Very soon after leaving Oxford, Beauclerk became engaged to a Miss Draycott, whose family were well known to that affable blue-stocking, Mrs. Montagu; but some coldness on his part, some sensitiveness on hers, broke off the match. His fortune-hunting parent is said to have been disappointed, as the lady owned several lead-mines in her own right. That same year, with Bennet Langton for companion part of the way, Beauclerk, whose health, never robust, now began to give him anxiety, set out on a Continental tour. Baretti, whom he had met at home, received him most kindly at Milan, thanks to Johnson’s urgent and friendly letter. By his subsequent knowledge of Italian popular customs, he was able to testify in Baretti’s favor, when the latter was under arrest for killing his man in the Haymarket, and in concert with Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Johnson, to help him, in a very interesting case, towards his acquittal. It was reported to Selwyn that the handsome gambling Inglese was robbed at Venice of £10,000! an incident which, perhaps, shortened his peregrinations. If the report were accurate, it would prove that he could have been in no immediate need of pecuniary rescue from his leaden sweetheart. It was Dr. Johnson’s opinion, coinciding with the opinion of Roger Ascham on the same general subject, that travel adds very little to one’s mental forces, and that Beauclerk might have learned more in the Academe of “Fleet Street, sir!” Topham Beauclerk married Lady Diana Spencer, the eldest daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, as soon as she obtained a divorce from her first husband. This was Frederick, Lord Bolingbroke, nephew and heir of the great owner of that title; a very trying gentleman, who was the restless “Bully” of Selwyn’s correspondence; he survived until 1787. The ceremony took place March 12, 1768, in St. George’s, Hanover Square, “by license of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” both conspirators being then residents of the parish. Lady Diana Spencer was born in the spring of 1734, and was therefore in her thirty-fifth year, while Beauclerk was but twenty-nine.[54] Johnson was disturbed, and felt offended at first with the whole affair; but he never withdrew from the agreeable society of Beauclerk’s wife. It is nothing wonderful that the courtship and honey-moon was signalized by the forfeit of Beauclerk’s place in the exacting Club, “for continued inattendance,” and not regained for a considerable period. “They are in town, at Topham’s house, and give dinners,” one of George Selwyn’s gossiping friends wrote, after the wedding. “Lord Ancram dined there yesterday, and called her nothing but Lady Bolingbroke the whole time!” Let us hope that “Milady Bully” triumphed over her awkward guest, and looked, as Earl March once described her under other difficulties, “handsomer than ever I saw her, and not the least abashed;” or as deliberately easy as when she entertained with her gay talk the nervous Boswell who awaited