with wonderful propriety.  He had married at seventeen; but even that step had not protected his morals:  he fell into abject poverty.  Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, then second master of Westminster, made an arrangement with his creditors.  Young Lloyd had published a poem called ‘The Actor;’ Churchill, in imitation, now produced ‘The Rosciad,’ and Bubb Dodington was one whose ridiculous points were salient in those days of personality.  ‘The Rosciad’ had a signal success, which completed the ruin of its author:  he became a man of the town, forsook the wife of his youth, and abandoned the clerical character.  There are few sights more contemptible than that of a clergyman who has cast off his profession, or whose profession has cast him off.  But Churchill’s talents for a time kept him from utter destitution.  Bubb Doddington may have been consoled by finding that he shared the fate of Dr. Johnson, who had spoken slightingly of Churchill’s works, and who shone forth, therefore, in ‘The Ghost,’ a later poem, as Dr. Pomposo.

Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord Melcombe, which is said to have been taken from the life; but perhaps the most faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington’s character was furnished by himself in his ‘Diary;’ in which, as it has been well observed, he ’unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly compound of mean compliance and political prostitution.’  It may, in passing, be remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography; and that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a ’learned, ingenious, accomplished gentleman,’ adding, ’the want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million:’  in spite of this eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded vanity, worldliness, and an undue estimation of his own perishable fame.  After all, amusing as personalities must always be, neither the humours of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful limning of Cumberland, whilst they cannot be ranked among talents of the highest order, imply a sort of social treachery.  The delicious little colloquy between Boswell and Johnson places low personal ridicule in its proper light.

Boswell.—­’Foote has a great deal of humour.’  Johnson.—­’Yes, sir.’  Boswell.—­’He has a singular talent of exhibiting characters.’  Johnson—­’Sir. it is not a talent—­it is a vice; it is what others abstain from.  It is not comedy, which exhibits the character of a species—­as that of a miser gathered from many misers—­it is farce, which exhibits individuals.’  Boswell.—­’Did not he think of exhibiting you, sir?’ Johnson.—­’Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones.  I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a leg; I would not have left him a leg to cut off.’

Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but those few are discreditable.

Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, Dodington was entangled by an unhappy and perplexing intrigue.