Peter Pindar spared few. Pitt he hated, because he had not bribed him; Sir Joseph Banks, Boswell fair game—Hannah More, Bishop Porteus, who had ventured in a sermon to speak highly of Hannah; James Bruce, and many another.
To Lady Mount Edgcumbe he wrote a consolatory stanza on the death of her favourite pig.
O dry that tear, so round and big;
Nor waste in sighs your precious wind!
Death only takes a single Pig—
Your lord and son are still behind.
In 1793, Wolcot sold the copyright of his public works to J. Walker for an annuity of £200, and it was stipulated that any future work should be offered to the same publisher.
On this occasion he craftily overreached the publisher. When Walker made the proposition to the doctor by letter it was with an offer of an annuity of two hundred pounds. Wolcot replied by appointing the publisher to call on him, that day week. He received him in deshabille, even in his nightcap; and, from having purposely abstained from shaving for four days, together with the naturally cadaverous complexion, his appearance was unhealthy; added to which, he assumed a hollow sepulchral cough. Walker had determined not to make any advance on the sum he had named, but when the doctor was again taken with a fit of coughing he was induced to make it two hundred and fifty pounds. This Wolcot peremptorily refused, and was seized with an attack of coughing that nearly suffocated him. The publisher, thinking it impossible that he could last long, agreed to make the annuity three hundred. But some time after, Pitt having passed a Bill through both Houses to restrain such libellous writings as those of Peter Pindar, the
