(304) William, second Viscount Vane, in Ireland.  His “lady” was the too-celebrated Lady Vane, first married to Lord William Hamilton, and secondly to Lord Vane; who has given her own extraordinary and disreputable adventures to the world, in Smollett’s novel of “Peregrine Pickle,” under the title of “Memoirs of a Lady of Quality.”  She is also immortalized in different ways, by Johnson, in his ,Vanity of Human Wishes,” and by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in one of his Odes.-D. [She was the daughter of Mr. Hawes, a South Sea director, and died in 1788.  Lord Vane died in 1789.  Boswell distinctly states, that the lady mnentioned in Johnson’s couplet “was not the celebrated Lady Vane, whose Memoirs were given to the public by Dr. Smollett, but Ann Vane, who was mistress to Frederick Prince of Wales, and died in 1736, not long before Johnson settled in London.”  See Boswell’s Johnson, vol. i. p. 226, ed. 1835.]

(305) Uncle of Lord Vane, whose father, Lord Barnard, had married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Gilbert Holles, Earl of Clare, and sister and coheir of John Duke of Newcastle.

(306) Henry Clinton, ninth Earl of Lincoln, succeeded as Duke of Newcastle in 1768, on the death of his uncle, the minister.

(307) Paul Whitehead, a satirical poet of bad character, was the son of a tailor, who lived in Castle-yard, Holborn.  He wrote several abusive poems, now forgotten, entitled “The State Dances,” “Manners,” “The Gymnasiad,” etc.  In “Manners,” having attacked some members of the House of Lords, that assembly summoned Dodsley, the publisher, before them, (Whitehead having absconded,) and subsequently imprisoned him.  In politics, Whitehead was a follower of Bubb Dodington; in private life be was the friend and companion of the profligate Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, Churchill, etc. and, like them, was a member of the Hell-fire Club, which held its orgies at Mednam Abbey, in Bucks.  The estimation in which he was held even by his friends may be judged of by the lines in which Churchill has damned him to everlasting fame: 

“May I (can worse disgrace on mankind fall?) Be born a Whitehead and baptized a Paul.”

Paul Whitehead died in 1774.-D. [The proceedings in the House of Lords against the author of “Manners” which took place in February, 1739, was, in the opinion of Dr. Johnson, “intended rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.”]

(308) The day the parliament was to meet.

(309) His voice was clear, sweet, and free from defects of every kind.  He was a chaste performer, and never hazarded any difficulty which he was not certain of executing with the utmost precision.  He was, moreover, an excellent actor, so that nothing but the recent remembrance of the gigantic talents of Farinelli, and the grand and majestic style of Senesino, could have lefl an English audience any thing to wish.-E.

(310) Amorevoli was an admirable tenor.  “I have heard,” says Dr. Burney, “better voices of his pitch, but never, on the stage, more taste and expression.  The Visconti had a shrill flexible voice, and pleased more in rapid songs than those that required high colouring and pathos."-E.