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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
+by Horace Walpole
+(#2 in our series by Horace Walpole)
+
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+Title: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
+
+Author: Horace Walpole
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4609]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
+by Horace Walpole
+******This file should be named 4609.txt or 4609.zip******
+
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+***
+This etext was produced by Marjorie Fulton.
+
+For easier searching, letters have been numbered.  Only the page
+numbers that appear in the table of contents have been retained
+in the text of letters.  Footnotes have been regrouped as
+endnotes following the letter to which they relate.
+
+
+
+
+
+            THE LETTERS of HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD:
+
+            INCLUDING NUMEROUS LETTERS NOW FIRST PUBLISHED
+                    FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS.
+
+                           IN FOUR VOLUMES
+                         VOL. 1.  1735-1748.
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. 1.
+
+
+PREFACE--25
+
+Advertisement--33
+
+Second advertisement--40
+
+Sir Charles Grey's Letter connecting Walpole with Junius--41
+
+Sketch of the Life of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford,
+by Lord Dover--47
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND.
+
+CHAPTer 1.--67
+Motives to the Undertaking-Precedents-George the First's
+Reign-a Proem to the History of the Reigning House of
+Brunswick-The Reminiscent introduced to that Monarch-His
+Person and Dress-The Duchess of Kendal-her Jealousy of
+Sir Robert Walpole's Credit with the King-the Intrigues to
+displace him, and make Bolingbroke Minister
+
+CHAPTER 2.--73
+Marriage of George the First, while Electoral Prince, to the
+Princess Sophia Dorothea-Assassination of Count
+Konigsmark-Separation from the Princess-Left-handed
+espousal-Piety of the Duchess of Kendal-Confinement and Death
+of Sophia Dorothea in the Castle of Alden-French
+Prophetess-The King's Superstition-Mademoiselle
+Schulemberg-Royal Inconsistency-Countess of platen-Anne Brett-
+Sudden Death of George the First
+
+CHAPTER 3.--79
+Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of
+Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of
+Craggs-Royal Reconcilement-Peerage Bill Defeated-Project for
+seizing the Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke
+of Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open rupture-Prince and
+Princess of Wales ordered to leave the Palace
+
+CHAPtER 4.--83
+Bill Of Pains and Penalties against Bishop Atterbury-Projected
+Assassination of Sir Robert Walpole-Revival of the Order of
+the Bath-Instance of George the First's good-humoured Presence
+of Mind
+
+CHAPTER 5.--86
+Accession of George the Second-Sir Spencer Compton-Expected
+Change in Administration-Continuation of Lord Townshend -and
+Sir Robert Walpole by the Intervention of Queen Caroline-Mrs.
+Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Her character by
+Swift-and by Lord Chesterfield
+
+CHAPTER 6.--89
+Destruction of George the First's Will.
+
+CHAPTER 7.91
+History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Miss
+Bellenden-Marriage with Colonel John Carnl)bell, afterwards
+Fourth Duke of Argyle-Anecdotes of Queen Caroline-Her last
+Illness and Death-Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of
+Marlborough-Last Years of George the Second-Mrs. Clayton,
+afterwards Lady Sundon-Lady Diana Spencer-Frederick, Prince of
+Wales-Sudden Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton
+Court to St. James's-Birth of a Princess-Rupture with the
+King-Anecdotes of Lady Yarmouth
+
+CHAPTER 8.--101
+
+George the Second's Daughters-Anne, Princess of
+Orange-Princess Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of
+Cumberland
+
+CHAPTER 9.--103
+Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of Catherine,
+Duchess of Buckingham
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH, TO
+THE EARL OF STAIR, ILLUSTRATIVE OF "THE REMINISCENCES." (NOW
+FIRST PUBlished) 111
+
+
+
+                        LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE.
+
+(Those Letters now first collected are marked N.)
+
+                                   1735
+
+1. To Richard West, Esq. November 9.-Picture of a University
+life. Cambridge sophs. Juvenile quadruple alliance--121
+
+
+
+                                   1736.
+
+2. To George Montagu, Esq. May 2.-Marriage of Frederick,
+Prince of Wales, with the Princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha--122
+
+3. To the same, May 6.-Pleasures of youth, and youthful
+recollections--123
+
+4. To the same, May 20.-Jaunt to Oxford. Wrest House. Easton
+Neston. Althorp--124
+
+5. To the same, May 30.-Petronius Arbiter. Coventry's Dialogue
+between Philemon and Hydaspes on False Religion. Artemisia--
+126
+
+6. To Richard West, Esq. Aug. 17.-Gray, and other
+schoolfellows. Eton recollections. Course of study at the
+University--127
+
+
+
+                                   1737.
+
+7. To George Montagu, Esq. March 20.-French and English
+manners contrasted--128
+
+8. To the same.-Feelings on revisiting Eton--129
+
+
+
+                                   1739.
+
+9. To Richard West, Esq. April 21. Paris society. Amusements.
+Funeral of the Duke de Tresmes. St. Denis.  Church of the
+Celestins. French love of show. Signs. Notions of honour--130
+
+10. To the same.-, Description of Versailles. Conventof the
+Chartreux. History of St. Bruno, painted by Le Soeur. Relics--
+132
+
+11. To the same, June 18.-Rheims. Brooke's "Gustavus Vasa"--
+134
+
+12. To the same, July 20.-Rheims. Compiegne.
+Self-introduction--134
+
+13. To the same, Sept. 28.-Mountains of Savoy. Grande
+Chartreuse. Aix. English visitors. Epigram--136
+
+14. To the same, Nov. 11.-Passage of Mount Cenis. Cruel
+accident. Chamberri. Inscription. Pas de Suza. Turin. Italian
+comedy. "L'Anima Damnata." Conversazione--138
+
+15. To the same.-Bologna. Letter-writing. Curl. Whitfield's
+Journal. Jingling epitaph. Academical exercises at the
+Franciscans' church. Dominicans' Church. Old verses in a new
+light--140
+
+
+
+                                   1740.
+
+16. To the same, January 24.-Florence. Grand Duke's gallery.
+Effect of travel. English and Italian character contrasted.
+Story of the prince and the nut--142
+
+17. To the same, February 27.-Florence. The Carnival.
+Character of the Florentines. Their prejudice about nobility.
+Mr. Martin. Affair of honour--143
+
+18. To the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, March 6.-Complaints of
+his not writing. Attachment to Florence--145
+
+19. To richard West, Esq. March 22.-Description of Siena.
+Romish superstitions. Climate of italy. Italian customs.
+Radicofani. Dome of Siena. Inscription. Entrance to Rome--146
+
+20. To the same, April 16.-Rome. Ruins of the temple of
+Minerva Medica. Ignorance and poverty of the present Romans.
+The Coliseum. Relics--148
+
+21. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 23.-Society at Rome. The
+Moscovita. Roman Conversations. The Conclave. Lord Deskford--
+150
+
+22. To Richard West, Esq., May 7.-The Conclave. Antiquities of
+Rome. State of the public a century hence--152
+
+23. To the same, June 14.-Naples. Description of Herculaneum.
+Passage in Statius picturing out this latent city--153
+
+24. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 5.-Reasons for leaving
+Rome. Malaria. Radicofani described. Relics from Jerusalem.
+Society at Florence. Mr. Mann. Lady pomfret. Princess Craon.
+Hosier's ghost. The Conclave. Lord Chancellor Hardwicke--155
+
+25. To Richard West, Esq.-Medals and inscriptions. Taking of
+Porto Bello. The Conclave. Lady Mary Montagu. Life at
+Florence--159
+
+26. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 25.-Character of the
+Florentines. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu described. Sortes
+Virgiliane--161
+
+27. To Richard West, Esq. Oct. 2.-Effect of travel- A wedding
+at Florence. Addison's Italy. Dr. Cocchi. Bondelmonti. A song.
+Bronzes and medals. Tartini. Lady Walpole. Platonic love--163
+
+28. To the same, Nov.-Disastrous flood at Florence--166
+
+
+
+
+                                   1741.
+
+29. To the Rev. Joseph Spence, Feb. 21.-Hopes to renew in
+England an acquaintance begun in Italy. Owns him his master in
+the antique--[N.) 168
+
+30. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, March 25.-Rejoices at George
+Selwyn's recovery And at the result of Mr. Sandvs' motion for
+the removal of Sir Robert Walpole. Middleton's Life of Cicero-
+-169
+
+31. To Richard West, Esq., May 10.-His opinion of the first
+act of West's tragedy of Pausanias. Description of Rome during
+fair-time--170
+
+32. To Sir Horace Mann, Sept.-Calais on his return to England.
+Amorevoli. The Viscontina. Passage to Dover. Comfort and
+snugness of English in country towns. The distinction of
+"meddling people" nowhere but in England. Story of Mr. Pope
+and the Prince of Wales--172
+
+33. To the same, Oct.-Corsica. Bianca Colonna. Baron Stosch,
+and his Maltese cats--174
+
+34. To the Hon. H. S. Conway.-On his return to England. Changes
+produced by travel--175
+
+35. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 8.-Illness of Sir Robert Walpole.
+The Opera. Sir Benjamin Keene. Dominichino's Madonna and
+Child. Lady Dorothy Boyle. State of parties--176
+
+36. To the same, Oct. 13--178
+
+37. To the same, Oct. 19.-Unfavourable state of his father's
+health--178
+
+38. To the same, Oct. 22.-Duel between Winnington and Augustus
+Townshend. Long Sir Thomas Robinson. Mrs. Woffington. "Les
+Cours de l'Europe"--179
+
+39. To the same, Nov. 2.-Sir Thomas Robinson's ball. The
+Euston embroil. The Neutrality. "The Balancing Captain," a new
+song--182
+
+40. To the same, Nov. 5.-Opera House management--186
+
+41. To the same, Nov. 12.-Admiral Vernon. The Opera. The
+Viscontina--187
+
+42. To the same, Nov. 23.-Spanish design on Lombardy. Sir
+Edward Walpole's courtship. Lady Pomfret. "Going to Court."
+Lord Lincoln. Paul Whitehead. "Manners"--189
+
+43. To the same, Nov. 26.-His mother's tomb. Intaglio of the
+Gladiator--191
+
+44. To the same, Dec. 3.-Admiral Haddock. Meeting of
+Parliament. State of parties. Colley Cibber--192
+
+
+45. To the same, Dec. 10.-Debate on the King's speech.
+Westminster petition. Triumph of Opposition. "Bright Bootle"--
+194
+
+46. To the same, Dec. 16.-Chairman of election committees.
+Ministry in a minority--197
+
+47. To the same, Dec. 17.-Warm debates in Westminster election
+committee. Odd suicide--199
+
+48. To the same, Dec. 24.-Anecdote of Sandys. Ministerial
+victory. Debates on the Westminster election. Story of the
+Duchess of Buckingham. Mr. Nugent. Lord Gage. Revolution in
+Russia--201
+
+49. To the same, Dec. 29.-The Dominichino. Passage of the
+Giogo. Bubb Doddington. Follies of the Opposition--206
+
+
+
+                                  1742.
+
+50. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 7.-Reasons why he is not in
+fashion. His father's want of partiality for him. Character of
+General Churchill. Vote-trafficking during the holidays. Music
+party. The three beauty-Fitzroys. Lord Hervey. Hammond, the
+poet. Death of Lady Sundon. Anecdotes--207
+
+51. To the same, Jan. 22.-House of Commons. Merchants'
+petition. Leonidas Glover. Place Bill. Projected changes.
+King's message to the Prince. Pulteney's motion for a secret
+committee on Sir Robert Walpole's conduct. New opera--212
+
+52. To the same Feb. 4.-Sir Robert's morning levees. His
+resignation. Created Earl of Orford--218
+
+53. To the same; Feb. 9.@Political changes. Opposition meeting
+at the Fountain. Cry against Sir Robert. Instructions to
+members. Lord Wilmington first lord of the Treasury.New
+ministry. Crebillon's "Sofa"--220
+
+54. To the same, Feb. 18.-Rumoured impeachments. Popular
+feeling. "The Unhappy Favourite." "broad Bottom" ministry. the
+Prince of Wales at the King's levee. sir Robert takes his seat
+in the HOuse of Lords. Grand masquerade--224
+
+55. To the same, Feb. 25.-House of Commons. Shippen. Murray.
+Story of Sir R. Godschall. Impeachments. Changes. "England in
+1741," by Sir C. H. Williams--227
+
+56. To the same, march 3.-Merchants' petition. leonidas
+Glover. New Story of the Lord mayor. speech of Doddington.
+Heydon election. "The broad Bottom." Duchess of Marlborough's
+Memoirs. Lord Oxford's sale. New opera. Sir robert at
+richmond--229
+
+57. to the same, March 10.-The coalition. Motion for a
+committee of inquiry into the last twenty years thrown out.
+Duke of Argyle resigns. Old Sarah's Memoirs--234
+
+58. To the same, march 22.-Queen of Hungary's successes. Lord
+Oxford's sale--237
+
+59. to the same, March 24.-Secret Committee to inquire into
+the conduct of the Earl of Orford appointed. Horace WAlpole's
+speech on the occasion--238
+
+60. To the same, april 1.-Secret Committee balloted for. court
+and Opposition lists. Bill for repealing the Septennial Act
+rejected--241
+
+61. To the same, april 8.-lady Walpole's extravagant schemes.
+Subsidy for the Queen of Hungary. Lord Orford's crowded
+levees. Rage of the mob against him. Place Bill rejected by
+the Lords--243
+
+62. To the same, April 15.-Progress of the Secret Committee.
+Committal of Paxton--246
+
+63. To the same, april 22.- Secret Committee. Examination of
+Sir John Rawdon. Opening of Ranelagh Gardens--247
+
+64. To the same, April 29.-Preparations for war in Flanders.
+Examinations before the Secret Committee. Scuffle at the
+Opera--249
+
+65. To richard West, Esq., may 4.-Anxiety for the recovery of
+his health and spirits. The age most unpoetical. Wit
+monopolized by politics. Royal reconciliation. Asheton's
+sermons. (Death of Mr. West)--251
+
+66. To sir Horace mann, May 6.-Florentine nobility.
+Embarkations for Germany. Doings of the Secret committee. the
+opera--252
+
+67. to the same, May 13.-first report of the Secret Committee.
+Bill to indemnify evidence against Lord orford brought in--254
+
+68. To the same, May 20.-Indemnity Bill carried in the
+Commons. Party dinner at the Fountain. Place Bill. Mr.
+Nugent's attack on the bishops--254
+
+69. To the same, May 28.-Ranelagh. Vauxhall. Mrs. Clive. "Miss
+Lucy in town." Garrick at Goodman's Fields: "a very good
+mimic; but nothing wonderful in his acting." Mrs. Bracegirdle.
+meeting at the Fountain. The Indemnity Bill flung out by the
+Lords. Epigram on Pulteney. Committee to examine the public
+accounts. Epigram on the Indemnity Bill. Kent and symmetry.
+"The Irish Beggar"--256
+
+70. To the same, June 3.-Epigram on Lord Islay's garden upon
+Hounslow Heath--260
+
+71. To the same, June 10.-Lady Walpole and her son. Royal
+reviews. Death of hammong. Process against the duchess of
+Beaufort--261
+
+72. To the same, June 14.-Peace between Austria and Prussia.
+Ministerial movements. Perplexities of the Secret Committee.
+Conduct of Mr. Scrope. Lady Vane's adventures--263
+
+73. To the same, June 25.-successes of the Queen of Hungary.
+Mr. Pulteney created Earl of Bath--265
+
+74. To the same, June 30.-Second Report of the Secret
+Committee.' The Pretender. Intercepted letters. Lord
+Barrymore--267
+
+75. to the same.-Lines on the death of Richard West, Esq. "A
+Receipt to make a lord"--269
+
+76. To the same, July 7.-New Place Bill. General Guise.
+Monticelli--271
+
+77. To the same July 14.-Ned and Will Finch. Lord Sidney
+Beauclerc. Pulteney takes up his patent as Earl of Bath.
+Ranelagh masquerade. Fire in Downing Street--273
+
+78. To the same.-Prorogation. End of the Secret Committee.
+Paxton released from Newgate. Ceretesi. Shocking scene of
+murder. Items from his grandfather's account-book. Lord Orford
+at court--275
+
+79. To the same, July 29.-About to set out for Houghton.
+Evening at Ranelagh with his father. Lord Orford's increasing
+popularity. "The Wife of Bath." Cibber's pamphlet against
+Pope. Doddington's "Comparison of the Old and New Ministry"--
+278
+
+80. To the same,-New ballads. Lord Orford at Houghton--279
+
+81. To the same, Aug. 20--280
+
+82. To the same, Aug. 28.-Marshal Belleisles, Cardinal Tencin.
+"Lessons for the Day." "An honourable man"--281
+
+83. To the same, Sept, 11.-Visit to Woolterton. A Catalogue of
+New French Books"--284
+
+84. To the same, Sept. 25.-Admiral Matthews. The King'sJourney
+to Flanders. Siege of Prague. History of the Princess Eleonora
+of Guastalla. Moli`ere's Tartuffe--285
+
+85. To the same, Oct. 8.-Siege of Prague raised. Great
+preparations for the King's journey to Flanders. Odes on
+Pulteney. Story of the Pigwiggins. Fracas at Kensington
+Palace--287
+
+86. To the same, Oct. 18.-Admiral Matthews. "Yarmouth Roads."
+A ballad, by Lord Hervey--289
+
+87. To the same, Oct. 23.--293
+
+88. To the same, Nov. 1.-The King's levee and drawing-room
+described. State of parties. A piece of absence. Duc
+d'Arembery--294
+
+89. To the same, Nov. 15.-Projects of Opposition Lord Orford's
+reception at the levee. Revolution in the French court. The
+Opera. Lord Tyrawley. Doddington's marriage--296
+
+90. To the same, Dec. 2.--House of Commons. Motion for a new
+secret committee thrown out. Union of the Whigs--298
+
+91. To the same, Dec. 9.-Debate on disbanding the army in
+Flanders. "Hanover"-the word for the winter--299
+
+92. To the same, Dec. 23.-Difficulty of writing upon nothing--
+301
+
+
+
+                                   1743.
+
+93. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 6.-Admiral Vernon. Reply of the
+Duchess of Queensberry--302
+
+94. To the same, Jan. 13.-House of Commons. Case of the
+Hanover 'Forces." Difficulty of raising the supplies. Lord
+Orford's popularity--304
+
+95. To the same, Jan. 27.-Accession of the Dutch to the King's
+measures--306
+
+96. To the same, Feb. 2. Debate in the Lords on disbanding the
+Hanoverian troops--308
+
+97. to the same, Feb. 18.--309
+
+98. To the same, Feb. 24.' Austrian victory over the Spaniards
+in Italy. King theodore's Declaration. handle and the Opera--
+309
+
+99. To the same, March 3.-Death of the Electress. Story of
+Lord Hervey. The Oratorios--310
+
+
+100. To the same, March 14.-Duel between his uncle Horace and
+Mr. Chetwynd. Death of the Duchess of Buckingham--311
+
+101. To the same, March 25.-Epidemic. Death of Dr. Blackburne,
+Archbishop of York--314
+
+102. To the same, April 4.-Funeral of the Duchess of
+Buckingham--315
+
+103. To the same, April 14.-Army in Flanders. King Theodore.
+The Opera ruined by gentlemen directors. Dillettanti Club.
+London versus the country--317
+
+104. To the same, April 25.-Departure of the King and Duke of
+Cumberland from the army in Flanders. The Regency. Princess
+Louisa and the Prince of Denmark. Lord Stafford and Miss
+Cantillon. Irish fracas. Silvia and Philander--318
+
+105. To the same, May 4.-King Theodore. Admiral Vernon's
+frantic speech. Ceretesi. Low state of the Opera. Freemasonry-
+-320
+
+106. to the same, May 12.-Death of the Duchess of Kendal.
+Story of Old Sarah. Maids of honour--322
+
+107. To the same, May 19.-Mutiny of a Highland regiment--323
+
+108. To the same, June 4.-Marriages, deaths and promotions.
+Sale of Corsica--324
+
+109. To the same, June 16.-expected battle in Flanders. Alarms
+for Mr. Conway. Houghton gallery. Life of Theodore--326
+
+110. To the same, June 20.-Visit to Euston. Kent. Anecdote of
+Lord Easton. Lady Dorothy Boyle--328
+
+111. To the same, June 28.-Batttle of Dettingen. Conduct of
+the King. Anecdotes--329
+
+112. To the same, July 4.-Further anecdotes of the battle.
+Public rejoicings. Lines on the victory. Halifax's poem of the
+battle of the Boyne--331
+
+113. to the same, July 11.-another battle expected--333
+
+114. to the same, July 19.-Conduct of General Ilton. "The
+Confectioner"--334
+
+115. To the same, July 31.-the temporizing conduct of the
+Regency. Bon-mot of Winnington--335
+
+116. To the same, Aug. 14.-Arrival of the Dominichini.
+Description. Pun of Madame de S`evign`e--336
+
+
+117. TO John Chute, Esq., Aug. 20.-Life at Houghton.
+Stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine. The Dominichini--
+[N.) 338
+
+118. To Sir Horace Mann, Aug. 29.-Undoubted originality of the
+Dominichini. Mr. Pelham first lord of the treasury--340
+
+119. To the same, Sept. 7.-The marrying Princesses. French
+players at Cliefden. Our faith in'politics. Story of the Duke
+of Buckingham. Extraordinary miracle--341
+
+120. To the same, Sept 17.-The King and Lord Stair--343
+
+121. To the same, Oct. 3.-Journey to town. Newmarket
+described. No solitude in the country. Delights of a London
+life. Admiral Matthews and the Pope. Story of Sir James of the
+Peak. Mrs. White's brown bob. Old Sarazin at two the morning.
+Lord Perceval's "Faction Detected." Death of the duke of
+Argyle--344
+
+122. To the same, oct. 12.-Conduct of Sir Horace's father. The
+army in Flanders in winter quarters. Distracted state of
+parties. Patapaniana. Imitation of an epigram of martial--347
+
+123. To the Same, Nov. 17.-the King's arrival and reception.
+His cool behaviour to the Prince of Wales. Lord Holderness's
+Dutch bride. The Prince of Denmark. the Opera--349
+
+124. To the same, Nov. 30.-Meeting of Parliament. Strength of
+Opposition. Conduct of Lord Carteret. Treasury dishclouts.
+Debate on the Address--351
+
+125. To the same, Dec. 15.-Debates on the Hanoverian troops.
+Resignation of Lord Gower. Ministerial changes. Sandys made a
+peer. Verses addressed to the House of Lords, on its receiving
+a new peer--352
+
+126. To the same, Dec. 26.--354
+
+
+                                   1744.
+
+127. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 24.-The Brest fleet at sea.
+Motion for continuing the Hanover troops carried by the
+exertions of Lord Orford--356
+
+128. To the same, Feb. 9.-Appearance of the Brest squadron off
+the Land's End. Pretender's son at Paris--358
+
+129. To the same, Feb. 16.-French squadron off Torbay. King's
+message concerning the young Pretender and designed invasion.
+Activity and zeal of Lord Orford--359
+
+130. To the same, Feb. 23.-Welsh election carried against Sir
+Watkyn Williams. Prospect of invasion. Preparations--361
+
+131. To the same, March 1.-The French expected every moment.
+Escape of the Brest squadron from Sir John Norris. Dutch
+troops sent for. Spirit of the nation. Addresses. Lord
+Barrymore and Colonel Cecil taken up. Suspension of the Habeas
+Corpus. The young Pretender--361
+
+132. To the same, March 5.-Great storm. French transports
+destroyed, and troops disembarked--363
+
+133. To the same, March 15.-Fears of invasion dispelled.
+Mediterranean engagement. Admiral Lestock--364
+
+134. To the same, March 22.-French declaration of war. Affair
+in the Mediterranean. Sir John Norris. Hymeneals. Lord
+Carteret and Lady Sophia Fermor. Doddington and Mrs. Behan--
+365
+
+135. To the same, April 2.--366
+
+136. To the same, April 15.-Nuptials of the great Quixote and
+the fair Sophia. Invasion from Dunkirk laid aside--367
+
+137. To the same, May 8.-Debate on the Pretender's
+Correspondence Bill--369
+
+138. To the same, May 29.-Movements of the army in Flanders.
