another person? I think I ought: It is what the title of my book professes; how I am to execute it I do not know, and how my best endeavors may be received I can form no guess. In the mean time, I will strive to arm myself with an humble but honest mind, resolving, as far as in me lies, not to speak partially of my works because they are my own, nor slightingly against my conscience from apprehension that readers may be found to differ from me, where my thoughts may seem more favorable than theirs. The latter of these consequences may perhaps frequently occur, and when it does, my memoirs must encounter it, and acquit themselves of it as they can; for myself, it cannot be long before I am alike insensible to censure or applause.

This play, of which I have been speaking, lay by me for a considerable time; till Lord Halifax one day, when we were at Bushey Park, desired me to show it to him; he read it, and immediately proposed to carry it to Garrick, and recommend it to him for representation. Garrick was then at Hampton, and I went with Lord Halifax across the Park to his house. This was the first time I found myself in company with that extraordinary man. He received his noble visitor with profound obeisance, and in truth there were some claims upon his civility for favors and indulgences granted to him by Lord Halifax as Ranger of Bushey Park. I was silently attentive to every minute particular of this interview, and soon discovered the embarrassment, which the introduction of my manuscript occasioned; I saw my cause was desperate, though my advocate was sanguine, and in truth the first effort of a raw author did not promise much to the purpose of the manager. He took it, however, with all possible respect, and promised an attentive perusal, but those tell-tale features, so miraculously gifted in the art of assumed emotions, could not mask their real ones, and I predicted to Lord Halifax, as we returned to the lodge, that I had no expectation of my play being accepted. A day or two of what might scarce be called suspense, confirmed this prediction, when Mr. Garrick having stated his despair of accommodating a play on such a plan to the purposes of the stage, returned the manuscript to Lord Halifax with many apologies to his lordship, and some few qualifying words to its author, which certainly was as much as in reason could be expected from him, though it did not satisfy the patron of the play, who warmly resented his noncompliance with his wishes, and for a length of time forbore to live in habits of his former good neighborhood with him.

When I published this play, which I soon after did, I was conscious that I published Mr. Garrick's justification for re

fusing it, and I made no mention of the circumstances above stated.

George Ridge, Esq., of Kilmiston, in the county of Hants, had two sons and one daughter by Miss Brooke, niece to my grandfather Bentley; with this family we had lived as friends and relations in habits of the greatest intimacy. It was upon an excursion, as I have before related, to this gentleman's house that I founded my school-boy poem written at Bury, and our families had kept up an interchange of annual visits for a course of time. From these meetings I had been for several years excluded by my avocations at college or London, till upon Mr. Ridge's coming to town accompanied by his wife and daughter, and taking lodgings in the near neighborhood of Mount Street, where I held my melancholy abode, I was kindly entertained by them, and found so many real charms in the modest manners and blooming beauty of the amiable daughter, that I passed every hour I could command in her society, and devoted all my thoughts to the attainment of that happiness, which it was in her power to bestow upon my future days. As soon, therefore, as I obtained, through the patronage of Lord Halifax, a small establishment as Crown Agent for the province of Nova Scotia, I began to hope the object I aspired to was within my reach, when upon a visit she made with her parents to mine at Fulham, I tendered my addresses, and had the unspeakable felicity to find them accepted, and sanctioned by the consent of all parties concerned; thus I became possessed of one, whom the virtues of her heart and the charms of her person had effectually endeared to me, and on the 19th day of February, 1759 (being my birth-day), I was married by my father in the church of Kilmiston, to Elizabeth, only daughter of George and Elizabeth Ridge.

CHAPTER III.

