A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833Smith, John Thomas
History
A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833
Smith, John Thomas
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
[250] Robert Lemon, the archivist. He discovered Milton’s “De
Doctrina Christiania,” and gave assistance to Sir Walter Scott.
[251] Sir Robert Strange was engraver to Prince Charles. His
distinguished career was chequered by his political sympathies,
and by his bitter criticism of the Royal Academy, in consequence,
partly, of its exclusion of engravers. Knighted by George III.
(after he had engraved West’s apotheosis of the three royal
children), he died in his last London home in Great Queen Street,
July 5, 1792. See note, p. 82.
[252] The bill of which Smith gives particulars is quoted in
full by William Hookham Carpenter in his _Pictorial Notices of
Sir Anthony Van Dyck_ (1844). “It is more than probable that the
account had been submitted to the supervision of Bishop Juxon, who,
by the influence of Archbishop Laud, was appointed to the office of
Lord Treasurer in 1635, which he held till 1641; and Anthony Wood
tells us ‘he kept the King’s purse when necessities were deepest,
and clamours were loudest.’” Vandyke had from Charles, in addition
to payments against pictures, an annuity of £200 a year and houses
at Blackfriars and Eltham.
[253] On February 23. After lying in state in the Royal Academy,
the remains of Sir Joshua Reynolds were interred, on Saturday,
March 3, in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, near the
resting-place of Sir Christopher Wren. The pall was borne by ten
peers, and the Archbishop of York took part in the service.
[254] Burke’s tribute had appeared in the _Annual Register_.
[255] Lieut.-Colonel Molesworth Phillips, whose career links Dr.
Johnson to Charles Lamb, was the companion of Captain Cook on his
last voyage. His marriage in 1782 to Susannah Elizabeth, daughter
of Dr. Charles Burney, and sister of Fanny Burney, brought him
into the Johnson set. He escorted Miss Burney to Westminster Hall
to hear Warren Hastings on his defence. Lamb, recalling his old
whist-playing friends in his “Letter of Elia to Robert Southey,”
names him as “the high-minded associate of Cook, the veteran
Colonel, with his lusty heart still sending cartels of defiance to
old Time.” He died in 1832.
[256] Mrs. Cholmondeley, who appears several times in Boswell’s
_Life_, was a younger sister of Peg Woffington, and the wife of the
Hon. and Rev. George Cholmondeley.
[257] “Sheridan had very fine eyes, and he was very vain of them.
He said to Rogers on his deathbed, ‘Tell Lady Besborough that my
eyes will look up to the coffin-lid as brightly as ever.’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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