Sir John Barnard was as little ready to reply to banter, as Nugent was inferior to him in reasoning. The citizen, with the most acute head for figures, made that sort of speaking still more unpleasant by the paltriness of his language, as the arrogance of his honesty clouded the merit of it. The Irishman’s style was floridly bombast; his impudence as great as if he had been honest. Sir John’s moroseness looked like ill-nature, and may be was so. Nugent affected unbounded good-humour, and it was unbounded but by much secret malice, which sometimes broke out in boisterous railing, oftener vented itself in still-born satires. Sir John Barnard had been attached to Lord Granville, but had been flattered from him by Mr. Pelham. Nugent’s attachments were to Lord Granville; but all his flattery addressed to Mr. Pelham, whom he mimicked in candour, as he often resembled Lord Granville in ranting. Sir John Barnard meant honestly, and preserved his disinterestedness: he would probably have sunk in his character of a great genius, if he had come into business with Sandys and others--as they did. Nugent[52] * * * * had lost the reputation of a great poet, by writing works of his own, after he had acquired fame by an ode[53] that was the joint production[54] of several others. One would have thought his speeches had as different an origin; sometimes nothing finer, generally nothing more crowded with absurdities. At this time all was faction, and splitting into little factions. The Pelhams were ill with one another, and ill with the Bedfords. The latter Duke would have set up Fox against Mr. Pelham; and the former Duke[55] was countenancing Pitt against all. Mr. Pelham supported Pitt and his clan against the Duke of Cumberland, who was united with the Bedfords. The Prince’s Court, composed of the refuse of every party, was divided into twenty small ones. Lord Egmont at the head of one, Nugent of another, consisting of himself and two more, Lady Middlesex and Doddington of a third, the chief ornament of which was the Earl of Bute, a Scotchman, who, having no estate, had passed his youth in studying mathematics and mechanics in his own little island, then simples in the hedges about Twickenham, and at five and thirty had fallen in love with his own figure, which he produced at masquerades in becoming dresses, and in plays which he acted in private companies with a set of his own relations. He became a personal favourite of the Prince, and was so lucky just now as to give up a pension to be one of the Lords of his Bedchamber. The Jacobites had quarrelled at Oxford on the choice of a member, and would not join with the Prince, who courted them. Lord Granville, Lord Chesterfield, and Lord Winchelsea, were each separately courted by the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Oxford by Mr. Pelham, who at the same time was making new connexions, trying to preserve the old ones, adopting his brother’s jealousies, and yet threatening to resign on account of them. He had once