1835 THE COMMONERS 231 



attacked, and better than whom he probably was not. 

 That he possessed a certain sardonic humour may be 

 gathered from his ' Political Dictionary,' wherein he 

 defines ' half seas over ' as ' the most respectable state 

 of sobriety among princes and ministers,' and 

 * Nethermost Hell ' as * the country-seats of Lough- 

 borough, Dundas, Pitt, and the whole crew of rascals 

 round the throne,' and tells us that ' Grace, when in 

 conversation applied to a Duke, means nothing : thus 

 " His Grace the Duke of Leeds " has absolutely no 

 signification,' or that * honour in high-life means 

 the debauching your neighbour's wife or daughter, 

 killing your man, and being a member of the Jockey 

 Club and Brookes's gaming-house.' That his 'colours ' 

 in racing should have been ' yellow shot with red ' was 

 appropriate enough in the case of a gentleman gifted 

 with so lurid a humour ; but the history of the age 

 assures us that his remarks may be taken without any 

 very large admixture of salt. 



Mr. Jennings (of whom ' Louse ' Pigott naturally 

 speaks with sympathetic respect) was Henry Con- 

 stantine Jennings, of Shiplake, Oxon, a gentleman of 

 good estate and illustrious descent, having ' Eoyal 

 blood in his veins ' (from George, Duke of Clarence, 

 par les femmes, through the beheaded Countess of 

 Salisbury, it is said). He was born in 1731, and died 

 (' within the Kules of the King's Bench ') in 1819, so 

 that his life, whatever may be said of his fortune, 

 cannot have been very much abridged by his career 



