future scholiasts: are we to understand that it is most wise that the verdict should be decided by the majority, or that the majority of a Scottish jury always decide most wisely? The last supposition may account for the partiality of the Caledonians to majorities elsewhere, from their observing that they were always in the right in their own national courts. But the sentence is deeply oracular, and will bear either construction.

We take our leave of Sir John with a sincere advice to him to extend his next travels to some more distant bourne. He has long been the Stranger Abroad, we will not permit him to be the Stranger at Home. We must guard him against giving us a Hampstead Summer, Memoranda of Margate, or, the Traveller at Brighton: A top-Sir John must not be offended at the simile, Virgil compares a queen to the same thing-a top, when it narrows its gyrations, is apt to become stationary; in which case all schoolboys know it will either fall asleep or tumble down: the remedy to restore its activity, and enlarge its circuit, is a tight flagellation. We have taken the hint; but we hope that Sir John will not go to law with us for so doing: we would rather whip our top anywhere than in Westminster Hall; and our review is not, at least in the engraver's sense of the word, adorned with cuts.

LADY SUFFOLK'S CORRESPONDENCE.*

[Quarterly Review, January, 1824.]

THE French have been long allowed to

"Shine unrivalled in the gay Memoir."

But they are not more rich than we are in that other sort of autobiography which an individual gradually and insensibly composes in the course of his epistolary correspondence, and which possesses an advantage over professed memoirs as exhibiting the sentiments and feelings of the writer, contrasted with, and of course corrected by, those of his correspondents. The Augustan age of Queen Anne and the reigns which succeeded, gave occasion to several collections of this nature. Pope, who felt his own powers in this particular department, and was unwilling that the public should remain in ignorance of them, contrived, it is said, by a manœuvre not perhaps entirely worthy of a man of genius, to give to the public what was professedly designed for the cabinet. His example, and perhaps his assistance, produced the letters of Swift, Gay, and Bolingbroke, and since his time we have had the admirable correspondence of his fair friend and foe Lady Mary Wortley Montague; the playful, ingenious and amiable letters of Gray and Cowper, and the mingled history and gossip of the satirical, keen, and polished Horace Walpole. It is no -wonder that the public should receive with unabated favour the various epistolary collections which have from time to time been laid before them, for they are peculiarly qualified to gratify that undefined yet eager curiosity, which, without

* Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and her second husband the Honourable George Berkeley, from 1712 to 1767. With Historical, Biographical, and Explanatory Notes. 2 vols. 8vo." The Work was edited by the Right Honourable J. W. CROKER].

having any determined object, pursues the great to the inmost recesses of their privacy, and eagerly seeks after the personal details of the lives of those whose names are eminent either in history or in literature. The possession of their letters gives us the same command over them which Gulliver exercised over the ghosts of the departed great by favour of the Governor of Glubbdubdrib; they-the long insensible and silent-seem thus to revive to human feeling, to mingle again in the world, and to add their passions, wishes and complaints to those which swell the living tide of humanity.

Sharing this general feeling, we opened with no little interest the present work, containing the correspondence of those distinguished persons, who, deeply engaged in the politics or literature of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, were led from peculiar circumstances to make the celebrated Countess of Suffolk,-still more celebrated perhaps as Mrs. Howard,-the common centre of their in

terest.

"Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Young;-the Duchesses of Buckingham, Marlborough, and Queensberry;-Ladies Orkney, Mohun, Hervey, Vere, and Temple;-Misses Bellenden, Blount, Howe, and Pitt;-Lords Perterborough, Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, Lansdowne, Mansfield, and Bathurst;-Messrs. Fortescue, Pulteney, Pelham, Pitt, Grenville, and Horace Walpole.” -Introd. p. xxix.

