sages relating to the dissensions of the royal family, which have been destroyed. All this however I submit to my readers' judgment as the best-though still a very unsatisfactory-conjecture I can make on this mysterious subject."

in Lord Hervey's Memoirs; for I should have supposed that he-curious in literary scandal-most have known it. He may perhaps have had some special motive for not alluding to it; or perhaps his notice of it may have occurred in one of the pasAs to the impression that will be made on the minds of those who read these attractive volumes by the character of the Queen, it can only be rendered tolerable by throwing ourselves into the period in which she lived, and the situation in which she was placed. People are the creatures of circumstances, and the too often slaves of their passions. Her dominant passion was the love of power; that was to be obtained and preserved by skilful management of the King's temper, and an easy compliance with his desires. He had no notion that conjugal fidelity was a virtue, or, if so, that it was expected of him to show the example. Neither he nor the Queen were at all influenced by delicacy of feeling; he communicated to her the secrets of his amours, and she consented to live in the company of his mistresses. Though Mr. Croker has mentioned the extenuating circumstance of expediency, yet he owns it cannot excuse the indulgence, and even encoucouragement, given on her death-bed to the King's vices. He concludes that she had little moral delicacy or Christian duty; and he quotes from Lord Chesterfield, who says that "she fixed herself in deism-believing in a future state. Upon the whole, the agreeable woman was liked by most people, while the Queen was neither esteemed, beloved, nor trusted by any one but the King."

Lord Hervey was the second son of John first Earl of Bristol, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Felton and Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter and heiress of the third Earl of Suffolk. An elder son, Carr, Lord Hervey, mentioned by Pope, died young: he is said to have been notoriously the father of Horace Walpole, and this assertion the Editor considers supported by circumstances developed in these memoirs. The father lived, when a country gentleman and only John Hervey, esq. at Ickworth, near Bury St. Edmund's; but in 1703, through the friendship of the Melbourne family, he was created Lord Hervey. At the accession of George the First he was created Earl of Bristol. His character was that of an amiable and accomplished man; in politics a Whig, and supporter of the Hanoverian succession; but he took little part in public affairs. John Hervey was educated at Westminster under Dr. Friend, whence he removed to Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in 1715. In 1716 he visited Paris, and then proceeded to pay his court at Hanover, where George the First was; his mother's fears and tenderness for him prevented his proceeding to Italy. On his return he entertained some desire for a commission in the Guards, but that it seems he soon relinquished, and he spent much time with his father in the retirement of Ickworth, and also with the gay and youthful society of the court. He formed a friendship with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and a strong attachment of a softer kind with the celebrated Mrs. Lepell, so well known in Pope's verses and letters, the daughter of Brigadier-General Lepell. There is some obscurity regarding the date of the marriage; it is generally fixed on the 25th October, 1720, but it seems that it had secretly taken place some months before. The young couple, it appears, led a gay and fashionable life, and on Lord Hervey's side (for the lady was in all essentials blameless) there was both laxity of morals and scepticism in religion. A deistical defence

of Mandeville in answer to Berkeley, though professing to be the work " of a Country Clergyman," was written by Lord Hervey. On 15 Nov. 1723, by the death of his elder brother Carr, he succeeded to the title of Lord Hervey, and in March 1725 was elected member for Bury. In January, 1728, in the first Parliament of George the First, he moved the Address in the House of Commons. He soon after set out for Italy (having become a valetudinarian, which his father attributed to the use of that detestable and poisonous plant-tea), accompanied by Mr. Stephen Fox. He returned in September, 1729. He was courted both by Pulteney and Walpole, but Walpole carried off the prize; and on 7 May, 1730, he received the gold key of Vice-Chamberlain to the King. He published several pamphlets in answer to the "Craftsman," one of which was answered by Pulteney, and this led to a duel in St. James's Park, where Pulteney would "infallibly have run Lord Hervey through the body if his foot had not slipped;" and then the seconds parted them. Then came the more serious quarrel with Pope, a quarrel with something sharper and severer than Pulteney's sword, -the poet's pen.* In 1727 Pope commenced his attacks; which in 1732 he renewed in a severer form of bitter contempt and insult, and this was followed by the celebrated prose letter, and the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and the character of Sporus. In the satire called "1738" he was again attacked. Pope ridiculed him on what is to all a tender point, his personal appearance. No doubt his satirical description is exaggerated, but the Duchess of Marlborough, in her " Opinions," gives no favourable picture of his morals or appearance. She says, "Lord Hervey is at this time always with the king, and in vast favour. He has certainly parts and wit, but is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous;—a painted face, and not a tooth in his head."

