Note 361:1 — Chapter XV

He says, in a subsequent letter,—"What are become of all the controversies since the days of Scaliger and Scioppius, of Billingsgate memory? Why, they sleep in oblivion, till some Bayle drags them out of their dust, and takes mighty pains to ascertain the date of each author's death, which is of no more consequence to the world than the day of his birth. Many a country squire quarrels with his neighbour about game and manors, yet they never print their wrangles, though as much abuse passes between them, as if they could quote all the Philippics of the learned." We have an instance of what he considered a really important dispute, when he was baffled in his attempt to get his nephew, Lord Orford, married to Miss Nicol, "the vast fortune." "Thus," he says, "had I placed him in a greater situation than even his grandfather hoped to bequeath to him,—had retrieved all the oversights of my family,—had saved Houghton, and all our glory." "I have been forced," he says, writing to Horace Mann, "to write a narrative of the whole transaction; and was with difficulty kept from publishing it."—Letters , ii. 401.