She no doubt spoke sincerely, according to the light wherein, in the obliquity of her intellectual eyesight she beheld him. Just as that prince of republican and unbelieving bigots, Thomas Holles said of the same person, “I am sorry for the irregularities of Wilkes; they are however only as spots in the sun!” “It is the weakness of the many,” says a once noted Journalist “that when they have taken a fancy to a man, or to the name of a man they take a fancy even to his failings.” But there must have been no ordinary charm in the manners of John Wilkes, who in one interview overcame Johnson's well-founded and vehement dislike. The good nature of his countenance, and its vivacity and cleverness made its physical ugliness be overlooked; and probably his cast of the eye, which was a squint of the first water, seemed only a peculiarity which gave effect to the sallies of his wit. Hogarth's portrait of him he treated with characteristic good humour, and allowed it “to be an excellent compound caricature, or a caricature of what Nature had already caricatured. I know but one short apology said he, to be made for this gentleman, or to speak more properly, for the _person_ of Mr. Wilkes; it is, that he did not make himself; and that he never was solicitous about the _case_ (as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never heard that he ever hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus admiring the image in it; nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain, while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cottage to which he is tenant for life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order. While the share of health and animal spirits which heaven has given out, should hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation; or will ever be brought to our _Ingenium Galbæ malè habitat:—Monsieur est mal logé._” This was part of a note for his intended edition of Churchill.