[238] George third Earl, Augustus, and William, sons of William Anne second Earl of Albemarle. Frederick, the fourth son, was on this occasion promoted to the Bishoprick of Exeter. Of Augustus (afterwards Lord Keppel) see more in the preceding reign, under the History of Admiral Byng.--Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 174. [A very interesting account of his life was lately published by his kinsman, the Honourable and Reverend Thomas Augustus Keppel.--E.]
[239] Madame Geoffrin was proprietor of a great manufacture of glass; yet by her wit, parts, riches, and cabals, and by patronizing authors, and the modern philosophers and painters, statuaries and architects, and by keeping an open house for foreigners of all nations, she was much considered, and had great respect paid to her by persons of the first rank in France. [Marmontel draws a spirited portrait of her in his Memoirs.--E.]
[240] This is a very one-sided view of the character of the Duc de Nivernois. He had no pretensions to the character of a soldier, having been obliged to quit the army from ill-health at an early age. As a diplomatist, he certainly failed at Berlin--as all other diplomatists did, who brought proposals that did not suit the views of the King of Prussia. In England he gave great satisfaction to all parties. His popularity is noticed by Lord Chesterfield. He was a generous, though not perhaps a very discriminating, patron of letters, and a respectable writer for one who made literature only an amusement. His private life was exemplary; and he showed no common strength of mind in the firmness with which he bore the loss of his rank and property, and, above all, his heavy domestic misfortunes. His second wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, died a few days after marriage. Of his two sons-in-law, the Count de Gisors, his destined heir, an élève of Marmontel, fell at the battle of Crevelt: the remaining one, the Duc de Brissac, was torn to pieces by the mob at Paris, at the beginning of the Revolution. The Duke of Nivernois died in 1798, at a very advanced age.--E.
[241] Besides his crime of being the favourite of the Duke of Cumberland, Fox had deeply offended the Princess by advising Mr. Pelham, the very day after the death of her husband, to take her son, the present King, from her, that she might not get an ascendant over him. I one day mentioned this fact to Lord Mansfield: he said, “It was very true, and he believed the measure was not followed, _only_ because Mr. Fox had advised it”--so jealous was Mr. Pelham of Fox!