[103] The Comte de Guines had been for some years Ambassador at Berlin--a post he procured through the intervention of Madame Montesson, preparatory to her marriage to the Duc d’Orleans. He belonged to the school of Choiseul, Richelieu, Soubize, and Lauzun. His embassy to London involved him in a very unpleasant suit with his secretary, La Forte, who, having lost large sums in stock-jobbing speculations during the excitement caused by the expected war with Spain on account of the Falkland Islands, declared himself bankrupt, and endeavoured to prove that he had been the agent of M. de Guines in these speculations. The action was eventually decided in the Ambassador’s favour, but only after long litigation, in the course of which it was difficult to avert strong suspicions of the truth of the charge.--(Flassan’s Diplomatie Française, vol. v. p. 54.)--M. de Guines emigrated during the Revolution, and died in 1806, aged seventy-one.--(See more of him in Thiebault’s Frederic the Second, and the Mémoires de Madame de Genlis, vol. i. p. 252, seqq. and vol. ii. p. 40.)--E. [104] More of this trial may be seen in Woodfall’s Junius, note, vol. ii. p. 153, and the Annual Register for 1770, p. 100–108, &c. A most disgraceful affair it was to all parties concerned, except the King.--E. [105] This letter being too long for a note is inserted in the Appendix.--(See the reference to it in the Table of Contents.)--E. [106] The spirit and talent which he showed in these altercations with the Livery, contributed to raise him to the Bench. He died Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in 1799, in his sixty-fifth year. His decisions are still cited with respect. The trial of Horne Tooke is the only instance where he seems, by common consent, to have made a poor figure.--E. [107] On the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland. [108] No lines were ever more apposite than the following of Dr. Young to Lord Granby:-- “Of boasting more than of a bomb afraid, A soldier should be modest as a maid.” [109] “---- Granby stands without a flaw; At least, each fault he did possess Rose _from some virtue in excess_. Pierc’d by the piteous tale of grief, When wretches sought of him relief, His eyes large drops of pearl distilling, He’d give--till left without a shilling! What most his manly heart-strings tore, Was, when he felt, and found no more.” _Poem by Major Henry Waller, in the Gentleman’s Magazine for September, 1784._ [110] John Calcraft.