+Illness of his father. Death of Pope. Mr. Henry Fox's private
+marriage with Lady Charlotte Lenox. Bishop Berkeley and
+tar-water--370
+
+139. To the same, June 11.-Successes of the French army in
+Flanders. State of the combined army. And of our sea-force--
+372
+
+140. To the same, June 18.-Return of Admiral Anson. Ball at
+Ranelagh. Purchase of Dr. Middleton's collection. Lord
+Orford's pension--373
+
+141. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 29.-Eton recollections.
+Lines out of a new poem. Opinion of the present great men.
+Ranelagh described--[N.] 375
+
+142. To Sir Horace Mann, June 29.-Cluster of good news. Our
+army joined by the dutch. Success of the King of Sardinia over
+the Spaniards. The Rhine passed by Prince Charles. Lines on
+the death of Pope. Epitaph on him by Rolli-- 377
+
+143. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 20.-Happiness at receiving
+a letter of confidence. Advice on the subject of an early
+attachment. Arguments for breaking off the acquaintance. Offer
+of the immediate use of his fortune--379
+
+144. To Sir Horace Mann, July 22.-Letter-writing one of the
+first duties. Difficulty of keeping up a correspondence after
+long absence. History writing. Carte and the City aldermen.
+Inscription on Lady Euston's picture. lady Carteret. Epigram
+on her--381
+
+145. To the same, Aug. 6.-Marquis de la Ch`etardie dismissed
+by the Empress of Russia. The Grifona. Lord Surrey's sonnets--
+383
+
+146. To the same, Aug. 16.-Preparations for a Journey to
+Houghton. Rule for conquering the passions. Country life. king
+of Prussia's address to the people of England. A dialogue on
+the battle of Dettingen--385
+
+147. To the same, Sept. 1.-Victory at Velletri. Illness of the
+King of France. Epigram on Bishop Berkeley's tar-water--387
+
+148. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 6.--388
+
+149. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 6.-Self-scolding. Neapolitan
+expedition--390
+
+150. To the same, Oct. 19.-Defeat of the King of Sardinia.
+loss of the ship Victory, with Sir John Balchen. Death of
+Sarah of Marlborough, the Countess Granville, and Lord
+Beauchamp. Marriage of Lord Lincoln. French King's dismissal
+of Madame de Chateauroux. Discretion of a Scotch soldier--391
+
+151. To the same, November 9.-Lord middleton's wedding. The
+Pomfrets. Lady Granville's At Home. Old Marlborough's will.
+Glover's Leonidas--393
+
+152. To the same, Nov. 26.-History of Lord Granville's
+resignation. Voila le monde! Decline of his father's health.
+Outcry against pantomimes. Drury Lane uproar. Bear-garden
+bruisers. Walpole turned popular orator--394
+
+153. To the same, Dec. 24.-Conduct of the King. Prostitution
+of patriots. List of ministerial changes. Mr. Pitt declines
+office. Opposition selling themselves for profit. The
+Pretender's son owned in France--397
+
+
+
+1745.
+
+154. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan, 4.-Complains of dearth of news.
+His ink at low water mark. Lord Sandwich's first-rate tie-wig.
+Lady Granville's assemblies. Marshal a prisoner at Hanover--
+399
+
+155. To the same, Jan. 14.-M. de Magnan's history. Prince
+Lobkowitz. Doings of the Granville faction. Anecdote of Lord
+Baltimore. Illness of Lord Orford. Mrs. Stephens's remedy. Sir
+Thomas Hanmer's Shakspeare. Absurd alteration therein--400
+
+156. To the same, Feb. 1.-Variety of politics. Lord Granville
+characterized. Progress of the coalition--402
+
+157. TO the same, Feb. 28.-Alarming illness of Lord Orford.
+Success of the coalition. situation of the Pelhams. Masquerade
+at the Venetian ambassadress's. Lady townshend's ball. Marshal
+Belleisle at Nottingham. matrimonials on the tapis--404
+
+158. To the same, march 29.-Death of Lord Orford. Inquiry into
+the miscarriage of the fleet in the action off Toulon.
+Matthews and Lestock. Instability of the ministry. Thomson's
+Tancred and Sigismunda. Glover's Leonidas. The Seasons.
+Alenside's Odes. Quarrel between the Duchesses of Queensberry
+and Richmond. Rage for conundrums--406
+
+159. To the same, April 15.-Reflections on his father's death.
+Compliments paid to his memory. Mediterranean miscarriages--
+410
+
+160. To the same, April 29.-Disadvantages of a distant
+correspondence. Death of Mr. Francis Chute, and of poor
+Patapan. Prospect of a battle in Flandders. Marshal Saxe--411
+
+161. To the same, May 11.-Battle of Fontenoy. Bravery of the
+Duke. Song, written after the news of the battle, by the
+Prince of Wales--412
+
+162. To George Montagu, Esq., May 18.-Condolence on the death
+of Mr. Montigu's brother at Fontenoy--415
+
+163. To Sir Horace Mann, May 24.-Popularity of the Duke of
+Cumberland. Lady Walpole. Story of Lord Bath's parsimony--415
+
+164. To George Montagu, Esq. may 25.-Family at Englefield
+Green. Sir Edward Walpole. Dr. Styan Thirlby--416
+
+165. To the Hon. H. S. conway, May 27.-Despairs of seeing his
+friend a perfect hero. the Why!--417
+
+166. To sir Horace Mann-Recommendatory, of Mr. Hobart,
+afterwards Lord Buckinghamshire--418
+
+167. to the same, June 24.-Expected arrival from Italy of the
+sister-Countess. Surrender of the citadel of tournai. Defeat
+of Charles Lorrain. Revolution of the Prince of Wales's court.
+Miss Neville. Lady Abergavenny--419
+
+168. to George Montagu, Esq. June 25.-Mistley, the seat of Mr.
+Rigby, described. Fashionable at Homes. Lady Brown's Sunday
+parties. Lady Archibald hamilton. Miss Granville. Jemmy
+Lumley's assembly--421
+
+169. To the Hon. H.S. Conway, July 1.-Tournai and Fontenoy.
+Gaming act--422
+
+170. To Sir Horace Mann, July 5.-Seizure of Ghent and Bruges
+by the French--424
+
+171. To the same, July 12.---425
+
+172. to George Montagu, Esq. July 13.-Success of the French in
+Flanders. Lord Baltimore. Mrs. Comyns--427
+
+173. To sir Horace Mann, July 15.--428
+
+174. To the same, July 26.-Projected invasion. Disgraces in
+Flanders--430
+
+175. To George Montagu, Esq. AUg. 1.-Portrait of M. de
+Grignon. Livys patavinity. marshal Belleisle in London. Duke
+of Newcastle described. Duches of Bolton's geographical
+resolution--431
+
+176. To sir Horace Mann, Aug. 7.-Rumours of an invasion.
+Proclamation for apprehending the Pretender's son--432
+
+177. To the Rev. Thomas Birch, Aug. 15.-Respecting a projected
+History of George the Second--434
+
+178. To Sir Horace Mann, Sept. 6.-Landing and progress of the
+young Pretender. His manifestoes--435
+
+179. To the same, Sept. 13.-Progress of the rebellion. The
+Duke of Newcastle's speech to the Regency--436
+
+179a. To George Montagu, Esq., Sept. 17.--
+(Transcriber's note: this letter appears in the text but was
+omitted from the printed table of contents--438
+
+180. To the same, Sept. 20.-Edinburgh taken by the rebelsOur
+strength at sea. Plan of raising regiments. Lady Orford's
+reception in England.--439
+
+181. To the same, Sept. 27.-Successes of Prince Charles in
+Scotland--441
+
+182. To the same, Oct. 4.-Operations against the rebels.
+Spirited conduct of the Archbishop of York--443
+
+183. To the same, Oct. 11.-Death of Lady Granville--445
+
+184. To the same, Oct. 21.-Excesses of the rebels at
+Edinburgh. Proceedings in Parliament--446
+
+185. To the same, Nov. 4.-State of the rebellion. Debates
+respecting the new raised regiments. Ministerial changes--447
+
+186. To the same, Nov. 15.-Disturbance about the new
+regiments. Advance of the rebels into England. Their desperate
+situation. Lord Clancarty--449
+
+187. To the same, Nov. 22.-The rebels advance to Penrith. The
+Mayor of Carlisle's heroic letter, and surrender of the town.
+Proceedings in Parliament--451
+
+188. To the same, Nov. 29.-,rhe sham Pretender. Lord
+Derwentwater taken. The rebels at Preston. Marshal Wade--453
+
+189. To the same, Dec. 9.-Conduct of the rebels at Derby.
+Black Friday. Preparations for a French invasion Rising spirit
+of the people--455
+
+190. To the same Dec. 20.-Flight of the rebels from Derby.
+Capture of the Martinico fleet. Debate on employing the
+Hessian troops.Marriage of the Duchess of Bridgewater and Dick
+Lyttelton. A good Irish letter--457
+
+
+
+1746.
+
+191. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 3.-Recapture of Carlisle.
+General Hawley. Preparations at Dunkirk. Ministerial
+movements--460
+
+192. To the same, Jan. 17.-The rebels fortifying themselves in
+Scotland. Hawley's executions. Anecdotes of him. The French
+invasion laid aside--461
+
+193. To the same, Jan. 28.-Battle of Falkirk--463
+
+194. To the same, Feb. 7.-Plight of the rebels. The new
+regiments. Confusion at court--464
+
+195. To the same, Feb. 14.-Insurrection in the closet. The
+Pelhams throw up the seals. Reconciliation and return to
+office. History--466
+
+196. To the same, March 6.-Reunion of the dispersed clans.
+Lord Lovat--469
+
+197. To the same, March 21.-The rebels take Fort Augustus. The
+Prince of Wales's new opposition--470
+
+198. To the same, March 28.-The rebels out of spirits. Lady
+Walpole. Peggy Banks. The opera. Shocking murder--471
+
+199. To the same, April 15.-The rebellion at its last gasp.
+Supplies from France taken. Hanoverian troops. Trial of
+Hawley. Marriage of Lord Kildare. An odd discovery. Strange
+event--473
+
+200. To the same, April 25.-Battle of Culloden. Escape of the
+young Pretender. Fireworks and illuminations. Death of Mr.
+Winnington--476
+
+201. To the same, May 16.-End of the rebellion. Old
+Tullybardine. Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Ogilvie
+prisoners. Antwerp taken--478
+
+202. To George Montagu, Esq. May 22.-Visit to Langley. The
+Sidney Papers. Sir Philip's defence of the Earl of Leicester--
+479
+
+203. To the same, June 6.-Character of the Prince of Hesse.
+Fame of the Violette--480
+
+204. To Sir Horace Mann, June 6.-Marriage of the Princess Mary
+to the Prince of Hesse--482
+
+205. To George Montagu, Esq. June 12.-Anecdotes of the Prince
+of Hesse. Lady Caroline Fitzroy. Dick Edgecumbe--483
+
+206. To the same, June 17.-Prospect of Peace. Death of
+Augustus Townshend--484
+
+207. To Sir Horace Mann, June 20.-Battle of Placentia. Old
+Tullybardine and Lord Cromartie in the Tower. Death of Jack
+Spenser--485
+
+208. To George Montagu, Esq. June 24.-Ministerial changes.
+Arrival of rebel prisoners. Jack Spenser's will. Lady
+Townshend's bon-mots. Anecdotes of Lords Bath and Sandys, and
+the Duke of Cumberland--486
+
+209. To the same, July 3.-Promotions and marriages--487
+
+210. To Sir Horace Mann, July 7.-Lord Lovat, and Murray, the
+Pretender's secretary,taken.--488
+
+211. To the same, Aug, 1.-Trials of the rebel Lords.
+Description of Lords Kilmarnock, Cromartie, and Balmerino.
+Intercessions in their behalf. Confessions of Murray--489
+
+212. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 2.-Trials of the rebel
+Lords. Anecdotes--494
+
+213. To the same, Aug. 5.-Discoveries of Murray. Lady
+Cromartie's petition. Anecdotes of the rebel lords. The Duke
+of Cumberland's ball--495
+
+214. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 11.-Lord Cromartie's pardon.
+Lady Caroline Fitzroy's marriage--497
+
+215. TO Sir Horace mann, Aug. 12.-Opera squabbles. The
+Violette. Lord Sandwich's embassy. Marriage of Lady Charlotte
+Fermor, and of the Princess Louisa to the King of Denmark.
+Wanderings of the young Pretender. Conduct of the rebel Lords.
+Story of Lord Balmerino--497
+
+216. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 16.-Anecdotes of the rebel
+Lords under sentence--500
+
+217. To Sir Horace Mann, Aug. 21.-Account of the execution of
+Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock--501
+
+218. To the same, Sept. 15.-Lady Orford and Mr. Shirley--504
+
+219. To the same, Oct. 2.-Arrival of Mr. Chute from Italy. Mr.
+Whithed described--506
+
+220. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 3.-Enclosing Gray's Ode on
+a distant Prospect of Eton College--507
+
+221. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 14.-Defeat of the allies in
+Flanders. Capitulation of Genoa. Acquittal of Cope. General
+Oglethorpe's sentence--508
+
+222. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 24.-Campaign in Scotland--
+509
+
+223. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 3.-His Epilogue to
+Tamerlane--510
+
+224. To Sir Horace Mann, Nov. 4.-Ministerial changes. Lord
+Chesterfield accepts the seals. Expedition to Quiberon.
+Admiral Matthews's court-martial--511
+
+225. To the same, Nov. 12--513
+
+226. To the same,, Dec. 5.-Marriages. Reformations in the
+army. Arrest of Orator henley. theatricals--514
+
+227. To Sir Horace Mann, Dec. 25.-Trial of Lord Lovat.
+Mr.Davis's copy of the Dominichino--515
+
+
+
+                                   1747.
+
+228. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 27.-The Prince's new Opposition-
+-517
+
+229. To the same, Feb. 23.-The Opera. Debates on places and
+pensions. Lord Kildare's marriage. Panciatici. Anecdotes of
+Lord Holderness and Lord Hervey--519
+
+
+230. to the same, March 20.-Lord Lovat's trial. Anecdotes--521
+
+231. To the same, April 10.-Account of Lord Lovat's execution.
+The Independents. Tottering state of the ministry. Civil war
+in the house of Finch--522
+
+232. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 16.-Mutability of fame
+and popularity. Lord Lovat's burial. Story of George Selwyn.
+Debate on the Heritable Jurisdictions Bill--525
+
+233. To Sir Horace Mann, May 5.-The new Stadtholder. Scotch
+Clanships Bill. Bill for allowing counsel to prisoners on
+impeachments for treason. Resignations. Holland House--526
+
+234. To the same, May 19.-Anson's victory. Death of Captain
+Grenville. Mr. Dayrolies--527
+
+235. To the same, June 5.-Sudden dissolution of Parliament.
+Rumoured ministerial changes. Purchase (of Strawberry Hill--
+528
+
+236. TO the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 8.-Description of
+Strawberry Hill. Dissolution of Parliament. Measures for
+carrying elections--530
+
+237. To Sir Horace Mann, June 26.-Election tumults. Sir Jacob
+Botiverie's peerage. The Duchess of Queensberry at court.
+Instance of English bizarrerie--531
+
+238. To George Montagu, Esq. July 2.-Ill success of the army
+in the Netherlands. Battle of Laffeldt. Gallant conduct of Mr.
+Conway. Naval captures--533
+
+239. To Sir Horace Mann, July 3.-Battle of Laffeldt. Capture
+of the Domingo fleet. Progress of the elections--534
+
+240. To the same, July 28.-Piedmontese victory over the
+French. Death of the Chevalier Belleisle--535
+
+241. To the same, Sept. 1.-Bergen-op-Zoom. Sir James Grey.
+Pantiatici--536
+
+242. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 1.-Cardinal Polignac's
+Anti-Lucretius. George Selwyn. Anecdotes--537
+
+243. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 2.-Capture of Bergen-op-Zoom.
+Character of Mr. Chute. Chit-chat. Anecdote of Lord Bath--537
+
+244. To the same, Nov. 10.-Admiral Hawke's victory. Meeting of
+the new Parliament. The musical clock--539
+
+245. To the same, Nov. 24.-Meditates a journey to Florence.
+Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Ministerial interference in the
+Seaford election. Mr. Potter. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's
+Eclogues--539
+
+
+
+                                   1748.
+
+246. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 12.-General dispositions for
+war. Diplomatic Changes. Lord and Lady Coke. Matrimonial
+fracas--541
+
+247. To the same, Jan. 26.-Mr. Legge's embassy to the King of
+Prussia. Mr. Villiers. Ministers triumphant in Parliament.
+Admiral Vernon's letters--542
+
+248. To the same, Feb. 16.-Resignation of Lord Chesterfield.
+Ministerial changes. Hitch in Mr. Legge's embassy. Discontents
+in the army. Public amusements. Comedy of the Foundling--544
+
+249. To Sir Horace Mann, March 11.-Prevalence of miliary
+fever. Death of the Marquis of Powis. Private theatricals.
+Attempt to damn the Foundling. Animosities in the House of
+Commons. Buckingham assizes. The Duchess of Queensberry's
+masquerade--545
+
+250. To the same, April 29.-Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
+Masquerade at the Hay market--547
+
+251. To George Montagu, Esq. May 18.-Lord Anson's voyage with
+Lady Elizabeth Yorke. His voyage. Anecdotes. Marshal Wade's
+house--549
+
+252. To the same, May 26.-Ranelagh. Anecdotes. Sir Thomas
+Bootle. Story of Prince Edward--550
+
+253. To the same, June 7.-The Duke of Newcastle's journey to
+Holland. Strawberry Hill," the old name of his house--551
+
+254. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 27.-His rural occupations.
+Lord Coke. Friendly advice from White's. F`ete at Vauxhall--
+(N.). 553
+
+255. To SirHorace Mann, July 14.@The Duke of Newcastle's
+travels. Anecdote--554
+
+256. To the same.-Bad state of Lord Orford's health.
+Reflections. Has finished his Aedes Walpolianae. Improvements
+at Strawberry Hill--555
+
+257. To George Montagu, Esq. July 25.-Account of a visit to
+Nugent. Family of the Aubrey de Versa, Earls of Oxford.
+Henningham Castle Gosfield--556
+
+258. To the same, Aug. 11.-Anecdotes of the House of Vere.
+Kitty Clive. Garrick and Lee. Visit to Esher. Claremont House.
+Mrs. Pritchard--558
+
+259. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 29.-His progress in
+planting. Anticipations of future discoveries--561
+
+260. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 3.-Bonmot of the duke of
+Cumberland. "The new light." Whitfield and the Methodists.
+Smell of thieves. Story of Handsome Tracy. Gray, the worst
+company in the world--563
+
+261. To Sir Horace Mann, Sept. 12-Death of Bishop Gibson--565
+
+262. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 25.-Disinterested
+friendship. passage in Chillingworth. The Duchess of Ireland's
+Hennins, or piked horns--566
+
+263. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 4.-Meeting of Parliament.
+Preparations for proclaiming the peace. Lady Cadogan--567
+
+264. TO George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 20--568
+
+265. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 24.-Adventure of Milord Richard
+Onslow. Character of lord Walpole. Unpopularity, of the peace.
+Death of old Tom Walker--569
+
+266. To the same, Dec. 2.-The King's return. Prospects of a
+stormy session. League Of the tories with the Prince's party.
+Bon-mots of Mr. Chute. The Opera. Pertici. Lord Marchmont and
+Hume Campbell. Treason at Oxford--570
+
+267. To the same, Dec. 11.-Imprisonment of the young Pretender
+at Vincennes. Death of the proud Duke of Somerset; his will.
+Bon-mot of John Stanhope. hogarth at Calais--571
+
+268. To the same, Dec. 26.-Improvements at Strawberry Hill.
+Diplomatic movements. Old Somerset's will. Trial of the
+Vice-Chancellor of Oxford.Story of sir William Burdett--574
+
+
+
+
+                                 PREFACE.
+
+
+
+The letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, as hitherto
+published, have consisted of,-
+
+1. The letters contained in the quarto edition of his works,
+published in the year 1798.
+
+2. His letters to George Montagu, Esq. from 1738 to 1770,
+which formed one quarto volume, published in 1818.
+
+3. His letters to the Rev.  William Cole and others, from 1745
+to 1782, published in the same form and year.
+
+4. His letters to the Earl of Hertford, during his lordship's
+embassy to Paris, and also to the Rev.  Henry Zouch, which
+appeared in quarto, in 1825.
+
+And 5. His letters to Sir Horace Mann, British Envoy at the Court
+of Tuscany, from 1741 to 1760, first published in 1833, in three
+volumes octavo, from the originals in the possession of the Earl
+of Waldegrave; edited by Lord Dover, with an original memoir of
+the author.
+
+To the above are now added several hundred letters, which have
+hitherto existed Only in manuscript, or made their appearance
+singly and incidentally in other works.  In this new
+collection, besides the letters to Miss Berry, are some to the
+Hon.  H. S. Conway, and John Chute, Esq. omitted In former
+editions; and many to Lady Suffolk, his brother-in-law,
+Charles Churchill, Esq., Captain Jephson, Sir David Dalrymple,
+Lord Hailes, the Earl of Buchan, the Earl of Charlemont, Mr.
+Gibbon, Mr. Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, George Hardinge,
+Esq., Mr. Pinkerton, and other distinguished characters.  The
+letters to the Rev. William Cole have been carefully examined
+with the originals, and many explanatory notes added, from the
+manuscript collections of that indefatigable antiquary,
+deposited in the British museum.
+
+Besides being the only complete edition ever published of the
+incomparable letters of this "prince of epistolary writers,"
+as he has been designated by an eminent critic, the present
+work possesses the further advantage of exhibiting the letters
+themselves in chronological order.  Thus the whole series
+forms a lively and most interesting commentary on the events
+of the age, as well as a record of the most important
+transactions, invaluable to the historian and politician, from
+1735 to 1797-a period of more than sixty years.
+
+To Lord Dover's description of these letters (1) little need
+be added.  Of Horace Walpole it is not too much to say, that
+he knew more of the Courts of George I., George II., and
+George III., during the early years of the last monarch, than
+any other individual; and, though he lived to an extreme age,
+the perpetual youthfulness of his disposition rendered him as
+lively a chronicler when advanced in life, as when his
+brilliant career commenced.  It is to this unceasing spring,
+this unfading juvenility of spirit, that the world is indebted
+for the gay colours with which Walpole invests every thing he
+touches.  If the irresistible court beauties-the Gunnings, the
+Lepels, and others-have been compelled, after their hundred
+conquests, to yield to the ungallant liberties of Time, and to
+Death, the rude destroyer, it is a delight to us to know that
+their charms are destined to bloom for ever in the sparkling
+graces of the patrician letter-writer.  In his epistles are to
+be seen, even in more vivid tints than those of Watteau, these
+splendid creatures in all the pride of their beauty and of
+their wardrobe, pluming themselves as if they never could grow
+old, and casting around them their piercing glances and no
+less poignant raillery.  But Horace Walpole is not content
+with thus displaying his dazzling bevy of heroines; he reveals
+them in their less ostentatious moments, and makes us as
+familiar with their weaknesses as with the despotic power of
+their beauty.  Nothing that transpired in the great world
+escaped his knowledge, nor the trenchant sallies of his wit,
+rendered the more cutting by his unrivalled talent as a
+raconteur.  Whatever he observed found its way into his
+letters, and thus is formed a more perfect narrative of the
+Curt-of its intrigues, political and otherwise-of the
+manoeuvres of statesmen, the cabals of party, and of private
+society among the illustrious and the fashionable of the last
+century, at home and on the continent-than can elsewhere be
+obtained.  And how piquant are his disclosures!  how much of
+actual truth do they contain! how perfectly, in his
+anecdotes, are to be traced the hidden and often trivial
+sources of some of the most important public events!  "Sir
+Joshua Reynolds," say the Edinburgh reviewers, "used to
+observe, that, though nobody would for a moment compare Claude
+to Raphael, there would be another Raphael before there was
+another Claude; and we own, that we expect to see fresh Humes
+and fresh Burkes, before we again fall in with that peculiar
+combination of moral and intellectual qualities to which the
+writings of Horace Walpole owe their extraordinary
+popularity."