Lord Halifax, first lord of trade and plantations-Earl of Bute at the head of affairs-Dodington-Lord Halifax, lord-lieutenant of Ireland-His arrangements - William Gerard Hamilton - Cumberland, Ulster secretary—‘The Banishment of Cicero'-Lord Melcombe-Bentley-The Wishes'-Opening speech of the Lord Lieutenant-Edmund Burke-Mr. Roseingrave-Cumberland's disinterestedness-Offered a baronetcy-Hamilton as an orator-Quarrel with Burke-Cumberland's father raised to the bishopric-Society in Dublin-Primate Stone-Dr. Robinson-Colonel Ford-George FaulknerMrs. Dancer-Cumberland returns to England-Health of his family-Bishop Cumberland-Cumberland's disappointment-Situation at the Board of Trade -Cumberland's estimate of Halifax-The Summer's tale-Bickerstaff-Smith the actor-Cumberland visits his father-The brothers'-Garrick-Fitzherbert-The West Indian-Mr. Talbot-Lord Eyre-Anecdote of a Catholic priest-The O'Roukes-Sir Thomas Cuffee-Mr. Geoghegan-Doctor of laws.

LORD HALIFAX, upon some slight concessions from the Duke of Newcastle, had reassumed his office of First Lord of Trade and Plantations, and I returned with my wife to Fulham, taking a house for a short time in Luke Street, Westminster, and afterwards in Abington Buildings.

In the following year, upon the death of the king, administration it is well known took a new shape, and all eyes were turned towards the Earl of Bute, as dispenser of favors and awarder of promotions. Mr. Dodington, whom I had visited a second

''Lord Bute,' said Dr. Johnson, though a very honorable man—a man who meant well-a man who had his blood full of prerogative-was a theoretical statesman-a book minister-and thought this country could be governed by the influence of the crown alone.'-Boswell's Johnson, vol. ii. p. 355. How mistaken he was, his short, unpopular, and inglorious administration will attest.

'The Earl of Bute,' says Walpole, 'was a Scotchman, who, having no estate, had passed his youth in studying mathematics and mechanics in his own little island, then simples in the hedges about Twickenham, and at five-and-thirty had fallen in love with his own figure, which he produced at masquerades in becoming dresses, and in plays, which he acted in private companies, with a set of his own relations.'-Memoirs of the Reign of George II., vol. i. p. 46.

Bute married the only daughter of the celebrated Mary Wortley Montague. After the death of her father, and brother, the eccentric Edward Wortley Montague, she came into possession of a large landed property. After living several years in profound retirement, on his patrimonial estate, in the Isle of Bute, he emerged from his retreat, and took a house on the banks of the Thames. Accident made him acquainted with Frederic, Prince of Wales, and

time at Eastbury with my wife and her father, Mr. Ridge, obtained an English peerage, and Lord Halifax was honored with the high office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and was preparing to open his majesty's first Parliament in that kingdom; I had reason to believe myself at this time very much in his confidence, and in the conduct of a certain private transaction, which I am not called upon to explain, I had done him

