up to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales's Court. 'I want to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit you should know also who it is that wishes that pleasure. You have heard (continued he) of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so much. I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast, but have survived them; and, despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I have cleared my accounts and shut up my books, with thoughts of never opening them again. But you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die, which now I do; so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman is a prodigy, for at eighty-five he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty, a disposition to be pleased and a power to please others beyond whatever I knew; added to which, a man of learning, courtesy and feeling." Another portrait has been drawn not less characteristic. About two years before his death, having some friends with him at his country seat, and being loth to part with them one night, his son, the Lord Chancellor, objected to sitting up any longer, and left the room. As soon as he was gone, the lively old peer said, "Come, my good friends, since the old gentleman is gone to bed, I think we may venture to crack another bottle!" Until within a month of his death, he constantly rode out on horseback two hours in the morning, and drank his bottle of wine after dinner. It would be unpardonable to omit here the splendid passage of Burke, in which the long and felicitous life of Lord Bathurst is apostrophised in connection with the sudden growth of American greatness. In his speech on conciliation with America, delivered in 1775, Burke said:

"Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 at an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quæ sit poterit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when in the fourth generation, the third Prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing counsels) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst those bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and while he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should

tell him 'Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests, and civilizing settle. ments, in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had been presented to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!"

No cloud was interposed, but the day was near its close: Lord Bathurst died a few months afterwards, September 16, 1775, aged 91.

Mr. Daines Barrington, in his Miscellanies, mentions it as a remarkable instance of memory-the musical memory-that Lord Bathurst, when eightyseven, sung throughout an air of Nicolini's, and imitated that popular Italian musician, though his lordship could not have heard the song for more than sixty years.

Pope said to Spence, that none of his works had been more laboured than this Epistle. It was not in the form of a dialogue, and Lord Bathurst told Warton, that he was much surprised to see what he had, with repeated pleasure, so often read as an Epistle addressed to himself, converted into a dialogue," in which," said he, "I perceive, I really make but a shabby and indifferent figure, and contribute very little to the spirit of the dialogue-if t must be a dialogue." The alterations are very slight, yet they do seem to give more point and spirit to the passages where the noble lord is introduced as an interlocutor. Pope's taste and judgment did not desert him on this occasion, but of course he has himself always the best of it in the argument! The following is a specimen of the simple process by which the Epistle was converted into a dialogue. The lines

"A knotty point! to which we now proceed.

But you are tired-I'll tell a tale. B. Agreed.
P. Where London's column, &c.

Stood originally thus :

"That knotty point, my Lord, shall I discuss,
Or tell a tale?-a tale-it follows thus:
Where London's column," &c.

FRANCIS CHARTRES.

Ver. 20. Chartres, and the Devil.] Colonel Francis Chartres (more correctly Charteris), of Amisfield, died in March, 1731-2, and Arbuthnot's striking epitaph on him appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for the following month. The name, however, was veiled under that of "Don Francisco." This notorious gambler was of a good Scotch family, and was well connected. He married Helen, daughter of Sir Alexander Swinton, Senator of the College of

Justice, by whom he had a daughter, married to the Earl of Wemyss, to whose second son he left most of his estate, and considerable portions to her other children. Charteris died at Stoneyfield, a manor-house near Edinburgh, the life-rent of which, with a legacy of £1000, he left to his law-agent, the cele brated Duncan Forbes of Culloden. Charteris said of Forbes, that his honesty was so whimsical that it was forty-five per cent. above Don Quixote. The graceless reprobate, it is said, left off swearing, when he was made aware that he was dying; and one day, under an impression that he was on the point of dissolution, he ordered, "with a great roar," that all his just debts should be paid. Hogarth, it is well known, introduced Charteris, attended by his pimp, into the first plate of his Rake's Progress. Indeed, his infamy seems to have been so conspicuous as to be one of the common topics of the day, and the outrage at his funeral marks the popular indignation.

VULTURE HOPKINS.

Ver. 85. What can they give? to dying Hopkins heirs?] John Hopkins, the rapacious citizen alluded to, died in his house at Broad Street, London, April 25, 1732. His fortune is set down in the periodicals of the day at £300,000. He left £500 to the Hospital for Incurables; £500 to be divided among poor housekeepers, at the rate of £20 to each family; and the bulk of his estate was left to the eldest son of his eldest daughter, and, in case of failure of issue male, to the surviving male heir of his other four daughters. Hopkins supposed that by the time the unborn heir was of age, the interest of his estate would amount to above £100,000. The case was brought into Court, and the Master of the Rolls decided, October 22, 1733, that the whole real estate should go to the heir-at-law, until some person, then unborn, should be born, and attain to the age of twenty-one years. An heir male was born, but died in 1737, aged only six months. There were two other rich citizens of the name of Hopkins, related to the subject of Pope's satire, who attained to as great wealth by stock-jobbing, and other means. They were members of the Kit-Cat Club, a distinction to which the Vulture seems never to have risen. In verses 291 and 292 of this Epistle, Pope alludes to the expensive funeral of Hopkins, and it is stated that Mr. Boulter, executor to Hopkins, made so splendid a funeral for him, that the expenses amounted to £7666.

JAPHET CROOK.

