A melancholy event relaxed a little the assiduity of the Opposition. The Marquis of Tavistock,[338] only son of the Duke of Bedford, was thrown from his horse as he was hunting, and received a kick that fractured his skull. He languished about a fortnight, and died at the age of twenty-seven. If there was a perfectly amiable and unblemished character in an age so full of censure, and so much deserving it, the universal esteem in which the virtues of that young Lord were held, seemed to allow that he was the person. His gentleness, generosity, and strict integrity made all the world love or admire him. Full of spirit and martial ardour, which he suppressed in deference to a father to whom his life was so important, he had the genuine bashfulness of youth, and the humility of the lowest fortune. His large fortune he shared with his cotemporary friends, assisting them in purchasing commissions. Yet he had taste for those arts whose excellence and splendour became the House of so great an heir, and indulged himself in them when they did not interfere with his more favourite liberality. His parts were neither shining nor contemptible; and his virtue assisted his understanding in preserving both from being biassed or seduced. To observers, it was clear that he much disapproved the want of principle in the relations and dependants[339] of his parents; yet so respectful was his duty to his father, and so attentive his tenderness to his mother, and so artfully had she impressed it, that Lord Tavistock’s repugnance to their connections and politics was only observable by his shunning Parliament, and by withdrawing himself from their society to hunting and country sports. He was not less exemplary as a husband than as a son, and his widow, who doated on so excellent a young man, survived him but two years.[340] The indecent indifference with which such a catastrophe was felt by the faction of the family, spoke but too plainly that Lord Tavistock had lived a reproach and terror to them. The Duke, his father, for a few days almost lost his senses--and recovered them too soon. The Duchess was less blameable, and retained the impression longer; but while all mankind who ever heard the name of Lord Tavistock were profuse in lamenting such a national calamity, it gave universal scandal when, in a little fortnight after his death, they beheld his father, the Duke, carried by his creatures to the India House to vote on a factious question. This unexampled insensibility was bitterly pressed home on the Duke two years afterwards in a public libel. Yet surely, it was savage wantonness to taunt a parent with such a misfortune; and of flint must the heart have been that could think such a domestic stroke a proper subject for insult, however inadequate to the world the anguish appeared: how steeled the nature that could wish to recall the feelings of a father on such a misfortune. In Borgia’s age they stabbed with daggers; in ours with the pen![341]