stimulate the minister to add another count to the indictment preferred
against him, on which he might be expected to find it less easy to
excite the sympathy of any party. Wilkes had not always confined his
literary efforts to political pamphlets. There was a club named the
Franciscans (in compliment to Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Bute's
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, as well as Lord Sandwich, the First
Lord of the Admiralty, was one of its members), which met at Medmenham
Abbey, on the banks of the Thames, and there held revels whose license
recalled the worst excesses of the preceding century. To this club
Wilkes also belonged; and, in indulgence of tastes in harmony with such
a brotherhood, he had composed a blasphemous and indecent parody on
Pope's "Essay on Man," which he entitled "An Essay on Woman," and to
which he appended a body of burlesque notes purporting to be the
composition of Pope's latest commentator, the celebrated Dr. Warburton,
Bishop of Gloucester. He had never published it (indeed, it may be
doubted whether, even in that not very delicate age, any publisher could
have been found to run the risk of issuing so scandalous a work), but he
had printed a few copies in his own house, of which he designed to make
presents to such friends as he expected to appreciate it. He had not,
however, so far as it appears, given away a single copy, when, on the
very first day of the next session of Parliament, Lord Sandwich himself
brought the parody under the notice of the House of Lords. If there was
a single member of the House whose delicacy was not likely to be
shocked, and whose morals could not be injured by such a composition, it
was certainly Lord Sandwich himself; but his zeal as a minister to
support his chief kindled in him a sudden enthusiasm for the support of
virtue and decency also; and, having obtained a copy by some
surreptitious means, he now made a formal complaint of it to the House,
contending that the use of the name of the Bishop of Gloucester as
author of the notes constituted a breach of the privileges of the House.