill's, 225. 
 Rostand, M. Edmond, 248. 
 Round, Mr. J. H., 138 n. 
 Routh, Martin, 251. 
 Ruffhead's Pope, 193 n. 
 Rumain, Comtesse de, 54. 
 
 Saint-Aubin, Auguste de, 
 
 60. 
 St. James's Magazine, The, 
 
 211, 232, 237. 
 St. Lambert, 87. 
 Sainte Palaye, La Curne de, 
 
 52- 
 
302 
 
 General Index 
 
 ' Sally Lun/ 5 n. 
 Salm, Princesse de, 43. 
 Samaritan, Mason's, 271. 
 Sarrazin, Jean, 65. 
 Savage, Richard, 11, 239. 
 Secular Ode, Mason's, 272. 
 Selima and Azor, Collier's, 
 
 107, 
 Seran, Comtesse de, 54. 
 Seraphin, Joseph Francois, 
 
 38. 
 Serres, Dominic, i7on. 
 Seivandoni, 105. 
 Sevigne, Mme. de, 32, 
 
 1940. 
 Shakespeare Illustrated, Le- 
 nox's, 76. 
 Shakespeare in France, 
 
 73 n. 
 Sharp, William, 121. 
 Shenstone, William, 235 n. 
 Sheridan, R. B., 108, 224. 
 Sherman, Miss Mary (Mrs. 
 
 Mason), 263, 264 n. 
 Side Lights on the Georgian 
 
 Period, Paston's, 264 n. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 274. 
 ' Skroddles ' (Mason), 254. 
 Slater, Joseph, 186. 
 Smart, Christopher, 234. 
 Smith, Adam, 88, 222. 
 Smith, Mr. W. M., 34 n. 
 
 Soane, Sir John, 125. 
 Southey, Robert, 221, 265. 
 Spanish Armada, Defeat of, 
 
 Loutherbourg's, 123 n. 
 Speed, Henrietta Jane, 191. 
 Spencer, Lord and Lady, 
 
 83. 
 Spence's Anecdotes, 1 5 n. 
 Spenser, Edmund, 248. 
 Spleen, Colman's, 107. 
 Stage Costume, 106 n. 
 Stances a la Malibran, 
 
 de Musset's, 225. 
 Stapfer, Paul, 63. 
 Sterne, Lawrence, 29, 58, 
 
 67 n., 80, 81. 
 Steyne, Lord, igon. 
 Stowe Catalogue, Forster's, 
 
 209 n. 
 Stowe,Eighteenth-Cen- 
 
 TURY, 180-209. 
 Stoive, Seeley's, 208 n. 
 Straus, Mr. Ralph, 249. 
 Stubbs, John, 140, 142. 
 Suard, 89, 92. 
 Suffolk, Lady, i3n., 191. 
 Suffren, Paul de, 152. 
 Suffren, Pierre Andr^, 52, 
 
 150-179, 282-287. 
 Suffren, The Bailli de, 
 
 150-179. 
 Sultan, BickerstafFe's, 107. 
 
General Index 
 
 303 
 
 Sunk Fence, The, 184. 
 Swift, Jonathan, 189. 
 Swift on Blenheim, 207. 
 
 Tableau Mowuant, 39 n. 
 Talleyrand, M. de, 4.2, 
 
 43 n- 
 Tancred and Sigismunda, 
 
 Thomson's, 81. 
 Tartre, Mme. du, 53. 
 Tar- Water, 82, 130. 
 Tears and Triumph of Par- 
 nassus, Lloyd's, 225. 
 Temple, Anna Chamber, 
 
 Countess, 204 n., 205. 
 Temple, Countess, 182, 
 
 199. 
 Temple, Earl, 180, 204. n. 
 Temple, George, 199. 
 Temple, George, Marquess 
 
 of Buckingham, 199, 
 
 207, 208. 
 Temple, Hester (Pitt's 
 
 wife), 199. 
 Temple, Richard, Earl, 
 
 199. 
 Temple, Sir Peter, 182. 
 Temple, Sir Richard (i), 
 
 182. 
 Temple, Sir Richard (2), 
 
 182, 184, 189. 
 Temple, Sir Thomas, 181. 
 
