Some fine spirits contributed to the Batheaston vase, and their contributions, for which the writers generally had a fortnight’s notice,—the one theme being given to all competitors,—are often marked by power, grace, fancy, and, in the comic pieces, rough humour. On one occasion, some scandalous verses were dropped into the vase, the reading of which in the very first lines called up blushes on the cheeks of the modest, and caused suspicion to rest on the rather audacious Christopher Anstey. “An enemy hath done this,” was the sum of the general comment. Lady Miller’s death soon followed. Miss Seward has generously spoken of her really intellectual friend, though she begins with a curious figure of speech. “Lady Miller,” she says, “was surrounded by a hornet’s nest,” which was, as she goes on to state in more common sense style, “composed of those who were disappointed in their expectations of being summoned to her intellectual feast, and of others whose rhyming offerings could neither obtain the wreath, nor be admitted to a place in her miscellany. ‘Who knows not the active malice of wounded vanity to blot the fairest worth and blast the brightest fame?’ From its venom, excellence cannot even find repose in the grave, and it never fails to descend upon those who dare defend the claims of the deceased.” Reference has been made, in a previous page (see p. 46) to Boswell’s error in stating that the Bluestocking Clubs were originally established about this time, 1781, when Hannah More was writing of them as institutions, the chief members of which had already passed away. The amiable philosopher and thoroughly honest, modest, and accomplished man, Benjamin Stillingfleet (the grandson of the bishop), from whom they are supposed to derive their name, had been dead ten years. In his early days, he made the ascent of Mont Blanc; his last were spent in Kensington Barracks, where his salary as barrack-master satisfied his wants and left him wherewith to help those who were in need. He contributed toward the social reform commenced by Johnson, Miss Mulso (Chapone), and Mrs. Montagu in 1750, a poem on “Conversation.” It rings with echoes of Pope, and lays down some very excellent rules that, implicitly followed, would make conversation impossible. Boswell refers to Hannah More’s poem on the Bluestockings without noticing her record that so many of the persons named in it were then dead. The institution, in fact, was in “the sere, the yellow leaf,” and one, at least, of its old leaders was weary. In 1782, when Mrs. Montagu was established in her palace (as Wraxall says the Italians would call, and as many English people did call, it), in Portman Square, her assemblies were more crowded than ever. She herself, queening it beneath the ceiling painted by Angelica Kaufmann, felt, or affected to feel, a little weary of her splendour.