198 'OLD q' 



can procure. "What he saw in tomes to make him 

 undertake forming a library, can best be proved by a 

 remark he made to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, which I 

 am about to relate. Or, perhaps, Pope's allusion, 



' In books, not authors, curious is my lord,' 



may explain his fancy for collecting volumes together. 

 That he placed no special value on their contents is 

 well known. 



Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, traveller and historian, 

 states in his Memoirs that about this time he lived 

 in almost daily intercourse with the Duke of Queens- 

 berry, certainly during the last seven years of his 

 lengthy existence ; and that, although his frame had 

 become all but a wreck, his mind was fresh and 

 vigorous — another proof of the sword (the mind) 

 wearing out its scabbard (the body). Wraxall re- 

 cords that no man ever retained sounder judgment, 

 or displayed more animation, for his years, than his 

 grace ; that his manners were noble and polished, and 

 his conversation was gay and entertaining, frequently 

 original, though, adds the perspicuous writer, 

 ' rarely instructive, frequently libertine.' But, for all 

 that, sufficient might be gained from his conversation 

 to show a strong, sagacious, masculine intellect, com- 

 bined with a thorough knowledge of the world and 



