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.

There was a certain 'black woman,' as Horace Walpole calls a Mrs.
Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. This handsome brunette lived
in a corner house of Saville Row, in Piccadilly, where Dodington visited
her. The result of their intimacy was his giving this lady a bond of ten
thousand pounds to be paid if he married any one else. The real object
of his affections was a Mrs. Behan, with whom he lived seventeen years,
and whom, on the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, he eventually married.

Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul Whitehead, a wild
specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, dramatist, all in one; and what
was quite in character, a Templar to boot. Paul--so named from being
born on that Saint's day--wrote one or two pieces which brought him an
ephemeral fame, such as the 'State Dunces,' and the 'Epistle to Dr.
Thompson,' 'Manners,' a satire, and the 'Gymnasiad,' a mock heroic poem,
intended to ridicule the passion for boxing, then prevalent. Paul
Whitehead, who died in 1774, was an infamous, but not, in the opinion of
Walpole, a despicable poet, yet Churchill has consigned him to
everlasting infamy as a reprobate, in these lines:--

'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)
Be born a Whitebread, and baptised a Paul.'

Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill; and both of
these wretched men were members of a society long the theme of horror
and disgust, even after its existence had ceased to be remembered,
except by a few old people. This was the 'Hell-fire Club,' held in
appropriate orgies at Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire. The profligate
Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and Churchill, were amongst its most
prominent members.

With such associates, and living in a court where nothing but the basest
passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, we are inclined to
accord with the descendant of Bubb Dodington, the editor of his 'Diary,'
Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's
political conduct was 'wholly directed by the base motives of vanity,
selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe seems to have been a man of the
world of the very worst _calibre_; sensual, servile, and