+
+As a suitable introduction, prefixed to the whole collection
+of letters, are the author's admirable "Reminiscences of the
+Courts of George the First and Second," which were first
+narrated to, and, in 1788, written for the amusement of Miss
+Mary and Miss Agnes Berry.  To the former of these ladies the
+public is indebted for a curious commentary on the
+Reminiscences, contained in extracts from the letters of Sarah
+Duchess of Marlborough, to the Earl of Stair, now first
+published from the original manuscripts.  Of the Reminiscences
+themselves it has been truly observed, that, both in manner
+and matter, they are the very perfection of anecdote writing,
+and make us better acquainted with the manners of George the
+First and Second and their Courts, than we should be after
+perusing a hundred heavy historians.
+
+Of the most valuable of all Walpole's correspondence-his
+letters to Sir Horace Mann-the history will appear in the
+following Preface to that work, from the pen of the lamented
+editor, the late Lord Dover:-
+
+"In the Preface to the 'Memoires of the last Ten Years of the
+Reign of George II. by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford,'
+published in the year 1822, is the following statement:-
+
+"'Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death
+of Lord Orford, was the following memorandum, wrapped in an
+envelope, on which was written, Not to be opened till after my
+will."
+
+"'In my library at Strawberry Hill are two wainscot chests or
+boxes, the larger marked with an A, the lesser with a B:-
+I desire, that as soon as I am dead, my executor and executrix
+will cord up strongly, and sell the larger box, marked A, and
+deliver it to the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour, to be kept
+by him unopened and unsealed till the eldest son of Lady
+Waldegrave, or whichever of her sons, being Earl of
+Waldegrave, shall attain the age of twenty-five years; when
+the said chest, with whatever it contains, shall be delivered
+to him for his own.  And I beg that the Honourable Hugh Conway
+Seymour, when be shall receive the said chest, will give a
+promise in writing, signed by him, to Lady Waldegrave, that he
+or his representatives will deliver the said chest, unopened
+and unsealed, by my executor and executrix, to the first son
+of Lady Waldegrave who shall attain the age of' twenty-five
+years.  The key of the said chest is in one of the cupboards
+of the green closet, within the blue breakfast room, at
+Strawberry Hill; and that key, I desire, may be delivered to
+Laura, Lady Waldegrave, to be kept by her till her son shall
+receive the chest.'
+"'March 21st, 1790.'"
+
+(Signed) HON. HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD.'
+Aug. 19, 1796.'
+
+"In obedience to these directions, the box described in the
+preceding memorandum was corded an(] sealed with the seals of
+the Honourable Mrs. Damer and the late Lord Frederick
+Campbell, the executrix and executor of Lord Orford, and by
+them delivered to the late Lord Hugh Seymour, by whose
+representatives it was given up, unopened and unsealed, to the
+present Earl of Waldegrave, when he attained the age of
+twenty-five.  On examining the box, it was found to contain a
+number of manuscript volumes and other papers, among which
+were the Memoires now published.' "
+
+"The correspondence of Horace Walpole with Sir Horace Mann,
+now first published, was also contained in the same box.  It
+appears that Walpole, after the death of Sir Horace, became
+again the possessor of his own letters.  He had them copied
+very carefully in three volumes, and annotated them with short
+notes, explanatory of the persons mentioned in them, with an
+evident view to their eventual publication.
+ "It is from these volumes that the present publication is
+taken.  The notes of the author have also been printed
+verbatim.  As, however, in the period of time which has
+elapsed since Walpole's death, many of the personages
+mentioned in the letters, whom he appears to have thought
+sufficiently conspicuous not to need remark, have become
+almost forgotten, the Editor has deemed it necessary to add,
+as shortly as possible, some account of them; and he has taken
+care, whenever he has done so, to distinguish his notes from
+those of the original author, by the letter D. placed at the
+end of them.
+
+"This correspondence is perhaps the most interesting one of
+Walpole's that has as yet appeared; as, in addition to his
+usual merit as a letter-writer, and the advantage of great
+ease, which his extreme intimacy with Sir Horace Mann gives to
+his style, the letters to him are the most uninterrupted
+series which has thus far been offered to the public.  They
+are also the only letters of Walpole which give an account of
+that very curious period when his father, Sir Robert Walpole,
+left office.  In his letters hitherto published, there is a
+great gap at this epoch; probably in consequence of his other
+correspondents being at the time either in or near London.  A
+Single letter to Mr. Conway, dated 'london, 1741,'-one to Mr.
+West, dated 'May 4th, 1742,'-(none in 1743,) and one to Mr.
+Conway, dated 'Houghton: Oct. 6th, 1744,' are all that appear
+till 'may 18th, 1745,' when his letters to George Montagu
+recommence, after an interval of eight years.  Whereas, in the
+correspondence now published, there are no less than one
+hundred and seventeen letters during that interval.
+
+The letters of Walpole to Sir Horace Mann have also another
+advantage over those of the same author previously published,
+namely, that Sir Horace's constant absence from home, and the
+distance of his residence from the British Islands, made every
+occurrence that happened acceptable to him as news.  It)
+consequence, his correspondent relates to him every thing that
+takes place, both in the court and in society,-whether the
+anecdotes are of a public or private nature,-hence the
+collection of' letters to him becomes a most exact chronicle
+of the events of the day, and elucidates very amusingly both
+the manners of the time, and the characters of the persons
+then alive.  In the sketches, however, of character, which
+Walpole has thus left us, we must always remember that, though
+a very quick and accurate observer, he was a man of many
+prejudices; and that, above all, his hostility was unvarying
+and unbounded with regard to any of his contemporaries, who
+had been adverse to the person or administration of Sir Robert
+Walpole.  This, though an amiable feeling, occasionally
+carries him too far in his invectives, and renders him unjust
+in his judgments.
+
+"The answers of Sir Horace Mann are also preserved at
+Strawberry Hill: they are very voluminous, but particularly
+devoid of interest, as they are written in a dry heavy style,
+and consist almost entirely of trifling details of forgotten
+Florentine society, mixed with small portions of Italian
+political news of the day, which are even still less amusing
+than the former topic.  They have, however, been found useful
+to refer to occasionally, in order to explain allusions in the
+letters of Walpole.
+
+"Sir Horace Mann was a contemporary and early friend of Horace
+Walpole. (2) He was the second son of Robert Mann, of Linton,
+in the county of Kent, Esq.  He was appointed in 1740 minister
+plenipotentiary from England to the court of Florence-a post
+he continued to occupy for the long period of forty-six years,
+till his death, at an advanced age, November 6, 1786.  In 1755
+he was created a baronet, with remainder to the issue of his
+brother Galfridus Mann, and, in the reign of George the Third,
+a knight of the Bath.  It will be observed that Walpole calls
+his correspondent Mr. Mann, whereas the title-pages of' these
+volumes, and all the notes which have been added by the editor
+designate him as Sir Horace Mann.  This latter appellation is
+undoubtedly, in the greater part of the correspondence, an
+anachronism, as Sir Horace Mann was not made a baronet till
+the year 1755; but, as he is best known to the world under
+that designation, it was considered better to allow him the
+title, by courtesy, throughout the work.
+
+"As the following letters turn much upon the politics of the
+day, and as the ignoble and unstable Governments which
+followed that of Sir Robert Walpole are now somewhat
+forgotten, it may not be unacceptable to the reader to be
+furnished with a slight sketch of the political changes which
+took place from the year 1742 to the death of George the
+Second.
+
+"At the general election of 1741, immense efforts were made by
+the Opposition to the Walpole administration to strengthen
+their phalanx-great sums were spent by their leaders in
+elections, and an union was at length effected between the
+Opposition or 'Patriots,' headed by Pulteney, and the Tories
+or Jacobites, who had hitherto, though opposed to Walpole,
+never acted cordially with the former.
+
+"Sir Robert, upon the meeting of Parliament, exerted himself
+with almost more than his usual vigour and talent, to resist
+this formidable band of opponents; but the chances were
+against him.  The timidity of his friends, and, if we may
+believe Horace Walpole, the treachery of some of his
+colleagues, and finally the majority in the House of Commons
+against him, compelled him at length to resign; which he did
+in the beginning of February, 1742.  Upon this step being
+taken, and perhaps even before it, the Duke of Newcastle and
+Lord Hardwicke, the two most influential members of Sir Robert
+Walpole's cabinet, entered into communication with Mr.
+Pulteney and Lord Carteret, the leaders of the regular
+Opposition, with a view of forming a government, to the
+exclusion of the Tories and Jacobites, and even of part of Mr.
+Pulteney's own party.  The negotiation was successful; but it
+was so at the expense of the popularity, reputation, and
+influence of Pulteney, who never recovered the disgrace of
+thus deserting his former associates.
+
+"In consequence of these intrigues, the King agreed to send
+for Lord Wilmington, and to place him at the head of the
+ministry.  It is remarkable that this man, who was a mere
+cipher, should have been again had recourse to, after his
+failure in making a government at the very commencement of
+the reign of George the Second, when his manifest incapacity,
+and the influence of Queen Caroline, had occasioned the
+remaining of his opponent Sir Robert Walpole in power.  With
+Lord Wilmington came in Lord Harrington, as president of the
+council; Lord Gower, as privy seal; Lord Winchilsea, as first
+lord of the admiralty; Lord Carteret as secretary of state;
+the other secretary being the Duke of Newcastle, who had been
+so under Walpole; Lord Hardwicke continued chancellor; and
+Samuel Sandys was made chancellor of the exchequer.  Several
+of the creatures of Pulteney obtained minor offices: but he
+himself, hampered by his abandonment of many of his former
+friends, took no place; but Only obtained a promise of an
+earldom, whenever he might wish for it.
+
+"These arrangements produced, as was natural, a great schism
+in the different parties, which broke out at a meeting at the
+Fountain Tavern, on the 12th of February, where the Duke of
+Argyll declared himself in opposition to the new government,
+upon the ground of the unjust exclusion of the Tories.  The
+Duke of Argyll subsequently relented, and kissed hands for the
+master-generalship of the ordnance, upon the understanding,
+that Sir John Hinde Cotton, a notorious Jacobite, was to have
+a place.  This the King refused; upon which the Duke finally
+subsided into Opposition.  Lord Stair had the ordnance, and
+Lord Cobham was made a field-marshal and commander of the
+forces in England.  This latter event happened at the end of
+the session of 1742, when Lord Gower and Lord Bathurst, and
+one or two other Jacobites, were promoted.  It was at this
+period (July, 1742), that the King, by the advice of Sir
+Robert Walpole, who saw that such a step would complete the
+degradation Of Pulteney, insisted upon his taking out the
+patent for his earldom and quitting the House of Commons;
+which he did with the greatest unwillingness.
+
+"On the death of Lord Wilmington, in July 1743, Mr.  Pelham
+was made first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the
+exchequer (from which office Sandys was dismissed), by the
+advice of Sir Robert Walpole, and instead of Lord Bath, who
+now found that his adversary had really turned the key upon
+him, (3) and that the door of the cabinet was never to be
+unlocked to him.  The ministry was at this time, besides its
+natural feebleness, rent by internal dissensions; for Lord
+Carteret, who, as secretary of state, had accompanied the King
+abroad in 1743, had acquired great influence over his royal
+master,-and trusting to this, and to the superiority of his
+talents over his colleagues, his insolence to them became
+unbounded.  The timid and time-serving Pelhams were quite
+ready to humble themselves before him; but Lord Carteret was
+not content with this: he was not content, unless he showed
+them, and made them feel, all the contempt he entertained for
+them.  In addition to these difficulties, Lord Gower resigned
+the privy-seal in December 1743, upon the plea that no more
+Tories were taken into office; but probably more from
+perceiving that the administration could not go on.  Lord
+Cobham also resigned, and went again into opposition.
+
+"Finally, in November 1744, the greater part of the cabinet
+having previously made their arrangements with the Opposition)
+joined in a remonstrance to the King against Lord Carteret,
+and offered, if he was not dismissed, their own resignations.
+After some resistance, the King, again by the advice of Lord
+Orford, yielded.  Lord Carteret and his adherents, and those
+of Lord Bath, were dismissed, and a mixed government of Whigs
+and Tories was formed.  Mr. Pelham continued first minister;
+the Duke of Dorset was made president of the council; Lord
+Gower again took the privy-seal, which had been held for a few
+months by Lord Cholmondeley; the Duke of Bedford became first
+lord of' the admiralty; Lord Harrincton secretary of state;
+Lord Chesterfield, Lord Sandwich, George Grenville,
+Doddington, and Lyttelton, and Sir John Hinde Cotton, Sir John
+Philipps, and some other Tories, had places.  But though the
+King had dismissed Lord Carteret (now become Earl of
+Granville) from his councils, he had not from his confidence.
+He treated his new ministers with coldness and incivility, and
+consulted Lord Granville secretly upon all important points.
+
+"At length, in the midst of the Rebellion, in August 1746, the
+ministry went to the King, and gave him the option of taking
+Pitt into office, which he had previously refused, or
+receiving their resignations.  After again endeavouring in
+vain to form an administration through the means of Lord
+Granville and Lord Bath, the King was obliged to consent to
+the demands of his ministers-and here may be said to commence
+the leaden rule of the Pelhams, which continued to influence
+the councils of this country, more or less, for so many years.
+Pitt took the inferior, but lucrative office of paymaster; and
+from this time no material change took place till the death of
+Mr. Pelham, in March 1754, unless we except the admission of
+Lord Granville to the cabinet in 1751, as president of the
+council; an office which he contrived, with an interested
+prudence very unlike his former conduct, to retain during all
+succeeding ministries-and the getting rid of the Duke of
+Bedford and Lord Sandwich, of whom the Pelhams had become
+jealous.
+
+The death of Pelham called into evidence the latent divisions
+and hatreds of public Men, who had been hitherto acting in
+concert.  Fox and Pitt were obviously the two persons, upon
+one of whom the power of Pelham must eventually fall.  But the
+intriguing Duke of Newcastle hated, and was jealous of both.
+He, therefore, placed Sir Thomas Robinson in the House of
+Commons, as secretary of state and leader, and made Henry
+Bilson Legge chancellor of the exchequer, while he himself
+took the treasury-leaving Fox (4) and Pitt in the subordinate
+situations they had hitherto held.  The incapacity of Sir
+Thomas Robinson became, however, soon so apparent, that a
+change was inevitable.  This was hastened by a temporary
+coalition between Fox and Pitt, which was occasioned,
+naturally enough, by the ill-treatment they had both received
+from the Duke of Newcastle.
+
+"At length the latter reluctantly consented to admit Fox into
+the cabinet, in 1755.  Upon this, Pitt again broke with Fox,
+and went with his friends into opposition, with the exception
+of Sir George Lyttelton, who became chancellor of the
+exchequer.  The new government, however, lasted but one
+session of parliament-its own dissensions, the talents of its
+opponents, and the dissatisfaction of the King, who had been
+thwarted in his German subsidiary treaties, aiding in its
+downfall.
+
+"The Duke of Devonshire, who had been very active in the
+previous political negotiations, was now commissioned, in
+1756, by the King to form a government.  The Duke of Newcastle
+and Fox were turned out, and Pitt became lord of the
+ascendant.  But the King's aversion to his new ministers was
+even greater than it had been to his old; and in February
+1757, he commissioned Lord Waldegrave to endeavour to form a
+government, with the assistance of Newcastle and Fox.  In this
+undertaking he failed, very mainly through the irresolutions
+and jealousies of Newcastle.  Thus circumstanced, the King,
+however unwillingly, was obliged to deliver himself up into
+the hands of Pitt, Who (in June, 1757) succeeded in forming
+that administration, which was destined to be one of the most
+glorious ones England has ever seen.  He placed himself at the
+head of it, holding the situation of secretary of state and
+leader of the House of Commons, leaving the Duke of Newcastle
+at the head of the treasury, and placing Legge again in the
+exchequer.  This administration lasted till the reign of the
+succeeding sovereign."
+
+To his edition of the Letters to Sir Horace Mann, Lord Dover
+appended illustrative notes, which are retained in the
+present.  Of the manner in which his lordship executed the
+office of editor and annotator, the Edinburgh Review thus
+speaks, in a brilliant article on those Letters, which
+appeared in the number of that work for January 1834:-"The
+editing of these volumes was the last of the useful and modest
+services rendered to literature by a nobleman of amiable
+manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of
+cultivated mind.  On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover
+performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the
+slightest ostentation.  He had two merits, both of which are
+rarely found together in a commentator: he was content to be
+merely a commentator,-to keep in the background, and to leave
+the foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to
+illustrate.  yet, though willing to be an attendant, he was by
+no means a slave; nor did he consider it as part of his
+editorial duty to see no faults in the writer to whom he
+faithfully and assiduously rendered the humblest literary
+offices."
+
+It remains only to add, that the original notes of Horace
+Walpole are throughout retained, undistinguished by any
+signature; whereas, those of the various editors are
+indicated by a characteristic initial, which is explained in
+the progress of the work.
+
+January, 1840.
+(1) Sketch of the Life, etc.
+
+(2) The coincidence of remarkable names in the two families of
+Mann and Walpole, would lead one to imagine that there was
+also some connection of relationship between them-and yet none
+is to be traced in the pedigree of either family.  Sir Robert
+Walpole had two brothers named Horace and Galfridus-and Sir
+Horace Mann's next brother was named Galfridus Mann.  If such
+a relationship did exist, it probably came through the
+Burwells, the family of Sir Robert Walpole's mother.
+(3) "Sir Robert Walpole's expression, when he found that
+Pulteney had consented to be made Earl of Bath."
+
+(4) "Fox was secretary at war."
+
+
+
+
+                                          ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+To the first edition of Lord Orford's works, which was
+published the year after he died, no memoir of his life was
+prefixed: his death                     was too recent, his
+life and character was too well known, his works
+     too popular, to require it.  His political Memoirs, and
+the collections of his Letters which have been subsequently
+published, were edited by persons, who, though well qualified
+for their task in every other respect, have failed in their
+account of his private life, and their
+appreciation of his individual character, from the want of a
+personal acquaintance with their author.
+
+The life contained in Sir Walter Scott's Biographical Sketches
+of the English Novelists labours under the same disadvantages.
+He had never seen Lord Orford, nor even lived with such of his
+intimates and contemporaries in society as survived him.
+
+Lord Dover, who has so admirably edited the first part of his
+correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, knew Lord Orford only by
+having been carried sometimes, when a boy, by his father Lord
+Clifden to Strawberry Hill.  His editorial labours with these
+letters were the last occupation of his accomplished mind, and
+were pursued while his body was fast sinking under the
+complication of disease, which so soon after deprived Society
+Of One Of its most distinguished members, the arts of an
+enlightened patron, and his intimates of an amiable and
+attaching friend.  Of the meagreness and insufficiency of his
+memoir of Lord Orford's life prefixed to the letters, he was
+himself aware, and expressed to the author of these pages his
+inability then to improve it, and his regret that
+circumstances had deprived him, while it was yet time, of the
+assistance of those who could have furnished him with better
+materials.  His account of the latter part of Lord Orford's
+life is deficient in details, and sometimes erroneous as to
+dates.  He appears likewise to have been unacquainted with
+some of his writings, and the circumstances which led to and
+accompanied them.  In the present publication those
+deficiencies are supplied from notes, in the hands of the
+writer, left by Lord Orford, of the dates of the principal
+events of his own life, and of the writing and publication of
+all his works.  It is only to be regretted that his
+autobiography is so short, and so entirely confined to dates.
+In estimating the character of Lord Orford, and in the opinion
+which he gives of his talents, Lord Dover has evinced much
+candour and good taste.  He praises with discrimination, and
+draws no unfair inferences from the peculiarities of a
+character with which he was not personally acquainted.
+
+It is by the Review of the Letters to Sir Horace Mann, that
+the severest condemnation has been passed and the most unjust
+impressions given, not only of the genius and talents, but of
+the heart and character, of Lord Orford.  The mistaken
+opinions of the eloquent and accomplished author (5) of that
+review are to be traced chiefly to the same causes which
+defeated the intentions of the two first biographers.  In his
+case, these causes were increased, not only by no acquaintance
+with his subject, but by still farther removal from the
+fashions, the social habits, the little minute details, of the
+age to which Horace Walpole belongs,-an age so essentially
+different from the business, the movement, the important
+struggles, of that which claims the critic as one of its most
+distinguished ornaments.  A conviction that these reasons led
+to his having drawn up, from the supposed evidence of
+Walpole's works alone, a character of their  author so
+entirely and offensively unlike the original, has forced the
+pen into the feeble and failing hand of the writer of these
+pages,-has imposed the pious duty of attempting to rescue, by
+incontrovertible facts, acquired in long intimacy, the memory
+of an old and beloved friend, from the giant grasp of an
+author and a critic from whose judgment, when deliberately
+formed, few can hope to appeal with success.  The candour, the
+good-nature of this critic,-the inexhaustible stores of his
+literary acquirements, which place him in the first rank of
+those most distinguished for historical knowledge and critical
+acumen,-will allow him, I feel sure, to forgive this appeal
+from his hasty and general opinion, to the judgment of his
+better informed mind, on the peculiarities of' a character
+often remarkably dissimilar from that of his works.
+
+Lord Dover has justly and forcibly remarked, "that what did
+the most honour both to the head and the' heart of Horace
+Walpole, was the friendship which he bore to Marshal Conway; a
+man who, according to all the accounts of him that have come
+down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a decree of
+affection." (6)
+He then quotes the character given of him by the editor of
+Lord Orford's works in 1798.  This character of Marshal Conway
+was a portrait drawn from the life, and, as it proceeded from
+the same pen which now traces these lines, has some right to
+be inserted here.  "It is only those who have had the
+opportunity of penetrating into the most secret motives of his
+public conduct, and into the inmost recesses of his private
+life, who can do real justice to the unsullied purity of his
+character;-who saw and knew him in the evening of his days,
+retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and of a
+statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private -life; happy in
+the resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of
+useful science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by
+pensions or places-undistinguished by titles or
+ribbons-unsophisticated by public life, and unwearied by
+retirement."
+
+To this man, Lord Orford's attachment, from their boyish days
+at Eton school to the death of Marshal Conway in 1795, is
+already a circumstance of sufficiently rare occurrence among
+men of the world.  Could such a man, of whom the foregoing
+lines are an unvarnished sketch-of whose character, simplicity
+was one of the distinguished ornaments-could such a man have
+endured the intimacy of such an individual as the reviewer
+describes Lord Orford to have been?  Could an intercourse of
+uninterrupted friendship and undiminished confidence have
+existed between them during a period of nearly sixty
+             years, undisturbed by the business and bustle of
+middle life, so apt to cool, and often to terminate, youthful
+friendships? Could such an intercourse ever have existed, with
+the supposed selfish indifference, and artificial coldness and
+conceit of Lord Orford's character?
+
+The last correspondence included in the present publication
+will, it is presumed, furnish no less convincing proof, that
+the warmth of his feelings, and his capacity for sincere
+affection, continued unenfeebled by age.  It is with this
+view, and this alone, that the correspondence alluded to is
+now, for the first time, given to the public.  It can add
+nothing to the already established epistolary fame of Lord
+Orford, and the public can be as little interested in his
+sentiments for the two individuals addressed.  But, in forming
+a just estimate of his character, the reader will hardly fail
+to observe that those sentiments were entertained at a time of
+life when, for the most part, the heart is too little capable
+of expansion to open to new attachments.  The whole tone of
+these letters must prove the unimpaired warmth of his
+feelings, and form a striking contrast to the cold harshness
+of which he has                         been accused, in his
+intercourse with Madame du Deffand, at an earlier period of
+his life.  This harshness, as was noticed by the editor of
+Madame du Deffand's letters, in the preface to that
+publication, proceeded solely from a dread of ridicule, which
+formed a principal feature of Mr. Walpole's character, and
+which, carried, as in his case, to excess, must be called a
+principal weakness.  "This accounts for the ungracious
+language in which he so often replies to the importunities of
+her anxious affection; a language so foreign to his heart, and
+so contrary to his own habits in friendship." (7)
+
+Is this, then, the man who is supposed to be "the most
+eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most
+capricious of mortals?  -his mind a bundle of inconsistent
+whims and affectations-his features covered with mask within
+mask, which, when the outer disguise of obvious affectation
+was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the
+real man."-"Affectation is the essence of the man.  It pervades
+all his thoughts and all his expressions.  If it were taken
+away, nothing would be left." (8)
+
+He affected nothing; he played no part; he was what he
+appeared to be.  Aware that he was ill qualified for politics,
+for public life, for parliamentary business, or indeed for
+business of any sort, the whole tenor of his life was
+consistent with this opinion of himself.  Had he attempted to
+effect what belongs only to characters of another stamp -had
+he endeavoured to take a lead in the House of Commons-had he
+sought for place, dignity, or office-had he aimed at intrigue,
+or attempted to be a tool for others-then, indeed, he might
+have deserved the appellation of artificial, eccentric, and
+capricious.
