quently quotes several letters and facts of that date, which recognize the club as having been long established!

On the whole then we conclude, that the club was instituted about 1688, by some young men of wit and pleasure about town; that it had at first no political importance, nor probably any political object, but that its most distinguished members being whigs in politics, it gradually took a more decided whig character, and finally, in the factious time of Queen Anne, became almost exclusively political; and we further conclude that our author knew nothing at all of the matter.

That ridiculous peer for whom his extravagant haughtiness acquired the title of the proud Duke of Somerset, became a member of the Kit-Cat Club, when it had risen into such importance. as to be considered worthy of his august countenance. With his characteristic vanity he began the celebrated collection of portraits, which adorned the club-room at old Tonson's house, at Barn Elms: the room had been built before the pictures were thought of, and Sir Godfrey Kneller-himself a member of the club was obliged to invent a new sized canvass, (since so well known by the name of Kit-Cat,) accommodated to the walls; and by these portraits and this accident, the name of the club itself has been immortalized, rather than by any literary renown achieved by the association.

Our author tells us that it was dissolved in the year 1720, and for once he may be right. But why does he not account for the fact of several of these portraits being decorated with the garter, which the originals did not possess till after the dissolution of the club and the death of the painter-(Sir Godfrey died in 1728)for instance-Lord Scarborough, Knight of the Garter in 1724; Sir R. Walpole in 1726; Lord Wilmington in 1727, and Lord Burlington in 1730. We had a right to expect from a person professing to give a critical history of these persons and their portraits a solution of this difficulty.

We shall not attempt to follow the author through his biography of the members of the club; it would be an examination of the peerage and biographical indexes. He has made no search after rare books or family papers. It does not appear that he ever heard that there is a collection of original documents at the British Museum, nor has he taken the pains of reconciling, by the most ordinary attention, the discrepancies and contradictions which his several extracts exhibit; the same pages often contain the most extravagant contradictions; and his style, when he trusts for a sentence or two to his own goose quill, is hardly intelligible. In the very front of his work, and as a general picture of the men and manners of the association, we have the following elaborate passage;

The Earl of Dorset, the Mecænas of the wits of those days, was one

of

of the first members of the society. Maynwaring used to be the ruling man in all conversations, and, with Lord Bolingbroke to pass for a great genius, although posterity has never condescended to take heed either of the oratory of the one, or the philosophy of the other.'—Int. p. iii.

Does this mean that Maynwaring, as well as Bolingbroke, used to pass for a great genius; or that Maynwaring used to pass for such in the opinion of Bolingbroke? If the former, it would imply that the tory Bolingbroke was a member of this whig club; if the latter, the mention of Bolingbroke is perfectly idle—because, if Maynwaring was the ruling man in all conversation, and so considered by the patriots that saved Britain,' what offence was it in Lord Bolingbroke to be of the same opinion? but, in either case, what had Maynwaring's oratory to do with Bolingbroke's philosophy? and above all, what has it to do with the opinion of posterity' about Bolingbroke's philosophy? But posterity,' it seems, has never condescended to take heed of Maynwaring's oratory.' No wonder; he never was an orator: our editor, even in the preceding line, only says, that he shone in conversation. And And if, in his ideas, oratory and conversation are the same thing, then, his assertion that posterity does not take heed of Maynwaring's oratory is false, for even he, one of the most heedless of posterity, has not only heard of it, but recorded it in the very first page of a work dedicated to the celebrity of wit and genius, and the name of Maynwaring stands second, even in his account of the eminent men who illustrated this club. As to posterity's never having condescended to take heed of Lord Bolingbroke's philosophy,' what can we say? Posterity neither admires nor approves Bolingbroke's philosophy: but to say that works which have made perhaps more noise than any others of the class published in the last century; which have been answered, criticised, refuted, by the ablest men in England, have passed unheeded, requires an audacity of ignorance of which we had no conception.

We shall now follow the auther in some of his critical and historical details.

་

He says, (page v.) that the custom of toasting ladies after dinner was peculiar to the Kit-Cat Club,' and he quotes the Tatler, No. 34, in proof of this assertion; whereas the Tatler asserts that the origin of the word toast was derived from Charles the Second's time, long before the club was thought of! In fact, however, the whole paper relates not to the custom of toasting ladies,' but to the reason why the custom has been called toasting. Our blundering editor confuses the fact and the name, and with the book before his eyes, cannot understand a plain passage.

He sneers at Horace Walpole as a sage transmitter of an anec

dote

dote which he is yet sage enough to copy, and simple enough to spoil.

'It is related of the duke's ancestor, the celebrated Countess of Shrewsbury, (we believe by Horace Walpole,) that she was told in the early part of her career by a caster of nativities, (vulgariter, a gypsey,) that she should not die whilst she was building!'-p. 21.

Now, although we admit that the author is very likely to know what any thing is called vulgariter, yet we must beg to acquaint him, that gipsies never were considered as casters of nativities;' and that telling the fortune of a young lady is a very different thing from casting the nativity of an infant.

'The South Sea scheme,' says the author, turned out to be a specious piece of CHICANERY, like the Trojan horse'! (p. 23.) It is quite evident from this, that our erudite friend has heard of one Virgil, and imagines (as we conclude from the following exquisite passage) that he is a Latin historian—

It is reported by Virgil of Mezentius that he was guilty, among other enormities, of binding dead and living bodies together, and thus dooming the latter to the most dreadful of all punishments, that of rotting to destruction by a premature conjunction with putrescence.'-p. 71.

