00000022.htm

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 3

equanimity at times, is the reverse of philosophic.
He is fitted however for the part of a Sevrepaywicmjs
and in this character he now appears. He was a
Fellow of King's, and subsequently of Eton, Rector
of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, and Preacher to the
Society of Lincoln's Inn¹. Partly from the fact that
they were members of the same college at Cambridge,
but still more, I am inclined to think, from a certain
disposition to toadyism, he is in closer juxtaposition
with Walpole than with any other member of the
alliance. What part he played in the famous quarrel
"between Gray and Walpole it is impossible now
exactly to determine, but it is probable that his
conduct in the matter caused an estrangement be-
tween himself and Gray. His interest in the case
appears from the Postscript to a letter (strangely
fulsome and exaggerated as I think) which he wrote
to Walpole on his recovery from his illness at Reggio.
This letter is given on p. 58. The Mrs— there

¹ Cunningham (H. Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 2). An
amusing letter from Walpole to Asliton dated from the
Christopher Inn at Eton has this " If I do not compose myself
$, little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach
I shall certainly be in a "bill for laughing at church; but how
to help it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw
liim here, was standing up funking over against a conduct to
be catechized." But this letter is certainly misplaced between
one of 1737 and one of 1739, for Ashton was not ordained till
later. He was made Fellow of Eton Dec. 20,1745, and pro-
bably never preached in the Chapel before that event.



	INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 3 equanimity at times, is the reverse of philosophic. He is fitted however for the part of a Sevrepaywicmjs and in this character he now appears. He was a Fellow of King's, and subsequently of Eton, Rector of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, and Preacher to the Society of Lincoln's Inn¹. Partly from the fact that they were members of the same college at Cambridge, but still more, I am inclined to think, from a certain disposition to toadyism, he is in closer juxtaposition with Walpole than with any other member of the alliance. What part he played in the famous quarrel "between Gray and Walpole it is impossible now exactly to determine, but it is probable that his conduct in the matter caused an estrangement be- tween himself and Gray. His interest in the case appears from the Postscript to a letter (strangely fulsome and exaggerated as I think) which he wrote to Walpole on his recovery from his illness at Reggio. This letter is given on p. 58. The Mrs— there ¹ Cunningham (H. Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. 2). An amusing letter from Walpole to Asliton dated from the Christopher Inn at Eton has this " If I do not compose myself $, little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach I shall certainly be in a "bill for laughing at church; but how to help it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw liim here, was standing up funking over against a conduct to be catechized." But this letter is certainly misplaced between one of 1737 and one of 1739, for Ashton was not ordained till later. He was made Fellow of Eton Dec. 20,1745, and pro- bably never preached in the Chapel before that event.