+
+>From the retreat of his father, which happened the year after
+he entered parliament, the only real interest he took in
+politics was when their events happened immediately to concern
+the objects of his private friendships.  He occupied himself
+with what really amused him.  If he had affected any thing, it
+would certainly not have been a taste for the trifling
+occupations with which he is reproached.  Of no person can it
+be less truly said, that "affectation was the essence of the
+man."  What man, or even what woman, ever affected to be the
+frivolous being he is described?  When his critic says, that
+he had "the soul of a gentleman-usher," he was little aware
+that he only repeated what Lord Orford often said of
+himself-that from his knowledge of old ceremonials and
+etiquettes, he was sure that in a former state of existence,
+he must have been a gentleman-usher,-about the time of
+Elizabeth.
+
+In politics, he was what he professed to be, a Whig, in the
+sense which that denomination bore in his younger days,-never
+a Republican.
+
+In his old and enfeebled age, the horrors of the first French
+revolution made him a Tory; while he always lamented, as one
+of the worst effects of its excesses, that they must
+necessarily retard to a distant period the progress and
+establishment of civil liberty.  But why are we to believe his
+contempt for crowned heads should have prevented his writing a
+memoir of "Royal and Noble Authors?"  Their literary labours,
+when all brought together by himself, would not, it is
+believed, tend much to raise, or much to alter his opinion of
+them.
+
+In his letters from Paris, written in the years 1765, 1766,
+1767 and 1771, it will be seen, that so far from being
+infinitely more occupied with "the fashions and gossip of
+Versailles and Marli than with a great moral revolution which
+was taking place in his sight," he was truly aware of the
+state of the public mind, and foresaw all that was coming on.
+
+Of Rousseau he has proved that he knew more, and that he
+judged him more accurately, than Mr. Hume, and many others who
+were then duped by his mad pride and disturbed understanding.
+
+Voltaire had convicted himself of the basest of vain lies in
+the intercourse he sought with Mr. Walpole.  The details of
+this transaction, and the letters which passed at the time,
+are already printed in the quarto edition of his works.     In
+the short notes of his life left by himself, and from which
+all the dates in this notice are taken, it is thus mentioned:
+
+"Although Voltaire, with whom I had never had the least
+acquaintance, had voluntarily written to me first, and asked
+for my book, he wrote a letter to the Duchesse de Choiseul, in
+which, without saying                              a syllable
+of his having written to me first, he told her I had
+officiously   sent him my works, and declared war with him in
+defence  'de ce bouffon de Shakspeare,' whom in his reply to
+me he pretended so much to admire.  The Duchesse sent me
+Voltaire's letter; which gave me such a contempt for his
+disingenuity, that I dropped all correspondence with him."
+
+When he spoke with contempt of d'Alembert, it was not of his
+abilities; of which he never pretended to judge.  Professor
+Saunderson had long before, when he was a lad at Cambridge,
+assured him, that it would be robbing him to pretend teaching
+him mathematics, of which his mind was perfectly incapable, so
+that any comparison of the intellectual powers of the two men"
+would indeed be as "exquisitely ridiculous" as the critic
+declares it.  But lord Orford, speaking of d'Alembert,
+complains of the overweening importance which he, and all the
+men of letters of those days in France, attributed to their
+squabbles and disputes.  The idleness to which an absolute
+government necessarily condemns  nine-tenths of its subjects,
+sufficiently accounts for the exaggerated importance given to
+and assumed by the French writers, even before they had
+become, in the language of the Reviewer, "the interpreters
+between England and mankind:" he asserts, "that all the great
+discoveries in physics, in metaphysics, in political science,
+are ours but no foreign nation, except France, has received
+them from us by direct communication: isolated in our
+situation, isolated by our manners, we found truth, but did
+not impart it." (9)  It may surely be asked, whether France
+will subscribe to this assertion of superiority, in the whole
+range of science!  If she does, her character has undergone an
+even greater change, than any she has yet experienced in the
+course of all her revolutions.
+
+lord Orford is believed by his critic to have "sneered" at
+every body. sneering was not his way of showing dislike.  He
+had very strong prejudices, sometimes adopted on very
+insufficient grounds, and he therefore often made great
+mistakes in the appreciation of character; but when influenced
+by such impressions, he always expressed his opinions
+directly, and often too violently.
+
+The affections of his heart were bestowed on few; for in early
+life they had never been cultivated, but they were singularly
+warm, pure, and constant; characterized not by the ardour of
+passion, but by the constant preoccupation of real affection.
+He had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attached, early
+in life; and with his father, a man of coarse feelings and
+boisterous manners, he had few sentiments in common.  Always
+feeble in constitution, he was unequal to the sports of the
+field, and to the drinking which then accompanied them, so
+that during his father's retreat at Houghton, however much he
+respected his abilities and was devoted to his fame, he had
+little sympathy in his tastes, or pleasure in his society.  To
+the friends of his own selection his devotion was not confined
+to professions or words: on all occasions of difficulty, of
+whatever nature, his active affection came forward in defence
+of their character, or assistance in their affairs.
+
+When his friend Conway, as second in command under Sir John
+Mordaunt, in the expedition to St. Maloes, partook in some
+degree of the public censure called forth by the failure of
+these repeated ill-judged attempts on the coasts of France,
+Walpole's pen was immediately employed in rebutting the
+accusations of the popular pamphlet of the day on this
+subject, And establishing his friend's exemption from any
+responsibility in the failure.  When, on a more important
+occasion, Mr. Conway was not only dismissed from being Equerry
+to the King, George III., but from the command of his
+regiment, for his constitutional conduct and votes in the
+House of Commons, in the memorable affair of the legality of
+General Warrants for the seizure of persons and papers,
+Walpole immediately stepped forward, not with cold
+commendations of his friend's upright and spirited conduct,
+but with all the confidence Of long-tried affection, and all
+the security of noble minds incapable of misunderstanding each
+other, he insisted on being allowed to share in future his
+fortune with his friend, and thus more than repair the
+pecuniary loss he had incurred.  Mr. Conway, in a letter to
+his brother, Lord Hertford, of this period, says "Horace
+Walpole has on this occasion shown that warmth of friendship
+that you know him capable of so, strongly, that I want words
+to express my sense of it;" (10) thus proving the justice he
+did to Walpole's sentiments and intentions.
+
+In the case of General Conway's near relationship and intimacy
+from childhood, the cause in which his fortunes were suffering
+might have warmed a colder heart, and opened a closer hand,
+than Mr. Walpole's: but Madame du Deffand was a recent
+acquaintance, who had no claim on him, but the pleasure he
+received from her society, and his desire that her blind and
+helpless old age might not be deprived of any of the comforts
+and alleviations of which it was capable.  When by the
+financial arrangements of the French government, under the
+unscrupulous administration of the Abb`e Terray, the creditors
+of the state were considerably reduced in income, Mr. Walpole,
+in the most earnest manner, begged to prevent the
+unpleasantness of his old friend's exposing her necessities,
+and imploring aid from the minister of the day, by allowing
+him to make up the deficit in her revenue, as a loan, Or in
+any manner that would be most satisfactory to her.  The loss,
+after all, did not fall on that stock from which she derived
+her income, and the assistance was not accepted; but Madame du
+Deffand's confidence in, and opinion of, the offer, we see in
+her letters.
+
+During his after life, although no ostentatious contributor to
+public charities and schemes of improvement, the friends in
+whose opinion he knew he could confide, had always more
+difficulty to repress than to excite his liberality.
+
+That he should have wished his friend Conway to be employed as
+commander on military expeditions, which, as a soldier fond of
+his profession, he naturally coveted, although Mr. Walpole
+might disapprove of the policy of the minister in sending out
+such expeditions, surely implies neither disguise, nor
+contradiction in his opinions.
+
+The dread which the reviewer supposes him to have had, lest he
+should lose caste as a gentleman, by ranking as a wit and an
+author, he was much too     fine a gentleman to have believed
+in the possibility of feeling.  He knew he had never studied
+since he left college; he knew that he was not at all a
+learned man: but the reputation he had acquired by his wit and
+by his writings, not only among fine gentlemen, but with
+society in general, made him nothing loath to cultivate every
+opportunity of increasing it.  The account he gave of the
+idleness of his life to Sir Horace Mann, when he disclaims the
+title of "the learned gentleman," was literally true; and it
+is not easy to imagine any reason why a man at the age of
+forty-three, who admits that he is idle, and who renounces
+being either a learned man or a politician, should be
+"ashamed" of playing loo in good company till two or three
+o'clock in the morning, if he neither ruins himself nor
+others. (11)  He wrote his letters as rapidly as his disabled
+fingers would allow him to form the characters of a remarkably
+legible hand.  No rough draughts or sketches of familiar
+letters were found amongst his papers at Strawberry Hill: but
+he was in the habit of putting down on the backs of letters or
+on slips of paper, a note of facts, of news, of witticisms, or
+of any thing he wished not to forget, for the amusement of his
+correspondents.
+
+After reading "The Mysterious Mother," who will accede to the
+opinion, that his works are "destitute of every charm that is
+derived from elevation, or from tenderness of sentiment?" (12)
+
+But, with opinions as to the genius, the taste, or the talents
+of Lord Orford, this little notice has nothing to do.  It aims
+solely at rescuing his individual character from
+misconceptions.  Of the means necessary for this purpose, its
+writer, by the "painful preeminence" of age, remains the sole
+depositary, and being so, has submitted to the task of
+repelling such misconceptions.  It is done with the reluctance
+which must always be experienced in differing from, or calling
+in question, the opinions of a person, for whom is felt all
+the admiration and respect due to super-eminent abilities, and
+all the grateful pride and affectionate regard inspired by
+personal friendship.
+
+M. B.                         October 1840.
+
+(5) T. Babbington Macaulay.
+
+(6) Sketch of the Life of Horace Walpole, by Lord Dover.  See
+vol. i.
+
+(7) See Preface to Madame du Deffand's Letters, p. xi.; and
+vol. ii. of this collection.
+
+(8) See Edinburgh Review, vol. lviii. p. 233.
+
+(9) Edinburgh Review, vol, lviii. p. 233.
+
+(10) See vol. iii.
+
+(11) See Edinburgh Review, vol. lviii. p. 232.
+
+(12) Ibid.,  p. 237.
+
+
+
+
+                           Second Advertisement
+
+
+THE last volume will be found to contain upwards of one hundred
+letters, introduced into no former edition of the Correspondence
+of Horace Walpole.  The greater part of them were written between
+the years 1789 and 1797, and were addressed to the Miss Berrys,
+during their residence in Italy.  They embrace most of the
+leading events of the first five years of the French Revolution;
+and wherever the facts detailed in the letters have appeared to
+require elucidation or confirmation, the Editor has generally had
+recourse to M. Thiers's useful "History" of that great event;
+which has recently appeared in an English dress, accompanied with
+notes and illustrations, drawn from the most authentic sources.
+
+While the last volume was at press, the Editor was favoured with
+a letter from the Right Honourable Sir Charles Grey, relative to
+the share which he considers Mr. Walpole to have had in the
+composition and publication of the Letters of Junius.
+
+Albany Street, Regent's Park,
+October 28, 1840.
+
+
+
+             TO THE EDITOR OF THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE,
+                             EARL OF ORFORD.
+
+
+
+Sir,
+
+1. Before your last volume is published, I am desirous of stating
+to you some of the considerations which, more than seventeen
+years ago, led me to the belief I still entertain, that Walpole
+had a principal share in the composition and publication of the
+Letters of Junius: though I think it likely that Mason, or some
+other friend corrected the style, and gave precision and force to
+the most striking passages.
+
+2. It was in 1823, whilst I was residing in India, that Lord
+Holland's edition of Walpole's Memoires of the Last Ten Years of
+the Reign of George the Second suggested to me this notion; and
+it was shortly afterwards communicated to several of my friends.
+The edition of Junius which I had with me, was that of Mr.
+Woodfall the younger, in three volumes; and I am not at present
+by any means satisfied that all the letters which the editor
+assigns to Junius were written by him: but in this hasty notice I
+must proceed upon the supposition that they were.
+
+3. It will be remembered that the Memoires were composed by
+Walpole in secrecy, and that he left them in a sealed box, which,
+by his will, was forbidden to be opened till many years after his
+death.  The letters from which the corresponding passages are
+given below are all published as Letters of Junius by Mr.
+Woodfall, and are of dates later than the time when Walpole wrote
+his Memoires; but half a century earlier than the time when they
+were printed.
+
+Note by the transcriber: there follows a table, in which letters
+of Junius are presented for comparisons side by side with
+writings
+of Walpole.  I have changed the format to present them in
+sequence.  Return to text.
+
+Junius:
+I own, my lord, that yours is not an uncommon character.  Women,
+and men like women, are timid, vindictive, and irresolute.
+Woodfall's Junius, vol. ii, p. 168.
+
+Walpole:
+As it is observed that timorous natures like those of women are
+generally cruel, Lord mansfield might easily slide into rigour,
+etc.-Walpole's Memoires, vol. ii. p. 175.
+
+Junius:
+Without openly supporting the person, you (Lord Mansfield) have
+done essential service to the cause; and consoled yourself for
+the loss of a favourite family by reviving and establishing the
+maxims of their government.-vol. ii, p. 182.
+
+Walpole:
+The occasions of the times had called him (Lord Mansfield) off
+from principles that favoured an arbitrary king-he still leaned
+towards an arbitrary government.-vol. ii. p. 266.
+
+Junius:
+You (Lord Mansfield) would fain be thought to take no share in
+government, while in reality you are the mainspring of the
+machine.-vol. ii. p. 179.
+
+Walpole:
+Pitt liked the dignity of despotism; Lord Mansfield the
+reality.-Vol. ii. p. 274.
+
+Junius:
+You secretly engross the power, while you decline the title of
+minister.-vol. ii. p.179.
+
+Walpole:
+He was timid himself, and always waving what he was always
+courting.-Vol. ii. p. 336.
+
+Junius:
+In council he generally affects to take a moderate part.-vol. ii.
+p. 354.
+At present there is something oracular in the delivery of my
+opinion.  I speak from a recess which no human curiosity can
+penetrate.-vol. i. p. 314.
+
+Walpole:
+The conduct was artful, new and grand: secluded from all eyes,
+his (Lord Chatham's) orders were received as oracles.-vol. ii. p.
+347.
+
+Junius:
+Our enemies treat us as the cunning trader does the unskilful
+Indian.  they magnify their generosity when they give us baubles
+of no proportionate value for ivory and gold.-vol. ii. p. 359.
+
+Walpole:
+They made a legal purchase to all eternity of empires and
+posterity, from a parcel of naked savages, for a handful of glass
+beads and baubles.-Vol. i. p. 343.
+
+Junius:
+If you deny him the cup, there will be no keeping him within the
+pale of the ministry.-vol. ii. p. 249.
+
+Walpole:
+Where I believe the clergy do not deny the laity the cup.-Letter
+to Montague.
+He took care to regulate his patron's warmth within the pale of
+his own advantage.-Memoires, vol. ii. p. 197.
+Come over to the pale of loyalty.-vol. i. p. 282.
+
+Junius:
+Honour and justice must not be renounced although a thousand
+modes of right and wrong were to occupy the degrees of morality
+between Zeno and Epicurus.  The fundamental principles of
+Christianity may still be preserved.-vol. ii. p. 346.
+
+Walpole:
+The modes of Christianity were exhausted.-Vol. ii. p. 282
+To mark how much the modes of thinking change, and that
+fundamentals themselves can make no impression.-vol. ii. p. 265.
+
+Junius:
+He (the duke of Bedfor) would not have betrayed such ignorance or
+such contempt of the constitution as openly to avow in a court of
+judicature the purchase and sale of a borough.
+Note.- In an answer in chancery in a suit against him to recover
+a large sum paid him by a person whom he had undertaken to return
+to parliament for one of his Grace's boroughs.  He was compelled
+to repay the money.-vol. i. p. 576.
+
+Walpole:
+Corruption prevailed in the House of Commons.  Instances had been
+brought to our courts of judicature how much it prevailed in our
+elections.
+Note.-The Duke of Bedford had received 1500 pounds for electing
+Jefrery French at one of his boroughs in the west; but he dying
+immediately, his heir sued the Duke for the money, who paid it,
+rather than let the cause be heard.
+
+Junius:
+The Princess Dowager made it her first care to inspire her son
+with horror against heresy, and with a respect for the church.
+His mother took more pains to form his beliefs than either his
+morals or his understanding.-vol. iii. p. 408.
+
+Walpole:
+>From the death of the Prince the object of the Princess Dowager
+had been the government of her son; and her attention had
+answered.  She had taught him great devotion, and she had taken
+care that he should be taught nothing else.-Vol. i. p. 396.
+
+Junius:
+That prince had strong natural parts, and used frequently to
+blush for his own ignorance and want of education, which had been
+wilfully neglected by his mother and her minion.
+
+Walpole:
+Martin spoke for the clause, and said, "The King could not have a
+separate interest from his people, the Princess might; witness
+Queen Isabella and her minion Mortimer."-Vol. i. p. 118.
+
+Transcriber's note: the following paragraph is surrounded by
+asterisks.  it appears to be a comment by the letter writer, sir
+charles Grey, rather than either Junius or Walpole.
+
+Our great Edward, too, at an early period, had sense enough to
+understand the nature of the connexion between his abandoned
+mother and the detested Mortimer.
+
+Junius:
+when it was proposed to settle the present King's household as
+Prince of Wales, it is well known that the Earl of Bute was
+forced into it in direct contradiction to the late King's
+inclination. vol. ii. .-
+
+Walpole:
+Fox had an audience.  The monarch was sour, but endeavoured to
+keep his temper, yet made no concessions; no request to the
+retiring minister to stay.  At last he let slip the true cause of
+his indignation: "You," said he, "have made me make that puppy
+Bute groom of the
+stole."-Vol. ii. p. 92.
+
+Though too long to be cited in these hurried notes, there are
+several other passages in which the coincidence of sentiment and
+expression and of the order in which the thoughts and arguments
+are ranged, is very remarkable: and the difficulty of accounting
+otherwise for such coincidences between the Letters of Junius and
+the unpublished and secret Memoires of Walpole, first made me
+suspect that the two names might belong to one and the same
+person-Horace Walpole the younger.
+
+4. Being led by this conjecture to examine the other works of
+Walpole, I found, in them also, many echoes, as it were, of the
+voice of Junius, which it is singular should not have been more
+observed.  No One, I think, can collate the concluding portion of
+Walpole's letter to Lord Bute, of February 15, 1762, and the
+latter part of the eulogium of Junius on Lord Chatham, without
+being struck by the similarity of manner and tone; and by the
+identity of that feeling, which, in both cases, prompts the
+writer, whilst he is elaborating compliments, to defend himself
+jealously against all suspicion of flattery or interested
+motives.
+
+Transcriber's note: there follows a comparison of material from
+Junius and Walpole, set out in parallel columns.  I have changed
+these to a sequential arrangement.
+
+Junius:
+I did not intend to make a public declaration of the respect I
+bear Lord Chatham.  I well knew what unworthy conclusions would
+be drawn from it.  But I am called upon to deliver my opinion,
+and surely it is not in the little censure of Mr. Home to deter
+me from doing signal justice to a man who, I confess, has grown
+upon my esteem.  As for the common, sordid views of avarice, or
+any purpose of vulgar ambition, I question whether the applause
+of Junius would be of service to Lord Chatham.  My vote will
+hardly recommend him to an increase of his pension, or to a seat
+in the Cabinet.  But if his ambition be upon a level with his
+understanding; if he judges of what is truly honourable for
+himself with the same superior genius which animates and directs
+him to eloquence in debate, to wisdom in decision, even the pen
+of Junius shall contribute to reward him.  Recorded honour shall
+gather round his monument, and thicken over him.  It is a solid
+fabric, and will support the laurels that adorn it.  I am not
+conversant in the language of panegyric.  These praises are
+extorted from me; but they will wear well, for they have been
+dearly earned.-Vol. ii. p. 310.
+
+WALPOLE.
+I did not purpose to tempt again the patience of mankind.  But
+the case is very different with regard to my trouble.  My whole
+fortune is from the bounty of the Crown and from the public: it
+would ill become me to spare any pains for the King's glory, or
+for the honour and satisfaction of my country; and give me leave
+to add, my lord, it would be an ungrateful return for the
+distinction with which your lordship has condescended to honour
+me if I withheld such trifling aid as mine, when it might in the
+least tend to adorn your lordship's administration.  From me, my
+lord, permit me to say these are not words of course, or of
+compliment, this is not the language of flattery: your lordship
+knows I have no views; perhaps knows that, insignificant as it
+is, my praise is never detached from my esteem: and when you have
+raised, as I trust you will, real monuments of glory, the most
+contemptible characters in the inscription dedicated by your
+country, may not be the testimony of, my lord, your lordship's
+most obedient humble servant.-Letters, vol. iii.
+
+I have neither time nor space for going much farther into this
+part of the subject; but there is one circumstance which, in its
+application to the supposition that Francis was Junius, is too
+remarkable to be passed over.  Sir Philip Francis supplied Mr.
+Almon with reports of two speeches of Lord Chatham, in one of
+which there is this passage, "The Americans had Purchased their
+liberty at a dear rate, since they had quitted their native
+country and gone in search of freedom to a desert."  Junius,
+about three weeks before, had said, "They left their native land
+in search of freedom, and found it in a desert;" and it has been
+inferred from this, that the words in the speech were not Lord
+Chatham's, but the reporter's, and that Sir Philip Francis was
+Junius.  But it happens that Walpole, in his Royal and Noble
+Authors, some years earlier than either the letter of Junius or
+the speech of Lord Chatham, had said of Lord Brooke, that he was
+on the point "Of seeking liberty in the forests of America."
+
+5. If we turn from a recollection of the words to a consideration
+of the peculiarities of the style of Junius, I think it will be
+agreed that the most remarkable of all is that species of irony
+which consists in equivocal compliment.  Walpole also excelled in
+this; and prided himself upon doing so.  Are we not justified in
+saying, that of all who, in the eighteenth century, cast their
+thoughts on public occurrences into the form of letters, Junius
+and Walpole are the most distinguished! that the works of no
+other prose writer of their time exhibit a zest for political
+satire equal to that which is displayed in the Letters of Junius,
+and in the Memoires and Political Letters of Walpole  and that
+the sarcasm of equivocal praise was the favourite weapon in the
+armoury of each, though it certainly appears to have been
+tempered, and sharpened, and polished with additional care for
+the hand of Junius?  When did Francis ever deal in compliment or
+in equivoque?  In his vituperation there was always more of fury
+than of malice: but Junius and Walpole were cruel.  Madame du
+Deffand says to the latter, "Votre plume est de fer tremp`e dans
+de fiel."  I have sometimes thought that clever old woman either
+knew or suspected him to be Junius.  She uses in one place the
+unusual expression, "Votre `ecrit de Junius:" and if Walpole was
+Junius, some of the most carefully composed letters in 1769 and
+1771 were written in Paris ; where, indeed, it would seem that
+Junius, whoever he was, collected the materials for the
+accusation with which he threatened the Duke of Bedford, and
+which he evidently knew to be untrue.
+
+6. It has sometimes been said, that the Letters of Junius must
+have been written by a lawyer, and they were at one time
+attributed even to Mr. Dunning.  The mistakes which I am about to
+notice, trifling as they may be, make it impossible that any
+lawyer should have been the author; and it appears to me that not
+only is there a considerable resemblance in those mistakes which
+I adduce of Walpole's, but that the affectation in both of
+employing legal terms with which they were not familiar, and of
+which they did not distinctly apprehend the meaning, is very
+remarkable.  Junius thought De Lolme's Essay deep," (13) and
+talks of property which "savours of the reality:" (14) he
+misapplies that trite expression of the courts, bona fide: (15)
+misunderstands mortmain, (16) and supposes that an inquisitio
+post mortem was an inquiry how the deceased came by his death.