Our readers have not often, we believe, met with a more distinct and curious account of a change of administration and its motives, than the following passage, in which we are informed that the famous Duke of Newcastle was on July 2, 1757, placed at the head of the Treasury; but quitted his seat there in favour of John Stewart, Earl of Bute, in May, 1762, on being created Baron Pelham of Stanmer in Sussex.'-p. 156.-This Duke of Newcastle, who resigned the Treasury on being created Baron Pelham, is a great favourite with our editor, who rebukes the petty malice of the time-serving Bishop Newton, for having flippantly observed, that "the Duke had been so long used to shuffle the cards that he always knew how to deal the honors into his own hands." This is not a very decent mode of alluding to a prelate of the character of Bishop Newton; but it is mild and gentlemanlike compared with his censures on the Dean of St. Patrick's.

"The

Swift also, with that coarse malevolence so peculiar to him, has endeavoured to malign the duke. In what he was pleased to term his "Strictures on public characters," we have the following passage: Duke of Newcastle has one only daughter, who will be the richest heiress in Europe, now Countess of Oxford, cheated by her father." As there exists no other authority upon which to presume his Grace guilty of chicanery towards his daughter than the simple ipse dixit of Swift, we may very naturally conclude it to be one of those base attempts to calumniate public character, in which this OBSCENE RHYMESTER so frequently indulged.'-p. 59.

Our

Our readers are, no doubt, astonished at such language: but what will they think when we recal to their recollection, that the Duke of Newcastle, of whom Swift speaks, and the Duke of Newcastle whom our editor defends, were two absolutely different persons, confounded by him only because they happened to bear the same title! Every body, except our editor, knows that John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, the father of Lady Oxford, the last male of his name and line, died about 1711; while Thomas Pelham, the member of the Kit-Cat, was created Duke of Newcastle in 1715, and lived till 1768-such is the historical accuracy which ventures to charge Dean Swift with coarseness, malevolence, slander, baseness, calumny, and obscenity.'

But it is not enough to convict this compiler of mere ignorance; in such a case as this, it is our duty to expose his impudent negligence. The statement that this Duke had a DAUGHTER, the Countess of Oxford,' is at the foot of the 59th page, and the very first paragraph of the 60th page informs us that, as the Duke had no issue, his titles and estates devolved upon his NEPHEW the Earl of Lincoln'!

All this startles belief; but we have something further on the same subject, still more incredible. He confounds-with the pictures and the dates, and his own notes, all before his eyesHenry, seventh Earl of Lincoln, born in 1684, with Henry, minth Earl of Lincoln, born 1723. In the text (p. 60.) he says, that the ensuing portrait and notice belong to Henry, seventh Earl,' the husband of the Duke's sister; and in the note on this very passage, he states the picture to be that of the son of the Duke's sister,' born, as we have said, in 1723, the Kit-Cat Club having expired, as the editor himself tells us, some years before.

To a meagre account of James, Earl of Berkeley, a celebrated admiral, he adds, the above scanty notice, derived entirely from the peerage, is all we can collect concerning the Earl of Berkeley.' p. 101. Had he looked into Charnock's Biographia Navalis, or the Lives of the Admirals, or any other book but the peerage, he would have found ample details, even in these common works, of the life of this gallant lord: and if he had read Horace Walpole's Reminiscences,' he would have found a most extraordinary and not very creditable anecdote of Lord Berkeley.

Of the celebrated Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, he tells us that at the commencement of his political career, Montague was one of the Lords who signed the invitation to King William.'-p. 108. Montague was not a Lord till a dozen years after the Revolution; and if, by the word invitation, he means the celebrated association, we beg to acquaint him that Montague

neither

neither signed it, nor was, at that period, of a rank or condition to sign so important a document.

He borrows an anecdote from Horace Walpole, and criticises him,

6

Montague arose to speak upon the question, but after uttering a few sentences, was struck so suddenly with surprise, that he was unable for several minutes to go on. Recovering himself, he took occasion from this circumstance to "enforce the necessity of allowing counsel to prisoners who were to appear before their judges; since he, who was not only innocent and unaccused, but one of their own members, was so dashed when he was to speak before that wise and illustrious assembly." The same story has been told of the Earl of Shaftesbury by Walpole, in his catalogue of royal and noble authors; but this must have originated in some mistake, as when the speech is related to have proceeded from Shaftesbury, he had no seat in the House of Commons.'-p. 108.

It so happens that Walpole's story is congruous and consistent; the words he assigns to Lord Shaftesbury are, if he, innocent and pleading for others, was daunted at the augustness of such an assembly, what must a man be who should plead before them for his life?" Walpole well knew that no man could plead before the Commons for his life, though he might before the Lords.

In the account of the duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, (p. 122.) our author says,

'The day after the dispute, the Duke of Hamilton sent a challenge by Lieutenant General Macartney, to Lord Mohun. They met in Hyde Park, on November 15th, 1712, when each fell, mortally wounded, on the first exchange of shots.'-p. 122.

This sentence contains almost as many errors as words. The facts are, that Lord Mohun was the challenger-that Macartney was Lord Mohun's second, and not the Duke's ;—that they did not fight with pistols, but with swords-and that, instead of being mortally wounded at the first assault, the combat was protracted, and that both the Duke and Lord Mohun had several wounds.

This subject affords the learned author an occasion to propose an important amendment in our criminal law.

'It would be well for the interests of society, if the legislature were to make the seconds in all cases of duels amenable to the laws as capital offenders. Much misery and bloodshed would be saved by such a provision, and these honorable encounters either cease altogether, or occur much less frequently than they do at present.'-p. 122.

This is very judicious, and we are glad to be able to acquaint the worthy legislator, that such is, and has always been, the state of the law of England on this point.

If there be any two names in English politics, law, or literature, with the history of which it is shameful to be unacquainted, they are those