"Thus, when the Dilettanti mention 'the cause of virtue' as a high object which they will never abandon, they express their belief that the union into which they had entered had a more important purpose than any personal satisfaction could give it, and that they did engage themselves thereby in some degree to promote the advantage of their country and of mankind.
"Of all the merry meetings these gay gentlemen had together, small records remain. We, looking back out of a graver time, can only judge from the uninterrupted course of their festive gatherings, from the names of the statesmen, the wits, the scholars, the artists, the amateurs, that fill the catalogue, from the strange mixture of dignities and accessions to wealth for which, by the rules of the Society, fines were paid,--and above all, by the pictures which they possess,--how much of the pleasantry and the hearty enjoyment must have been mixed up with the more solid pursuits of the Members. Cast your eye over the list of those who met together at the table of the Dilettanti any time between 1770 and 1790."[20] Here occur the names of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Earl Fitzwilliam, Charles James Fox, Hon. Stephen Fox (Lord Holland), Hon. Mr. Fitzpatrick, Charles Howard (Duke of Norfolk), Lord Robert Spencer, George Selwyn, Colonel Fitzgerald, Hon. H. Conway, Joseph Banks, Duke of Dorset, Sir William Hamilton, David Garrick, George Colman, Joseph Windham, R. Payne Knight, Sir George Beaumont, Towneley, and others of less posthumous fame, but probably of not less agreeable companionship.
The funds must have largely benefited by the payment of fines, some of which were very strange. Those paid "on increase of income, by inheritance, legacy, marriage, or preferment," are very odd; as, five guineas by Lord Grosvenor, on his marriage with Miss Leveson Gower; eleven guineas by the Duke of Bedford, on being appointed First Lord of the Admiralty; ten guineas compounded for by Bubb Dodington, as Treasurer of the Navy; two guineas by the Duke of Kingston for a Colonelcy of Horse (then valued at 400_l._ per annum); twenty-one pounds by Lord Sandwich on going out as Ambassador to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle; and twopence three-farthings by the same nobleman, on becoming Recorder of Huntingdon; thirteen shillings and fourpence by the Duke of Bedford, on getting the Garter; and sixteen shillings and eightpence (Scotch) by the Duke of Buccleuch, on getting the Thistle; twenty-one pounds by the Earl of Holdernesse, as Secretary of State; and nine pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence, by Charles James Fox, as a Lord of the Admiralty.