The charge to which Walpole alludes, was, that the earl had given her a
bond for L.30,000 not to molest her; but as there was no proof, this gross
charge certainly has no right to be implicitly received. Still it is
unaccountable why he should have suffered her to have married the Duke of
Kingston without any known remonstrance, and why he should have allowed
her to retain the title of the duke's widow until the rightful heir
instituted the proceedings. The earl died in 1779, within three years from
the trial.
Among the characters which pass through this magic-lantern, is Topham
Beauclerk, so frequently mentioned, and mentioned with praise, in
Boswell's _Johnson_. He seems to have been a man of great elegance of
manner, and peculiarity of that happy talent of conversation whose wit
seems to be spontaneous, and whose anecdotes, however _recherche_, seem to
flow from the subject. "Every thing," remarked Johnson, "comes from
Beauclerk so easily, that it appears to me that I labour when I say a good
thing."
Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sydney Beauclerk, a son of Charles,
first Duke of St Albans. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and,
from the moment of his entering fashionable life, was remarked for the
elegance of manner, and the liveliness of conversation, which continued to
be his distinctions to the close of his career. Unfortunately, the fashion
of the time not only allowed, but seems to have almost required, an
irregularity of life which would tarnish the character of any man in our
more decorous day. His unfortunate intercourse with Viscountess
Bolingbroke, better known by her subsequent name of Lady Diana Beauclerk,
produced a divorce, and in two days after a marriage. She was the eldest
daughter of Charles, the second Duke of Marlborough, and was in early life
as distinguished for her beauty, as in later years she was for her wit.
Johnson in his old age became acquainted with Topham Beauclerk, through
their common friend, Langton, and even the sage and moralist acknowledged
the captivation of his manners. "What a coalition!" said Garrick, when he
heard of their acquaintance, "I shall have my old friend to bail out of
the roundhouse." But whatever might be the elegance of his companion's
laxity, Johnson did not hesitate to rebuke him. Beauclerk, like wits in
general, had a propensity to satire, on which Johnson once took him to
task in this rough style--"You never open your mouth but with the
intention to give pain; and you have now given me pain, not from the power
of what you have said, but from my seeing the intention." At another tine,
applying to him that line of Pope's, slightly altered, he said--
'Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools;'
everything you do shows the one, and every thing you say the other."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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