Note 37 — Chapter I

He was vain, extravagant, and trifling: simple out of the House, and too ready at assertions in it. His eloquence, which was astonishing, was the more extraordinary, as it seemed to come upon him by inspiration, for he could scarce talk common sense in private on political subjects, on which in public he would be the most animated speaker. Sir Robert Walpole has often, when he did not care to enter early into the debate himself, given Yonge his notes, as the latter has come late into the House, from which he could speak admirably and fluently, though he had missed all the preceding discussion. He had been kept down for some time by the prevailing interest of General Churchill with Sir Robert Walpole, on the following occasion. Yonge, in a poetic epistle (to which he had great proneness, though scanty talents) addressed to Hedges, who was supposed to be well with Mrs. Oldfield, said, speaking of that actress in the character of Cleopatra,

[The dead and living Cleopatra.]—This coming to the fair one’s knowledge, she never ceased, till she had made such a rupture between her fond General and Yonge, as had like to have ended in the total ruin of the latter.