Dodington (Lord Melcombe) deserves some recollection for the mere sake of his political _flexibility_. He entered Parliament young, and was shortly after sent Envoy to Spain. Inheriting a considerable fortune from his father, whose name was Bubb, he acquired a large estate by the death of his maternal uncle, Dodington, whose name he took in consequence. Still the pursuit of place was the business of his life, and he became proverbial for the eagerness of his avarice, and the slipperiness of his principles. Some talent, some plausibility, great perseverance, and unblushing impudence, gained him a succession of employments under all the successive parties. Beginning his political life under Walpole, by whom he was appointed a Lord of the Treasury, he secured for himself the lucrative sinecure of the Clerkship of the Pells in Ireland. When Walpole began to totter, Dodington _ratted_; and when the minister finally fell, he was made a sharer in the spoil, obtaining the Treasurership of the Navy. When Frederick, Prince of Wales, started in opposition, Dodington hastened to worship the rising sun, and became head of the "Prince's party." When Frederick died, Dodington returned to his old quarters, and figured again as Treasurer of the Navy, under the Newcastle administration. On the death of George II., Lord Bute was the new dispenser of places, and Dodington joined him accordingly. His reward was the peerage in the same year. This was the summit of his busy, arrogant, aspiring, and _humiliating_ career. Whether he contemplated further experiments on fortune is not now to be known, for he enjoyed his _honours_ but a twelvemonth, dying in 1762. All this labour of servility was for himself alone, for he had no offspring. His _Diary_ is familiar to the readers of political biography, and it is uniformly quoted as the most singular instance, in public life, of fearless exposure to contempt, of sinister caution, and conscious tergiversation. A _bon mot_ of Chesterfield was long remembered. Dodington, on going abroad on some mission, observed to Chesterfield the vexation of having such a name as Bubb appended to his better-sounding appellation. "Poh!" said Chesterfield, "enlarge it--call yourself Silly-bubb." In this correspondence, it is surprising that we meet so few references to the invasion of the Pretender in 1745, unless we are to account for it by the letters having been destroyed. The event itself was the most memorable since the Civil War; and if the nation had been less Protestant, it might have changed the dynasty. But the bigotry of James II. had raised a spirit of determined resistance to his line, which nothing but actual overthrow in the field could extinguish. The enterprise was gallantly conceived, and as gallantly executed by the Highlanders; but there was a want of force. The Clans fought boldly, but their blood was shed in vain; and the invasion actually gave additional strength to the Protestant throne.