stories, this anecdote of Lord Lyttelton deserves attention. So
first we must glance at the previous history of the hero. Thomas
Lord Lyttelton was born, says Mr. Coulton (in the 'Quarterly
Review,' No. 179, p. 111), on January 30, 1744.* He was educated at
Eton, where Dr. Barnard thought his boyish promise even superior to
that of Charles James Fox. His sketches of scenery in Scotland
reminded Mrs. Montagu of the vigour of Salvator Rosa, combined with
the grace of Claude Lorraine! At the age of nineteen, already
affianced to Miss Warburton, he went on the Grand Tour, and excelled
the ordinary model of young debauchery abroad. Mr. James Boswell
found a Circe at Siena, Lyttelton found Circes everywhere. He
returned to England in 1765; and that learned lady, Mrs. Carter, the
translator of Epictetus, 'admired his talents and elegant manners,
as much as she detested his vices.' In 1768 he entered the House of
Commons, and, in his maiden speech, implored the Assembly to believe
that America was more important than Mr. Wilkes (and Liberty).
Unseated for bribery in January 1769, he vanished from the public
view, more or less, for a season; at least he is rarely mentioned in
memoirs, and Coulton thinks that young Lyttelton was now engaged--in
what does the reader suppose? In writing 'The Letters of Junius'!**

*The writer was not Croker, but Mr. Coulton, 'a Kentish gentleman,'
says Lockhart, February 7, 1851, to his daughter Charlotte.
**If Lyttelton went to Italy on being ejected from Parliament, as
Mr. Rigg says he did in the 'Dictionary of National Biography,'
Coulton's theory will be hard to justify.

He was clever enough; his rank was like that assumed as his own by
Junius; his eloquence (as he proved later in the House of Lords) was
vituperative enough; he shared some of Junius's hatreds, while he