Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/196

 176 in his own college. At Trinity he polled 107 votes against 51 that were given to Townshend. At St. John's Townshend secured 91 and 48 were given to Euston. It was à propos of this election that Paley was fabled to have preached before the university in the presence of Pitt on the text "There is a lad here, who hath five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many."

The comment of Wraxall over this electoral contest summed up the situation with complete justice. "Few men held a higher place in Fox's friendship than Townshend, a place to which he was well entitled by the elegance of his mind, his various accomplishments and steady adherence throughout life. Though not endowed with eminent parliamentary talents, he possessed an understanding highly cultivated, set off by the most pleasing manners. If party could ever feel regret, it would have been excited by his exclusion from a seat so honourable in itself as that of the University of Cambridge, to which he had attained by unwearied personal exertions."

Townshend's friendship with Fox and his influence over the Whig leader had by this time become known to the world at large. When Fox paid a long visit to Dublin in the closing months of 1777, Townshend accompanied him. Tickell, the brother-in-law of Sheridan, published anonymously in 1779 — it passed through at least three editions before the next year had run its course — a clever satire entitled "epistle from the honourable Charles Fox partridge shooting, to the honourable John Townshend cruising." Fox is represented as tired of pastime in the country and he hopes that Townshend is in like case. He indulges in satire over the peculiarities of his opponents in politics and adjures his friend to return to life at Westminster. The young Whig yachtsman is designated the "pride of fop alley though a little tanned" and there is spread before him an