42 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. No 81., July 18. '67. 



soon after his residence, have shown so distin- 

 guished a man the neighbourly respect of a visit, 

 and would, therefore, have been known to him 

 after 1740 or 1741. The last mention of her that 

 I have stumbled on is in 1746, in one of Horace 

 Walpole's letters. Walpole, then on a visit at 

 Mistley, forwarded to Conway a copy of his verses 

 called " The Beauties." Rigby, he says, has " a 

 set of beauties of his own, who he swears are 

 handsomer," and proposed to change the names ; 

 but allows them to remain in initials, because F. 

 M., meant for Miss Fanny Macartney, may pass 

 for his beauty, Fanny Murray. I think, therefore, 

 all circumstances considered, that I cannot be far 

 wrong if I assume that this lady had reached the 

 culminating point as a celebrity in 1745-1746. 

 Now if the poem was written in, or even about 

 1746, it was written when Wilkes was a boy of 

 nineteen, studying with a tutor at Leyden, and 

 winning golden opinions from all sorts of men, 

 and even a Dedication from the learned and vir- 

 tuous Andrew Baxter. Wilkes did not even re- 

 turn to England until 1749 ; and then with such 

 a character, that it won the heart of Mrs. Mead, 

 a rigid and formal Dissenter, as well as of her 

 daughter, a lady of the mature age of thirty-two. 

 Soon after his return, the unhappy marriage was 

 brought about ; and youth and mature age, — 

 twenty-one and thirty-two, — were united. After 

 the marriage, Wilkes and his wife resided with 

 her mother, in summer at Aylesbury, and in 

 winter at Red Lion Court, Smithfield, where their 

 daughter was born in Aug., 1750. It was not till 

 1751 that Wilkes took the house in Great George 

 Street, and set up for a man of fashion, and be- 

 came the associate of Lord Sandwich, Sir F. 

 Dashwood, and Mr. Potter, to the horror of his 

 wife, who returned to her mother in Red Lion 

 Court. Such men, says her apologist, " could not 

 fail to shock any lady of sensibility and delicacy ;" 

 and of these Potter " was the worst, and indeed 

 the ruin of Mr. Wilkes, who was not a bad man 

 early or naturally. But Potter poisoned his 

 morals." 



Here, then, we have the youth pursuing his 

 studies on the Continent up to 1749, and the 

 young man married, and living soberly with his 

 mother-in-law, up to 1751. In 1751, when be- 

 tween twenty-three and twenty-four, the parvenu 

 had his head turned by king's ministers and high 

 officials : and at the general election in 1754, 

 Potter persuaded him — not much persuasion re- 

 quired — to contest Berwick, which he did unsuc- 

 cessfully at a cost of 4000^. In June, 1757, when 

 Pitt, then in the height of his popularity, was in- 

 vited and agreed to offer himself for Bath, it was 

 arranged that Potter, just appointed one of the 

 vice-treasurers of Ireland, should succeed him 

 at Okehampton, and Wilkes succeed Potter at 

 Aylesbury. Potter arranged these political move- 



ments, and Wilkes paid for all, at a further cost of 

 7000Z. 



Churchill, from whom Wilkes had no secret, 

 seems to confirm the conjecture that Potter was 

 the writer. His "Dedication" to great Gloster 

 arises out of the bishop's denunciations in the 

 House of Lords : — 



" When (to maintain God's honour, and his own), 

 He called Blasphemers forth — methinks I now 

 See stern rebuke enthroned on his brow, 

 And arm'd with tenfold terrors — from his tongue, 

 Where fiery zeal and Christian fury hung, 

 Methinks I hear the deep -toned thunders roll. 

 And chill with horror every sinner's soul, 

 In vain they strive to Qy — flight cannot save. 

 And Potter trembles even in his grave.'" 



What is the meaning of this reference to Potter? 

 Why should Potter tremble in his grave, at the 

 bishop's denunciation, if Potter were not the 

 writer ? 



Another contemporary, well informed as to all 

 the undercurrents of literature, Capt. Thomson, in 

 his Life of Paul Whitehead — Whitehead, be it 

 remembered, was secretary to the Medmenham 

 Club — one of the select dozen for whose use it was 

 believed the Essay was printed — distinctly states 

 that the Essay was not Wilkes's "composition." 

 I could produce endless evidence of a like cha- 

 racter from contemporary publications : some even 

 accuse Wilkes of affecting to be the writer, which 

 it is well known he was not: and be it remem- 

 bered, that whatever moral difference there might 

 be, there was no legal difference, or difference in 

 the legal consequences, between author and pub- 

 lisher, and, therefore, the several writers were all 

 contending .for, or asserting an abstract fact. 

 Thus one of the satirical ephemera of the time 

 says Wilkes was sacrificed by Antinomious [Sand- 

 wich], "for having m his possession" the '■'• wo7-ks 

 of another person" which Antinomious himself 

 had often read. 



Again, in a paper subsequently republished by 

 Ahnon in Collection of " Letters, Sfc." together 

 with '■'Pieces of Wit" ^-c, hy Mr. Wilkes and 

 others, — a work probably prepared under the di- 

 rection of Wilkes, and which undoubtedly con- 

 tained many papers written by Wilkes, — there is 

 reference to a sermon (preached by Kidgell, the 

 informer,) against blasphemy, and, as said, full of 

 abuse against (Wilkes) " an oppressed man, con- 

 demning him unheard." The writer goes on to 

 say : — 



" But what a horrid aggravation must it be to the 

 crimes of such a time-serving preacher, if he knew that 

 the person he was for reward abusing, was absolutely in- 

 nocent of the blasphemy; that the work referred to was 

 wrote by a son of the Church." 



So in A Letter to J. Kidgell (Williams, 1763), 

 the writer says : — 



" As to the Author, who one should understand is the 

 execrable offender you mean, if the Avorld is rightly iu- 



