Note 50 — No. XI.
Reading edition
Line 19.—[General Fitzpatrick was one of Fox’s most attached friends and political supporters. Boswell, speaking of a dinner at Beauclerk’s, 24th April, 1779, says, on a celebrated wit being mentioned (believed to be Fitzpatrick), “Johnson replied, ‘I have been several times in company with him, but never perceived any strong power of wit. He produces a general effect by various means; he has a cheerful countenance and a gay voice. Besides his trade is wit. It would be as wild in him to come into company without merriment, as for a highwayman to take the road without his pistols.’” Walpole (in his Journal of the Reign of George III., i. 167, and ii. 560) describes him as “an agreeable young man of parts,” and mentions his “genteel irony and badinage”. He was Lord Shelburne’s brother-in-law, at whose house Johnson might have met him, as well as in Fox’s company. Rogers (Table Talk, p. 104) said that Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare. He possessed no mean poetic talents, particularly for compositions of wit, fancy, and satire. To the Rolliad he contributed “Extract from the Dedication”; Nos. v., ix. and xii., in Part I.; and No. v. in Part II. In the Political Eclogues, he wrote “The Liars”; and “Pindaric Ode” (No. xv.)—also, “Incantation for raising a Phantom, imitated from Macbeth,” in the Political Miscellanies.
GENERAL RICHARD FITZPATRICK’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF.
“My own Epitaph.
“Whose turn is next? This monitory Stone
Replies, vain Passenger, perhaps thy own.
If, idly curious, thou wilt seek to know
Whose relics mingle with the dust below,
Enough to tell thee, that his destin’d span
On Earth he dwelt,—and, like thyself, a Man.
Nor distant far th’ inevitable day
When thou, poor mortal, shalt like him be clay.
Through life he walk’d unemulous of fame,
Nor wish’d beyond it to preserve a name.
Content, if Friendship, o’er his humble bier,
Drop but the heartfelt tribute of a tear;
Though countless ages should unconscious glide,
Nor learn that ever he had liv’d, or died.
“R. F.”
Such is the epitaph placed on a stone sarcophagus in the usual form, in the churchyard at Sunninghill, close to the house where Gen. Fitzpatrick’s friend, G. Ellis, died.—Nichols, Lit. Illustr., vol. vii., pp. 633–4.—Ed.]