father of George III. He became a great favorite with the Prince and Princess; took a part in the private theatricals exhibited for their amusement, and gradually laid the foundations of his subsequent elevation. After the death of the Prince, his intimacy with the Princess gave rise to rumors which compromised her character and injuriously affected him. The Earl's handsome person was supposed to be an irresistible attraction to the plastic and pleasure-loving Princess. To his external accomplishments, says Wraxall, 'he added a cultivated mind, illuminated by a taste for many branches of the fine arts and letters. For the study of botany he nourished a decided passion, which he gratified to the utmost; and, in the indulgence of which predilection, he manifested on some occasions a princely liberality. Of a disposition naturally retired and severe, he was not formed for an extensive commerce with mankind, or endowed by nature with talents for managing popular assemblies. Even in his family he was austere, harsh, difficult of access, and sometimes totally inaccessible to his own children. In the House of Lords he neither displayed eloquence nor graciousness of manners. But he proved himself likewise deficient in a quality still more essential for a first minister, firmness of character. Yet, with these political defects of mind, and of personal deportment, he undertook to displace, and he aspired to succeed Mr. Pitt, at a moment when that minister had carried the glory of the British arms to an unexampled height by sea and land. We cannot sufficiently regret that George the Third should not have contented himself with heaping honors and dignities on him, carefully excluding him from any political employment. Few princes, however, of whom history preserves any record, have manifested, at twenty-three, a judgment so superior to the natural partialities of youth. Even Elizabeth, though she placed Cecil at the head of her councils, yet committed her armies successively to Leicester and to Essex. After an administration of about two years, passed either in the post of Secretary of State or as First Lord of the Treasury, during which time he brought the war with France and Spain to a conclusion, Lord Bute, abandoning his royal master, quitted his situation, and again withdrew to privacy; no testimonies of national regret, or of national esteem, accompanied him at his departure from office. His magnificent residence in Berkeley Square exposed him to very malignant comments, respecting the means by which he had reared so expensive a pile. His enemies asserted that he could not possibly have possessed the ability, either from his patrimonial fortune, or in consequence of his marriage, to erect such a structure. As little could he be supposed to have amassed wherewithal, during his very short administration, to suffice for its construction. The only satisfactory solution of the difficulty, therefore, lay in imagining that he had either received presents from France, or had made large purchases in the public funds previous to the signature of the preliminaries.'-Historical Memoirs, p. 175, vide Mahon's Character of Bute, History of England, vol. iv. p. 23; and Chesterfield's Characters. The violence of his opponents and the lukewarmness of his friends drove Bute into retirement. The popular displeasure followed him even there, and his influence was supposed still to control public measures. He was disliked by his contemporaries, and his character seems to have inspired no other feeling in their posterity.

faithful service; happy for him it would have been, and the prevention of innumerable troubles and vexations, if my zealous efforts had been permitted to take effect, but a fatal propensity had again seized possession of him, and probably the more strongly for the interruption it had received-but of this enough,

His family was now to be formed upon an establishment suitable to his high office. In these arrangements there was much to do, and I was fully occupied. Some few persons of obscure characters were pressed upon him for subordinate situations from a quarter where I had no communication or connection; but I had the satisfaction to see his old and faithful friend, Doctor Crane, prepare himself to head the list of his chaplains, and Doctor Oswald, afterwards Bishop of Raphoe, with my good father, completed that department. I obtained a situation for a gentleman, who had married my eldest sister, but what gave me peculiar satisfaction was to have it in my power to gratify the wishes of one of the best and bravest young officers of his time, Captain William Ridge, brother to my wife. He had served the whole war in America with distinguished reputation; had been shot and carried off the field in the fatal affair of Ticonderoga, and was now returned with honorable wounds and the praises and esteem of his general and brother officers. This amiable, this excellent friend, whose heart was as it were my own, and whose memory will be ever dear to me, I caused to be put upon the staff of aids-de-camp, and had the happiness of making him one of my family during the whole time of my residence in Dublin Castle, as Ulster Secretary.

William Gerard Hamilton, a name well known, had negotiated himself into the office of Chief Secretary. I need say no more than that he did not owe this to the choice of Lord Halifax; of course it was not easy for that gentleman to find himself in the confidence of his principal, to whom he was little known, and in the first instance not altogether acceptable. I do not think he

I William Gerard Hamilton was born in 1729, at Lincoln's Inn, where his father was a barrister. 'His father,' says Walpole, 'had been the first Scot who ever pleaded at the English bar, and, as it was said of him, should have been the last; the son had much more parts.'-Memoirs of the Reign of George II., vol. ii. p. 44. Hamilton was educated at Winchester School, and Oriel College, Oxford. He studied his father's profession; but was never called to the bar. In 1754, he was elected a member of Parliament, and made the memorable speech, which gave him the name of Single Speech Hamilton. 'He spoke for the first time,' wrote Walpole to Conway, and was at once perfection; his speech was set and full of antitheses, but these antitheses were full of argument; indeed, his speech was the most argumentative of the whole day, and he broke through the regularity of his own composition, answered other people, and fell