[49] John Home, author of the tragedies of Douglas, Agis, and Siege of Aquileia; of which none save Douglas (says Sir Walter Scott) were exhibited with remarkable applause, and one or two with marked disapprobation. Mr. Home, though not a first-rate dramatist, was a pleasing writer, well-informed, and very agreeable in society. George the Third became much attached to him, and provided for him on coming to the throne. He died in 1808, aged 84. His memoirs have been elegantly written by Mackenzie, and form the subject of one of Walter Scott’s beautiful criticisms in the Quarterly Review for June 1827.--E. [50] Thomas Worseley, Surveyor General of the Board of Works. [51] George Cooke, prothonotary of the Common Pleas, and member for Middlesex. Walpole calls him elsewhere a “pompous Jacobite.” He conducted the celebrated Westminster Petition against Lord Trentham in 1751; afterwards attaching himself to Mr. Pitt, he was appointed joint Paymaster-General in 1766, and died in 1768.--E. [52] Thomas Coventry, member for Bridport. A barrister, and director of the South Sea Company. He was son of Thomas Coventry, who was brother of William fifth Earl of Coventry.--E. [53] Alderman William Beckford, of Jamaica, member for the City of London. [54] Henry Bilson Legge, a younger son of the first Earl of Dartmouth, was at this time Chancellor of the Exchequer. It should be remembered that Mr. Legge had abandoned Lord Winchelsea, and attached himself to Mr. Pelham in the Cabinet schism of 1744. He shared, with many respectable statesmen of that day, the charge of having served several masters, the partial changes so frequently made in the Government having rendered coalitions almost inevitable, especially at a time when, owing to the decline of Jacobitism, the lines of demarcation between the different political parties had become very indistinct. None, however, with whom he acted, could deny his eminent qualifications as a man of business, or as a debater in the House of Commons on all questions of trade and finance. His political integrity is less commendable. Dodington says, that his thoughts were “_tout pour la trippe_”--all for quarter-day (Diary, 407); and has, in common with Walpole, reproached him with perfidy, in disclosing to the Duke of Newcastle the negotiations of Leicester House with the Court in 1757. The more detailed account of the transaction, since published in the posthumous memoirs of Mr. Glover, makes it far more probable that the secret was insidiously drawn from him by the Duke, whose skill in imposing on men of superior ability to his own, is one of the most remarkable traits of his character; and that Mr. Legge was very open to such arts, may reasonably be inferred, from the well-known fact of his having incurred the serious displeasure of George the Second by an indiscreet slip in conversation, when minister at Berlin. He had the laxity of principle that belonged to the school of Walpole, but there