+(17)  Walpole talks of "the purparty of a wife's lands;" of
+"tenures against which, of all others, quo warrantos are sure to
+take place;" (18) of the days of soccage," which he supposes to
+be obsolete; and of a fera naturae.
+
+Transcriber's note: Again there are a few passages from Junius
+and Walpole compared in parallel columns, which I present below
+in sequence.
+
+Junius:
+You say the facts on which you reason are universally admitted: a
+gratis dictum which I flatly deny.-vol. ii. p. 143.
+
+Walpole:
+This circumstance is alleged against them as an incident
+contrived to gain belief, as if they had been in danger of their
+lives.  The argument is gratis dictum.-Works, vol. ii. p. 568.
+
+
+Junius:
+They are the trustees, not the owners of the estate.  the fee
+simple is in us.- vol.-vol. i. p. 345.
+
+Walpole:
+Do you think we shall purchase the fee simple of him for so many
+years?-Letters, vol. ii.
+
+7. Walpole's time of life, his station in society, means of
+information, and habits of writing much, and anonymously, and in
+concealment, all tally with the supposition of his being Junius.
+So do his places of residence, when that part of the subject is
+carefully examined.
+
+8. It is an odd circumstance that Walpole, who makes remarks on
+every thing, makes no remark on Junius.  If he ever expressed an
+opinion of him in his letters to any of his numerous
+correspondents, those letters have been suppressed.  There are
+fewer letters of his in the years during which Junius was
+writing, than in any others.
+
+9. Walpole's quarrel with the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, and
+The party whom he calls "the Bedford court," and Junius "the
+Bloomsbury gang," would account for the rancour of the letters of
+the latter to the Duke.
+
+
+10. Walpole's dislike and opinion of the Duke of Grafton, which
+is nowhere more remarkably expressed than in a letter published
+for the first time in your third volume, coupled with his
+friendship for the first Duchess of Grafton, fall in with the
+attacks of Junius on the Duke.
+
+11. The Memoires of Walpole show an enmity to Lord Mansfield
+almost equal to that of Junius.
+
+12. Turning from these to a person in a different station, we
+find, on the part of Walpole, (and, by-the-by, of Mason too,) a
+sort of spite against Dr. Johnson; and in the works of Walpole,
+selected by himself for publication after his death,' there is a
+high-wrought criticism and condemnation of the style of Johnson,
+which I cannot help believing to have been conceived in revenge
+of the well-known handling of Junius in Johnson's pamphlet on the
+Falkland Islands.  "Let not injudicious admiration mistake the
+venom of the shift for the vigour of the bow," is said by Johnson
+of Junius: and Walpole says of Johnson, that "he destroys more
+enemies by the weight of his shield, than with the point of his
+spear."
+
+13. There is a host of small facts which might be adduced in
+support of what I have advanced.  Any one who has leisure to
+examine the voluminous works of Walpole, and who can lend his
+mind to the inquiry, will find them crowd upon him.  Let me
+mention one well known occurrence.
+
+Junius says, in the postscript of a private note to Mr. Woodfall,
+Beware of David Garrick.  He was sent to pump you, and went
+directly to Richmond to tell the King I should write no more." He
+then directed Woodfall to send the following note to Garrick, but
+not in the handwriting of Junius:-"I am very exactly informed of
+your impertinent inquiries, and of the information you so busily
+sent to Richmond, and with what triumph and exultation it was
+received.  I knew every particular of it the next day.  Now, mark
+me, vagabond!  Keep to your pantomimes, or be assured you shall
+hear of it.  Meddle no more, thou busy informer! It is in my
+power to make you curse the hour in which you dared to interfere
+with Junius." (19)
+
+Mr. Woodfall remarks on this, that Garrick had received a letter
+from Woodfall, (the editor of the newspaper in which the letters
+of Junius first appeared,) before the above-note of Junius was
+sent to the printer, in which Garrick was told, in confidence,
+that there were some doubts whether Junius would continue to
+write much longer.  Garrick flew with the intelligence to Mr.
+Remus, one of the pages to the King, who immediately conveyed it
+to his Majesty, at that time residing at Richmond; and from the
+peculiar sources of information that were open to this
+extraordinary writer, Junius was apprised of the whole
+transaction on the ensuing morning, and wrote the above
+postscript, and the letter that follows it, in consequence.  Now
+all that appears to Mr. Woodfall the younger. to be so wonderful
+in these circumstances is very easily explained, if we suppose
+Walpole to have been Junius.  Strawberry Hill is very near
+Richmond Park, and Walpole had many acquaintances amongst those
+who were about the King; whilst his friend, Mrs. Clive, the
+actress, who lived in the adjoining house to his own, and her
+brother, Mr. Raftor, who frequently visited her, both belonged to
+Garrick's company.
+
+But I have extended this letter too far.  My purpose was merely
+to invite your attention to a subject of some literary interest,
+which you have peculiar opportunities of examining; and to enable
+you, if you should think fit, to draw to it the attention of the
+public also.  I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, CHAS. EDW. GREY.
+20.
+Albemarle Street, October 24, 1840.
+
+(13) Woodfall's Junius, vol. i. p. 385.
+
+(14) Ibid. p. 312.
+
+(15) Ibid. p. 311.
+
+(16) Ibid., vol. ii. p. 131.
+
+(17) Ibid.,vol. i. p. 454.
+
+(18) Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 361.
+
+(19) Junius, Vol. i. P. 228.
+
+
+
+
+           SKETCH OF THE LIFE of HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD:
+                            BY LORD DOVER. (20)
+
+
+Any one who attempts to become a biographer of Horace Walpole
+must labour under the disadvantage of following a greater master
+in the art; namely, Sir Walter Scott, whose lively and agreeable
+account of this Author, contained in his "Lives of the
+Novelists," is well known and deservedly admired.  As, however,
+the greater part of Walter Scott's pages is devoted to a very
+able criticism of the only work of fiction produced by Walpole,
+"The Castle of Otranto," it has been thought, that a more general
+sketch of his life and writings might not prove unacceptable to
+the reader.
+
+Horace Walpole was the third and youngest son (21) of that
+eminent minister, Sir Robert Walpole-the glory of the Whigs, the
+preserver of the throne of these realms to the present Royal
+Family, and under whose fostering rule and guidance the country
+flourished in peace for more than twenty years.  The elder
+brothers of Horace were, Robert, Lord Walpole, so created in
+1723, who succeeded his father in the Earldom of Orford in 1745,
+and died in 1751; and Sir Edward Walpole, Knight of the Bath,
+whose three natural daughters were, Mrs. Keppel, wife to the
+Honourable Frederick Keppel, Bishop of Exeter; the Countess of
+Waldegrave, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester; and the Countess of
+Dysart.  Sir Edward Walpole died in 1784.  His sisters were,
+Catherine, who died of consumption at the age of nineteen; and
+Mary, married to George, Viscount Malpas, afterwards third Earl
+of Cholmondeley: she died in 1732.  The mother of Horace, and of
+his brothers and sisters here mentioned, was Catherine Shorter,
+daughter of John Shorter, Esq. of Bybrook, in Kent, and grand-
+daughter of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London in 1688. (22)
+She died in 1736; and her youngest son, who always professed the
+greatest veneration for her memory, erected a monument to her in
+Westminster Abbey, in one of the side aisles of Henry the
+Seventh's Chapel.  Horace Walpole had also a half-sister, the
+natural daughter of his father, by his mistress, Maria Skerrett,
+whom he afterwards married.  She also was named Mary Walpole, and
+married Colonel Charles Churchill, the natural son of General
+Churchill; who was himself a natural son of an older brother of
+the great Duke of Marlborough.
+
+Horace Walpole was born October 5th, 1717 (23) and educated a
+Eton School, and at King's College, Cambridge.  Upon leaving the
+latter place, he set out on his travels on the Continent, in
+company with Gray the poet, with whom he had formed a friendship
+at school.  They commenced their journey in March 1739, and
+continued abroad above two years.  Almost the whole of this time
+was spent in Italy, and nearly a year of it was devoted to
+Florence; where Walpole was detained by the society of his
+friends, Mr. Mann, Mr. Chute, and Mr. Whithed.  It was in these
+classic scenes, that his love of art, and taste for elegant and
+antiquarian literature, became more developed; and that it took
+such complete possession of him as to occupy the whole of his
+later life, diversified only by the occasional amusement of
+politics, or the distractions of society. Unfortunately, the
+friendship of Walpole and his travelling companion could not
+survive two years of constant intercourse: they quarrelled and
+parted at Reggio, in July 1741, and afterwards pursued their way
+homewards by different routes. (24)
+
+Walpole arrived in England in September 1741, at which time his
+correspondence with Sir Horace Mann commences.  He had been
+chosen member for Callington, in the parliament which was elected
+in June of that year, and arrived in the House of Commons just in
+time to witness the angry discussions which preceded and
+accompanied the downfall of his father's administration.  He
+plunged at once into the excitement of political partisanship
+with all the ardour of youth, and all the zeal which his filial
+affection for his father inspired.  His feelings at this period
+are best explained by a reference to his letters in the following
+collection.  Public business and attendance upon the House of
+Commons, apart from the interest attached to peculiar questions,
+he seems never to have liked.  He consequently took very little
+part either in debates or committees.  In March 1742, on a motion
+being made for an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole
+for the preceding ten years, he delivered his maiden speech; (25)
+on which he was complimented by no less a judge of oratory than
+Pitt.  This speech he has preserved in his letter to Sir Horace
+Mann, of March 24th, 1742.  He moved the Address in 1751; and in
+1756 made a speech on the question of employing Swiss regiments
+in the colonies.  This speech he has also himself preserved in
+the second volume of his "Memoires."  In 1757 he was active in
+his endeavours to save the unfortunate Admiral Byng.  Of his
+conduct upon this occasion he has left a detailed account of his
+"Memoires."  This concludes all that can be collected of his
+public life, and at the general election of 1768 (26) he finally
+retired from parliament.
+
+Upon this occasion he writes thus to George Montagu,-" As my
+senatorial dignity is gone, I shall not put you to the expense of
+a cover; and I hope the advertisement will not be taxed, as I
+seal it to the paper.  In short, I retain so much iniquity from
+the last infamous parliament, that, you see, I would still cheat
+the public.  The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here,
+instead of being at Lynn, in the high fever of a contested
+election, which, at best, Would end in my being carried about
+that large town, like a figure of a pope at a bonfires is very
+great.  I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall
+repent my resolution.  What could I see but sons and grandsons
+playing over the same knaveries that I have seen their fathers
+and grandfather's act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord
+Chatham's?  Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Towns@ends?
+Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings?"
+(27)
+
+>From this time Walpole devoted himself more than ever to his
+literary and antiquarian pursuits; though the interest he still,
+in society at least, took in politics, is obvious, from the
+frequent reference to the subject in his letters.
+
+In the course of his life, his political opinions appear to have
+undergone a great change.  In his youth, and indeed till his old
+age, he was not only a strenuous Whig, but, at times, almost a
+Republican.  How strong his opinions were in this sense may be
+gathered, both from the frequent confessions of his political
+faith, which occur in his letters, and from his reverence for the
+death-warrant of Charles the First, of which he hung up the
+engraving in his bed-room, and wrote upon it with his own hand
+the words "Major Charta."  The horrors of the French Revolution
+drove him, in the latter period of his life, into other views of
+politics; and he seems to have become, in theory at least, a
+Tory, though he probably would have indignantly repudiated the
+appellation, had it been applied to him.
+
+Even during the earlier part of his career, his politics had
+varied a good deal (as, indeed, in a long life, whose do not?);
+but, in his case, the cause of variation was a most amiable one.
+His devoted attachment to Marshal Conway, which led him, when
+that distinguished man was turned out of his command of a
+regiment, and of his place at court, in 1764, (28) to offer, with
+much earnestness, to divide his fortune with him caused him also
+to look with a favourable eye upon the government of the day,
+whenever Mr. Conway was employed, and to follow him implicitly in
+his votes in the House of Commons.  Upon this subject he writes
+thus to Conway, who had not told him beforehand of a speech he
+made on the Qualification Bill, in consequence of which Walpole
+was absent from the House of Commons upon that occasion--"I don't
+suspect you of any reserve to me; I only mention it now for an
+occasion Of telling YOU, that I don't like to have any body think
+that I would not do whatever you do.  I am of no consequence;
+but, at least, it would give me some to act invariably with you,
+and that I shall most certainly be ever ready to do." (29)  Upon
+another occasion he writes again in a similar strain:-"My only
+reason for writing is, to repeat to you, that whatever you do, I
+shall act with you.  I resent any thing done to you as to myself.
+My fortunes shall never be separated from yours, except that,
+some day or other, I hope yours will be great, and I am content
+with mine." (30)
+
+Upon one political point Horace Walpole appears to have
+entertained from the first the most just views, and even at a
+time when such were not sanctioned by the general opinion of the
+nation.  From its very commencement, he objected to that
+disastrous contest the American war, which, commenced in ignorant
+and presumptuous folly, was prolonged to gratify the wicked
+obstinacy of individuals, and ended, as Walpole had foretold it
+would, in the discomfiture of its authors, and the national
+disgrace and degradation, after a profuse and useless waste of
+blood and treasure.  Nor must his sentiments upon the Slave Trade
+be forgotten-sentiments which he held, too, in an age when, far
+different from the present one, the Assiento Treaty, and other
+horrors of the same kind, were deemed, not only justifiable, but
+praiseworthy.  "We have been sitting," he writes, on the 25th of
+February 1750, "this fortnight on the African Company.  We, the
+British Senate, that temple of Liberty, and bulwark of Protestant
+Christianity, have, this fortnight, been considering methods to
+make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes.  It
+has appeared to us, that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches
+are sold every year to our plantations alone! It chills one's
+blood-I would not have to say I voted for it, for the continent
+of America!  The destruction of the miserable inhabitants by the
+Spaniards was but a momentary misfortune that flowed from the
+discovery of the New World, compared to this lasting havoc which
+it brought upon Africa.  We reproach Spain, and yet do not even
+pretend the nonsense of butchering the poor creatures for the
+good of their souls." (31)
+
+One of the most favourite pursuits of Walpole was the building
+and decoration of his Gothic villa of Strawberry Hill.  It is
+situated at the end of the village of Twickenham, towards
+Teddington, on a slope, which gives it a fine view of the reach
+of the Thames and the opposite wooded hill of Richmond Park.  He
+bought it in 1747, of Mrs. Chenevix, the proprietress of a
+celebrated toy-shop.  He thus describes it in a letter of that
+year to Mr. Conway.  "You perceive by my date that I am got into
+a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor.  It is a little
+plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is
+the prettiest bauble you ever saw.  It is set in enamelled
+meadows, with filigree hedges:-
+
+'A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd,
+And little finches wave their wings of gold.'
+
+Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me
+continually with coaches and chaises; barges, as solemn as barons
+of the exchequer, move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham
+Walks bound my prospects; but, thank God! the Thames is between
+me and the Duchess of Queensberry. (32) Dowagers, as plenty as
+flounders, inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is just now
+skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight." (33)
+
+He commenced almost immediately adding to the house, and
+Gothicizing it, assisted by the taste and designs of his friend
+Mr. Bentley; till, in the end, the cottage of Mrs. Chenevix had
+increased into the castellated residence we now behold.  He also
+filled it with collections of various sorts-books, prints,
+pictures, portraits, enamels, and miniatures, antiquities, and
+curiosities of all kinds.  Among these miscellaneous hoards are
+to be found some fine works of art, and many things most valuable
+in an historical and antiquarian point of view.  For these
+various expenses he drew upon his annual income, which arose from
+three patent places conferred on him by his father, of which the
+designations were, Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the
+Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats.  As early as the year 1744,
+these sinecures produced to him, according to his own account,
+nearly two thousand a-year; and somewhat later, the one place of
+Usher of Exchequer rose in value to double this sum.  This
+income, with prudent management, sufficed for the gratification
+of his expensive tastes of building and collecting, to which his
+long life was devoted.
+
+With regard to the merits of Strawberry Hill, as a building, it
+is perhaps unfair, in the present age, when the principles of
+Gothic architecture have been so much studied, and so often put
+in practice, to criticise it too severely.  Walpole himself, who,
+in the earlier part of his life, seems to have had an unbounded
+admiration for the works of his own hands, appears in later times
+to have been aware of the faults in style of which he had been
+guilty; for, in a letter to Mr. Barrett, in 1788, he says, "If
+Mr. Matthews was really entertained" (with seeing Strawberry
+Hill), "I am glad.  But Mr. Wyatt has made him too correct a Goth
+not to have seen all the imperfections and bad execution of my
+attempts; for neither Mr. Bentley nor my workmen had studied the
+science, and I was always too desultory and impatient to consider
+that I should please myself more by allowing time, than by
+hurrying my plans into execution before they were ripe.  My
+house, therefore, is but a sketch for beginners; yours (34) is
+finished by a great master; and if Mr. Matthews liked mine, it
+was en virtuose, who loves the dawnings of an art, or the
+glimmerings of its restoration." (35)
+
+In fact, the building of Strawberry Hill was "the glimmering of
+the restoration" of gothic architecture, which had previously,
+for above a century, been so much neglected that its very
+principles seemed lost.  If we compare the Gothic of Strawberry
+Hill with that of buildings about the same period, or a little
+anterior to it, we shall see how vastly superior it is to them,
+both in its taste and its decorations.  If we look at some of the
+restorations of our churches of the beginning of the eighteenth
+century , we shall find them a most barbarous mixture of Gothic
+forms and Grecian and Roman ornaments.  Such are the western
+towers of Westminster Abbey, designed by Wren; the attempts at
+Gothic, by the same architect, in one or two of his City
+churches; Gibbs's quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford; and
+the buildings in the same style of Kent, Batty, Langley, etc.  To
+these Strawberry is greatly superior: and it must be observed,
+that Walpole himself, in his progressive building, went on
+improving and purifying his taste.  Thus the gallery and
+round-tower at Strawberry Hill, which were among his latest
+works, are incomparably the best part of the house; and in their
+interior decorations there is very little to be objected to, and
+much to be admired.
+
+It were to be wished, indeed, that Walpole's haste to finish, to
+which he alludes in the letter just quoted, and perhaps also, in
+some degree, economy, had not made him build his castle, which,
+with all its faults, is a curious relic of a clever and ingenious
+man, with so little solidity, that it is almost already in a
+state of decay.  Lath and plaster, and wood, appear to have been
+his favourite materials for construction; which made his friend
+Williams (36) say of him, towards the end of his life, "that he
+had outlived three sets of his own battlements."  It is somewhat
+curious, as a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that,
+having built his castle with so little view to durability,
+Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a degree of
+strictness, which would have been more fitting for a baronial
+estate.  And that, too, after having written a fable entitled
+"The Entail," in consequence, of some one having asked him
+whether he did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in
+ridicule of such a proceeding.
+
+Whether Horace Walpole conferred a benefit upon the public by
+setting the fashion of applying the Gothic style of architecture
+to domestic purposes, may be doubtful; so greatly has the example
+he gave been abused in practice since.  But, at all events, he
+thus led the professors of architecture to study with accuracy
+the principles of the art, which has occasioned the restoration
+and preservation in such an admirable manner of so many of our
+finest cathedrals. colleges, and ancient Gothic and conventual
+buildings.  This, it must be at least allowed, was the fortunate
+result of the rage for Gothic, which succeeded the building of
+Strawberry Hill.  For a good many years after that event, every
+new building was pinnacled and turreted on all sides, however
+little its situation, its size, or its uses might seem to fit it
+for such ornaments.  Then, as fashion is never constant for any
+great length of' time, the taste of the public rushed at once
+upon castles; and loopholes, and battlements, and heavy arches,
+and buttresses appeared in every direction.  Now the fancy of the
+time has turned as madly to that bastard kind of architecture,
+possessing, however, many beauties, which compounded of the
+Gothic, Castellated, and Grecian or Roman, is called the
+Elizabethan, or Old English.  No villa, no country-house, no
+lodge in the outskirts of London, no box of a retired tradesman
+is now built, except in some modification of this style.  The
+most ludicrous situations and the most inappropriate destinations
+do not deter any one from pointing his gables, and squaring his
+bay-windows, in the most approved Elizabethan manner.  And this
+vulgarizing and lowering Of the Old English architecture, by over
+use, is sure, sooner or later, to lose its popularity, and to
+cause it to be contemned and neglected, like its predecessors.
+All these different styles, if properly applied, have their
+peculiar merits.  In old English country-houses, which have
+formerly been conventual buildings, the gothic style may be, with
+great propriety, introduced.  On the height of Belvoir or in
+similar situations, nothing could be devised so appropriate as
+the castellated; and in additions to, or renovations of old
+manor-houses the Elizabethan may be, with equal advantage,
+adopted.  It is the injudicious application of all three which
+has been, and is sure to be, the occasion of their fall in public
+favour.
+
+The next pursuit of Walpole, to -which it now becomes desirable
+to advert, are his literary labours, and the various publications
+with which, at different periods of his life, he favoured the
+world.  His first effort appears to have been a copy of verses,
+written at Cambridge.  His poetry is generally not of a very high
+order; lively, and with happy turns and expressions, but injured
+frequently by a sort of quaintness, and a somewhat inharmonious
+rhythm.  Its merits, however, exactly fitted it for the purpose
+which it was for the most part intended for; namely, as what are
+called vers de soci`et`e."  (37) Among the best of his verses may
+be mentioned those "On the neglected Column in the Place of St.
+Mark, at Florence," which contains some fine lines; his
+"Twickenham Register;" and "The Three Vernons."
+
+In 1752 he published his "Edes Walpolianae," or description of
+the family seat' of Houghton Hall, in Norfolk, where his father
+had built a palace, and had made a fine collection of pictures,
+which were sold by his grandson George, third Earl of Orford, to
+the Empress Catherine of Russia.  This work, which is, in fact, a
+mere catalogue of pictures, first showed the peculiar talent of
+Horace Walpole for enlivening, by anecdote and lightness of
+style, a dry subject.  This was afterwards still more exemplified
+in his "Anecdotes of Painting in England," of which the different
+volumes were published in 1761, 1763, and 1771; and in the
+"Catalogue of Engravers," published in 1763.  These works were
+compiled from papers of Vertue, the engraver; but Walpole, from
+the stores of his own historical knowledge, from his taste in the
+fine arts, and his happy manner of sketching characters, rendered
+them peculiarly his own.  But his masterpiece in this line was
+his "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," originally published
+in 1758. It is very true, as Walter Scott observes, that "it
+would be difficult, by any process or principle of subdivision,
+to select a list of so many plebeian authors, containing so very
+few whose genius was worthy of commemoration." (38)  But this
+very circumstance renders the merit of Walpole the greater, in
+having, out of such materials, composed a work which must be read
+with amusement and interest, as long as liveliness of diction and
+felicity in anecdote are considered ingredients of amusement in
+literature.
+
+In 1757 Walpole established a private printing-press at
+Strawberry Hill, and the first work he printed at it was the Odes
+of Gray, with Bentley's prints and vignettes.  Among the
+handsomest and most valuable volumes which subsequently issued
+from this press, in addition to Walpole's own Anecdotes of
+Painting, and his description of Strawberry Hill, must be
+mentioned the quarto lucan, with the notes of Grotius and
+Bentley; the Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury by himself,
+flentzner's Travels, and Lord Whitworth's account of Russia.  Of
+all these he printed a very limited number.  It does not,
+however, appear, as stated in the Biographical Dictionary, (39)
+he reserved all the copies as presents; on the contrary, it would
+seem that in most instances he sold a certain portion of the
+copies to the booksellers, probably with a view of defraying the
+expenses of his printing establishment.  As, however, the supply
+in the book-market of the Strawberry Hill editions was very
+small, they generally sold for high prices, and a great interest
+was created respecting them.
