Dodington, GEORGE BUBB

Dodington, GEORGE BUBB, a 'person of importance in his day,' was born plain Bubb in 1691, the son of an Irish fortune-hunter or apothecary, and took the name Dodington in 1720, on inheriting a fine property from his uncle. Resolved 'to make some figure in the world,' he had got into parliament in 1715, and from 1722 to 1754 sat for Bridgwater. Otherwise, he was always changing his place, from Walpole's service to the Prince of Wales's, from his to Argyll's, anon back to the Prince's, and so on: his one good action, that he spoke up for Byng. He was sometimes in office, but oftener out of it; and he had not long reached the goal of his ambition, a peerage with the title Baron Melcombe, when he died at Hammersmith, 28th July 1762. A soi-disant Mæcenas, he passed for something of a wit and poet, but is only remembered through Browning's Parleying, and by his posthumous Diary (1784), that odd self-revelation of a flunkey.