Ver. 86. To Chartres, vigour? Japhet, nose and ears?] Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, was sentenced May 31, 1731, to stand in the pillory, have both his ears cut off, his nose slit, his body imprisoned for life, and his goods and chattels forfeited to the Crown, for forging writings to an estate. He stood in the pillory, June 10, and being committed to the King's Bench

Prison, died there June 18, 1734. The circumstances connected with this man's history are curious. Stranger, it appears, when travelling in the north, met with a gentleman in an inn at York, who informed him that he had considerable wealth, but no near relation to leave it to. The other professed to be in the same situation, and at length the parties agreed to make each his will in favour of the other, so that the longest liver might enjoy the whole. In this way, Stranger in a few years came into possession of a large fortune. The heir-at-law of the deceased attempted to set aside the will, but failed. The fraud, however, was distinctly proved. In an early number of Chambers's Journal, it is stated that Stranger at one time migrated into Eskdale, and, possessing some smattering of scientific knowledge, was enabled to impose upon the Duke of Buccleuch (son of the Duke of Monmouth) in so far as to induce his Grace to enter into some expensive operations, for the purpose of digging and smelting iron. These operations were conducted at a place not far from the old tower of Gilnockie-the famous Johnny Armstrong's fastness-and there is still a hamlet near the spot, termed, from Stranger's operations, the Forge. Whether Crook or Stranger were the real name of the adventurer, the latter was that by which he went in Eskdale, and which was transmitted to an illegitimate daughter-Nelly Stranger-whom he left in that country, and who lived to a considerable age. Mr. Robert Chambers has obligingly informed us that he obtained this information from an old gentleman of eighty, Mr. Grieve, of Branxholm, a man full of anecdote, and of such accuracy as to give value to his relations of past events. Mr. Chambers conjectures that Stranger was the prototype of Dousterswivel, in Scott's "Antiquary." This is probable enough, from Sir Walter's acquaintance with all the projects and undertakings of the Buecleuch family, and from the strong impression that such a story as that of Stranger and his Forge must have made upon his mind.

THE DUCHESS OF RICHMOND.

Ver. 96. Die and endow a college or a cat.] The "Duchess of R." alluded to by Pope, was the celebrated Court beauty, Frances Stewart, granddaughter of Lord Blantyre, and wife of Charles Stewart, Duke of Richmond and Lennox. Miss Stewart inspired Charles II. with the purest and strongest passion he seemed capable of entertaining. He would have divorced his queen to marry her, and was half distracted when, by her clandestine marriage with Richmond, she eluded his grasp. The personal charms of La Belle Stewart have been commemorated by Grammont, Pepys, and others. The secretary, indeed, was enraptured with her appearance-her "cocked hat and a red plume," her "sweet eye," and "little Roman nose." Miss Stewart had been so annoyed by the attentions of Charles, and the manners of his profligate Court, that she resolved to marry any gentleman of £1500 a-year, when, fortunately, the Duke of Richmond solicited her hand. Her consent was, according to Pepys, "as great an act of honour as ever was done by woman!" In a few years the Duchess became a widow, and continued

66

The endowment satirized by
She left annuities to certain

so for thirty years, dying October 15, 1702. Pope has been favourably explained by Warton. female friends, with the burden of maintaining some of her cats: a delicate way of providing for poor, and probably proud, gentlewomen, without making them feel that they owed their livelihood to her mere liberality. It would have been easy, however, to have effected the same object in a way not liable to ridicule. The effigy " of the Duchess still exists, along with others, in Westminster Abbey, but is no longer exhibited to the public. She left money by her will, desiring that her effigies, as well done in wax as could be, and dressed in coronation robes and coronet, should be placed in a case, with clear crown glass before it, and should be set up in Westminster Abbey. A more lasting and popular "effigy" is the figure of Britannia, on our copper coins, which was originally modelled from a medal struck by Charles the Second, in honour of the fair Stewart. A similar figure, however, may be found on one of the coins of Antoninus Pius.

SIR GILBERT HEATHCOTE.

Ver. 101. The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule,
That every man in want is knave or fool.

The allusion here is to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, who was reckoned worth £700,000. He was one of the Aldermen of London, a Director of the Bank of England, and Member of Parliament for St. Germains. He died January 25, 1733, aged 82. This wealthy commoner made a provision in his will which ought to be recorded to his honour; he ordered that his tenants should not have their rents raised, whatever improvements they made.

MISS SKERRETT.-THE EXCISE BILL.

Ver. 119. Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys?
Phryne foresees a general Excise.

Why she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?

་་

Maria Skerrett was for upwards of ten years the mistress of Sir Robert Walpole, and in 1738, on the death of his first wife, Sir Robert married her, to the great mortification of his son Horace, who never mentions the second marriage. Coxe, in his Memoirs of Walpole, is also silent as to the mesalliance. Lord Hervey says that Miss Skerrett was a very pretty young woman, daughter to a merchant," and for whom Walpole was said to have given (besides an annual allowance) £5000 as entrance money. She had a daughter by Walpole, for whom he obtained the rank and title of an earl's daughter an honour previously confined to the illegitimate offspring of princes. months.

Maria Skerrett enjoyed her married dignity only about three Before her connexion with Walpole, she appears to have been a person of some distinction, and familiar with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who corresponded with her so early as 1716. She is said to have had a fortune