dington, Lord Crosbie, now Lord Glandore, who married Lord Sackville's daughter, invited me, with my then pupil Mr. Bligh, now M.P. for Meath county, to dinner; where we met Mr. Cumberland and my friend Mr. Edward Chamberlayne, formerly Fellow of King's College, of my standing, (the person alluded to as then Clerk of the Treasury in the anecdote of Mr. Burke,) who, with myself, was desirous to allow that comedy a share of due merit; but we found our noble hostess so primed with previous instruction, and supported in it by her instructor present, that my friend was obliged to compromise with her Ladyship and him, by a concession on their part, that it might have had some merit, if brought out as a farce. Another point which, however trifling, occurred to my recollection, was the casual circumstance of Mr. Nares (on whose name my good brother Sturges was guilty of the pun), having (on a visit here, when he succeeded me at Doddington) left behind on his table his pocket-glass, which I afterwards, on finding it, returned to him; but, as it lay open, I saw the motto, so nearly resembling that quoted in the British Critic as a proverb. Dr. Richard Bentley, jun. made his nephew, Mr. Bentley Warren, an attorney at Uppingham, his executor; and I had in my possession for a time the two printed books which I mention, and from him I heard the history of the elder Dr. Bentley's pedigree, and of his price for Milton, the latter as communicated to him by his uncle, who was Rector of Nailstone in Leicestershire. Mr. Cumberland's mistake as to the point of Mr. Isted's writing to him one of the last letters he ever wrote, and of himself being scarcely able to dictate a reply, is not noticed, but is proved by the original letter; in which it appears that the correspondence commenced on the part of Mr. Cumberland, in a letter written with his own right hand (the left being that injured by the fall), dated 23rd August, 1780,* from Madrid, and marked under the date, in Mr. Isted's hand, as received October 6,' and at the close, by Mr. Isted's hand also, as answered November 6th.' (Mr. Isted died in May 1781.) I recollected so well Mr. Isted having shewn me the letter, and was so well acquainted with the contents from memory, that when I desired the present Mr. Isted to look for it, I previously quoted to him the simile of the 'dried monkey,' and the expressions almost literally as applied to Abbé Hussey. At the same time Mrs. Isted gave me leave to rummage the drawers in • See the letter in this volume, p. 190.

the library, under the bookshelves, where I thought I should and did find Mr. Cumberland's letter to the Bishop of Od, which I had seen when first published, annexed by a pack-thread to Dr. Lowth's letter.

"I understood from Mrs. Isted that the pamphlet-drawers at Ecton owed their present assortment of company' to your Lordship's occasional leisure, for arrangement. If I dwell on the above expression, quoted from Mr. Cumberland's Memoirs, I cannot resist the opportunity of accounting for it by relating what I heard from Mr. Ashby's own mouth, and what Mrs. M. Orlebar, when she very lately shewed me her collection of Mr. Cumberland's Plays, assured me she likewise had heard from Mr. Ashby himself.

"Mr. Ashby having occasion to make a journey to town, called on his kinsman, whose entire family had so often been received at Haselbeech, and during his very short stay was desired to take their family dinner whenever it suited him. 'How long do you stay?' 'I must be in the country again by Saturday evening.' 'Positively?' 'Yes, positively. Then I am sorry, for I could have given you, not a family-dinner, but a treat, which your situation might not at another time give you anything equal to ; but you are quite sure you must be at home by that time?' 'Yes.' It is really unlucky. Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and Mrs. Cholmondeley dine with us that day, and I am really sorry you cannot. It so happened that either business was delayed, or Mr. Ashby's necessity for return was not so urgent, and he called on Friday, saying he thought he should not go out of town till Monday. Miss Cumberland (the father being absent) in a stage whisper, said to her mamma (who was silent on the occasion) Oh! then, mamma, cousin Ashby can dine with us on Saturday, as papa, you know, asked him.' A sternly-knitted brow enjoined instant silence in the daughter too; and the good cousin reached his hat, made his bow, and, not hearing from them in the course of the day, was at home with his excellent wife by the Saturday evening. He was too much of a ' matter-of-fact' man to promote the 'shining of that party.' Mrs. M. Orlebar tells me, however, that he left £1000 3 per cents. to Mr. Cumberland for his life, and to the unmarried daughter after him.

"My allusion to Bishop Denison Cumberland's determination about disposing of Irish preferment is grounded on a letter from his Lordship to my brother Sturges, in return for his congratulation on his translation to Kilmore, VOL. VIII.

2 D

after he was Vicar of St. Mary's, Reading, through Lord Halifax, and fairly expectant on Mrs. Sturges' uncle, Bishop Terrick, of London. The Bishop assured him he should have been happy to have had him under his patronage, had he not been already, and likely to be, under so much better. My brother, when he read to me the letter, which very probably may be preserved, still offered, if I wished it, to propose a transfer to me of that interest, as I had only Loddington, and my relation, Lord Camden, was out of the Seals, but neither he nor I had sufficient opinion of the sincerity of the compliment to give it a second thought."

Loddington, 10th August, 1808.