+
+In 1764 Walpole published one of the most remarkable of his
+works, "The Castle of Otranto;" and in 1768 his still more
+remarkable production, "The Mysterious Mother." (40) In speaking
+of the latter effort of his genius, (for it undoubtedly deserves
+that appellation,) an admirable judge of literary excellence has
+made the following remarks; "It is the fashion to underrate
+Horace Walpole firstly, because he was a nobleman, and secondly,
+because he was a gentleman: but, to say nothing of the
+composition of his incomparable letters, and of "The Castle of
+Otranto," he is the Ultimus Romanorum, the author of the
+'Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a
+puling love-play: he is the father of the first romance, and of
+the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher
+place than any living author, be he who he may." (41)
+
+In speaking Of "The Castle of Otranto," it may be remarked as a
+singular coincidence in the life of Walpole, that as he had been
+the first person to lead the modern public to seek for their
+architecture in the Gothic style and age, so he also opened the
+great magazine of the tales of Gothic times to their literature.
+"The Castle of Otranto" is remarkable," observes an eminent
+critic, "not only for the wild interest of its story, but as the
+first modern attempt to found a tale of amusing fiction upon the
+basis of the ancient romances of chivalry." (42) "This romance,"
+he continues, "has been justly considered not only as the
+original and model of a peculiar species of composition,
+attempted and successfully executed by a man of great genius, but
+as one of the standard works of our literature.' (43)
+
+The account which Walpole himself gives of the circumstances
+which led to the composition of "The Castle of Otranto," of his
+fancy of the portrait of Lord Deputy Falkland, in the gallery at
+Strawberry Hill, walking Out of its frame; and of his dream of a
+gigantic hand in armour on the banister of a great staircase, are
+well known.  Perhaps it may be objected to him, that he makes too
+frequent use of supernatural machinery in his romance; but, at
+the time it was written, this portion of his work was peculiarly
+acceptable to the public.  We have since, from the labours of the
+immense tribe of his followers and imitators of different degrees
+of merit, "supped so full of horrors," that we are become more
+fastidious upon these points; and even, perhaps, unfairly so, as
+at the present moment the style of supernatural romances in
+general is rather fallen again Into neglect and disfavour. "If,"
+concludes Walter Scott, in his criticism on this work, (and the
+sentiments expressed by him are so fair and just, that it is
+impossible to forbear quoting them,) "Horace Walpole, who led the
+way in this new species of literary composition, has been
+surpassed by some of his followers in diffuse brilliancy of
+composition, and perhaps in the art of detaining the mind of the
+reader in a state of feverish and anxious suspense through a
+protracted and complicated narrative, more will yet remain with
+him than the single merit of originality and invention.  The
+applause due to chastity of style--to a happy combination of
+supernatural agency with human interest-to a tone of feudal
+manners and language, sustained by characters strongly marked and
+well discriminated,-and to unity of action, producing scenes
+alternately of interest and grandeur,-the applause, in fine,
+which cannot be denied to him who can excite the passions of fear
+and pity must be awarded to the author of the Castle of Otranto."
+(44)
+
+"The Mysterious Mother," is a production of higher talent and
+more powerful genius than any other which we owe to the pen of
+Horace Walpole; though, from the nature of its subject, and the
+sternness of its character, it is never likely to compete in
+popularity with many of his other writings.  The story is too
+horrible almost for tragedy.  It is, as Walpole himself
+observes,"more truly horrid even than that of Oedipus." He took
+it from a history which had been told him, and which he thus
+relates: "I had heard, when very Young, that a gentlewoman, under
+uncommon agonies of mind, had waited on Archbishop Tillotson, and
+besought his counsel.  Many years before, a damsel that served
+her, had acquainted her that she was importuned by the
+gentlewoman's son to grant him a private meeting.  The mother
+ordered the maiden to make the assignation, when, she said, she
+would discover herself, and reprimand him for his criminal
+passion: but, being hurried away by a much more criminal passion
+herself, she kept the assignation without discovering herself.
+The fruit of this horrid artifice was a daughter, whom the
+gentlewoman caused to be educated very privately in the country:
+but proving very lovely, and being accidentally met by her
+father-brother, who had never had the slightest suspicion of the
+truth, he had fallen in love with and actually married her.  The
+wretched, guilty mother, learning what had happened, and
+distracted with the consequence of her crime, had now resorted to
+the archbishop, to know in what manner she should act.  The
+prelate charged her never to let her son or daughter know what
+had passed, as they were innocent of any criminal intention.  For
+herself he bade her almost despair." (45) Afterwards, Walpole
+found out that a similar story existed in the Tales of the Queen
+of Navarre, and also in Bishop Hall's works.  In this tragedy the
+dreadful interest is well sustained throughout, the march of the
+blank verse is grand and imposing, and some of the scenes are
+worked up with a vigour and a pathos, which render it one of the
+most powerful dramatic efforts of which our language can boast.
+
+The next publication of Walpole, was his "Historic Doubts on the
+Life and Reign of King Richard the Third," one of the most
+ingenious historical and antiquarian dissertations which has ever
+issued from the press.  He has collected his facts with so much
+industry, and draws his arguments and inferences from them with
+so much ability, that if he has not convinced the public of the
+entire innocence of Richard, he has, at all events, diminished
+the number of his crimes, and has thrown a doubt over his whole
+history, as well as over the credibility of his accusers, which
+is generally favourable to his reputation.  This work occasioned
+a great sensation in the literary world, and produced several
+replies, from F. Guydickens, Esq., Dean Milles, and the Rev. Mr.
+Masters, and others.  These works, however, are now gathered to
+"the dull of ancient days;" while the book they were intended to
+expose and annihilate remains an instructive and amusing volume;
+and, to say the least of it, a most creditable monument of its
+author's ingenuity.
+
+The remainder of the works of Walpole, published or printed in
+his lifetime, consist of minor, or, as he calls them, Fugitive
+pieces."  Of these the most remarkable are his papers in "The
+World," and other periodicals; " A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese
+Philosopher, in London," on the politics of the day; the "Essay
+on Modern Gardening;" the pamphlet called "A Counter Address," on
+the dismissal of Marshal Conway from his command of a regiment;
+the fanciful, but lively "Hieroglyphic Tales;" and "The
+Reminiscences," or Recollections of Court and Political
+Anecdotes; which last he wrote for the amusement of the Miss
+Berrys.  All of these are marked with those peculiarities, and
+those graces of style, which belonged to him; and may still be
+read, however various their subjects, with interest and
+instruction.  The Reminiscences are peculiarly curious; and may,
+perhaps, be stated to be, both in manner and matter, the very
+perfection of anecdote writing.  We may, indeed, say, with
+respect to Walpole, what can be advanced of but few such
+voluminous authors, that it is impossible to open any part of his
+works without deriving entertainment from them; so much do the
+charms and liveliness of his manner of writing influence all the
+subjects he treats of.
+
+Since the death of Walpole, a portion of his political Memoires,
+comprising the History of the last ten years of the Reign of
+George the Second, has been published, and has made a very
+remarkable addition to the historical information of that period.
+At the same time it must be allowed, that this work has not
+entirely fulfilled the expectation which the public had formed of
+it.  Though full of curious and interesting details; it can
+hardly be said to form a very interesting whole; while in no
+other of the publications of the author do his prejudices and
+aversions appear in so strong and unreasonable a light.  His
+satire also, and we might even call it by the stronger name of
+abuse, is too general, and thereby loses its effect.  Many of the
+characters are probably not too severely drawn; but some
+evidently are, and this circumstance shakes our faith in the
+rest.  We must, however, remember that the age he describes was
+one of peculiar corruption; and when the virtue and character of
+public men were, perhaps, at a lower ebb than at any other period
+since the days of Charles the Second.  The admirably graphic
+style of Walpole, in describing particular scenes and moments,
+shines forth in many parts of the Memoires: and this, joined to
+his having been an actor in many of the circumstances he relates
+and a near spectator of all, must ever render his book one of
+extreme value to the politician and the historian.
+
+But, the posthumous works of Walpole, upon which his lasting fame
+with posterity will probably rest, are his "incomparable
+LETTERS." (46) Of these, a considerable portion was published in
+the quarto edition of his works in 1798: since which period two
+quarto volumes, containing his letters to George Montagu, Esq.
+and the Rev. William Cole; and another, containing those to Lord
+Hertford and the Rev. Henry Zouch, have been given to the world;
+and the present publication of his correspondence with Sir Horace
+Mann completes the series, which extends from the year 1735 to
+the commencement of 1797, within six weeks of his death-a period
+of no less than fifty-seven years.
+
+A friend of Mr. Walpole's has observed, that "his epistolary
+talents have shown our language to be capable of all the grace
+and all the charms of the French of Madame de S`evign`e;" (47)
+and the remark is a true one, for he is undoubtedly the author
+who first proved the aptitude of our language for that light and
+gay epistolary style, which was before supposed peculiarly to
+belong to our Gallic neighbours.  There may be letters of a
+higher order in our literature than those of Walpole.  Gray's
+letters, and perhaps Cowper's, may be taken as instances of this;
+but where shall we find such an union of taste, humour, and
+almost dramatic power of description and narrative, as in the
+correspondence of Walpole? Where such happy touches upon the
+manners and characters of the time?  Where can we find such
+graphic scenes, as the funeral of George the Second; as the party
+to Vauxhall with Lady Harrington; as the ball at Miss
+Chudleigh's, in the letters already published; or as some of the
+House of Commons' debates and many of the anecdotes of society in
+those now offered to the world?  Walpole's style in
+letter-writing is occasionally quaint, and sometimes a little
+laboured; but for the most part he has contrived to throw into it
+a great appearance of ease, as if he wrote rapidly and without
+premeditation.  This, however, was by no means the case, as he
+took great pains with his letters, and even collected, and wrote
+down beforehand, anecdotes, with a view to their subsequent
+insertion.  Some of these stores have been discovered among the
+papers at Strawberry Hill.
+The account of the letters of Walpole leads naturally to some
+mention of his friends, to whom they were addressed.  These were,
+Gray the poet, Marshal Conway, his elder brother, Lord Hertford,
+George Montagu, Esq., the Rev. William Cole, Lord Strafford,
+Richard Bentley, Esq., John Chute, Esq., Sir Horace Mann, Lady
+Hervey, and in after-life, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Damer, and the
+two Miss Berrys.  His correspondence with the three latter ladies
+has never been published; but his regard for them, and intimacy
+with them, are known to have been very great.  Towards Mrs.
+Damer, the only child of the friend of his heart, Marshal Conway,
+he had an hereditary feeling of affection; and to her he
+bequeathed Strawberry Hill.  To the Miss Berrys he left, in
+conjunction with their father, the greater part of his papers,
+and the charge of collecting and publishing his works, a task
+which they performed with great care and judgment.  To these
+friends must be added the name of Richard West, Esq., a young man
+of great promise, (only son of Richard West, Lord Chancellor of
+Ireland, by the daughter of Bishop Burnet,) who died in 1742, at
+the premature age of twenty-six.
+
+Gray had been a school friend of Walpole, as has been before
+mentioned, they travelled together, and quarrelled during the
+Journey.  Walter Scott suggests as a reason for their
+differences, "that the youthful vivacity, and perhaps
+aristocratic assumption, of Walpole, did not agree with the
+somewhat formal opinions and habits of the professed man of
+letters." (48) This conjecture may very possibly be the correct
+one; but we have no clue to guide us with certainty to the causes
+of their rupture.  In after-life they were reconciled, though the
+intimacy of early friendship never appears to have been restored
+between them.  (49) Scott says of Walpole, that , his temper was
+precarious;" and we may, perhaps, affirm the same of Gray.  At
+all events, they were persons of such different characters, that
+their not agreeing could not be surprising.  What could be more
+opposite than "the self-sequestered, melancholy Gray," and the
+eager, volatile Walpole, of whom Lady Townshend said, when some
+one talked of his good spirits, "Oh, Mr. Walpole is spirits of
+hartshorn."  When Mason was writing the life of Gray, Walpole
+bade him throw the whole blame of the quarrel upon him.  This
+might be mere magnanimity, as Gray was then dead; what makes one
+most inclined to think it was the truth, is the fact, that Gray
+was not the only intimate friend of Walpole with whom he
+quarrelled.  He did so with Bentley, for which the eccentric
+conduct of that man of talent might perhaps account.  But what
+shall we say to his quarrel with the good-humoured, laughing
+George Montagu, with whom for the last years of the life of the
+latter, he held no intercourse?  It is true, that in a letter to
+Mr. Cole, Walpole lays the blame upon Montagu, and says, "he was
+become such an humourist;" but it must be remembered that we do
+not know Montagu's version of the story; and that undoubtedly
+three quarrels with three intimate friends rather support the
+charge, brought by Scott against Walpole, of his having "a
+precarious temper."
+
+The friendship, however, which does honour both to the head and
+heart of Horace Walpole, was that which he bore to Marshal
+Conway; a man who, accordant to all the accounts of him that have
+come down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a degree
+of affection.  Burke's panegyric (50)upon his public character
+and conduct is well-known; while the Editor of Lord Orford's
+Works thus most justly eulogizes his private life. "It is only
+those who have had the opportunity of penetrating into the most
+secret motives of his public conduct and the inmost recesses of
+his private life, that can do real justice to the unsullied
+purity of his character-who saw and knew him in the evening of
+his days, retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and a
+statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private life, happy in the
+resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful
+science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by pensions or
+places, undistinguished by titles or ribands, unsophisticated  by
+public life, and unwearied by retirement." The offer of Walpole
+to share his fortune with Conway, when the latter was dismissed
+from his places, an offer so creditable to both parties, has been
+already mentioned; and if we wish to have a just idea of the
+esteem in which Marshal Conway was held by his contemporaries, it
+is only necessary to mention, that upon the same occasion,
+similar offers were pressed upon him by his brother Lord
+Hertford, and by the Duke of Devonshire, without any concert
+between them.
+
+
+The rest of' Walpole's friends and correspondents it is hardly
+necessary to dwell upon; they are many of them already well known
+to the public from various causes. it may, however, be permitted
+to observe, that, they were, for the most part, persons
+distinguished either by their taste in the fine arts, their love
+of antiquities, their literary attainments, or their
+conversational talents.  To the friends already mentioned, but
+with whom Walpole did not habitually correspond, must be added,
+Mason the poet, George Selwyn, Richard second Lord Edgecumbe,
+George James Williams, Esq.  Lady Suffolk, and Mrs. Clive the
+actress.
+
+With the Marquise du Deffand, the old, blind, but clever leader
+of French society, he became acquainted at Paris late in her
+life.  Her devotion for him appears to have been very great, and
+is sometimes expressed in her letters with a warmth and
+tenderness, which Walpole, who was most sensitive of ridicule,
+thought so absurd in a person of her years and infirmities, that
+he frequently reproves her very harshly for it; so much so, as to
+give him the appearance of a want of kindly feeling towards her,
+which his general conduct to her, and the regrets he expressed on
+her death, do not warrant us in accusing him of. (51)
+
+In concluding the literary part of the character of Walpole, it
+is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between
+him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much
+calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered.  The
+periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily
+scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had,
+perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him
+bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as
+the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of
+that misguided son of genius; nay, even the author of "The
+Pursuits of Literature," who wrote many years after the
+transaction had taken place, and who ought to have known better,
+gave in to the prevailing topic of abuse. (52) It therefore
+becomes necessary to state shortly what really took place upon
+this occasion, a task which is rendered easier by the clear view
+of the transaction taken both by Walter Scott in his "Lives of
+the Novelists," and by Chalmers in his "Biographical Dictionary,"
+which is also fully borne out by the narrative drawn up by
+Walpole himself, and accompanied by the correspondence.
+
+it appears then, that in March
+ 1769, Walpole-received a letter from Chatterton, enclosing a few
+specimens of the pretended poems of Rowley, and announcing his
+discovery of a series of ancient painters at Bristol.  To this
+communication Walpole, naturally enough, returned a very civil
+answer.  Shortly afterwards, doubts arose in his mind as to the
+authenticity of the poems; these were confirmed by the opinions
+of some friends, to whom he showed them; and he then wrote an
+expression of these doubts to Chatterton.  This appears to have
+excited the anger of Chatterton, who, after one or two short
+notes, wrote Walpole a very impertinent one, in which he
+redemanded his manuscripts.  This last letter Walpole had
+intended to have answered with some sharpness; but did not do so.
+He only returned the specimens on the 4th of August 1769; and
+this concluded the intercourse between them, and as Walpole
+observes, "I never saw him then, before, or since."  Subsequently
+to this transaction, Chatterton acquired other patrons more
+credulous than Walpole, and proceeded with his forgeries.  In
+April 1770 he came to London, and committed suicide in August of
+that year; a fate which befell him, it is to be feared, more in
+consequence of his own dissolute and profligate habits, than from
+any want of patronage.  However this may be, Walpole clearly had
+nothing to say to it.
+
+In addition to the accusation of crushing, instead of fostering
+his genius, Walpole has also been charged with cruelty in not
+assisting him with money.  Upon this, he very truly says himself,
+"Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed, at the time of
+his correspondence with me.  He was maintained by his mother and
+lived with a lawyer.  His only pleas to my assistance were,
+disgust to his profession, inclination to poetry, and
+communication of some suspicious MSS.  His distress was the
+consequence of quitting his master, and coming to London, and of
+his other extravagances.  He had depended on the impulse of the
+talents he felt for making impression, and lifting him to wealth,
+honours, and faine.  I have already said, that I should have been
+blamable to his mother and society, if I had seduced an
+apprentice from his master to marry him to the nine Muses;' and I
+should have encouraged a propensity to forgery, which is not the
+talent most wanting culture in the present age." (53) Such and so
+unimportant was the transaction with Chatterton, which brought so
+much obloquy on Walpole, and seems really to have given him at
+different times great annoyance.
+
+There remains but little more to relate in the life of Walpole.
+His old age glided on peacefully, and, with the exception of his
+severe sufferings from the gout, apparently contentedly, in the
+pursuit of his favourite studies and employments.  In the year
+1791, he succeeded his unhappy nephew, George, third Earl of
+Orford, who had at different periods of his life been insane, in
+the family estate and the earldom.  The accession of this latter
+dignity seems rather to have annoyed him than otherwise.  He
+never took his seat in the House of Lords, and his unwillingness
+to adopt his title was shown in his endeavours to avoid making
+use of it in his signature.  He not unfrequently signed himself,
+"The Uncle of the late Earl of Orford." (54)
+
+He retained his faculties to the last, but his limbs became
+helpless from his frequent attacks of gout: as he himself
+expresses it,
+
+"Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season,
+Though unkind to my limbs, has yet left me my reason." (55)
+
+As a friend of his, who only knew him in the last years of his
+life, speaks of "his conversation as singularly brilliant as it
+was original," (56) we may conclude his liveliness never deserted
+him; that his talent for letter-writing did not, we have a proof
+in a letter written only six weeks before his death, in which,
+with all his accustomed grace of manner he entreats a lady of his
+acquaintance not to show "the idle notes of her ancient
+servant."-Lord Orford died in the eightieth year `of his life, at
+his house in Berkeley Square, on the 2d of March 1797, and was
+buried with his family in the church at Houghton and with him
+concluded the male line of the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+(20) Originally prefixed to his lordship's edition of Walpole's
+Letters to Sir Horace Mann, first published in 1833.
+
+(21) In a MS. note by Walpole, in his own copy of collins's
+Peerage, it is stated, that Sir Robert Walpole had, by his first
+wife, "another son, William, who died young, and a daughter,
+Catherine, who died of a consumption at Bath, aged nineteen."-E.
+
+(22) The occasion of the death of sir John Shorter was a curious
+one.  It is thus related in the Ellis Correspondence:-"Sir John
+Shorter, the present Lord Mayor. is very ill with a fall off his
+horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew
+Fair.  The city custom is, it seems, to drink always under
+Newgate when the Lord Mayor passes that way; and at this time the
+Lord Mayor's horse, being somewhat skittish,-started at the sight
+of the large glittering tankard which was reached to his
+lordship."  Letter of Aug. 30th, 1688.
+
+"On Tuesday last died the Lord Mayor, Sir John Shorter: the
+occasion of his distemper was his fall under Newgate, which
+bruised him a little, and put him into a fever."  Letter of
+September 6th, 1688.
+
+(23 )birthdate)  In Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary it is
+stated, that Horace Walpole was born in 1718; and Sir Walter
+Scott says he was born in 1716-17, which, according to the New
+Style, would mean that he was born in one of the three first
+months of the year 1717.  Both these statements are, however,
+erroneous, as he himself fixes the day of his birth, in a letter
+to Mr. Conway, dated October 5th, 1764, where he says "What
+signifies what happens when one is seven-and-forty, as I am
+to-day?  They tell me 'tis my birthday," And again, in a letter
+to the same correspondent, dated October 5th, 1777, he says, "I
+am three-score to-day."
+
+(24) The exact cause of this quarrel," says Mr. Mitford, in his
+Life of Gray, " has been passed over by the delicacy of his
+biographer, because Horace Walpole was alive when the Memoirs of
+Gray were written.  The former, however, charged himself with the
+chief blame, and lamented that he had not paid more attention and
+deference to Gray's superior judgment and prudence." See Works of
+Gray, vol. i. p. 9, Pickering's edition 1836.  In the
+"Walpolianae" is the following passage:-"The quarrel between Gray
+and me arose from his being too serious a companion.  I had just
+broke loose from the restraints of the University with as much
+money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself.
+Gray was for antiquities, etc. while I was for perpetual balls
+and plays: the fault was mine."-E.
+
+(25) Sir Walter Scott says that Walpole, on one occasion, "
+vindicated the memory of his father with great dignity and
+eloquence" in the House of Commons; but, as I cannot find any
+trace of a speech of this kind made by him after Sir Robert
+Walpole's death, I am inclined to think Sir Walter must have made
+a mistake as to the time of delivery of the speech mentioned in
+the text.  [Secker, at that time Bishop of Oxford, says that
+Walpole "spoke well against the motion." See post, letter to Sir
+Horace Mann, dated March 24, 1742.
+
+(26) Sir Walter Scott is in error when he says that Walpole
+retired from the House of Commons in 1758, "at the active age of
+forty-one."  This event occurred, as is here stated, in March,
+1768, and when Walpole was consequently in his fifty-first year.
+
+(27) Letter, dated Arlington Street, March 12th, 1768.  It is but
+fair to mention, in opposition to the opinion respecting George
+Grenville, here delivered by Walpole, that of no less an
+authority than Burke, who says, "Mr. Grenville was a first-rate
+figure in this country,"
+
+(28) He had also offered to share his fortune with Mr. Conway in
+the year 1744 (see letter of July 20th of that year), in order to
+enable Mr. Conway to marry a lady he was then in love with.  He
+ends his very pressing entreaties by saying, "For these reasons,
+don't deny me what I have set my Heart on-the making your fortune
+easy to you." Nor were these the only instances of generosity to
+a friend, which we find in the life of Walpole.  In the year
+1770, when the Abb`e Terrai was administering the finances of
+France, (or, to use the more expressive language of Voltaire,
+"Quand Terrai nous mangeait,") his economical reductions
+occasioned the loss of a portion of her pension, amounting to
+three thousand livres, to Madame du Deffand.  Upon this occasion
+Walpole wrote thus to his old blind friend, who had presented a
+memorial of her case to M. de St. Florentin, a course of
+proceeding which Walpole did not approve of:-"Ayez assez
+d'amiti`e pour moi pour accepter les trois mille livres de ma
+part.  Je voudrais que la somme ne me f`ut pas aussi indiferente
+qu'elle l'est, mais je vous jure qu'elle ne retranchera rien, pas
+m`eme sur mes amusemens.  La prendriez vous de la main de la
+grandeur, et la refuseriez vous de moi?  Vous me connaissez:
+faites ce sacrifice `a mon orgueil, qui serait enchants de vous
+avoir emp`ech`ee de vous abaisser jusqu'`a la sollicitation.
+Votre m`emoire me blesse.  Quoi! vous, vous, r`eduite `a
+repr`esenter vos malheurs!  Accordez moi, je vous conjure, la
+grace que je vous demande `a genoux, et jouissez de la
+satisfaction de vous dire, J'ai un ami qui ne permettra jamais
+que je me jette aux pieds des grands.  Ma Petite, j'insiste.
