1773 THE DUKES 27 



water Treatises.' He is said to have been ' highly 

 respected,' as he may well have been, if only for the 

 fact, if it be a fact, that he paid 110,000L a year 

 income-tax. Yet he is said to have been reduced to 

 his last penny during the construction of his great 

 work. In the obituary notice (' Gent. Mag.') of this 

 Duke there is so curious a statement as to his reason 

 for remaining a bachelor all his life that it deserves 

 mention here, if only for the purpose of vindicating 

 his memory. The statement is that the Duke, having 

 gone to stay with a friend, in whose house was also 

 staying the lady engaged to be married to that friend, 

 found the lady so very ready to ' fall ' that he became 

 suspicious of the whole sex, and made up his mind 

 that celibacy was the better part of discretion. Of 

 the Duke's behaviour towards his friend (according to 

 the story) there is fortunately the less reason to say 

 anything, inasmuch as there is a weak point in the 

 statement ; for the Duke, it appears, proposed to and 

 was refused by the Dowager-Duchess of Hamilton (the 

 ' beautiful Gunning '), and whether that refusal came 

 before or after the incident mentioned in the obituary, 

 such an experience would be as likely as any other to 

 account for his lifelong celibacy. Compare the case of 

 another member of the Jockey Club, the Earl of 

 March and Euglen (afterwards Duke of Queensberry, 

 better or worse known as ' Old Q.'), who was refused 

 not so much by Miss Pelham as by Miss Pelham's 

 family, for reasons which nobody could or would give, 