"MY LORD, "The favourable reception given by your Lordship to the observations which I could not refrain from putting on paper, after reading the second edition of Mr. Cumberland's Memoirs, was an ample reward for the little trouble I had taken in throwing into the form of a letter the collected scraps I had put together whilst the book was in my hands. As the packet, of which Mr. Meade was so good to undertake the charge, contained likewise Mr. Cumberland's original letter to the late (entrusted to me by the present) Mr. Isted,* I shall beg leave to avail myself of their purposed journey to Ireland, and request them to charge themselves with that as well as the other parts of its contents; unless you should wish to retain the printed volume of pamphlets for further attention at more leisure. The only person (my much-regretted friend and relation, Dr. Sturges, of Winchester) to whom I had a wish to communicate the manuscript, after it had received your sanction, being now no more, I shall not interrupt the political engagements of his son, Mr. Sturges Bourne,† with my comments on Mr. Cumberland's treatment of his great-uncle; but I had promised my own eldest son, a brother Etonian and King's-man, as he happened to be absent when my domestic critics, his youngest brother and sister, took the trouble of reading it through for me, that he should have some time his turn in it. The only points, in the way of correction or addition, that have occurred to me since, relate, first, to a mistake of mine, when speaking from memory, and charging Churchill with the coarse line

* See p. 190.

+ The Right Hon. W. Sturges Bourne died Feb. 1, 1845, aged 76. See a memoir of him in Gent. Mag. N. S. XXIII. 433, 661.

against Francis. A collection of fugitive poetry, which I have long since bound together in several volumes, brought to my eye lately the Art of rising in the Church,' by Anti-Sejanus Scott,* published in 1763, the year preceding the Cambridge contest; when, perhaps, he did not intend that the plan he prescribed should be the very one he so shortly afterwards followed with success. After half-adozen lines of gross abuse, the concluding couplet is,

'That, drunk each night, and liquor'd every chink,

Dyes his red face in port, and his black soul in ink.'

"Had I likewise not trusted to memory when I quoted Pope, I should not have overlooked a note which has since occurred to me, on the subject of 'priestly port,' at line 200, Dunciad iv. It is rather extraordinary that Mr. Cumberland, after reprobating the conduct of the latter Dr. Bentley's executor in selling the joint library of the two doctors, should himself be the person who occasioned the British Museum being possessed of about sixty volumes in his own hands, formerly given him by his grandfather, and that, too, in a mode less dignified than if he had openly himself tendered them to the trustees for the purchase. Mr. Evans, bookseller in Pall Mall, (successor to Mr. Edwards,) whom I had occasion lately to call on, in course of a pursuit which I will take the liberty to mention, told me that he sold them to Lackington, in hopes to escape notice in a transaction which 'res angusti domi' made necessary, but which was thereby only made the more public. The communication in the Gentleman's Magazine of November last,† page 1047, set me on an inquiry in which I was nearly interested. In 1797 my Uppingham parishioner, Mr. Bentley Warren, lent me the two books, which his uncle had recommended his reserv. ing from the sale. One, a publication of the Freethinkers of the time, with Dr. Bentley's first thoughts, as materials for his answer, on every vacant part of margin, &c. of a thin octavo, half-bound book: the other, Milton's Paradise Lost, quarto, Tonson's edition, with his alterations, notes, and interlineations, exactly as in his subsequent edition. By an imprudent mode of returning them, the * See Literary Illustrations, vol. VII. p. 450.

+ The communication here referred to, describes how the books with Dr. Bentley's MS. notes came to the British Museum. Mr. Kidd, editor of "Opuscula Ruhnkeniana," noticed the books in Lackington's shop, and made out a list of them, amounting to sixty volumes. He waited on Mr. Nares, the librarian of the MS. department of the British Museum, who lost no time in laying the matter before the Trustees, and the whole collection was purchased for the public use.

former only reached him; and, after fruitless endeavours to trace the other, he handsomely accepted a copy of Bentley's Milton from me. On reading the Gentleman's Magazine above named, I wrote to Mr. Nares, requesting he would make inquiries whether that book (though not likely to be in the list of those in the Museum) was anywhere forthcoming. Before he had an opportunity even to communicate the subject of my inquiry to any one, a friend wrote to him that Mr. Evans above mentioned had favoured him with a view' of a book which exactly answered my description. He wrote, and recommended my writing also, to Mr. Evans. It appeared that the book was in his hands only in transitu between Mr. Mitford, of Oriel College, Oxford, and Mr. Dunster, of Petworth, editor of Paradise Regained; and he afterwards sent me information that it was then in the hands of Mr. Todd, who is shortly to publish an edition of Milton's Poetical Works for the booksellers. Mr. Nares was so good as to call on Mr. Todd, where he saw the book, which, though new bound (since Mr. Evans had first seen it, I believe), had the attestation I described to Mr. Nares, of Dr. Bentley's giving it to Mr. Warren, under the Doctor's own hand, carefully preserved. I have since called on Mr. Todd, and seen not only what Mr. Nares did, but a further memorandum of Mr. Mitford's, that the book was given him in 1804 by John Clementson, esq. Deputy Serjeant at Arms.

"The present Mr. Clementson, who succeeded his father in that office, was my pupil, when I resided at Uppingham, his father living in the adjoining parish. Hence he must have had the opportunity of procuring from the bookseller there (who was in the habit of buying anything) the book his son tells me he gave Mr. Mitford, but knows not how his father obtained it. I am now, through him, endeavouring to obtain restitution for Mr. Warren, whom I have not yet acquainted with the case. Mr. Thirlwall has returned me my papers with very gracious acknowledgments, but has been impeded in publication by other important avocations. I depend on your Lordship's forgiveness of this detail, remaining your most obedient and obliged servant, EDWARD JONES."

"MY LORD,

Loddington, 19th June, 1809. "In the hope of availing myself of Mr. and Mrs. Isted's kind conveyance, I continue to presume on your