Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/385

 the ‘New Foundling Hospital for Wit,’ vi. 107–10 (1786). They are of little merit, though they have gained for Dick Edgcumbe a notice in Walpole's ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ (iv. 242–3, Park's edition). He was also an accomplished draughtsman, and designed a clever coat of arms for the ‘Old and Young Club’ at Arthur's, which was purchased at the sale at Strawberry Hill by Arthur's Clubhouse (Walpole's Letters, iii. 10, and note); it has since disappeared. It was engraved by Grignon. He also painted a portrait of the convict, Mary Squires (, Catalogue, p. 457). It is greatly to his credit that he should have been among the first to recognise the genius of Reynolds ( and, Life of Reynolds, i. 48), who painted for Horace Walpole a group of George Selwyn, Edgcumbe, and Williams, entitled ‘Conversation,’ which was purchased at the Strawberry Hill sale by the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, lord Taunton. Edgcumbe's services to art are also recognised in Müntz's dedication to him of his treatise on ‘Encaustic or Count Caylus's method of Painting in the Manner of the Ancients.’

[Collins's Peerage of England, 9th ed. vii. 354; Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 131, iii. 1167; Gent. Mag. xxxi. 237 (1761).]  EDGCUMBE, RICHARD, second (1764–1839), only child of George, the first earl [q. v.], was born on 13 Sept. 1764. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, of which university he was created a D.C.L. in 1793. As Viscount Valletort he represented the borough of Fowey in the tory interest from 1786 to 1795, when, on the death of his father, he was elevated to the peerage. At the same time he was appointed to succeed his father as lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Cornwall. In March 1808 he was appointed captain of the band of gentlemen pensioners, and was sworn of the privy council. He held the captaincy until 1812.

Mount-Edgcumbe was a man of artistic tastes. Cyrus Redding, in his ‘Fifty Years' Recollections,’ harshly and unjustly describes him at p. 175 of vol. i. as ‘a mere fribble, exhibiting little above the calibre of an opera connoisseur, with something of the mimic.’ He seems, indeed, to have been in great request as an amateur actor ( and, Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ii. 76, 77, 508, and the Journal and Correspondence of Miss Berry, ii. 110, 114, who preserves a clever prologue written by him for the theatricals at Strawberry Hill in 1800). He also wrote, at first for private circulation, some amusing and discriminating ‘Musical Reminiscences of an Old Amateur; chiefly respecting the Italian Opera in England for fifty years, from 1793 to 1823.’ The second edition, published anonymously, appeared in 1827; the third, to which he appended his name, in 1828; and the fourth, ‘continued to the present times, and including the Festival at Westminster Abbey,’ in 1834. The merits of the little book are recognised in the ‘Athenæum’ of 22 Nov. 1834. Mount-Edgcumbe records the interesting fact that he composed an opera on the ‘Zenobia’ of Metastasio, which was performed on the occasion of Banti's benefit in 1800 (pp. 82–3 of the fourth edition), but the score has not been preserved.

Mount-Edgcumbe died, 26 Sept. 1839, at Richmond, and was buried in Petersham churchyard (, History of Surrey, iii. 132). He married on 21 Feb. 1789 Lady Sophia Hobart, third daughter of John, second earl of Buckinghamshire, who died on 17 Aug. 1806, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Ernest Augustus, third earl of Mount Edgcumbe, born in 1797, died in 1861, the author of some interesting ‘Extracts from Journals kept during the Revolutions at Rome and Palermo’ (1849, 2nd edit. 1850).

Reynolds painted Mount-Edgcumbe's portrait in 1774; the original is now in the Mount-Edgcumbe collection, and was engraved by Dickinson.

[Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 131, iii. 1168; Gent. Mag. xii. 540 (1839).]  EDGEWORTH DE FIRMONT, HENRY ESSEX (1745–1807), confessor to Louis XVI, was a son of the Rev. Robert Edgeworth, rector of Edgeworthstown, co. Longford, and a descendant of Francis Edgeworth, who with his brother Edward came over from England about 1582. His mother was a granddaughter of Archbishop Ussher. When Henry was three or four years of age, his father changed his religion owing to a conversation with a protestant prelate who had visited Toulouse, and been much impressed by the catholic rites, but was precluded by age and position from examination of catholic tenets. Robert Edgeworth, leaving one son, Ussher, behind with his kinsmen, resigned the living and settled with his wife and his three other children at Toulouse. On the father's death and the return of the elder brother Robert to Ireland (1769), Henry, who had been educated by the jesuits at Toulouse, was sent to Paris and trained for the priesthood. On being ordained he took the name of De Firmont, from the paternal estate of Firmount, near Edgeworths-