ouglas, had been
interred.

It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that
Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most
beneficent rule of life.

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 e