Bute, who had always been considered as a man of taste and reading, affected, from the moment of his elevation, the character of a Maecenas.  If he expected to conciliate the public by encouraging literature and art, he was grievously mistaken.  Indeed, none of the objects of his munificence, with the single exception of Johnson, can be said to have been well selected; and the public, not unnaturally, ascribed the selection of Johnson rather to the Doctor’s political prejudices than to his literary merits:  for a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who had nothing in common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and who had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Revolution, was honoured with a mark of royal approbation, similar to that which was bestowed on the author of the English Dictionary, and of the Vanity of Human Wishes.  It was remarked that Adam, a Scotchman, was the Court architect, and that Ramsay, a Scotchman, was the Court painter, and was preferred to Reynolds.  Mallet, a Scotchman, of no high literary fame, and of infamous character, partook largely of the liberality of the Government.  John Home, a Scotchman, was rewarded for the tragedy of Douglas, both with a pension and with a sinecure place.  But, when the author of the Bard, and of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, ventured to ask for a Professorship, the emoluments of which he much needed, and for the duties of which he was, in many respects, better qualified than any man living, he was refused; and the post was bestowed on the pedagogue under whose care the favourite’s son-in-law, Sir James Lowther, had made such signal proficiency in the graces and in the humane virtues.

Thus, the First Lord of the Treasury was detested by many as a Tory, by many as a favourite, and by many as a Scot.  All the hatred which flowed from these various sources soon mingled, and was directed in one torrent of obloquy against the treaty of peace.  The Duke of Bedford, who had negotiated that treaty, was hooted through the streets.  Bute was attacked in his chair, and was with difficulty rescued by a troop of the guards.  He could hardly walk the streets in safety without disguising himself.  A gentleman who died not many years ago used to say that he once recognised the favourite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden, muffled in a large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over his brows.  His lordship’s established type with the mob was a jack-boot, a wretched pun on his Christian name and title.  A jack-boot, generally accompanied by a petticoat, was sometimes fastened on a gallows, and sometimes committed to the flames.  Libels on the Court, exceeding in audacity and rancour any that had been published for many years, now appeared daily both in prose and verse.  Wilkes, with lively insolence, compared the mother of George the Third to the mother of Edward the Third, and the Scotch minister to the gentle Mortimer.  Churchill, with all the energy of hatred, deplored the fate of his