Witty Excellency Hanbury did not succeed at Berlin on the "Romish-King Question," or otherwise; and indeed went off rather in a hurry. But for the next six or seven years he puddles about, at a great rate, in those Northern Courts; giving away a great deal of money, hatching many futile expensive intrigues at Petersburg, Warsaw (not much at Berlin, after the first trial there); and will not be altogether avoidable to us in time coming, as one could have wished. Besides, he is Horace Walpole's friend and select London Wit: he contributed a good deal to the English notions about Friedrich; and has left considerable bits of acrid testimony on Friedrich, "clear words of an Eye-witness," men call them,--which are still read by everybody; the said Walpole, and others, having since printed them, in very dark condition. [In Walpole,--George the Second--(i. 448-461), the Pieces which regard Friedrich. In--Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's Works--(edited by a diligent, reverential, but ignorant gentleman, whom I could guess to be Bookseller Jeffery in person: London, 1822, 3 vols. small 8vo) are witty Verses, and considerable sections of Prose, relating to other persons and objects now rather of an obsolete nature.] Brevity is much due to Hanbury and his testimonies, since silence in the circumstances is not allowable. Here is one Excerpt, with the necessary light for reading it:-- ... It is on this Romish-King and other the like chimerical errands, that witty Hanbury, then a much more admirable man than we now find him, is prowling about in the German Courts, off and on, for some ten years in all, six of them still to come. A sharp-eyed man, of shrewish quality; given to intriguing, to spying, to bribing; anxious to win his Diplomatic game by every method, though the stake (as here) is oftenest zero: with fatal proclivity to Scandal, and what in London circles he has heard called Wit. Little or nothing of real laughter in the soul of him, at any time; only a labored continual grin, always of malicious nature, and much trouble and jerking about, to keep that up. Had evidently some modicum of real intellect, of capacity for being wise; but now has fatally devoted it nearly all to being witty, on those poor terms! A perverse, barren, spiteful little wretch; the grin of him generally an affliction, at this date. His Diplomatic Correspondence I do not know. [Nothing of him is discoverable in the State-Paper Office. Many of his Papers, it would seem, are in the Earl of Essex's hands;--and might be of some Historical use, not of very much, could the British Museum get possession of them. Abundance of BACKSTAIRS History, on those Northern Courts, especially on Petersburg, and Warsaw-Dresden,--authentic Court-gossip, generally malicious, often not true, but never mendacious on the part of Williams,--is one likely item.] He did a great deal of Diplomatic business, issuing in zero, of which I have sometimes longed to know the exact dates; seldom anything farther.