Note 313 — Chapter XVIII

Nugent was immediately after created an Irish Peer, by the title of Viscount Clare. [His coarse, clever sayings are frequently recorded in Walpole’s Correspondence. He was the friend and patron of Goldsmith, who dedicated to him the amusing jeu d’esprit the “Haunch of Venison,” and he aspired to be a poet himself, with indifferent success. The Ode to Pulteney, however, contains some spirited lines, and it was therefore pronounced by Gray not to be his. His daughter married in 1775 the first Marquis of Buckingham, to whose interest with Mr. Pitt he owed his elevation to an earldom in 1776. He died in 1788, having survived his son, Colonel Nugent. The present Lord Nugent is his grandson, and has succeeded to his Irish Barony.—E.]