Amid the Don Pacifico Affair, William Gladstone told Lord Palmerston that
pride in his own country did not excuse bossing others about like a global schoolmaster.
Letitia Barbauld called Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela
‘a new experiment’ in English literature, and to judge by its reception
it was very successful.
A few weeks after a large French raiding party had been driven away from
the Isle of Wight, another flotilla arrived from across the Channel demanding money with menaces.