[174] 'Beardmore:' under sheriff.
[175] 'Guthrie:' William Guthrie, a literary hack. See Boswell. He
wrote an absurd History of the Peerage.
[176] 'Atheist lord:' See note on 'Epistle to William Hogarth.'
[177] 'Service of my pen:' he designed, and partly executed, a poem
entitled 'The Curate.'
[178] 'Francis:' the Rev. Philip Francis, the translator of Horace, and
father of Sir Philip Francis.
[179] 'Cleland:' John Cleland, an infamous witling of the time.
[180] 'Blacow:' an Oxfordian, who informed against some riotous
students, who were shouting out drunken Jacobitism.
[181] 'Kidgell:' Rector of Horne, the subject of the above sketch, and
here ironically praised, had obtained surreptitiously a copy of
Wilkes's 'Essay on Woman,' and betrayed it to the secretaries of state.
THE CONFERENCE.[182]
Grace said in form, which sceptics must agree,
When they are told that grace was said by me;
The servants gone to break the scurvy jest
On the proud landlord, and his threadbare guest;
'The King' gone round, my lady too withdrawn;
My lord, in usual taste, began to yawn,
And, lolling backward in his elbow-chair,
With an insipid kind of stupid stare,
Picking his teeth, twirling his seals about--
Churchill, you have a poem coming out: 10
You've my best wishes; but I really fear
Your Muse, in general, is too severe;
Her spirit seems her interest to oppose,
And where she makes one friend, makes twenty foes.
Pages:
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268