was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore
denominated "Big Ben," the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton
House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one
of his satires on the Prince's letter of February the 13th, 1812, to the
Duke of York, in which he _cut_ the Whigs, thus parodies that celebrated
"sentence of banishment:"--

"Neither have I resentments, nor wish there should come ill
To mortal, except, now I think on't, Beau Brummell,
Who threaten'd, last year, in a super-fine passion,
To cut _me_, and bring the old king into fashion."

Brummell now, since the sword was drawn, resolved to throw away the
sheath, and his hits were keen and "damaging," as those things are now
termed. In this style he said to little Colonel M'Mahon, the Prince's
secretary--"I made him, and I shall unmake him."

The "fat friend" hit was more pungent in reality than in its usual form.
The Prince, walking down St James's Street with Lord Moira, and seeing
Brummell approaching arm-in-arm with a man of rank, determined to show
the openness of the quarrel, stopped and spoke to the noble lord with an
apparent unconsciousness of ever having seen the Beau before. The
moment he was turning away, Brummell asked, in his most distinct voice,
"Pray, _who_ is your _fat_ friend?" Nothing could be more dexterously
impudent; for it repaid the Prince's pretended want of recognition
precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where
he was known to be most thin-skinned.

It is sufficiently remarkable, that the alienation of the Prince from
Brummell scarcely affected his popularity with the patrician world, or
his reception by the Duke and Duchess of York. He was a frequent guest
at Oatlands, and seems to have amused the duke by his pleasantry, and
cultivated the taste of the duchess by writing her epigrams, and making
her presents of little dogs. The Duke of York, though not much gifted
with the faculty of making jests, greatly enjoyed them in others. He was
a good-humoured, easy-mannered man, wholly without affectation of any
kind; well-intentioned, with some sagacity--mingled, however, with a
good deal of that abruptness which belonged to all the Brunswicks; and
though unfortunate in his domestic conduct, a matter on which it would
do no service to the reader to enlarge, yet a brave soldier, and a
zealous and most useful commander-in-chief at the Horse Guards. He, to