A Footnote on Francis Dashwood's Final Visit to Italy

In my recent essay, “Sir Francis Dashwood: Connoisseur, Collector and Traveller” for the Paul Mellon Centre’s Art and the Country House (2020), I write the following:

After his term as Chancellor of the Exchequer was completed, Dashwood continued working for the government, specifically as Postmaster General. However, after the 1760s he effectively withdrew from politics, spending his remaining years building his collections and extending his house. Dashwood never gave up his desire for travel. And, while as far as we know he never revisited Constantinople, he did return to Italy in 1768. Writing to Sir William Hamilton and the first Lady Hamilton, he thanked them for ‘the many civilities you were pleased to shew to Mr. Delon and myself during our stay at Naples’. It is not clear who ‘Mr. Delon’ was but Hamilton ended his reply with an intriguing postscript: ‘I beg you will be so obliging to send the enclosed to Mr. D’hancarville’. This was Pierre-François Hugues, the self-styled Baron d’Hancarville, who published Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Hon. William Hamilton in 1767–76.

The footnote is (currently) missing for the quotes, but they come from a letter that Dashwood wrote to Sir William Hamilton on 24 June 1768, which is in the British Library (BL Add. 71197, vol. 1, f. 55):

Rome 24th June 1768

Sir,

I take the liberty of troubling you with these few lines to return you and Mrs. Hamilton thanks for the many civilities you were pleased to shew to Mr. Delon and myself during our stay at Naples, and at the same time to assure you that if it can be in my power to be of any service to you in this place, you will find me at all times and upon all occassions shew the greatest readiness to execute any Commissions you shall think proper to honor me with. ---

Mr. Delon desires to join with me in offering his Compts. [compliments] to Mrs. Hamilton who I hope has not been any Sufferer from the fatigue of the Festivities. ---

I have the honor to be with great regard, Sir,

Your most Obed. Humble Sert.

Francis Dashwood

I beg you will be so obliging to send the enclosed to Mr. D’hancarville.

Since I’m 4000 miles away from the manuscript, I’m not sure whether I made a transcription error or whether Dashwood misspelled “Mr. Delon,” but Professor Stefano Ferrari has recently written to me and suggested that “Mr. Delon” is almost definitely French Embassy Secretary Jean-Henri Melon, who knew d’Hancarville and visited Hamilton in 1767 and 1768. Professor Ferrari has recently written on Jean-Henri Melon in “I rapporti tra Italia e Francia nel carteggio di Jean-Henri Melon con il duca Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld (1767-1769),” in Chroniques italiennes 37, nos. 1-2, (2019): 302-318, and I am grateful to him for clarifying this point.