Wakefield_; Gibbon had returned to England from Rome with the idea of
_The Decline and Fall_ floating in his brain; Thomas Chatterton,

----'the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride,'

had already given proofs of his wondrous precocity; the genuine
sailor-poet, Falconer, had lately published _The Shipwreck_; Laurence
Sterne had just collected the materials for his _Sentimental Journey_;
Sir William Blackstone had published his celebrated _Commentaries_;
Wesley and Whitefield had not yet ended their useful career; the star
of Edmund Burke was rising; and Jeremy Bentham, being then (1766) but
seventeen years of age, had taken his master's degree at Oxford,
although, it is true, the first literary performance of the eccentric
philosopher did not appear till some years later. Home, Moore, and
Colman, had appeared successfully as dramatists, and were about to be
followed by Macklin, Cumberland, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. Newcastle or
district celebrities of the time included Mark Akenside, the author of
_The Pleasures of the Imagination_; Dr Thomas Percy, dean of Carlisle,
who published, in 1765, his _Reliques of English Poetry_; and Dr John
Langhorne, a northern divine of no small popularity in his day as a
poet. Among other illustrious living men, were Horace Walpole, Henry
Mackenzie, Blair, Hume, Adam Smith, Dr Robertson, Garrick, Reynolds;
and last, not least, William Pitt, who, in 1766, was created Earl of
Chatham.

But let us return to our more immediate purpose--that of making a few
selections from the _Chronicle_, some of which will doubtless reflect
far less credit on the age than the enumeration we have just made of
eminent individuals. Now and then, a duel took place in Hyde Park. The