'Lord
Elibank,' he writes, 'had a mind that embraced the greatest variety of
topics, and produced the most original remarks. ... He had been a
lieutenant-colonel in the army and was at the siege of Carthagena, of
which he left an elegant account (which I'm afraid is lost). He was a
Jacobite, and a member of the famous Cocoa-tree Club, and resigned his
commission on some disgust.' Dr. Robertson and John Home were his
neighbours in the country, 'who made him change or soften down many of
his original opinions, and prepared him for becoming a most agreeable
member of the Literary Society of Edinburgh.' Smollett in _Humphry
Clinker_ (Letter of July 18), describes him as 'a nobleman whom I have
long revered for his humanity and universal intelligence, over and above
the entertainment arising from the originality of his character.'
Boswell, in the _London Mag._ 1779, p. 179, thus mentions the Cocoa-tree
Club:--'But even at Court, though I see much external obeisance, I do
not find congenial sentiments to warm my heart; and except when I have
the conversation of a very few select friends, I am never so well as
when I sit down to a dish of coffee in the Cocoa Tree, sacred of old to
loyalty, look round me to men of ancient families, and please myself
with the consolatory thought that there is perhaps more good in the
nation than I know.
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