Again, his fondness for foreign society and his Irish extraction made it possible for his political enemies to insinuate, with considerable effect in a time of national prejudices, that he was hardly an Englishman either by birth or in character. "Where," said one of the lampoon writers of the day addressing him:
"Where shall I then begin, where end?
But as I wish to be your friend,
Your lineage first I'll trace.
Pray then which would you choose to be,
Since double is your family tree—
Of Teague or Saxon race?
"Shall I to Maurice quite go back,
Who Scotchman-like erst bore a pack,
A merchant in those days;
Or as I mean not here to fret ye,
Shall I commence with surgeon Petty,
Well versed in land surveys?"[1]
The same notion more delicately expressed may be read in the following letter from Lady Rockingham: "Lady Rockingham presents her compliments to Lord Shelburne. She is totally at a loss what to say for so elegant a requital, beyond all measure and bounds, for the miserable box of Vinigritto snuff which she sent him yesterday (in haste) to take to the House of Lords, imagining, from his message to Lord Rockingham, that he wanted some of that snuff to take with him there, which made her take the liberty of sending some ready-mixed in the first box she could find, and such a one as the sight of this he has done her the honour to send in return would make her ashamed to recollect, but that she only meant it just to convey the snuff to his own snuff-box. It is a serious distress to Lady Rockingham to rob Lord Shelburne of not only much too elegant a box, but also (being crystal) of one that is of all others the most proper for Vinigritto.
- ↑ The remainder of the poem—which may be found in the Appendix to the Journals of Horace Walpole, edited by Dr. Doran—is an account of the "pious fraud." The allusion to Maurice, "who bore a pack," is apparently a confusion between Antony Petty, the Romsey clothier, father of Sir William Petty, and the Earls of Kerry. Sir William Petty was Physician-General to the Cromwellian army in Ireland, and author of the Down Survey.
