kind and affectionate heart eminently fitted for domestic companionship, yet condemned to drift down the stream of life a solitary however unwilling traveller, notwithstanding his own lines evinced the high estimate formed of domestic affection—
If no fond breast the splendid blessings share;
And each day’s bustling pageantry once past,
There—only there our bliss is found at last.
The lady, it appeared—and it is nearly all we can hear of her—was a Miss B, well known to Mr. Windham, possessed of all the necessary qualities of a good wife; but difficulties now unknown stood in the way. A younger Jephson, nephew of the poet, hopes (November 21, 1794) the case is not so desperate as Malone thinks. “I have heard as high an account of her as can be given of woman. The portraiture you sent me was very pleasing and satisfactory. . . . . Nothing but your evil genius, who seems to have discovered with cruel sagacity where you are most vulnerable, could have dashed so fair a prospect.” In the same strain, Lord Charlemont, Chetwood who knew her personally, the two Jephsons, uncle and nephew, allude to the subject in their letters of this date, and regret the result, for the sake of both parties. Fate had decreed him irreversibly a bachelor!
A characteristic homily upon love from the noble peer, a happy papa of sixty-seven, to the despairing bachelor of fifty-four, reached the latter in July 1795.
