(352) A young Scotch officer of the name of Forbes, fastened a quarrel on Mr. Wilkes, in Paris, for having written against Scotland, and insisted on his fighting him.  Wilkes declined until he should have settled an engagement of the same nature which he had with Lord Egremont.  Just at this time Lord Egremont died, and Wilkes immediately offered to meet Captain Forbes at Menin, in Flanders.  By some mistake Forbes did not appear, and the affair blew over.  A long controversy was kept up on the subject by partisans in the newspapers; but on the whole it is impossible to deny that Forbes’s conduct was nasty and foolish, and that Wilkes behaved himself like a man of temper and honour.-C.

(353) At this time secretary of state. " It is a great mercy,” says Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son, of the 3d of December, “that Mr. Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, is out of danger; and it is no less a mercy, that God hath raised up the Earl of Sandwich, to vindicate true religion and morality.  These two blessings will justly make an epocha in the annals affairs country."-E.

(354) The Bishop of Gloucester, whose laborious commentaries on Pope’s Essay on Man gave Wilkes the idea of fathering on him the notes on the Essay on Woman.-C.

(355) Dr. Birch, in a letter to Lord Royston, gives the following account of what passed in the House of Lords on this occasion:- -"The session commenced with a complaint made by Lord Sandwich against Mr. Wilkes for a breach of privilege in being the author of a poem full of obscenity and blasphemy, intitled ’An Essay on Woman,’ with notes, under the name of the Bishop of Gloucester.  His letters, which discovered the piece was his, had been seized at Kearsley’s the bookseller, when the latter was taken up for publishing No. 45 of the North Briton.  Lord Temple and Lord Sandys objected to the reading letters, till the secretary of state’s warrant, by which Kearsley had been arrested, had been produced and shown to be a legal act; but this objection being overruled, the Lords voted the Essay a most scandalous, obscene, and impious libel, and adjourned the farther consideration of the subject, as far as concerned the author, till the Thursday following."-E.

Lord Barrington, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, gives the following account of Mr. Pitt’s speech:—­“He spoke with great ability, and the utmost degree of temper:  he spoke civilly, and not unfairly, of the ministers; but of the King he said every thing which duty and affection could inspire.  The effect of this was a vote for an address, nem. con.  I think, if fifty thousand pounds had been given for that speech, it would have been well expended.  It secures us a quiet session.”  See Chatham Correspondence, Vol. ii. p. 262.-E.