1803, ii. 104.
[911] Gibbon wrote on Feb. 21, 1772 (Misc. Works, ii. 78):--'To day the House of Commons was employed in a very odd way. Tommy Townshend moved that the sermon of Dr. Nowell, who preached before the House on the 30th of January (id est, before the Speaker and four members), should be burnt by the common hangman, as containing arbitrary, Tory, high-flown doctrines. The House was nearly agreeing to the motion, till they recollected that they had already thanked the preacher for his excellent discourse, and ordered it to be printed.'
[912]
'Although it be not shined upon.' Hudibras, iii. 2, 175.
[913] According to Mr. Croker, this was the Rev. Henry Bate, of the Morning Post, who in 1784 took the name of Dudley, was created a baronet in 1815, and died in 1824. Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 13, 1776 (Letters, vi. 39l):--'Yesterday I heard drums and trumpets in Piccadilly: I looked out of the window and saw a procession with streamers flying. At first I thought it a press-gang, but seeing the corps so well-drest, like Hussars, in yellow with blue waistcoats and breeches, and high caps, I concluded it was some new body of our allies, or a regiment newly raised, and with new regimentals for distinction. I was not totally mistaken, for the Colonel is a new ally. In short, this was a procession set forth by Mr. Bate, Lord Lyttelton's chaplain, and author of the old Morning Post, and meant as an appeal to the town against his antagonist, the new one.' In June, 1781, Bate was sentenced to a year's imprisonment 'for an atrocious libel on the Duke of Richmond. He was the worst of all the scandalous libellers that had appeared both on private persons as well as public. His life was dissolute, and he had fought more than one duel. Yet Lord Sandwich had procured for him a good Crown living, and he was believed to be pensioned by the Court.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 464.
[914] See ante, ii. 339, and iii. 265.
[915] Three days earlier, in the debate on the Westminster Scrutiny, Fox accused 'a person of great rank in this House'--Pitt I believe--'of adding pertness and personal contumely to every species of rash and inconsiderate violence.' Parl. Hist. xxiv. 924. Pitt, in reply, classed Fox among 'political apostates,' ib. p. 929. Burke, the same evening, 'sat down saying, "he little minded the ill-treatment of a parcel of boys."' When he was called to order, he said:--'When he used the term "a parcel of boys," he meant to apply it to the ministry, who, he conceived, were insulting him with their triumph; a triumph which grey hairs ought to be allowed the privilege of expressing displeasure at, when it was founded on the rash exultation of mere boys.' Ib. p. 939. Pitt, Prime-Minister though he was, in the spring of the same year, was called to order by the Speaker, for charging a member with using 'language the most false, the most malicious, and the most slanderous.' Ib. p. 763.
[916] Epistles to Mr. Pope, ii. 165.
[917] See an account of him, in a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Agutter. BOSWELL. This sermon was published in 1788. In Hannah More's Memoirs (i. 217), Henderson is described as 'a mixture of great sense, which discovered uncommon parts and learning, with a tincture of nonsense of the most extravagant kind. He believes in witches and apparitions, as well as in judicial astronomy.' Mrs. Kennicott writes (ib. p. 220):--'I think if Dr. Johnson had the shaking him about, he would shake out his nonsense, and set his sense a-working. 'He never got out into the world, says Dr. Hall, the Master of Pembroke College, having died in College in 1788.
[918] This was the second Lord Lyttelton, commonly known as 'the wicked Lord Lyttelton.' Fox described him to Rogers as 'a very bad man--downright wicked.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 95. He died Nov. 27, 1779. Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 292) wrote to Mason on Dec. 11 of that year:--'If you can send us any stories of ghosts out of the North, they will be very welcome. Lord Lyttelton's vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an apparition should despair of being able to get access to his Lordship's bed in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin-red-breast.' In the Gent. Mag. 1815, i. 597, and 1816, ii. 421, accounts are given of this vision. In the latter account it is said that 'he saw a bird fluttering, and afterwards a woman appeared in white apparel, and said, "Prepare to die; you will not exist three days."' Mrs. Piozzi also wrote a full account of it. Hayward's Piozzi, i. 332.
[919] See ante, ii. 150, and iii. 298, note 1.
[920] See ante, p. 278.
[921] 'If he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horror, or panting for security; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened to sufficient conviction? &c.' The Rambler, No.