nly, people who thought
little of Philip Dormer Stanhope, thought a great deal of the
glass-merchant's reprobate son when he was in power, and submitted
without a murmur to his impertinences. The fact is, that the beaux and
the wits are more intimately connected than the latter would care to
own: the wits have all been, or aspired to be, beaux, and beaux have
had their fair share of wit; both lived for the same purpose--to shine
in society: both used the same means--coats and bon-mots. The only
distinction is, that the garments of the beaux were better, and their
sayings not so good as those of the wits; while the conversation of
the wits was better, and their apparel not so striking as those of the
beaux. So, my Lord Chesterfield, who prided yourself quite as much on
being a fine gentleman as on being a fine wit, you cannot complain at
your proximity to Mr. Nash and others who _were_ fine gentlemen, and
would have been fine wits if they could.

Robert Fielding was, perhaps, the least of the beaux; but then, to make
up for this, he belonged to a noble family: he married a duchess, and,
what is more, he beat her. Surely in the kingdom of fools such a man is
not to be despised. You may be sure he did not think he was, for was he
not made the subject of two papers in 'The Tatler,' and what more could
such a man desire?

His father was a Suffolk squire, claiming relationship with the Earls of
Denbigh, and therefore, with the Hapsburgs, from whom the Beau and the
Emperors of Austria had the common honour of being descended. Perhaps
neither of them had sufficient sense to be proud of the greatest
intellectual ornament of their race, the author of 'Tom Jones;' but as
our hero was dead before the humourist was born, it is not fair to
conjecture what he might have thought on the subject.

It does not appear that very much is known of this great gem of the race
of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be very handsome, and the folly to
think that his face would be his fortune: it certainly stood him in good
stead at times, but it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma.

His father was not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to study laws
which he was only fitted to break. The young Adonis had sense enough to
see that destiny did not beckon him to fame in the gloom of a musty law
court, and removed a little further up to the Thames, and the more
fashionable region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z 300 repairs to
report his