Such is the illustrious list of Lady Suffolk's correspondents; but the editor has shown an honest desire rather to moderate than enhance the expectations which such names might excite. He observes (with a candour not usual with editors, whose labours, in general, impress them with perhaps an undue partiality in favour of their subjects), that"the letters themselves can hardly be said to fulfil the expectations which the reputation of the writers must create;" which he proceeds to account for, by saying that Lady Suffolk was of a character too prudent to preserve much that related to political intrigue; and he intimates that perhaps the real abilities of some of the writers were not quite equal to their reputations. But after these deductions, he expresses an opinion, in which we cordially concur, that there remains a great deal which is both interesting and curious; and we will add, that the correspondence is rendered still more acceptable to the general reader by the

judgment, precision, and critical taste with which the editor has supplied the necessary illustrations, filled up chasms in the correspondence, and pointed out the light which the present publication throws upon facts and characters which had been previously misconceived or misrepresented.

The situation of Mrs. Howard is well known, in respect to its general relations at least. Henrietta Hobart was the eldest daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, Bart., and through her influence her paternal house was ennobled in the person of her brother the first Earl of Buckinghamshire. She made an early, and, as it proved, an unhappy marriage with the Honourable Charles Howard, who afterwards became ninth earl of Suffolk. In the last years of Queen Anne, they visited together the court of Hanover, and there Mrs. Howard seems to have laid the foundation of that intimacy with the electoral prince and his consort, afterwards George II, and Queen Caroline, which subsequently distinguished her. Upon the accession of the house of Hanover, she became bed-chamber woman to the princess, and enjoyed so great a share in the confidence of the royal couple, that the world presumed an attachment towards her on the part of the prince prudently connived at by his politic consort -a presumption which was increased to something like certainty by Mrs. Howard refusing to quit her situation in the household, even in obedience to the commands of her husband. These evil reports (which, true or false, arose so naturally out of the circumstances of the case, that we never have before happened to hear them doubted) are, in some particulars, questioned by the editor of the correspondence before us. He does not indeed express any disbelief on his own part of the truth of the general impression on this subject; but he finds, and finding, we think he was bound to state, that several of the facts on which that impression has hitherto rested are unfounded, and he clearly proves that some details which Horace Walpole gives in support of a very scandalous version of the case are erroneous. The editor alleges that, although Mr. Howard undoubtedly took some violent steps to remove his lady from the prince's household, his motive was not mere jealousy, but a desire to gratify George I, who was willing in this as in other matters to annoy and mortify his daughter-in-law; and, strange as it may appear, it certainly does

seem that the supposed mistress was almost as great a favourite with the wife as with the husband. The editor avers besides, and we have no hesitation to believe him, that in no line of the mass of papers which he has carefully examined, does there occur the least proof of the imputation so broadly thrown out by Walpole. We regret that his researches have not enabled him to state whether it is true that the restive husband sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his lady for a pension of £1200. Horace Walpole was too wicked a wit to adopt the most favourable view of a court-intrigue; he admits, indeed, that the lady's friends always affected to consider the attentions of the royal friends as quite platonic, and that she maintained great decency and received uncommon respect to the end of her life.

For our own parts, without believing all Walpole's details, and in fact disbelieving many of them, we substantially agree in his opinion (which indeed seems to be that of the editor) that the king's friendship was by no means platonic or refined; but that the queen and Mrs. Howard, by mutual forbearance, good sense and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal: after all, the question has no great interest for the present generation, since scandal is only valued when fresh, and the public have generally enough of that poignant fare without ripping up the frailties of their grandmothers.

Whether founded on love or friendship, Mrs. Howard's favour in the family of the prince stood so high, that all who were discontented with George the First's government and Walpole's administration, and hoped to see a change of affairs under his successor, sought her patronage as the most secure road to that of her royal protectors.

Among these, an illustrious band of British authors, whose names are indissolubly united with the literary fame of their country, appear for a time to have paid successful court to Mrs. Howard, and through her to the Princess Caroline, who was unquestionably a woman of talent, and though more attached to the study of metaphysics than of letters, was capable of admiring, if she did not entirely appreciate, the powers of such men as Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. From a tract written by the witty physician himself, entitled Gulliver Deciphered, we learn (by a story