+Voyez, si vous aimez mieux me faire le plaisir le plus sensible,
+ou de devoir une grace qui, ayant `et`e sollicit`ee, arrive
+toujours trop tard pour contanter l'amiti`e.  Laissez moi go`uter
+la joie la plus pure, de vous avoir mise `a votre aise, et que
+cette joie soit un secret profond entre nous deux."  See Letters
+of the Marquise de Deffand to the Honourable Horace Walpole.-It
+was impossible to make a pecuniary offer with more earnestness or
+greater delicacy; and Madame du Deffand's not having found it
+necessary subsequently to accept it, in no degree diminishes the
+merit of the proffered gift.
+
+(29) See letter, dated Monday, five o'clock, Feb. 1761.
+
+(30) See letter, dated April 19th, 1764.
+
+(31) See letter to Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 25, 1750.
+
+(32) Catherine Hyde, the eccentric friend of Pope and Gay.  She
+was, at this time, living in a small house in Ham Walks.
+Walpole, having found her out airing in her Carriage, one day
+that he had called on her, there addressed the following lines to
+her:--
+
+'To many a Kitty, Love his car
+Would for a day engage;
+But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,
+Retains it for an age."
+
+(33) Letter of June 8th, 1747.
+
+(34) Lee, in Kent.
+
+(35) Letter of June 5th, 1788.
+
+(36) George James Williams, Esq.
+
+(37) In his vers de soci`et`e we perpetually discover a laborious
+effort to introduce the lightness of the French badinage into a
+masculine and somewhat rough language."-Quart. Rev. vol. xix. p.
+122.
+
+(38) Lives of the Novelists, Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 304, ed.
+1834.
+
+(39) Chalmer's Biographical Dictionary, article Walpole.
+
+(40) "The Mysterious Mother" was printed in that year: but was
+never published till after the death of Walpole.
+
+(41) Lord Byron, Preface to Mtrino Faliero."
+
+(42) Lives of the Novelists, Sir Walter Scott; Prose Works, vol.
+iii. p. 313.
+
+(43) Shortly after the appearance of this romance, the following
+high encomium was passed upon it by Bishop Warburton:-"We have
+been lately entertained with what I will venture to call a
+masterpiece in the fable, and a new species likewise.  The piece
+I mean is laid in Gothic chivalry, where a beautiful imagination,
+supported by strength of judgment, has enabled the author to go
+beyond his subject, and effect the full purpose of the ancient
+tragedy; that is, to purge the passions by pity and terror, in
+colouring as great and harmonious as in any of the best dramatic
+writers."-E.
+
+(44) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 323.
+
+(45) Postscript to "The Mysterious Mother."
+
+(46) Lord Byron.
+
+(47) Social Life in England and France," by Miss Berry.
+
+(48) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 301.
+
+(49) "In 1744, the difference between Walpole and Gray was
+adjusted by the interference of a lady, who wished well to both
+parties.  The lapse of three years had probably been sufficient,
+in some degree, to soften down, though not entirely obliterate,
+the remembrance of supposed injustices on both sides; natural
+kindness of temper had resumed their place, and we find their
+correspondence again proceeding on friendly and familiar terms."
+Mitford's Gray, vol. i. p. xxiii; see also vol. ii. p. 174.-E.
+
+(50) Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774.
+
+(51) "Vanity, when it unfortunately gets possession of a wise
+man's head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is
+impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a
+fool.  Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole
+seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those
+hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of
+friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind)
+addressed him, and of which he complained with the utmost
+indignation, merely because, if her letters were opened by a
+clerk at the post-office, such expressions of kindness might
+expose him to the ridicule of which he had such undue terror."
+Quart. Rev. Vol. xix. p. 119.-E.
+
+(52) See "Pursuits of Literature," second Dialogue:-
+
+"The Boy, whom once patricians pens adorn'd,
+First meanly flatter'd, then as meanly scorn'd."
+
+Which lines are Stated in a note to allude to Walpole.  See also,
+first Dialogue, where Chatturton is called, "That varlet bright."
+The note to which passage is "'I am the veriest varlet that ever
+chew'd,' says Falstaff, in Henry IV.  Part 1. Act. 2.  Mr. Horace
+Walpole, now Lord Orford, did not, however, seem to think it
+necessary that this varlet Chatterton should chew at all.  See
+the Starvation Act, dated at Strawberry Hill."
+
+(53) Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Chatterton.
+Works, vol. iv.
+
+(54) The Duke of Bedford has a letter of Walpole's with this
+signature.
+
+(55) "Epitapilium vivi auctoris."-l 792.
+
+(56) "Social Life in England and France."
+
+
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND:
+WRITTEN IN 1788,
+FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF MISS MARY AND MISS AGNES BERRY.
+
+Il ne faut point d'esprit pour s'occuper des vieux
+`ev`enements.-Voltaire.
+
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER 1.
+
+
+Motives to the Undertaking-Precedents-George the First's Reign a
+Proem to the History of the Reigning House of Brunswick-The
+Reminiscent introduced to that Monarch-His Person and Dress-The
+Duchess of Kendal-her Jealousy of Sir Robert Walpole's Credit
+with the King-and Intrigues to displace him, and make Bolingbroke
+Minister.                                                     '
+
+
+You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one
+evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from
+my childhood of the courts of King George the First, and of his
+son the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and of the
+latter's princess, since Queen Caroline; and you expressed such
+wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce
+worthy of the  title even of anecdotes) to writing, that, having
+no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any more
+important or laudable occupation, I will begin to satisfy the
+repetition of your curiosity.  But observe, I promise no more
+than to begin; for I not only cannot answer that I shall have
+patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather
+so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that
+it is very possible my life (turned of seventy-one) may be
+exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am
+sensible of the garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of
+relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not.  Thus,
+while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging
+myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for
+which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the
+completion of my design.  Patience, therefore young ladies; and
+if you coin an old gentleman into narratives, you must expect a
+good deal of alloy.  I engage for no method, no regularity, no
+polish.  My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, which
+are struck of any promiscuous metals; and, though they bear the
+impress of some sovereign's name, only serve to quiet the
+garrison for the moment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by
+collectors and virtuosos, who think their series not complete,
+unless they have even the coins of base metal of every reign.  As
+I date from my nonage, I must have laid up no state secrets.
+Most of the facts I am going to tell you though new to you and to
+most of the present age, were known perhaps at the time to my
+nurse and my tutors.  Thus, my stories will have nothing to do
+with history.
+
+Luckily, there have appeared within these three months two
+publications, that will serve as precedents for whatever I am
+going to say: I mean Les Fragments of the Correspondence of the
+Duchess of Orleans, (57) and those of the M`emoires of the Duc de
+St. Simon. (58) Nothing more d`ecousu than both: they tell you
+what they please; or rather, what their editors have pleased to
+let them tell.  In one respect I shall be less satisfactory.
+They knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with
+their personages.  I did not at ten years old, penetrate
+characters; and as George 1. died at the period where my
+reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a
+shining king; and as the Duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard
+very little of either when he and her power were no more.  In
+fact, the reign of George 1. was little more than the proem to
+the history of England Under the House of Brunswick.  That family
+was established here by surmounting a rebellion; to which
+settlement perhaps the phrensy of the South Sea scheme
+contributed, by diverting the national attention from the game of
+faction to the delirium of stockjobbing; and even faction was
+split into fractions by the quarrel between the king and the heir
+apparent-another interlude, which authorizes me to call the reign
+of George 1. a proem to the history of the reigning House of
+Brunswick, so successively agitated by parallel feuds.
+
+Commen`cons.
+
+As my first hero was going off the stage before I ought to have
+come upon it, it will be necessary to tell you why the said two
+personages happened to meet just two nights before they were to
+part for ever; a rencounter that barely enables me to give you a
+general idea of the former's person and of his mistress's-or, as
+has been supposed, his wife's.
+
+As I was the youngest by eleven years of Sir Robert Walpole's
+children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate,
+as you see me still, though with no constitutional complaint till
+I had the gout after forty, and as my two sisters were
+consumptive and died of consumptions, the supposed necessary care
+of me (and I have overheard persons saying, "That child cannot
+possibly live") so engrossed the attention of my mother, that
+compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness; and as
+the infinite good-nature of my father never thwarted any of his
+children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted
+her to gratify the first vehement inclination that I ever
+expressed, and which, as I have never since felt any enthusiasm
+for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in
+the family must have put into my head, to long to see the king.
+This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the
+Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his
+Majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual
+to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to
+be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling
+child; yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was
+settled to be in private, and at night.
+
+Accordingly, the night but one before the king began his last
+journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of
+the Countess of Walsingham, (59) on the ground floor, towards the
+garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt, the
+Duchess of Kendal's: apartments occupied by George II. after his
+queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses
+of Suffolk and Yarmouth.
+
+Notice being given that the king was come down to supper, Lady
+Walsingham took me alone into the duchess's ante-room, where we
+found alone the king and her.  I knelt down, and kissed his hand.
+He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my
+mother (60)
+
+The person of the king is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him
+but yesterday.  It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and
+exactly like his pictures and coins; Dot tall; of an aspect
+rather good than august; with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat,
+waistcoat, and breeches of snuff coloured cloth, with stockings
+Of the same colour, and a blue riband over all.  So entirely was
+he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess;
+but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I
+remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean,
+ill-favoured old lady but I did not retain the least idea of her
+features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.
+
+My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it,
+were, I suppose, causes that contributed, very soon afterwards,
+to make me shed a flood of tears for that sovereign's death,
+when, with the other scholars at Eton college, I walked in
+procession to the proclamation of the successor; and which
+(though I think they partly felt because I imagined it became the
+son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys)
+were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were
+politicians, to fears of my father's most probable fall, but of
+which I had not the smallest conception, nor should have met with
+any more concern than I did when it really arrived, in the year
+1742; by which time I had lost all taste for courts and princes
+and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious
+thought for himself.
+
+It must not be inferred from her obtaining this grace for me,
+that the Duchess of Kendal was a friend to my father; on the
+contrary, at that moment she had been labouring to displace him,
+and introduce Lord Bolingbroke (61) into the administration; on
+which I shall say more hereafter.
+
+It was an instance of Sir Robert's singular fortune, or evidence
+of his talents, that he not only preserved his power under two
+successive monarchs, but in spite of the efforts of both their
+mistresses (62) to remove him.  It was perhaps still more
+remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that Sir Robert
+governed George the First in Latin, the King not speaking
+English, (63) and his minister no German, nor even French. (64)
+It was much talked of, that Sir Robert, detecting one of the
+Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King'S
+face, had the firmness to say to the German, "Mentiris,
+impudentissime!"  The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he
+often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians
+selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the
+practice of the English court; and which an incident must have
+planted in his mind with no favourable impression of English
+disinterestedness. "This is a strange country!" said his Majesty;
+"the first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked out
+of the window, and saw a park with walks, a canal, etc. which
+they told me were mine.  The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger
+of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal; and I
+was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's servant for
+bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park!"
+I have said, that the Duchess of Kendal was no friend of Sir
+Robert, and wished to make Lord Bolingbroke minister in his room.
+I was too young to know any thing of that reign, nor was
+acquainted with the political cabals of the court, which,
+however, I might have learnt from my father in the three years
+after his retirement; but being too thoughtless at that time, nor
+having your laudable curiosity, I neglected to inform myself of
+many passages and circumstances, of which I have often since
+regretted my faulty ignorance.
+
+By what I can at present recollect, the Duchess seems to have
+been jealous of Sir Robert's credit with the King, which he had
+acquired, not by paying court, but by his superior abilities in
+the House of Commons, and by his knowledge in finance, of which
+Lord Sunderland and Craggs had betrayed their ignorance in
+countennancing the South Sea scheme; and who, though more
+agreeable to the King, had been forced to give way to Walpole, as
+the only man capable of repairing that mischief.  The Duchess,
+too, might be alarmed at his attachment to the Princess of Wales;
+from whom, in case of the King's death, her grace could expect no
+favour.  Of her jealousy I do know the following instance; Queen
+Anne had bestowed the rangership of Richmond New Park on her
+relations the Hydes for three lives, one of which was expired.
+King George, fond of shooting, bought out the term of the last
+Earl of Clarendon, and of his son Lord Cornbury, and frequently
+shot there; having appointed my eldest brother, Lord Walpole,
+ranger nominally, but my father in reality, wished to hunt there
+once or twice a week.  The park had run to great decay under the
+Hydes, nor was there any mansion (65) better than the common
+lodges of the keepers.  The King ordered a stone lodge designed
+by Henry, Earl of Pembroke, to be erected for himself, but merely
+as a banqueting-house, (66) with a large eating-room, kitchen,
+and necessary offices, where he might dine after his sport. Sir
+Robert began another of brick for himself, and the under-ranger,
+which by degrees, he much enlarged; usually retiring thither from
+business, or rather, as he said himself, to do more business than
+he could in town, on Saturdays and Sundays.  On that edifice, on
+the thatched-house, and other improvements, he laid out fourteen
+thousand pounds of his own money.  In the meantime, he hired a
+small house for himself on the hill without the park; and in that
+small tenement the King did him the honour of dining with him
+more than once after shooting.  His Majesty, fond of private
+joviality, (67) was pleased with punch after dinner, and indulged
+in it freely.  The Duchess, alarmed at the advantage the minister
+might make of the openness of the King's heart in those
+convivial, unguarded hours, and at a crisis when she was
+conscious Sir Robert was apprised of her inimical machinations in
+favour of Lord Bolingbroke, enjoined the few Germans who
+accompanied the King at those dinners to prevent his Majesty from
+drinking too freely.  Her spies obeyed too punctually, and
+without any address.  The King was offended, and silenced the
+tools by the coarsest epithets in the German language.  He even,
+before his departure, ordered Sir Robert to have the stone lodge
+finished against his return: no symptom of a falling minister, as
+has since been supposed Sir Robert then was, and that Lord
+Bolingbroke was to have replaced him, had the King lived to come
+back.  But my presumption to the contrary is more strongly
+corroborated by what had recently passed: the Duchess had
+actually prevailed on the King to see Bolingbroke secretly in his
+closet.  That intriguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain
+an audience long enough to efface former prejudices, and make
+sufficient impression on the King against Sir Robert, and in his
+own favour, went provided with a memorial, which he left in the
+closet. and begged his Majesty to peruse coolly at his leisure.
+The King kept the paper, but no longer than till he saw Sir
+Robert, to whom he delivered the poisoned remonstrance.  If that
+communication prognosticated the minister's fall, I am at a loss
+to know what a mark of confidence is.
+
+Nor was that discovery the first intimation that Walpole had
+received of the measure of Bolingbroke's gratitude.  The
+minister, against the earnest representations of his family and
+Most intimate friends, had consented to the recall of that
+incendiary from banishment, (68) excepting only his readmission
+into the House of Lords, that every field of annoyance might not
+be open to his mischievous turbulence.  Bolingbroke, it seems,
+deemed an embargo laid on his tongue would warrant his hand to
+launch every envenomed shaft against his benefactor, who by
+restricting had paid him the compliment of avowing that his
+eloquence was not totally inoffensive.  Craftsmen, pamphlet,
+libels, combinations, were showered on or employed for years
+against the prime-minister, without shaking his power or ruffling
+his temper; and Bolingbroke had the mortification of finding his
+rival had abilities to maintain his influence against the
+mistresses of two kings, with whom his antagonist had plotted in
+vain to overturn him. (69)
+
+(57) Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria.  In
+1671 she became the second wife (his first being poisoned) of the
+brother of Louis XIV. by whom she was the mother of the regent,
+Duke of Orleans.  She died in 1722.  A collection of her letters,
+addressed to Prince Ulric of Brunswick, and to the Princess of
+Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, was published at Paris in
+1788.-E.
+
+(58) These celebrated M`emoires of the Court of Louis XIV. were
+first published, in a mutilated state, in 1788.  A complete
+edition, in thirteen volumes, appeared in 1791.-E.
+
+(59) Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the Duchess of Kendal,
+created Countess of Walsingham and -,afterwards married to the
+famous Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.
+
+(60) The following is the account of this introduction given in
+"Walpoliana:"-"I do remember something of George the First.  My
+father took me to St. James's while I was a very little boy;
+after waiting some time in an anteroom, a gentleman came in all
+dressed in brown, even his stockings, and with a riband and star.
+He took me up in his arms, kissed me, and chatted some time,"-E.
+
+(61) The well-known Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
+secretary of state to Queen Anne; on whose death he fled, and was
+attainted. ["We have the authority of Sir Robert Walpole
+himself," says Coxe, "that the restoration of Lord Bolingbroke
+was the work of the Duchess of Kendal.  He gained the duchess by
+a present of eleven thousand pounds, and obtained a promise to
+use her influence over the King, for the purpose of forwarding
+his complete restoration."]
+
+(62) The Duchess of Kendal and Lady Suffolk.
+
+(63) Sir Robert was frequently heard to say, that during the
+reign of the first George, he governed the kingdom by means of
+bad Latin: it is a matter of wonder that, under such
+disadvantages. the King should take pleasure in transacting
+business with him: a circumstance which was principally owing to
+the method and perspicuity of his calculations, and to the
+extreme facility with which he arranged and explained the most
+abstruse and difficult combinations of finance." Coxe.-E.
+
+(64) Prince William, afterwards Duke of Cumberland, then a child,
+being carried to big grandfather on his birthday, the King asked
+him at what hour he rose.  The Prince replied, "when the
+chimney-sweepers went about."  "Vat is de chimney-sweeper?" said
+the King.  "Have you been so long in England," said the boy, "and
+do not know what a chimney-sweeper is?  Why, they are like that
+man there;" pointing to Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchilsea
+and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly swarthy and dark-"the
+black funereal Finches"-Sir Charles Williams's Ode to a Number of
+Great Men, 1742.
+
+(65) The Earl of Rochester, who succeeded to the title of
+Clarendon on the extinction of the elder branch, had a villa
+close without the park; but it had been burnt down, and only one
+wing was left.  W. Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, purchased the
+ruins, and built the house, since bought by Lord Camelford.
+
+(66) It was afterwards enlarged by Princess Amelia; to whom her
+rather, George II. had granted the reversion of the rangership
+after Lord Walpole.  Her Royal Highness sold it to George III.
+for a pension on Ireland of twelve hundred pounds a-year, and his
+Majesty appointed Lord Bute ranger for life.
+
+(67) The King Hated the parade of royalty.  When he went to the
+opera, it was in no state; nor did he sit in the stage-box, nor
+forwards, but behind the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham,
+in the second box, now allotted to the maids of honour.
+
+(68) Bolingbroke at his return could not avoid waiting on Sir
+Robert to thank him, and was Invited to dine with him at Chelsea;
+but whether tortured at witnessing Walpole's serene frankness and
+felicity, or suffocated with indignation and confusion at being
+forced to be obliged to one whom be hated and envied, the first
+morsel he put into his mouth was near choking him, and he was
+reduced to rise from table and leave the room for some minutes.
+I never heard of their meeting more.
+
+(69) George II. parted with Lady Suffolk, on Princess Amelia
+informing Queen Caroline from Bath, that the mistress had
+interviews there with Lord Bolingbroke.  Lady Suffolk, above
+twenty years after, protested to me that she had not once seen
+his lordship there; and I should believe she did not, for she was
+a woman of truth: but her great intimacy and connexion with Pope
+and Swift, the intimate friends of Bolingbroke, even before the
+death of George I. and her being the channel through whom that
+faction had flattered themselves they should gain the ear of the
+new King, can leave no doubt of Lady Suffolk's support of that
+party.  Her dearest friend to her death was William, afterwards
+Lord Chetwynd, the known and most trusted confidant of Lord
+Bolingbroke.  Of those political intrigues I shall say more in
+these Reminiscences.
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+Marriage of George the First, while Electoral Prince, to the
+Princess Sophia Dorothea-Assassination of Count
+Konigsmark-Separation from the Princess-Left-handed
+Espousal-Piety of the Duchess of Kendal-Confinement and Death of
+Sophia Dorothea in the Castle of Alden-French Prophetess-The
+King's Superstition-Mademoiselle Schulemberg--Royal
+Inconstancy-Countess of Platen-Anne Brett--Sudden Death of George
+the First.
+
+George the First, while Electoral Prince, had married his cousin,
+the Princess Dorothea (70) only child of the Duke of Zell; a
+match of convenience to reunite the dominions of the family.
+Though she was very handsome, the Prince, who was extremely
+amorous, had several mistresses; which provocation, and his
+absence in the army of the confederates, probably disposed the
+Princess to indulge some degree of coquetry.  At that moment
+arrived at Hanover the famous and beautiful Count Konigsmark,
+(71) the charms of whose person ought not to have obliterated the
+memory of his vile assassination of Mr. Thynne.(72)His vanity,
+the beauty of the Electoral Princess, and the neglect under which
+he found her, encouraged his presumption to make his addresses to
+her, not covertly; and she, though believed not to have
+transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly.  The
+old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a
+pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day.
+The Princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her
+husband, and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was
+persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand before his
+abrupt departure and he was actually introduced by them into her
+bedchamber the next morning before she rose.  From that moment he
+disappeared nor was it known what became of him, till on the
+death of George I., on his son the new King's first journey to
+Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the
+body of Konigsmark was discovered under the floor of the
+Electoral Princess's dressing-room-the Count having probably been
+strangled there the instant he left her, and his body secreted.
+The discovery was hushed up; George II. entrusted the secret to
+his wife, Queen Caroline, who told it to my father: but the King
+was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his
+mistress; nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it, till I informed
+her of it several years afterwards.  The disappearance of the
+Count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the
+discovery of his body have of late years been spread, but not
+with the authentic circumstances.  The second George loved his
+mother as much as he hated his father, and purposed, as was said,
+had the former survived, to have brought her over and declared
+her Queen Dowager. (73)  Lady Suffolk has told me her surprise,
+on going to the new Queen the morning after the news arrived of
+the death of George I., at seeing hung up in the Queen's
+dressing-room a whole length of a lady in royal robes; and in the
+bedchamber a half length of the same person, neither of which
+Lady Suffolk had ever seen before.  The Prince had kept them
+concealed, not daring to produce them during the life of his
+father.  The whole length he probably sent to Hanover: (74) the
+half length I have frequently and frequently seen in the library
+of Princess Amelia, who told me it was the portrait of her
+grandmother. she bequeathed it, with other pictures of her
+family, to her nephew, the Landgrave of Hesse.
+
+Of the circumstances that ensued on Konigsmark's disappearance I
+am ignorant; nor am I acquainted with the laws of Germany
+relative to divorce or separation: nor do I know or suppose that
+despotism and pride allow the law to insist on much formality
+when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife.
+Perhaps too much difficulty of untying the Gordian not of
+matrimony thrown in the way of an absolute prince would be no
+kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper
+weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry VIII.
+Sovereigns, who narrow or let out the law of God according to
+their prejudices and passions, mould their own laws no doubt to
+the standard of their convenience.  Genealogic purity of blood is
+the predominant folly of Germany; and the code of Malta seems to
+have more force in the empire than the ten commandments.  Thence
+was introduced that most absurd evasion of the indissolubility of
+marriage, espousals with the left hand-as if the Almighty had
+restrained his ordinance to one half of a man's person, and
+allowed a greater latitude to his left side than to his right, or
+pronounced the former more ignoble than the latter.  The
+consciences both of princely and noble persons in Germany are
+quieted, if the more plebeian side is married to one who would
+degrade the more illustrious moiety-but, as if the laws of
+matrimony had no reference to the children to be thence
+propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance are not
+entitled to inherit.  Shocking consequence of a senseless
+equivocation, that only satisfies pride, not justice; and
+calculated for an acquittal at the herald's Office, not at the
+last tribunal.
+
+Separated the Princess Dorothea certainly was, and never admitted
+even to the nominal honours of her rank, being thenceforward
+always styled Duchess of Halle.  Whether divorced (75) is
+problematic, at least to me; nor can I pronounce, as, though it
+was generally believed, I am not certain that George espoused the
+Duchess of Kendal with his left hand.  As the Princess Dorothea
+died only some months before him, that ridiculous ceremony was
+scarcely deferred till then; and the extreme outward devotion of
+the Duchess, who every Sunday went seven times to Lutheran
+chapels, seemed to announce a realized wife.  As the genuine wife
+was always detained in her husband's power, he seems not to have
+wholly dissolved their union; for, on the approach of the French
+army towards Hanover, during Queen Anne's reign, the Duchess of
+Halle was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their
+only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and did implore,
+though in vain that she might continue to reside with them.  As
+her son too, George II., had thoughts of bringing her over and
+declaring her Queen Dowager, one can hardly believe that a
+ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of which process
+would have glared in the face of her royalty.  But though German
+casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his
+left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to
+be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic
+counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu
+constituted adultery; and therefore of a formal divorce I must
+doubt-and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided,
+till future search into the Hanoverian chancery shall clear up a
+point of little real importance.
