Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/292

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Hervey
286
Hervey

his old friendship with Lady Mary until his death, and a number of his letters to her are preserved at Ickworth, while her letters to him were returned to Lady Mary by his eldest son after Hervey’s death (Lady M. W. Montagu, Works, i. 95). Hervey carefully omits from his memoirs the cause of his quarrel with the Prince of Wales, which commenced at the end of 1731, but in all probability it arose out of their rivalry for the favours of Miss Vane, maid of honour to the queen, and sister of Henry, first earl of Darlington.

By his wife Hervey had eight children. Three sons, George William [q.v.], Augustus John [q.v.], and Frederick Augustus [q.v.], successively became earls of Bristol, while the fourth son, William, born on 13 May 1732, became a general in the army, and died on 15 Jan. 1815. Lepell, their eldest daughter, married Constantine Phipps, afterwards created Baron Mulgrave, and died suddenly at the admiralty, aged 57, on 9 March 1780, Mary became the wife of George Fitzgerald, and was burnt to death on 9 April 1815, aged 89. Emily Caroline Nassau died unmarried on 11 June 1814, aged 80; and Caroline, whose beauty is celebrated in Churchill’s `Times,’ died, also unmarried, on 1 March 1819, aged 83.

There is a full-length portrait of Hervey in the National Protrait Gallery. It was painted by J. B. Van Loo in 1741, and engraved in the same year by John Faber, jun. Another portrait, by an unknown artist, was lent by Mr. F. Hanbury Williams to the Loan Collection of National Portraits at South Kensington in 1867 (Cat. No. 257). There is also a portrait of Ickworth. An engraving of Hervey is given in Harding’s `Series of Protraits to illustrate the Earl of Orford’s Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,' 1803, and busts of Hervey are prefixed to the ‘Memoirs,’ 1884, and the `Letters between Lord Hervey and Dr. Middleton concerning the Roman Senate,' 1778. The manuscript of the memoirs, which is wholly autograph, is in the possession of the Marquis of Bristol. Several sheets of it, probably containing additional particulars of the dissensions among the royal family, have unfortunately been destroyed by its former possessors. The third earl left strict injunctions in his will that the ‘Memoirs' were not to be published until after the death of George III, and they did not appear until 1848. Their close and minute portraiture of court life and intrigue renders them indispensable to the student of the first ten years of George II. Hervey's style, though somewhat elaborated, is lively and forcible. Throughout his writings, which in many ways bear a curious resemblance to those of Horace Walpole, a bitter tone of cynicism and a morbid spirit of universal detraction are always apparent. Though Middleton published his share of the correspondence with Hervey on the mode of electing the Roman senate in 1747, Hervey's letters were not printed until 1778, when they were edited by T. Knowles.

The laboured panegyric by which Middleton dedicated his life of Cicero to Hervey in 1741 is satirized in the fourth book of the ‘Dunciad' (lines 103-4). From the correspondence preserved at Ickworth it appears that the assertion made in Park's edition of ‘Noble Autors' (iv. 202-3), on the authority of Seward's ‘Anecdotes,' that the extracts from Cicero’s orations in Middleton's ‘Life' were translated by Hervey is incorrect. Hervey's pamphlets are pronounced by Horace Walpole as being ‘equal to any that ever were written,' and by some of them he rendered very effective service to the government of Sir Robert Walpole. A few of Hervey's poems were collected together, with those of James Hammond [q.v.], and published in 1808 and 1818. Several of his poetical pieces will be found in Dodsley's ‘Collection of Poems,' 1782, iii. 194-204, iv. 85-116, v. 159-68, and in the ‘New Foundling Hospital for Wit,' 1784, i. 239-43 (see also Gent. Mag. 1796, vol. lxvi. pt. i. p. 509). Besides the ‘Memoirs,' the ‘Letters to Dr. Middleton,' and several poems, Hervey is said to have left behind in a manuscript ‘Agrippina, a Tragedy in Rhyme' (Park, Walpole, iv. 201). He was author of the following works: 1. ‘An Answer to the Occasional Writer. No. II [with an] Appendix, being the Answer to the Occasional Writer, No. I,' anon., London, 1727, 8vo. 2. ‘The Occasional Writer, No. IV. To his Imperial Majesty.' 3. ‘Observations on the Writings of the Craftsman' [i.e. on Lord Bolingbroke’s letters on English history], anon., London, 1730, 8vo. 4. Sequel of the last pamphlet, anon., London, 1730, 8vo. 5. ‘Farther Observations on the Writings of the Craftsman ...,' anon., London, 1730, 8vo. 6. ‘Remarks on the Craftsman's Vindication of his two honble. patrons, in his paper of May 22, 1731,' 2nd edit., anon., London, 1731, 8vo. This has also been ascribed to William Arnall. 7. ‘Letter to Mr. D’Anvers on his reply to "Sedition and Defamation displayed,"' London, 1731, 8vo. 8. ‘Some Remarks on the Minute Philosopher [by G. Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne, q.v.] In a Letter from a Country Clergyman to his friend in London,' anon., London, 1732, 8vo; 2nd edit., London, 1732, 8vo. 9. ‘The Pub-