[254] Often the familiar letters were enclosed to Mrs. Elstob, a learned lady and authoress, who was now governess to the Portland children. Lady Oxford was then at Bullstrode. Dr. Young had lost his beloved wife, his step-son and step-daughter the year before. The step-daughter died of consumption, brought on by grief at her mother’s loss. Her step-father had taken her abroad for her health. She died at Montpellier, and was refused Christian burial by the bigoted French of those days. The poor doctor, assisted by his servant, dug her grave in a field, unaided by any one. Can any one wonder at the gloom pervading the poem? Whilst the duchess is writing to Mrs. Montagu, the latter writes on December 5-- “Madam, after being sunk into stupidity by the company of a strange kind of animal called a country Beau and wit, how unfit am I for conversation of the Duchess of Portland!” [Page heading: A ROUÉ OF THE PERIOD] She then proceeds to draw this curious picture of a country beau,-- “who cannot attain the perfection of a monkey, even the art of mimicry.... Had you seen the pains this animal has been taking to imitate the cringe of a beau, the smartness of a wit, till he was hideous to behold, and horrible to hear, you would have pitied him! He walks like a tortoise, and chatters like a magpye: by the indulgence of a kind mother, and the advantage of a country education, he was first a clown, then he was sent to the Inns of Court, where he first fell into a red waistcoat and velvet breeches; then into vanity. This light companion led him to the play house, where he ostentiously coquetted with the orange wenches, who cured him of the bel-air of taking snuff by abridging him of his nostrils, grown even in his own eyes no very lovely figure; he thought Bacchus, no critic in faces, would prove in the end a better friend than Cupid: accordingly he fell into the company of the jovial, till want of money and want of taste led this prodigal son, if not to eat, to drink with swine. He visited the prisons, not as a comforter, but as a companion to criminals; shook hands with the gold finder, and walked in the ways of the scavenger; so singular his humility, none were his contempt. At last, having lost his money, ruined his constitution, and lost all the sense nature gave him, he returned to the country where all the youths of inferior rank, admiring his experience, and emulating his qualities, and copying his manners, grew, some fit for jail, others for transportation.... Notwithstanding all these vices and the most nauseous effect of them, all people treat him civilly!” Mr. Montagu writes to his wife on December 9,[255] and in it he says--