Lumbago--as Lord Ogleby says, 'a grievous enemy to Gallantry and
address'--and if he could have but heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as
I did) next day for the _cause_ of his malady, I don't think that he
would have turned a 'Squire of dames' in a hurry again. He seemed to
me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw. This was the last I
saw of old Vice Leach, except in town, where he was creeping into
assemblies, and trying to look young--and gentlemanly.

"Erskine too!--Erskine was there--good but intolerable. He jested, he
talked, he did everything admirably, but then he 'would' be applauded
for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own
paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again; and then 'the
trial by Jury!!!'--I almost wished it abolished, for I sate next him
at dinner, and, as I had read his published speeches, there was no
occasion to repeat them to me. Chester (the fox-hunter), surnamed
'Cheek Chester,' and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did
so. Cheek, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a
'bonvivant' in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one
evening, summed it up in 'by G-d, he 'drinks like a Man'!'"]


[Footnote 3: Sir Peniston Lamb, created an Irish baron as Lord
Melbourne in 1770, an Irish viscount in 1780, and an English peer in
1815, married, in 1769, Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke,
of Halnaby, Yorkshire, one of the cleverest and most beautiful women of
the day. Horace Walpole, writing to Mason, May 12, 1778, mentions her
when she was at the height of her beauty.

"On Tuesday," he says, "I supped, after the opera, at Mrs. Meynel's
with a set of the most fashionable company, which, take notice, I very