scribing the leading characters of the Administration, and reproducing with a few changes a jeu d'esprit which had appeared about a year before in the same journal under the signature of Correggio.[1] It purported to contain a vision of the masquerade given by the King of Denmark at the Opera House on the 10th of October. Grafton was Janus, Chatham was King Lear, Weymouth was the landlord of the Bedford Arms. "But no piece," so had said Correggio, "could be complete without a young man who will make a capital figure. His features are too happily marked to be mistaken. A single line of his face will be sufficient to give us the heir apparent of Loyola and all the College. A little more of the devil my lord if you please about the eye-brows; that's enough, a perfect Malagrida I protest! So much for his person, and as for his mind, a blinking bull-dog[2] placed near him will form a very natural type of all his good qualities." Following in the steps of Correggio, the "Dreamer of Dreams" in the Public Advertiser placed Shelburne on his stage as a Jesuit.[3] The sobriquet thus invented stuck to its object, and Shelburne for ever after appeared in every caricature of the day in the guise of the famous Portuguese ecclesiastic, who some years before had been strangled and burnt by orders of Pombal, for his real or supposed share in the conspiracy of the Duc d'Aveiro.[4]
- ↑ September 16th, 1767.
- ↑ An allusion to Barré.
- ↑ Grenville Correspondence, iv. 383.
- ↑ Sir N. Wraxall, writing of his journey in Portugal, says: "In 1772, the State prisons were crowded with unfortunate victims. The tower of Belem, the Fort of the Bougie, situate at the mouth of the Tagus, and the Castle of St. Julien, placed at the northern entrance of that river, were all full of prisoners; among whom a great proportion had been Jesuits, arrested either in 1758 or 1763 by orders of the first Minister. The subterranean casemates of the Castle of St. Julien contained above a hundred individuals, who could be clearly discerned, by persons walking on the ramparts of the fortress, through the iron gratings which admitted some light to those gloomy abodes. I have myself beheld many of them at the depth of fifty or sixty feet below me, pacing to and fro—most of whom, being Jesuits, were habited in the dress of the order. They excited great commiseration. The famous Gabriel Malagrida,—an Italian Jesuit, who was accused of having, as confessor to the Marchioness of Tavora, known and encouraged her to make the attempt upon Joseph's life,—after being long imprisoned in that fortress, was strangled, and his body subsequently reduced to ashes at the stake in 1761. He appears to have been rather a visionary and an imbecile fanatic, than a man of dangerous parts. His public execution, when near seventy-five years of age, must be considered as a cruel and odious act, which reflects disgrace on Joseph and on his minister. Malagrida's name is become proverbial among us to express duplicity; and has been applied, perhaps unjustly, to one of our greatest modern statesmen by his
