unfortunate nobleman had determined to take poison.' Sir Walter
gives no authority, and Coulton admits that he knows of none.
Gloomy but commonplace reflections in the so-called 'Letters' of
Lyttelton do not even raise a presumption in favour of suicide,
which, in these very Letters, Lyttelton says that he cannot defend
by argument.* That Lyttelton made his will 'a few weeks before his
death,' providing for his fair victims, may be accounted for, as we
shall see, by the threatening state of his health, without any
notion of self-destruction. Walpole, in his three letters, only
speaks of 'a pistol' as the common construction of 'sudden death;'
and that remark occurs before he has heard any details. He rises
from a mere statement of Lord Lyttelton's, that he is 'to die in
three days,' to a 'dream' containing that assurance, and thence to
apparitions of a young woman and a robin-redbreast. The appearance
of that bird, by the way, is, in the folk-lore of Surrey, an omen of
death. Walpole was in a position to know all current gossip, and so
was Mrs. Piozzi.

*Coulton's argument requires him to postulate the authenticity of
many, at least, of these Letters, which were given to the world by
the author of 'Doctor Syntax.'

We now turn to a narrative nearly contemporary, that written out by
Lord Westcote on February 13, 1780. Lord Westcote examined the
eldest Miss Amphlett, Captain (later Admiral) Charles Wolsley, Mrs.
Flood, Lord Lyttelton's valet, Faulkner, and Stuckey, the servant in
whose arms, so to speak, Lord Lyttelton died. Stuckey was
questioned (note this) in the presence of Captain Wolsley and of MR.
FORTESCUE. The late Lord Lyttelton permitted the Westcote narrative
to be published in 'Notes and Queries' (November 21, 1874). The