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256 nicate the information literary or personal of which he was in pursuit.

In the club, occasional difficulties occurred in the election of new members, often not unusual in such associations. The friends of some, with or without cause, find opponents in others; and to some gentle mediating spirit is given the task of soothing asperities and explaining away misunderstandings. This office often fell to the lot of Malone. Mr. Windham, Sir Joseph Banks, Boswell, and a bishop or two, on former occasions, sought his kind offices when their friends were in danger of rejection by adverse votes, and succeeded. Sometimes his popularity ensured a call to fulfil more social duty, as appears by the following note of Mr. Canning:—

Spring Gardens, Monday Night, March 12, 1799. ,—You must not infer that I am likely to become an inattentive member (however I may be an unworthy one) of the club, from the circumstance of being unable to attend to-morrow and to take the chair, which, I find, I am called upon to fill. But I am not my own master on a post night; and a post night, after the arrival of fifteen mails at once, will confine me too strictly to the Foreign Office to allow me to partake of the convivialities of the Thatched House.

Will you permit me to request, if a substitute is necessary, that you will have the goodness to take the chair for me; and if any apology can be required for my most unwilling abdication of so high an office, that you will have the goodness to make that apology in my behalf, by stating the occasion which prevents my attendance?

I beg your pardon for giving you this trouble, but I know not to whom I could apply with so confident a reliance upon their good nature and good offices.

I am, dear Sir, Your very sincere and faithful humble servant,