and not only his Uncle Duke (the Duke of Newcastle) but even Majesty is
fallen in love with him. He talked to the king at his levee, without
being spoken to. That was always thought high treason; but I don't know
how the gruff gentleman liked it. And then he had been told that Lord
Lincoln designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war; in
short, he says Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in England.'

Horace was not, therefore, the only victim to a mother's ambition: there
is something touching in the interest he from time to time evinces in
poor Lord Lincoln's hopeless love. On another occasion, a second ball of
Sir Thomas Robinson's, Lord Lincoln, out of prudence, dances with Lady
Caroline Fitzroy, Mr. Conway taking Lady Sophia Fermor. 'The two couple
were just admirably mismatched, as everybody soon perceived, by the
attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and the
emulation of either lady; it was an admirable scene.'

All, however, was not country dancing: the young man, 'too old and too
young to be in love,' was to make his way as a wit. He did so, in the
approved way in that day of irreligion, in a political squib. On July
14th, 1742, he writes in his Notes, 'I wrote the "_Lessons for the
Day_;" the "Lessons for the day" being the first and second chapters of
the "Book of Preferment,"' Horace was proud of this _brochure_, for he
says it got about surreptitiously, and was 'the original of many things
of that sort.' Various _jeux d'esprit_ of a similar sort followed. A
'Sermon on Painting,' which was preached before Sir Robert Walpole, in
the gallery at Houghton, by his chaplain; 'Patapan, or the Little White
Dog,' imitated from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the 'Old England Journal,'
intended to ridicule Lord Bath; and then, in a magazine, was printed his
'Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and Notes.' Next the 'Beauties,'
which was also handed about, and got into print. So that without the