or level pistol at him. Insult after
insult, injury after injury, were offered to the obnoxious politician.
The King dismissed him from the colonelcy of the Buckinghamshire
Militia. Lord Temple was the Lord-Lieutenant of the county of
Buckinghamshire, and as Lord-Lieutenant it was his duty to convey to
Wilkes the news of his disgrace. Never was such news so conveyed.
Temple told Wilkes of his dismissal in a letter of warm enthusiasm, of
warm personal praise. The King immediately retaliated by removing
Temple from the Lord-Lieutenancy and striking his name off the list of
privy councillors. The enmity was not confined to the King and to the
parasites who sought to please the King. Dr. Johnson declared that if
he were the monarch he would have sent half a dozen footmen to duck
Wilkes for daring to censure his royal master or his royal master's
ministers. In the House of Commons the hostility was at its height.
When Parliament met Wilkes sought to call the attention of the House to
his case, but was anticipated by Grenville, who read a royal message
directed at Wilkes, the result of which was that the House voted that
the number Forty-five of the _North Briton_ was a seditious libel, and
ordered it to be burned by the common hangman.

The basest part of the attack upon Wilkes was the use that his enemies
made of his private papers, the way in which they associated his
political conduct with an offence that was wholly unpolitical. It had
amused Wilkes to set up a private printing-press at his own house. At
this {65} press certain productions were printed which were no doubt
indecent, which were no doubt blasphemous, but which were furthermore
so foolish as to make both their indecency and their blasphemy of very
little effect. One was the "Essay on Woman," written as a parody of
Pope's "Essay on Man;" the other was an imitation of the "Veni
Creator." Neither of these pieces of gross buffoonery bore any
author's name. Very few copies of them had been printed, and these few
solely for circulation among private friends with a taste for foul
literature. No offence had been committed, no offence had been
intended, against public morality. It is certain, as far as any
literary puzzle can be regarded as certain, that Wilkes's share in the
dirty business was chiefly, if not entirely, limited to the printing of
the pages. The "Essay on Woman," as those who have had the misfortune
to read it know, is a dreary writer's