Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/151

 ii s. ix. FEB. 21, i9i4.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

145

took him a great deal of time to compose it." I shall endeavour to show that this was in all probability true.

Warburton's ' Pope ' appeared in 1751. Wilkes at once secured a sumptuous copy with fine plates. It now worthily reposes in the Grenville Library (press-mark 12850- 58). The patriot has carefully annotated it, supplying an omission in the Table of Contents, from which the Bishop had in- advertently left out 'The Universal Prayer.' Wilkes has corrected the oversight in his own writing. He has marginally noted throughout the poems afterwards parodied the various readings of preceding editions.

A perusal of the parodies supplies good reason for thinking that they were added to and touched up from time to time, and perhaps begun before the Warburton edi- tion appeared.

Thus the earliest reference to events of the time is to the marriage of Edward Hussey to the Duchess of Manchester. There is a gross allusion in the ' Essay ' to this event, which, we learn- from a letter of Walpole of 3 July, 1746, occured in that year, the bride- groom's excessive physical development being a subject of jest at the time. Wilkes alludes again in a note on Peg Woffington to Hussey's size, and this note is ironically ascribed to Burman, and does not correspond, as do most, with any actual note of War- burton's. It may well have been written with the text referring to Hussey about the time of the marriage. Hussey's nuptials must have been a stale subject of jest in 1762-3.

The allusion to Peg Woffington in Dublin and the dedication and occasional references to Fanny Murray, afford too uncertain grounds for any conjectures as to date, Mr. Bleackley has shown in his ' Ladies Fair and Frail ' that in 1754 Fanny was still a reigning beauty in the half -world to whom Grub Street offered incense, and she con tinued so for years after Dilke chose to con sign her to oblivion, retiring from the towr to the virtuous embraces of a husband in 1757 or 1758.

On the o her hand, we have at 11. 47-8 of the parody an unmistakable allusion bearing strongly on the question of author ship as well as date. For Pope's Then in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, There must be somewhere such a rank as man

Wilkes has substituted :

Then in the scale 'tis plain,

Godlike erect, Bute stands the foremost man.

Now, what had Potter, who died in 1759 to do with Bute, then an official in th

Princess of Wales's household ? But of

/Vilkes it has been well said : " He founded

'he North Briton with the express object of

. . .opposing Lord Bute " (Rae, Fort. Rev.,

f.S., iv. 276).

Is not this passage, the " mock pane- gyric of a man I could not love," admitted >y Wilkes in his letter to the Aylesbury lectors to be contained in the ' Essay ' ? ?here is an identical strain of mock pane- gyric in Wilkes's poem ' The Thane of Bute,* rinted in the quarto of 1871. The title-page furnishes another clue, both

date and authorship. We learn from Walpole that in 1763 Wilkes satirized Lord George Sackville in an unpublished number

f The North Briton, and that on 18 Nov. : Wilkes's bons mots are all over the town, but too- gross, I think, to repeat : the chief are at the ex- pense of poor Lord George." Walpole's 'Letters/ Toynbee, v. 318, 389.

Now, the title-page of the ' Essay ' con- tains a most calumnious and obscene jest at Lord George's expense, and long after- wards Wilkes again sneers at the " heroic " Secretary, the " Intrepidi herois " of the title-page (Walpole's ' Letters,' ix. 339).

When Potter died on 19 June, 1759, Lord George enjoyed a reputation as yet unim- peached for valour. Any mock panegyric of him as an " intrepid hero " would have lacked point. But at the Battle of Minden he lost his honour as a soldier, and became with Bute one of the best-hated men in the kingdom. Now, Minden was fought on

1 Aug., 1759.

So extreme was the feeling against Lord George that a paper was pinned to the Royal Exchange bearing the words : " No petti- coat government, no Scotch minister, and no Lord George Sackville " (Lecky, iii. 49).

" Much scandal," wrote Lecky, " was caused b the warm reception given to Lord G. Sackville, who was an intimate friend of Bute, but whose conduct at Minden had deeply tarnished his- reputation." iii. 26.

What more natural than that Wilkes should lampoon Bute's favourite no less than Bute in his bawdy rimes ?

A quotation from some verses of " the late Archbishop of York " Launcelot Black- burn, who, says Walpole, kept an archi- episcopal seraglio, being plainly indicated appended to the last of Warburton's notes in the parodied ' Essay,' shows us that the ' Essay ' was completed before the death, in 1761, of John Gilbert, the next Archbishop of York to die in the occupancy of that see. Blackburn died in 1743.

ERIC R. WATSON. (To be continued.)