466 SYDNEY'S CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIETY. the lady cried. "Come and see next time, ma'am-nothing more easy." She went away, however, convinced that such a proceeding was very unorthodox. No wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be said of him that no "dull dinners were ever remembered in his company." A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and useful. To the last he never considered his education as finished. His wit, a friend said, "was always fresh, always had the dew on it." He latterly got into what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit of water-drinking. Wine, he said, destroyed his understanding. He even "forgot the number of the Muses, and thought it was thirty-nine of course." He agreed with Sir James Mackintosh that he had found the world more good and more foolish than he had thought when young. He took a cheerful view of all things; he thanked God for small as well as great things, even for tea. "I am glad," he used to say, "I was not born before tea." His domestic affections were strong, and were heartily reciprocated. General society he divided into classes: "The noodlesvery numerous and well known. The affliction woman-a valuable member of society, generally an ancient spinster in small circumstances, who packs up her bag and sets off in cases of illness or death, 'to comfort, flatter, fetch, and carry. The up-takers-people who see from their fingers' ends, and go through a room touching every thing. The clearers-who begin at a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. The sheep-walkers-who go on forever on the beaten track. The lemon-squeezers of society-who act on you as a wet blanket; see a cloud in sunshine; the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of a bride; extinguish all hope; people whose very look sets your teeth on an edge. The let-well-aloners, cousingerman to the noodles-yet a variety, and who are afraid to act, and think it safer to stand still. Then the washerwomen -very numerous! who always say, "Well, if ever I put on my best bonnet, 'tis sure to rain,' etc. "Besides this, there is a very large class of people always treading on your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking you to give them something with your lame hand," etc. During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the death-stroke approaching. "I am so weak, both in body and mind," he said, "that I believe, if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength enough to stick it into a Dissenter." In October he became seriously ill. "Ah! Charles," he said to General Fox (when he was being kept very low), "I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted butterfly." He dreaded sorrowful faces around him, but confided to his old servant, Annie Kay-and to her alone-his sense of his danger. Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved brother Bobus, who followed him to the grave a fortnight after he had been laid in the tomb. He lingered till the 22d of February, 1845. His son closed his eyes. His last act was bestowing on a poverty-stricken clergyman a living. He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Douglas, had been interred. It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most beneficent rule of life. As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, stanch; free from the latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud. His wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without venom; humor without indelicacy; and was copious without being tiresome. GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. "It would have been well for Lord Melcombe's memory,' Horace Walpole remarks, "if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his wit and the evidence of his poetry." And, in the present day, that desirable result has come to pass. We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought him on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in "The Patron." We recall him most as "l'Amphytrion chez qui on dine .:” "My Lord of Melcombe," as Mallett says, "Whose soups and sauces duly season'd, Whose wit well timed and sense well reason'd, Give Burgundy a brighter stain, And add new flavor to Champagne." Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir Robert Walpole and Bubb Dodington? Who now reads without disgust the annals of that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, during which each party devoutly wished the other dead? Who minds whether the time-serying Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not? Who cares whether his hopes of political preferment were or were not gratified? Bubb Dodington was, in fact, the dinner-giving lordly poet, to whom even the saintly Young could write, "You give protection-I a worthless strain." Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had attained the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of Bubb. Then a benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left him, with his lands, the more exalted surname of Dodington. He sprang, however, from an obscure family, who had settled in Dorchester; but that disadvantage, which, according to Lord Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on a young man's advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most things are, by a great fortune. Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford. At the age of twenty-four he was elected M. P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterward named Envoy at the Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession of wealth to provincial honors, and 470 A MISFORTUNE FOR A MAN OF SOCIETY. became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset. Nay, poets began to Great Dodington to kings allied; My patron then, my laurels' pride." It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who thus profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not recorded that Thomson dedicated to him his "Summer." The dedication was prompted by Lord Binning; and "Summer" was published in 1727, when Dodington was one of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland. It seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson to pen such a passage as this: "Your example, sir, has recommended poetry with the greatest grace to the example of those who are engaged in the most active scenes of life; and this, though confessedly the least considerable of those qualities that dignify your character, must be particularly pleasing to one whose only hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the recommendation of an art in which you are a master." Warton adding this tribute: "To praise a Dodington, rash bard, forbear! What can thy weak and ill-tuned voice avail, When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?" Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous political caricature called the "Motion," is depicted as "the Spaniel," sitting between the Duke of Argyle's legs, while his grace is driving a coach at full speed to the Treasury, with a sword instead of a whip in his hand, with Lord Chesterfield as postillion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, holding on by the straps; even then the servile though pompous character of this true man of the world was comprehended completely; and Bubb Dodington's characteristics never changed." In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another misfortune for a man of society-he became fat and lethargic. "My brother Ned," Horace Walpole remarks, "says he is grown of less consequence, though more weight." And on another occasion, speaking of a majority in the House of Lords, he adds, "I do not count Dodington, who must now always be in the minority, for no majority will accept him." While, however, during the factious reign of George II., the town was declared, even by Horace, to be "wondrous dull; operas unfrequented, plays not in fashion, and amours old as marriages," Bubb Dodington, with his wealth and profusion, contrived always to be in vogue as a host, while he was at a discount as a politician. Politics and literature are the high |