memory, or ingenuity, so as to carry a reputation for ability that he
never has deserved. His money, and the distinction of his father, gave
him an association with cultivated people,--artists, politicians,
poets,--which the metal of his own mind would never have found by reason
of its own gravitating power. He courted notoriety in a way that would
have made him, if a poorer man, the toadying Boswell of some other
Johnson giant, and, if very poor, the welcome buffoon of some gossiping
journal, who would never weary of contortions, and who would brutify
himself at the death, to kindle an admiring smile.

He writes pleasantly about painters, and condescendingly of gardeners
and gardening. Of the special beauties of Strawberry Hill he is himself
historiographer; elaborate copper plates, elegant paper, and a
particularity that is ludicrous, set forth the charms of a villa which
never supplied a single incentive to correct taste, or a single scene
that has the embalmment of genius. He tells us grandly how this room was
hung with crimson, and that other with gold; how "the tearoom was
adorned with green paper and prints, ...on the hearth, a large green
vase of German ware, with a spread eagle, and lizards for
handles,"--which vase (if the observation be not counted disloyal by
sensitive gentlemen) must have been a very absurd bit of pottery. "On a
shelf and brackets are two _potpourris_ of Hankin china; two pierced
blue and white basons of old Delft; and two sceaus [_sic_] of coloured
Seve; a blue and white vase and cover; and two old Fayence bottles."

When a man writes about his own furniture in this style for large type
and quarto, we pity him more than if he had kept to such fantastic
nightmares as the "Castle of Otranto." The Earl of Orford speaks in high
terms of the literary abilities of the Earl of Bath: have any of my
readers ever chanced to see any literary work of the Earl of Bath? If