In 1732 an intimacy took place between him and Dr. Middleton, and a correspondence was carried on between them regarding the mode of electing for the Roman senate. Middleton published his share in 1747, but the complete correspondence was not given to the world till 1778. Middleton dedicated his Life of Cicero to him, which brought Pope again into the field against both the dedicator and his patron,-—

Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power,
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower.

"This sarcasm (says the editor) was the last blow of this celebrated conflict, which does little honour to Pope's taste or truth, and not much more to Lord Hervey's talents or temper." Lord Hervey for several years was kept by stronger influence than his own in the household place of Vice-Chamberlain; but in April, 1740, Lord Godolphin was made Con. stable of the Tower, and Lord Hervey Privy Seal in his room. On the

*Pope in his satirical sketches is apt to exaggerate till his descriptions and accusations wander entirely from the truth. The line

But wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys,

Surely is not at all applicable to Lord Hervey. And in the same way in his celebrated character of the Duke of Buckingham,

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,

The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,

Great Villiers lies, &c.

Not a syllable of this is true. The Duke of Buckingham died in one of his own houses then inhabited by a respectable tenant, and in no squalid want, or any personal want at all, though he had squandered away a vast patrimony.-REV.

11th February, 1741, Sir Robert Walpole closed his long and prosperous ministry, and resigned; and on the 12th July, much against his inclination, Lord Hervey was dismissed and replaced by Lord Gower. He was very ill at the time of Walpole's fall, yet, "though there was a short interval between his dismissal and his death, he distinguished himself by exertions within Parliament and in the press equal, if not superior, to any he had ever made." Of his private life after the change of ministry we are told, there are no traces; but his political is distinguished by his zeal in the new opposition. In March, 1743, he spoke with great applause against the Hanoverians, and he wrote also two able pamphlets, one of which, "On the present Position of Foreign and Domestic Affairs," the editor says, even after this lapse of time may still be read with interest." These were his last efforts. In the summer of 1743 he appears to have been suffering from illness, and his last letter, dated June 18, is written with feebleness and tremor of hand. He died on the 8th August of that year, and his death is thus recorded in the London Magazine:*

66

"Died. The Right Honourable John Lord Hervey, late Lord Privy Seal, and eldest son of the Earl of Bristol: a famous speaker in Parliament under the late administration, and in the Opposition to the present." His father Lord Bristol survived till the 20th January, 1751, and Lady Hervey to the 2nd September, 1768.

Lord Hervey thus speaks of these Memoirs, now, after their repose, disclosed to us :—

"I look upon these papers rather as fragments that might be wove into a history, than a history in themselves, so I generally put down such little particulars as can come to the knowledge of few historians; whilst I omit several which may be learned from every Gazette, and cannot fail to be inserted in the writings of every author who will treat of these times. I am very sensible too what mere trifles several things are in themselves which I have related; but as I know that I myself have had a pleasure in looking at William Rufus's rusty stirrup, and the relics of a half worm-eaten chair in which Queen Mary sat when she was married in the cathedral of Winchester to King Philip of Spain, it is for the sake of those who, like me, have an unaccountable pleasure in such trifling particulars relating to anti.

He goes on to say,

"Let Machiavels give rules for the conduct of princes, and let Tacituses refine upon them; let the one embellish their writings with teaching, and the other with commenting on these great personages; let these make people imagine that lettered theory can be reduced to common practice, and let these pretend to account for accidental steps by premeditated policy; whilst I content myself with only relating facts just as I see them, without pretending to impute the effects of chance to design,

quity that I take the trouble of putting many of the immaterial incidents I have described into black and white, and am very ready to give up the dignity of my character as an historian to the censures of those who may be pleased on this account to reflect upon it: let them enjoy their great reflections on great events unenvied, and seek them elsewhere; and let those only hope for any satisfaction or amusement in my writings who look with more indifferent eyes on the surface of those splendid trifles, and pry less metaphysically into the bottom of them, for it is to those only I write who prefer nature to gilding, truth to refinement, and have more pleasure in looking upon these great actors dressing and undressing than when they are representing their parts upon the public stage."

or to account for the great actions of great people always by great causes; since the highest rank of people have as many and the same passions as the lowest ; and since the lowest have five senses, and none of the highest that I know of have six. I look upon the world, and every incident in it, to be produced as much from the same manner of thinking, as I do the operations of kitchen-jacks and the finest repeating watches from the same laws of motion and the same rules of mechanism

* In the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. XIII. p. 443, instead of the latter clause, we find this :-" He distinguished himself with great zeal in the late debates against hiring auxiliaries and against the Gin Act."

