As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, staunch; free from the latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud.  His wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without venom; humour without indelicacy; and was copious without being tiresome.

GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE.

A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.—­A Misfortune for a Man of Society.—­ Brandenburgh House.—­’The Diversions of the Morning.’—­Johnson’s Opinion of Foote—­Churchill and ’The Rosciad.’—­Personal Ridicule in its Proper Light.—­Wild Specimen of the Poet.—­Walpole on Dodington’s ’Diary.’—­The best Commentary on a Man’s Life.—­Leicester House.—­Grace Boyle,—­Elegant Modes of passing Time.—­A sad Day.—­What does Dodington come here for?—­ The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.—­’Defend us from our Executors and Editors.’

It would have been well for Lord Melcombe’s memory, Horace Walpole remarks, ’if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his wit, and the evidence of his poetry.’  And in the present day, that desirable result has come to pass.  We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought him on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in ‘The Patron,’

We recall him most as ‘l’Amphytrion chez qui on dine;’ ’My Lord of Melcombe,’ as Mallet says—­

  ’Whose soups and sauces duly season’d,
  Whose wit well tim’d and sense well reason’d,
  Give Burgundy a brighter stain,
  And add new flavour to Champagne.’

Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir Robert Walpole and Bubb Dodington?  Who now reads without disgust the annals of that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, during which each party devoutly wished the other dead?  Who minds whether the time-serving Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not?  Who cares whether his hopes of political preferment were or were not gratified?  Bubb Dodington was, in fact, the dinner-giving lordly poet, to whom even the saintly Young could write:—­

  ’You give protection,—­I a worthless strain.

Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had attained the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of Bubb.  Then a benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left him, with his lands, the more exalted surname of Dodington.  He sprang, however, from an obscure family, who had settled in Dorchester; but that disadvantage, which, according to Lord Brougham’s famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on a young man’s advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most things are, by a great fortune.

Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford:  at the age of twenty-four he was elected M.P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterwards named Envoy at the Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession of wealth to provincial honours, and became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset.  Nay, poets began to worship him, and even pronounced him to be well born:—­