and others, either dining with them or they with him. Their talk even alleviated twinges which Drs. Heberden, Blane, and Sir James Earle assailed in vain.
His sisters, however, had become uneasy. His health continued indifferent, his spirits depressed, and the constant presence of a friend, in whom they could all place implicit confidence, seemed the only mode of allaying their apprehensions. With this view, a protege of the family, the Rev. J. Jephson, was summoned from Westmeath to London, who sketches for his wife a few notices of the scene.
I intended you (May 3) a long letter to-day, but Lord Sunderlin and Luttrell both called, and occupied me some hours; and then Mr. M. (Malone) and I sat down to books, papers, and criticism, which we have barely left within half an hour of the post going out.
He then mentions, as indicative of their studies, having solved a passage in Valerius Maximus which had defeated Malone, Windham, Luttrell,[1] and others.
- ↑ Of this gentleman, once well known in the higher circles of London life, little has been made public. But an eminent literary friend favours me with the following notice:—
“Luttrell I knew well. He was the natural son of a nobleman, Lord C; sat in the Irish Parliament when a young man; and subsequently was sent to the West Indies by his father, to manage estates there. He soon found himself fit for a larger sphere. On returning to England, he found an introduction to the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire—was constantly at her parties, and at all other fashionable assemblies of those days, was admired as a lively and intelligent, if not brilliant talker. Nor was he less a favourite with those of the next generation. Indeed, he continued to visit in, and be admired by, the very highest society in London till illness compelled him to stay at home. He died, if I mistake not, about a year before Rogers. He was twice married; by the first wife he had a son; the second wife, more advanced in life, proved an excellent nurse in his last illness. Though he published two poems of considerable merit—Letters to Julia and Crockford House,—he was, and I believe wished to be thought, a man of fashion, of attractive conversa-
