and he lived years!*-Let me mention here what was told to me by a lady at Clifton, "In my girlhood," she said, "I had a very severe illness, during which I heard Dr. Turton declare to my mother, in

In a note on Boswell's Life of Johnson (p. 562, ed. 1848), relative to Lord Mayor Beckford's famous speech (or rather, rejoinder) to the king in 1770, Mr. Croker observes: "Mr. Bosville's manuscript note on this passage says, 'that the monument records, not the words of Beckford, but what was prepared for him by John Horne Tooke, as agreed on at a dinner at Mr. George Bellas's in Doctors' Commons.' This, I think, is also stated in a manuscript note in the Museum copy; but Mr. Gifford says, 'he never uttered one syllable of the speech.' (Ben Jonson, i. 481.) Perhaps he said something which was afterwards put into its present shape by Horne Tooke."-In Stephens's Memoirs of Borne Tooke (vol. i. 155-7) we have the following account. “This answer [of the king] had been, of course, anticipated, and Mr. Horne, who was determined to give celebrity to the mayoralty of his friend, Mr. Beckford, at the same time that he supported the common cause, had suggested the idea of a reply to the sovereign; a measure hitherto unexampled in our history." Stevens then proceeds to say that the Lord Mayor "expressed himself nearly as follows," &c.; and presently adds, "This, as Mr. Horne lately acknowledged to me, was his composi tion.”—I now quote the words of Mr. Maltby (see notice prefixed to the Porsoniana in this volume.) "I was dining at Guildhall in 1790, and sitting next to Dr. C. Burney, when he assured me that Beckford did not utter one syllable of the speech,-that it was wholly the invention of Horne Tooke. Being very intimate with Tooke, I lost no time in questioning him on the subject. 'What Burney states,' he said 'is true. I saw Beckford just after he came from St. James's. I asked him what he had said to the king; and he replied, that he had been so confused, he scarcely knew what he had said. 'But,' cried I, 'your speech must be sent to the papers;

the next room, that I could not live. I immediately called out, 'But I will live, Dr. Turton!' and here I am, now sixty years old."

Hoole, the son of the translator of Ariosto, wrote a poem entitled The Curate,* which is by no means bad. I knew him when he was a private tutor.

What strange meetings sometimes occur! Richard Sharp, when a young man, was making a tour in Scotland with a friend. They arrived one night at Glencoe, and could get no lodgings at the inn; but they were told by the landlord that there lived

I'll write it for you.' I did so immediately, and it was printed forthwith."

These various statements enable us to arrive at the exact truth; viz. that Tooke suggested to Beckford (if he did not write them down) the heads of a rejoinder to the king's reply,-that Beckford, losing his presence of mind, made little or no use of them,-and that the famous speech (or rejoinder) which is engraved on the pedestal of Beckford's statue in Guildhall, was the elaborate composition of Horne Tooke.-ED.

* Edward, or the Curate; by the Rev. Samuel Hoole, 1787, 4to. His Poems were collected in two vols., 1790. He died (Rector of Poplar), February 26th, 1839; see The Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1839, p. 440.-ED.

in the neighbourhood a "laird" who was always ready to show kindness to strangers, and who would doubtless receive them into his house. Thither they went, and were treated with the greatest hospitality. In the course of conversation, the "laird" mentioned Newfoundland as a place familiar to him. "Have you been there?" asked Sharp. "Yes," he replied, "I spent some time there, when I was in the army;' and he went on to say that, while there, he enjoyed the society of the dearest friend he had ever had, a gentleman named Sharp. "Sir, I am the son of that very gentleman." The "laird" threw his arms round Sharp's neck, and embraced him with a flood of tears.

Sharp's little volume of Letters and Essays is hardly equal to his reputation.. He had given great attention to metaphysics, and intended to publish a work on that subject, the result of much thought and reading. One day, as we were walking together near Ulswater, I put some metaphysical question to him, when he stopped me short at once by saying, "There are only two men* in England with whom I ever - talk on metaphysics." This was not very flattering * Meaning, I believe, Mackintosh and Bobus Smith.-ED.

to me; and it so offended my sister, that she said I ought immediately to have ordered a postchaise, and left him there.

I have always understood that the oration of Pericles in Smith's Thucydides was translated by Lord Chatham.

Vernon was the person who invented the story about the lady being pulverised in India by a coup de soleil: when he was dining there with a Hindoo, one of his host's wives was suddenly reduced to ashes; upon which, the Hindoo rang the bell, and said to the attendant who answered it, "Bring fresh glasses, and sweep up your mistress."*

Another of his stories was this. He happened to be shooting hyenas near Carthage, when he stumbled, and fell down an abyss of many fathoms' depth. He was surprised, however, to find himself unhurt; for he lighted as if on a feather-bed. Presently he perceived that he was gently moved upwards; and

This "Joe" has been told with some variations. That I have given it in the very words of Mr. Rogers (which a correspondent to the Athenæum charges me with misrepresenting), see proof in the Addenda to this volume.-ED.

having by degrees reached the mouth of the abyss, he again stood safe on terra firma. He had fallen upon an immense mass of bats, which, disturbed from their slumbers, had risen out of the abyss and brought him up with them.

I knew Joseph Warton well. When Matthias attacked him in The Pursuits of Literature for reprinting some loose things in his edition of Pope, Joseph wrote a letter to me, in which he called Matthias "his pious critic,"-rather an odd expression to come from a clergyman.-He certainly ought not to have given that letter of Lord Cobham.f

I never saw Thomas Warton. I once called at the house of Robinson the bookseller for Dr. Kippis, who used to introduce me to many literary parties, and who that evening was to take me to the Society of Antiquaries. He said, "Tom Warton is up

* The Imitation of the Second Satire of the First Book of Horace, and the chapter of "The Double Mistress," in the Memoirs of Scrib. lerus: Matthias also objected to "a few trumpery, vulgar copies of verses which disgrace the pages."-ED.

† See J. Warton's Life of Pope, p. li. The letter had been previously printed,-in' the dullest of all biographies, Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 276.—ED.