-the only difference is, a little coarser or finer wheels. The intrigues of courts and private families are still the same game, and played with the same cards, the disparity in the skill of the gamesters in each equally great; there are excellently good

and execrably bad, and the only difference is their playing more or less deep, whilst the cutting and shuffling, the dealing and the playing, is still the same, whether the stakes be halfpence or millions."*

We now proceed to select a few of the more leading characters described; although had we had room we should also have added some less known, and not sketched by another pen. No more eminent person or of greater importance appeared at that time than the one now before us :

"Mr. Pulteney he knew was a man of parts, but not to be depended upon one capable of serving a minister, but more capable of hurting him, from desiring only to serve himself. He was a man of most inflexible pride, immeasurable ambition, and so impatient of any superiority that he grudged the power of doing good even to his benefactor, and envied the favour of the court to one who called him in to share it. He had as much lively ready wit as ever man was master of; and was, before politics soured his temper and engrossed his thoughts, the most agreeable and coveted

companion of his time. He was naturally lazy, and continued so till he was out of employment: his resentment and eagerness to annoy first taught him application, application gave him knowledge, but knowledge did not give him judgment, nor experience prudence. He was changeable in his wishes, vehement in the pursuit of them, and dissatisfied in the possession. He had strong passions, was seldom sincere, but when they ruled him; cool and unsteady in his friendships, warm and immoveable in his hate; naturally not generous, and made less so by the influence

See also Lord Hervey's Introduction to his Memoirs, vol. i. p. 1 to 4. In one place of his Memoirs (vol. i. p. 389) he says, "There is one thing I cannot help remarking here, very different from the common style of memoir-writers, and that is, the difficulty and sometimes the impossibility of coming at truth, even for those who have, to all appearance, the best information ;" and then he gives an example of the contradictory statement given him on the same subject by the Queen and by Sir R. Walpole.-REV. + On Parliamentary oratory these are the observations, by one who was himself an orator, occasioned by a speech of Mr. Pulteney's. "There was a languor in it that one almost always perceives in those speeches that have been so long preparing and compiling. Men of great talents and quick parts, who have a knowledge and readiness, a natural eloquence, a lively imagination, and a cominand of words, always in my opinion, which is founded on my observation, speak best upon the least preparation, supposing them masters of their subject; for, besides their thinking with less vivacity and emotion on subjects they have often thought of, their growing tired of them and having their fancy palled by them, in these cases of preparation their memory works more than their invention, and they are hunting the cold scent of the one, instead of pursuing the warm scent of the other; and, as most orators warm others in the degree or in proportion to the degree in which they are warmed themselves, so they never can affect their audience so much with things they have thought of till they are unaffected with them themselves as they will with those which they utter at the time that they are most affected with them themselves, which is generally in the first conception of them. And it is from this cause that all good speakers, in my humble opinion, speak better on a reply than at any other time, though Sir R. Walpole on this occasion even in replying lost those advantages I have mentioned, for, as he knew beforehand all the arguments to which he was to answer this day, so his answer was as much prepared and thought of as those things to which he was to answer, and, to my ear at least, there was the same languor, and that same want of the vis vivida, which appeared in the performance of Mr. Pulteney, and which I have often heard both of them speak without wanting, and possess superior I think to any two men I ever heard, and at least equal I believe to any two men that ever had the gift of speech." Of his father, Sir R. Walpole's eloquence, Horace Walpole says, It was made for use, and he never could shine but when it was necessary he should. He wanted art when he had no occasion for it, and never pleased but when he did more than please." And he adds, "How little he shone in formal ornamental eloquence, appeared from his speech at Sacheverell's trial, which was the only written one, and perhaps the worst, he ever made." See Horace Walpole's Memoirs of George the Second, vol i. p. 233.—REV.

Lord Bolingbroke has sat for his portrait to many eminent painters; among others to Chesterfield, Walpole, and Coxe; in some the features are a little fainter than others, but the general resemblance is the same: all have preserved "the pride in the heart," though some have softened "the defiance in the eye."

*Anna Maria Gumley.-Pope has given her a niche in his Satiric Fables as Pulteney's wife;" and Sir C. H. Williams says, "Pulteney, in becoming Lord Bath,

trucked the fairest fame

For a right honourable name

To call his vixen by."

And afterwards he calls her "Bath's ennobled doxy," &c.--REV.