Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/256

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future situation in life. He sat in two successive Parliaments; but being the child of eccentricity, he married a washerwoman, with whom he refused to cohabit, because the match was made in a frolic. Involving himself in debts, he quitted his native country, resolving to accommodate himself to the manners of every kingdom through which he passed. In Italy, Spain, Egypt, and Constantinople he formed connections, which he considered no longer lasting than his stay in each place: drank coffee plentifully, wore a long beard, smoaked much, drest in the Eastern style, and sat cross-legged in the Turkish fashion. On hearing of the death of his English wife, he was desirous of returning home to marry again, and prevent his estate devolving to the children of his sister, Lady Bute; and for that purpose, advertised for a decent young woman, in a state of pregnancy; the challenge was accepted, and the expectant bride only disappointed by the hand of death, which arrested this matchless oddity at Padua, 1776. Æt. 64.

Circe, by Guido;

"Who knows not Circe,
"The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
"Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,
"And downward fell into a grovelling swine?"

The inchantress, however, would not have stood in need of the charmed cup to produce infatuation,