fellow got at a proof-sheet; and by the treachery of one of Wilkes’s printers, who thought himself ill-used, and by the encouragement of his patron, who consulted Lord Bute and Lord Sandwich, and was egged on by them to proceed, Kidgell and Webbe purchased the whole poem: and now did Sandwich, who had hugged this mischief for months in his breast, lay open the precious poem before his brother Lords in strains of more hypocrisy[380] than would have been tolerable even in a professed Methodist. Parts of it were read, most coarsely and disgustingly blasphemous. Lord Lyttelton groaned in spirit, and begged they might hear no more. Bishop Warburton, who had not the luck, like Lord Lyttelton, to have his conversion believed by any one, foamed with the violence of a Saint Dominic; vaunted that he had combated infidelity, and laid it under his feet; and said, the blackest fiends in hell would not keep company with Wilkes, and then begged Satan’s pardon for comparing them together. Lord Temple had got no intelligence of this bomb, and knew little what to say; but concluding, justly, that the piece had been found among Wilkes’s papers, condemned the means by which it was obtained. It was instantly voted blasphemous, and a breach of privilege against the person of the Bishop of Gloucester. Lord Sandwich then moved that Wilkes should be voted the author; but even Lord Mansfield condemned so hasty and arbitrary a course, and said it was previously necessary to hear the accused person in his own defence: on which the proceeding was adjourned to the next day but one. I was in a division in the lobby of the House of Commons, when I heard what was passing in the other House, and immediately informed Mr. Pitt. He replied with indignation, “Why do not they search the Bishop of Gloucester’s study for heresy?”