 Temples of Stowe, The, 
 
 181. 
 Theatre Anglais, Choix de 
 
 Petites Pieces du, Patu's, 
 
 76. 
 TheBailli de Suffren, 
 
 150-179, 282-287. 
 The Portraits of Car- 
 
 montelle, 32-61. 
 Thierry, M. Augustin, 
 
 61 n. 
 Thomson, James, 95, 196. 
 Thornton, Bonnell, zio, 
 
 212, 213, 2l8. 
 Tilliard, J. B., 60. 
 Tipu Saib, 173. 
 Tischbein, the Elder, 96. 
 Tom Jones, Fielding's, 2, 
 
 128. 
 Tom Jones, Receipt for, 
 
 23 n., 128. 
 Tom Thumb, Fielding's, 19. 
 Tooke, William, 230. 
 Torre, the pyrotechnist, 
 
 71. 
 TroUope, Anthony, 105. 
 Tronchin, 37. 
 Tucker, Miss Gertrude 
 
 (Mrs. Warburton), 16. 
 Turner, J. M. W., 127. 
 T^wo Ladies of Syracuse, 
 
 Theocritus', 237. 
 
304 
 
 General Index 
 
 JJni'versal Deluge^ Louther- 
 
 bourg's, 124, 
 Uzanne, M. Octave, 56. 
 
 Valenciennes, Attack on, 
 Loutherbourg's, 122, 
 
 123 n. 
 Vanbrugh, Sir John, 185, 
 
 190. 
 Vanloo, Carle, 96. 
 Vauban, Comtesse de, 55. 
 Vaudreuil, Captain de, 154.. 
 Veal, or Veale, Captain 
 
 Richard, 130, 131, 140, 
 
 149. 
 Vengeur, Sinking of the, 
 
 150- 
 Venice Preser'v'd, Otway's, 
 
 18. 
 
 Verite dans le Vin, CoUe's, 
 
 91- 
 
 Vermenoux, Mme. de, 42 n. 
 
 Vernet, Joseph, 88, 99. 
 Vigee-Lebrun, Mme., 88. 
 VilUers, Lord, 258. 
 Virginia, Crisp's, 66 n. 
 Voisenon, Abbe de, 57. 
 Voltaire, 56, 60, 76, 82, 86. 
 Voltaire's Theatre Classique, 
 93. 
 
 Wade, Marshal, 3. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 32, 33, 
 35, 88, 90, 92, 99, 109, 
 119, 180, 202, 210, 219, 
 221,244, 254,259, 26 in. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, 183. 
 
 Wanstead House, 8. 
 
 Warburton, Bishop, 5, 14, 
 15-19, 221. 
 
 Warburton, Mrs,, 16. 
 
 Ward, Dr., 130. 
 
 Ward, Dr. A. W., 195. 
 
 Ward, Mr. Humphry, 
 257 n. 
 
 Warley Camp, no. 
 
 Warton, Joseph, 222. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 247, 249, 
 252, 266. 
 
 IVay to Keep Him, Murphy's, 
 236. 
 
 Webber, John, 109. 
 
 Welch, Saunders, 132, 133, 
 
 134. 137- 
 Wesley, Samuel, 217, 
 Weston, 104. 
 Wharton, Dr., of Durham, 
 
 250, 253. 
 Whitehead, William, 258. 
 Whittingham, Elizabeth 
 
 (Sir John Fielding's wife), 
 
 138. 
 Whittingham, Mary Ann, 
 
 138. 
 
General Index 
 
 305 
 
 Wilkes, John, 88, 210, 230, 
 
 239- 
 
 William, Fielding's toot- 
 man, 139, 147, 149. 
 
 Wilson, Richard, 109. 
 
 (Vine and Walnuts, W. H. 
 Pyne's, io6n., i i2n.,277. 
 
 Wolcot, Dr. ('Peter Pin- 
 dar'), 99, no. 
 
 Wonders of Derby shire , 1 i8n. 
 
 Wood, John, 7, 9. 
 
 Wood, ' Palmyra,' 186, 262. 
 Wouverman, Philip, 99. 
 Wright, 109 n. 
 
 Yew Cottage, Bath, 2, 23. 
 York, Duke of, 43 n., 84, 
 
 122. 
 Young, William (' Parson 
 
 Adams'), 235 n. 
 
 Zuccaielli, F., 95. 
 
 CHISWICK PRBSS : PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
 X