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have long studied his character. I therefore keep it in a state of suspense, by means of a couple of gilt nails, and ready to be veiled again, as occasion may serve.

"On the right, is John Dunning, (Lord Ashburton,) in whom I lost a friend. A lawyer, and yet a friend to liberty, who had the great constitutional lawyer, Selden, in his eye, and liberty in his heart.

"A little below stands Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose public conduct has been bold, masculine, and determined. Will he realise the lines he has written?

"Over a map of the city of Westminster, with a bird's eye view of the Thames and Greenwich Hospital, and surrounded by admirals, in the back ground, is placed J. H. Tooke, who has lately addressed the people in the style of Tiberius Gracchus; and who, although no naval man, has promised to stop the leak that lets out the public money.

"In a dreary corner, adumbrated by the works of Burke, and Reeves, and immediately beneath a wooden cut of Julian the apostate, is the portrait of William Pitt. All the artists have found it difficult to hit off his countenance; perhaps because so changeable; the candour and ingenuousness of his youth, his own talents, and a partiality, perhaps unjust, and assuredly ill-placed in behalf of his honoured father, first induced me to become a purchaser of this venal orator, who, in the language of Syphax, would "teach the hoary Numidian guile." Tête a tête with him, appears that brazen senator Henry Dundas, the most extraordinary man of his time, who goes to Scotland on a shooting expedition for six weeks, and actually returns with sixteen peers and fortyfive commoners, in the fob of his black velvet breeches !

"Allow me to do justice to this man; he is both merry and wise, for he has assisted at the spending of from 200 to 220 millions of money; and yet his own fortune, as if by a miracle, has nimbly increased. This is somewhat like a well, I once saw in his native country, which always flowed freely at ebb tide!

"Let me do justice, however, to the right honourable gen

tleman: he had many private virtues, which deserve to be recognized even by the bitterest of his political opponents.

"In this same corner, I had once attempted to cram Charles Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, and the Earl of Liverpool: but I found his Lordship very shy, and unaccommodating, so that he would not fit the interstice. Lord Loughborough, however, on being applied, fitted instantly, which some may attribute to the thinness of his body, and the meagerness of his visage, which seem determined to realise the personification of one of our English satirists.

66

A pert prim prater, &c.

My principles being always congenial to those that seated the Pope of Rome on the throne, I preserve a series of their portraits. I removed one great personage at the beginning of the American war, and another, since his conduct to the Princess of Wales, into the dark corner.

"Towards the right, and immediately over a bust of Marcus Junius Brutus, with the Ides of March on the pedestal, is placed a print of Earl Stanhope. His eye turns rather towards the unaccommodating Cassius, but his features are bold and manly.

"Honest James Martin," with a fine Roman cast countenance, and exactly as when I dined with him at Brand Holles, stands over the fire place. I would to God that we had but 200 such as the member for Tewkesbury in the Augean stables.

"Mr. Grey has an honourable part assigned to him, which he occupies in the room of Sir C., his father, whom I unhung at the very time he was refreshing himself under his own laurels at Martinico. I would have placed Captain Cochrane, of the navy, in his stead, but that I could not find an engraving of him.

"Lord Effingham, in the last war, and this gallant and able officer in the present, exhibit rare but honourable instances. of military and naval integrity. — O si sic omnes !”

Mr. Stephens wrote a great deal for the periodical press. The pages of the Analytical Review abound in learned and ingenious articles from his pen. He was also a very frequent contributor to the Monthly Magazine. Besides papers on the belles lettres, he was in the habit of furnishing biographical notices for that journal. "In facility of biographical writing, (says the Editor,) and in extent of information on the lives and actions of the contemporary generation, he was equalled by no writer of his age. His industry and integrity are proved by naming the works which proceeded from his pen, and though every variety of character passed in review before him, he never wrote an ill-natured paragraph, or aided the propagation of calumny."

Mr. Stephens's constitution was much impaired by intense study, added to the immoderate use of coldiam and other quack medicines, on the efficacy of which he placed great reliance. He suffered severely from the gout for the last two years of his life. He died somewhat suddenly, at his residence of Park House, Chelsea, February 24th, 1821.

His figure was tall and commanding; his voice powerful, his general deportment graceful, and his manners particularly gentlemanlike and conciliating.

In the course of his life Mr. Stephens had three times visited the Continent, and travelled over France, Holland, and Flanders.

The following is a List of his acknowledged Productions.

1. Jamaica; a poem.

2. The Templar.

3. A History of the Wars which arose out of the French Revolution; 2 vols. 4to. 1803.

4. Memoirs of John Horne Tooke; Svo. 1813.

5. The nine first volumes of the Public Characters.

6. Letters from a Nobleman to his Son.

7. A Translation of the Life of Dr. Franklin.

8. The Annual Biography; vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, with several anonymous pamphlets on various subjects.

In the notice of this gentleman, given in the Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors, the Editor speaks of him with unjustifiable impertinence as a "literary adventurer," and of his works with the same flippant and gratuitous disrespect. It would be difficult to assign a reason for an attack altogether so unprovoked and ungenerous, did it not immediately occur to us, that the publisher of the imitation of the old Monthly Magazine, (and the person with whom the Dictionary of Living Authors originated,) could be supposed to have no very friendly feelings towards a frequent and important contributor to the work he desired to supersede; so far from being, as he is there represented, a "literary adventurer," Mr. Stephens was possessed of an ample fortune, and devoted himself to literary pursuits more as an amusement than as a source of profit.

423

No. XIV.

JOHN HATSELL, Esq.

CHIEF CLERK OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Of this gentleman but little information has been recorded beyond the notices we have been enabled to glean from his own publications.

Mr. Hatsell appears to have been bred at Cambridge. Certain it is, that on the 28th of May, 1764, when he was clerk-assistant, he obtained leave of absence from the House, for a few days, in order to attend the election of a high steward for that University, during the great contest between the Earls of Hardwicke and Sandwich.

On the 10th of May, 1760, in consequence of the recommendation of Dr. Akenside, he was appointed clerk-assistant to the House of Commons, by the late Mr. Dyson, to whom he was unknown. On his nomination, he proceeded towards the table, in the customary manner, when the Right Honourable Arthur Onslow, then Speaker, addressed him aloud in the following terms: "The clerk has appointed you to be his clerk-assistant; but now you are appointed, you are the clerk of the House; you are my clerk;" then, by his direction, he took his seat at the table. He remained for many years in this, which is a station of great confidence and labour, and when Mr. Dyson retired, he was appointed, in conjunction with Mr. Tyrwhitt, as the successor of the former. The office of "Clerk of the Commons House of Parliament," or "Under Clerk of the Parliaments, to attend the House of Commons," is granted by the king for life by letters patent, with a salary of 207. a year; but it is a place of great emolument. In 1776, he published the first volume of an important work,

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