+
+I have said that the disgraced Princess died but a short time
+before the King. (76) It is known that in Queen Anne's time there
+was much noise about French prophets.  A female of that vocation
+(for we know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not
+limited to one gender) warned George I. to take care of his wife,
+as he would not survive her a year.  That oracle was probably
+dictated to the French Deborah by the Duke and Duchess of Zell,
+'who might be apprehensive lest the' Duchess of Kendal should be
+tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her conscientious
+union with their son-in-law.  Most Germans are superstitious,
+even such as have few other impressions of religion.  George gave
+such credit to the denunciation, that on the eve of his last
+departure he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales with
+tears, telling them he should never see them more.  It was
+certainly his own approaching fate that melted him, not the
+thought of quitting for ever two persons he hated.  He did
+sometimes so much justice to his son as to say, "Il est fougueux,
+mais il a de l'honneur."-For Queen Caroline, to his confidants he
+termed her "cette diablesse Madame la Princesse."
+
+I do not know whether it was about the same period, that in a
+tender mood he promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she
+survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to
+this world, he would make her a visit.  The Duchess, on his
+death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement,
+that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the
+windows of her villa at Isteworth, she was persuaded it was the
+soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and
+treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the
+royal bird or she took their last flight.
+
+George II., no more addicted than his father to too much
+religious credulity, had yet implicit faith in the German notion
+of vampires, and has more than once been angry with my father for
+speaking irreverently of those imaginary bloodsuckers.
+
+the Duchess of Kendal, of whom I have said so much, was when
+Mademoiselle Schulemberg, maid of honour to the Electress Sophia,
+mother of King George I. and destined by King William and the Act
+of Settlement to succeed Queen Anne.  George fell in love with
+Mademoiselle Schulemberg, though by no means an inviting
+object-so little, that one evening when she was in waiting behind
+the Electress's chair at a ball, the Princess Sophia, who had
+made herself mistress of the language of her future subjects,
+said in English to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk,
+then at her court, "Look at that mawkin, and think of her being
+my son's passion!"  Mrs. Howard, who told me the story, protested
+that she was terrified, forgetting that Mademoiselle Schulemberg
+did not understand English.
+
+The younger Mademoiselle Schulemberg, who came over with her and
+was created Countess Walsingham, passed for her niece; but was so
+like to the King that it is not very credible that the Duchess,
+who had affected to pass for cruel, had waited for the
+left-handed marriage.
+
+The Duchess under whatever denomination, had attained and
+preserved to the last her ascendant over the king: but
+notwithstanding that influence, he was not more constant to her
+than he had been to his avowed wife; for another acknowledged
+mistress, whom he also brought over, was Madame Kilmansegge,
+Countess of Platen, who was created Countess of Darlington, and
+by whom he was indisputably father of Charlotte, married to Lord
+Viscount Howe, and mother of the present earl. (77) Lady Howe was
+never publicly acknowledged as the Kings daughter; but Princess
+Amelia, (78) treated her daughter, Mrs. Howe, (79) upon that
+foot, and one evening, when I was present, gave her a ring, with
+a small portrait of George I, with a crown of diamonds.
+
+Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother's in my infancy, and
+whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as
+corpulent and ample as the Duchess was long and emaciated.  Two
+fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched
+eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of
+neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower
+part of her body, and no part restrained by stays 80) no wonder
+that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London
+were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a
+seraglio!  They were food from all the venom of the Jacobites;
+and, indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was
+vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse,
+against the sovereign and the new court, and chaunted even in
+their hearing about the public streets. (81)
+
+On the other hand, it was not till the last year or two of his
+reign that their foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment
+of taking openly an English mistress.  That personage was Anne
+Brett, eldest daughter by her second husband, (82) of the
+repudiated wife of the Earl Of Macclesfield, the unnatural mother
+of Savage the poet.  Miss Brett was very handsome, but dark
+enough by her eyes, complexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty.
+Abishag was lodged in the palace under the eyes of Bathsheba, who
+seemed to maintain her power, as other favourite sultanas have
+done, by suffering partners in the sovereign's affections.  When
+his Majesty should return to England, a countess's coronet was to
+have rewarded the young lady's compliance, and marked her
+secondary rank.  She might, however, have proved a troublesome
+rival, as she seemed SO confident of the power of her charms,
+that whatever predominant ascendant the Duchess might retain, her
+own authority in the palace she thought was to yield to no one
+else.  George I., when his son the Prince of Wales and the
+Princess had quitted St. James's on their quarrel with him, had
+kept back their three eldest daughters, who lived with him to his
+death, even after there had outwardly been a reconciliation
+between the King and Prince.  Miss Brett, when the King set out,
+ordered a door to be broken out of her apartment into the royal
+garden.  Anne, the eldest of the Princesses, offended at that
+freedom, and not choosing such a companion in her walks, ordered
+the door to be walled up again.  Miss Brett as imperiously
+reversed that command. The King died suddenly, and the empire of
+the new mistress and her promised coronet vanished.  She
+afterwards married Sir William Leman, and was forgotten before
+her reign had transpired beyond the confines of Westminster!
+(70)  Her names were Sophia Dorothea ; but I call her by the
+latter, to distinguish her from the Princess Sophia, her
+mother-in-law, on whom the crown of Great Britain was settled.
+(71) Konigsmark behaved with great intrepidity, and was wounded
+at a bull-feast in Spain.  See Letters from Spain of the Contesse
+D'Anois, vol. ii.  He was brother of the beautiful Comtesse de
+Konigsmark, mistress of Augustus the Second, King of Poland.
+(72) It was not this Count Konigsmark, but an elder brother, who
+was accused of having suborned Colonel Vratz, Lieutenant Stern,
+and one George Boroskey, to murder Mr. Thynne in Pall-Mall, on
+the 12th of February, 1682, and for which they were executed in
+that street on the 10th of March.  For the particulars, see
+Howell's State Trials, vol. ix. p. 1, and Sir John Reresby's
+Memoirs, p. 135. "This day," says Evelyn, in his Diary of the
+10th of March, "was executed Colonel Vrats, for the execrable
+murder of Mr. Thynne, set on by the principal, Konigsmark: he
+went to execution like an undaunted hero, as one that had done a
+friendly office for that base coward, Count Konigsmark, who had
+hopes to marry his widow, the rich Lady Ogle, and was acquitted
+by a corrupt jury, and so got away: Vrats told a friend of mine,
+who accompanied him to the gallows, and gave him some advice,
+that he did not value dying of a rush, and hoped and believed God
+would deal with him like a gentleman." Mr. Thynne was buried in
+Westminster Abbey; the manner of his death being represented on
+his monument.  He was the Issachar of Absalom and Achitophel; in
+which poem Dryden, describing the respect and favour with which
+Monmouth was received upon his progress in the year 1691, Says:
+"Hospitable hearts did most commend
+Wise Issachar, his wealthy, western friend."
+
+Reresby states, that Lady Ogle, immediately after the marriage,
+"repenting herself of the match, fled from him into Holland,
+before they were bedded." This circumstance added to the fact,
+that Mr. Thynne had formerly seduced Miss Trevor, one of the
+maids of honour to Catherine of Portugal, wife of Charles II.,
+gave birth to the following lines:
+
+"Here lies Tom Thynne, of Longleat Hall,
+Who never would have miscarried,
+Had he married the woman he lay withal,
+Or lain with the woman he married."
+
+On the 30th of May, in the same year, Lady Ogle was married to
+Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset.-E.
+
+(73) Lady Suffolk thought he rather would have her regent of
+Hanover; and she also told me, that George I. had offered to live
+again with his wife, but she refused, unless her pardon were
+asked publicly.  She said, what most affected her was the
+disgrace that would be brought on her children; and if she were
+only pardoned, that would not remove it. Lady Suffolk thought she
+was then divorced, though the divorce was never published; and
+that the old Elector consented to his son's marrying the Duchess
+of Kendal with the left hand-but it seems strange, that George I.
+should offer to live again with his wife, and yet be divorced
+front her.  Perhaps George II. to vindicate his mother, supposed
+that offer and her spirited refusal.
+
+(74) George II. was scrupulously exact in separating and keeping
+in each country whatever belonged to England or Hanover.  Lady
+Suffolk told me, that on his accession he could not find a knife,
+fork, and spoon of gold which had belonged to Queen Ann(@, and
+which he remembered to have seen here at his first -arrival.  He
+found them at Hanover on his first journey thither after he came
+to the crown, and brought them back to England.  He could not
+recollect much of greater value; for, on Queen Anne's death, and
+in the interval before the arrival of the new family, such a
+clearance had been made of her Majesty's jewels, or the new King
+so instantly distributed what he found amongst his German
+favourites, that, as Lady S. told me, Queen Caroline never
+obtained of the late Queen's.jewels but one pearl necklace.
+
+(75) George I., says Coxe, who never loved his wife, gave
+implicit credit to the account of her infidelity, as related by
+his father; consented to her imprisonment, and obtained from the
+ecclesiastical consistory a divorce, which was passed on the 28th
+of December 1694." Memoirs of Walpole.-E.
+
+(76) "the unfortunate Sophia was confined in the castle of Alden,
+situated on the small river Aller, in the duchy of Zell.  She
+terminated her miserable existence, after a long captivity of
+thirty-two years, on the 13th of November 1726, only seven months
+before the death of George the First; and she was announced in
+the Gazette, under the title of the Electress Dowager of Hanover.
+During her whole confinement she behaved with no less mildness
+than dignity; and, on receiving the sacrament once every week,
+never omitted making the most solemn asseverations, that she was
+not guilty of the crime laid to her charge." Coxe, vol. i. p.
+268.-E.
+
+(77) Admiral Lord Howe, and also of sir William, afterwards
+Viscount Howe.-E.
+
+(78) Second daughter of George the Second; born in 1711, died
+October the 31st, 1786.
+
+(79) Caroline, the eldest of Lady Howe's children, had married a
+gentleman of her own name, John Howe, Esq, of Honslop, in the
+county of Bucks.
+
+(80) According to Coxe, she was, when young, a woman of great
+beauty, but became extremely corpulent as she advanced in years.
+"Her power over the King," he adds, "was not equal to that of the
+Duchess of Kendal, but her character for rapacity was not
+inferior." On the death of her husband, in 1721, she was created
+Countess of Leinster in the kingdom of Ireland, Baroness of
+Brentford, and Countess of Darlington.-E.
+
+(81)  One of the German ladies, being abused by the mob, was said
+to have put her head out of the coach, and cried in bad English,
+"Good people, why you abuse us?  We come for all your goods."
+"Yes, damn ye," answered a fellow in the crowd, "and for all our
+chattels too." I mention this because on the death of Princess
+Amelia the newspapers revived the story and told it of her,
+though I had heard it threescore years before of one of her
+grandfather's mistresses.
+
+(82) Colonel Brett, the companion of Wycherley, Steele, Davenant,
+etc. and of whom the following particulars are recorded by
+Spence, on the authority of Dr. Young:-"The Colonel was a
+remarkably handsome man.  The Countess looking out of her window
+on a great disturbance in the street, saw him assaulted by some
+bailiffs, who were going to arrest him.  She paid his debt,
+released him from their pursuit, and soon after married him.
+When she died, she left him more than he expected; with which he
+bought an estate in the country, built a very handsome house upon
+it, and furnished it in the highest taste; went down to see the
+finishing of it, returned to London in hot weather and in too
+much hurry; got a fever by it, and died.  Nobody had a better
+taste of what would please the town, and his opinion was much
+regarded by the actors and dramatic poets." Anecdotes, p. 355.-E.
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER III.
+
+
+
+Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of
+Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of Craggs-Royal
+Reconcilement-Peerage Bill defeated-Project for seizing the
+Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke of
+Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open Rupture-Prince and Princess of
+Wales ordered to leave the Palace.
+
+One of the most remarkable occurrences in the reign of George I.
+was the open quarrel between him and his son the Prince of Wales.
+Whence the dissension originated; whether the prince's attachment
+to his mother embittered his mind against his father, or whether
+hatred of' his father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not
+pretend to know.  I do suspect front circumstances, that the
+hereditary enmity in the House of Brunswick between the parents
+and their eldest sons dated earlier than the divisions between
+the first two Georges.  The Princess Sophia was a woman of parts
+and great vivacity: in the earlier part of her life she had
+professed much zeal for the deposed House of Stuart, as appeared
+by a letter of hers in print, addressed to the Chevalier de St.
+George.  It is natural enough for all princes,-who have no
+prospect of being benefited by the deposition of a crowned head,
+to choose to think royalty an indelible character.  The Queen of
+Prussia, daughter of George I. lived and died an avowed Jacobite.
+The Princess Sophia, youngest child of the Queen of Bohemia, was
+consequently the most remote from any pretensions to the British
+crown; (83) but no sooner had King William procured a settlement
+of it after Queen Anne on her Electoral Highness, than nobody
+became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, nor could be
+more impatient to mount the throne of the expelled Stuarts.  It
+is certain, that during the reign of Anne, the Elector George was
+inclined to the Tories, though-after his mother's death and his
+own accession he gave himself to the opposite party.  But if be
+and his mother espoused different factions, Sophia found a ready
+partisan in her grandson, the Electoral prince; (84) and it is
+true, that the demand made by the Prince of his writ of summons
+to the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, which no wonder was
+so offensive to Queen Anne, was made in concert with his
+grandmother, without the privity of the Elector his father.  Were
+it certain, as was believed, that Bolingbroke and the Jacobites
+prevailed on the Queen *85) to consent to her brother coming
+secretly to England, and to seeing him in her closet; she might
+have been induced to that step, when provoked by an attempt to
+force a distant and foreign heir upon her while still alive. The
+Queen and her heiress being dead, the new King and his son came
+over in apparent harmony; and on his Majesty's first visit to his
+electoral dominions, the Prince of Wales was even left Regent;
+but never being trusted afterwards with that dignity on like
+occasions, it is probable that the son discovered too much
+fondness for acting the king, or that the father conceived a
+jealousy of his son having done so.  Sure it is, that on the
+King's return great divisions arose in the court; and the Whigs
+were divided-some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown,
+and others to the expectant.  I shall not enter into the detail
+of those squabbles, of which I am but superficially informed.
+The predominant ministers were the Earls of Sunderland and
+Stanhope.  The brothers-in-law, the Viscount Townshend and Mr.
+Robert Walpole, adhered to the Prince.  Lord Sunderland is said
+to have too much resembled as a politician the earl his father,
+who was so principal an actor in the reign of James II. and in
+bringing about the Revolution.  Between the earl in question and
+the Prince of Wales grew mortal antipathy; of which -,in anecdote
+told me by my father himself will leave no doubt.  When a
+reconciliation had been patched up between the two courts, and my
+father became first lord of the treasury a second time, Lord
+Sunderland in a t`ete-`a-t`ete with him said, "Well, Mr. Walpole,
+we have settled matters for the present; but we must think whom
+we shall have next" (meaning in case of the King's demise).
+Walpole said, "Your lordship may think as you please, but my part
+is taken;" meaning to support the established settlement.
+
+Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent passions, and had
+dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of
+any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea
+of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew
+into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel,
+looking on himself' as totally unqualified for the post, and
+suspecting it for a plan of mocking him.  He died in one of those
+tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the
+explosion of the South Sea scheme.  That iniquitous affair, which
+Walpole had early exposed, and to remedy the mischiefs of which
+he alone was deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of
+affairs, and obliged Sunderland to submit to be only a coadjutor
+of the administration.  The younger Craggs, (86) a showy
+vapouring man, had been brought forward by the ministers to
+oppose Walpole; but was soon reduced to beg his assistance on one
+(87) of their ways and means.  Craggs caught his death by calling
+at the gate of Lady March, (88) who was ill of the small-pox; and
+being told so by the porter, went home directly, fell ill of the
+same distemper, and died.  His father, the elder Craggs, whose
+very good sense Sir R. Walpole much admired, soon followed his
+son, and his sudden death was imputed to grief; but having been
+deeply dipped in the iniquities of the South Sea, and wishing to
+prevent confiscation and save his ill-acquired wealth for his
+daughters, there was no doubt of his having despatched himself.
+When his death was divulged, Sir Robert Owned that the unhappy
+man had in an oblique manner hinted his resolution to him.
+The reconciliation of the royal family was so little cordial,
+that I question whether the Prince did not resent Sir Robert
+Walpole's return to the King's service.  Yet had Walpole defeated
+a plan of Sunderland that @would in future have exceedingly
+hampered the successor, as it was calculated to do; nor do I
+affect to ascribe Sir Robert's victory directly to zeal for the
+Prince: personal and just views prompted his opposition, and the
+commoners of England were not less indebted to him than the
+Prince.  Sunderland had devised a bill to restrain the crown from
+ever adding above six peers to a number limited., (89) The actual
+peers were far from disliking the measure; but Walpole, taking
+fire, instantly communicated his dissatisfaction to all the great
+commoners, who might for ever be excluded from the peerage.  He
+spoke, he wrote, (90) he persuaded, and the bill was rejected by
+the Commons with disdain, after it had passed the House of Lords.
+(91)
+
+But the hatred of some of the junta at court had gone farther,
+horribly farther.  On the death of George 1. Queen Caroline found
+in his cabinet a proposal of the Earl of Berkeley, (92) then, I
+think, first lord of the admiralty, to seize the Prince of Wales,
+and convey him to America, whence he should never be heard of
+more.  This detestable project copied probably from the Earl of
+Falmouth's offer to Charles II. with regard to his Queen, was in
+the handwriting of Charles Stanhope, elder brother of the Earl of
+Harrington: (93) and so deep was the impression deservedly made
+on the mind of George II. by that abominable paper, that all the
+favour of Lord Harrington, when secretary of state, could never
+obtain the smallest boon to his brother, though but the
+subordinate transcriber. (94) George I. was too humane to listen
+to such an atrocious deed.  It was not very kind to the
+conspirators to leave such an instrument behind him; and if
+virtue and conscience will not check bold bad men from paying
+court by detestable offers, the King's carelessness or
+indifference in such an instance ought to warn them of the little
+gratitude that such machinations can inspire or expect.
+
+Among those who had preferred the service of the King to that of
+the heir apparent, was the Duke of Newcastle;, (95) Who, having
+married his sister to Lord Townshend, both his royal highness and
+the viscount had expected would have adhered to that
+connexion-and neither forgave his desertion.-I am aware of the
+desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned
+the reconciliation of the King and Prince before I have given any
+account of their public rupture.  The chain of my thoughts led me
+into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will
+have let you into the motives of my dramatis personae better than
+if I had 'more exactly observed chronology.- and as I am not
+writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I
+recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French
+writers of tragedy) may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece
+as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another,
+and by bricole the audience, with what had passed in the
+penetralia before the tragedy commences?
+
+The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that
+the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of
+Wales had been delivered of a second son.  The Prince had
+intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should
+with his Majesty be godfathers.  Nothing could equal the
+indignation of his Royal Highness when the King named the Duke of
+Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other.  The
+christening took place as usual in the Princess's bedchamber.
+Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bedchamber, and of
+most accurate memory painted the scene to me exactly.  On one
+side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother; on the other
+the Prince and the Princess's ladies.  No sooner had the Bishop
+closed the ceremony, than the Prince, crossing the feet of the
+bed in a rage, stepped up to the Duke of Newcastle, and, holding
+up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing attitude, said, "You
+are a rascal, but I shall find you," meaning, in broken English,
+"I shall find a time to be revenged."-"What was my astonishment,"
+continued Lady Suffolk, "when going to the Princess's apartment
+the next morning, the yeOMen in the guard-chamber pointed their
+halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass! I urged that
+it was my duty to attend the Princess.  They said, 'No matter; I
+must not pass that way.'"
+
+In one word, the King had been so provoked at the Prince's
+outrage in his presence, that it had been determined to inflict a
+still greater insult on his Royal Highness.  His threat to the
+Duke was pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to
+prevent a duel he had actually been put under arrest-as if a
+Prince of Wales could stoop to fight with a subject.  The arrest
+was soon taken off; but at night the Prince and Princess were
+ordered to leave the palace, (96) and retired to the house of her
+chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street.
+
+(83) It is remarkable, that either the weak propensity of the
+Stuarts to popery, or the visible connexion between regal and
+ecclesiastic power, had such operation on many of the branches of
+that family, who were at a distance from the crown of England, to
+wear which it is necessary to be a Protestant, that two or three
+of the daughters of the king and Queen of Bohemia, though their
+parents had lost every thing in the struggle between the two
+religions, turned Roman Catholics; and so did one or more of the
+sons of the Princess Sophia, brothers of the Protestant
+candidate, George I.
+
+(84) Afterwards George II.
+
+(85) I believe it was a fact, that the poor weak Queen, being
+disposed even to cede the crown to her brother, consulted Bishop
+Wilkins, called the Prophet, to know what would be the
+consequence of such a step.  He replied, "Madam, you would be in
+the Tower in a month, and dead in three." This Sentence, dictated
+by common sense, her Majesty took for inspiration, and dropped
+all thoughts of resigning the crown.
+
+*86) James Craggs, Jun, buried in Westminster Abbey, with an
+epitaph by Pope.  [Craggs died on the 16th of February, 1721.
+His monument was executed by Guelphi, whom Lord Burlington
+invited into the kingdom.  Walpole considered it graceful and
+simple, but that the artist was an indifferent sculptor.  Dr.
+Johnson objects to Pope's inscription, that it is partly in Latin
+and partly in English.  "If either language," he says, "be
+preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no reason can
+be given why part of the information should be given in one
+tongue, and part in another, on a tomb more than in any other
+place or any other occasion: such an epitaph resembles the
+conversation of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning by
+words, and conveys part by signs."]
+
+(87) I think it was the sixpenny tax on offices.
+
+(88) Sarah Cadogan, afterwards Duchess of Richmond.
+
+(89) Queen Anne's creation of twelve peers at once, to obtain a
+majority in the House of Lords, offered an ostensible plea for
+the restrictions.
+
+(90) Sir Robert published a pamphlet against the bill, entitled,
+"The Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House, in relation to a
+project for restraining and limiting the powers of the Crown in
+the future creation of Peers." On the other side, Addison's pen
+was employed in defending the measure, in a paper called "The Old
+Whig," against Steele, who attacked it in a pamphlet entitled
+"The Plebeian."-E.
+
+(91) The effect of Sir Robert's speech on the House," says Coxe,
+"exceeded the sanguine expectations: it fixed those who had
+before been wavering and irresolute, brought over many who had
+been tempted by the speciousness of the measure to favour
+introduction, and procured its rejection, by a triumphant
+majority of 269 against 177."  Memoirs, Vol. i.-E.
+
+(92) James, third Earl of Berkeley. knight of the garter, etc.
+In March 1718, he was appointed first lord of the admiralty, in
+which post he continued all the reign of George the First.  He
+died at the castle of Aubigny in France in 1736.]
+
+(93) William Stanhope, first Earl of Harrington of that family.
+
+(94) Coxe states, that such was the indignation which the perusal
+of this paper excited, that, when Sir Robert espoused Charles
+Stanhope's interest, the King rejected the application with some
+expressions of resentment, and declared that no consideration
+should induce him to assign to him any place of trust or honour.-
+E.
+
+(95) Thomas Holles Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, lord chamberlain,
+then secretary of state, and lastly, first lord of the treasury
+under George II.; the same King to whom he had been so obnoxious
+in the preceding reign.  He was obliged by George III. to resign
+his post.
+
+(96) "Notice was also formally given that no persons who paid
+their respects to the Prince and Princess of Wales would be
+received at court; and they were deprived of their guard, and of
+all other marks of distinction." Coxe, vol. i. p. 132.-E.
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Bill of Pains and Penalties against Bishop Atterbury-Projected
+Assassination of Sir Robert Walpole-Revival of the Order of the
+Bath-Instance of George the First's good-humoured Presence of
+Mind.
+
+As this trifling work is a miscellany of detached recollections,
+I will, ere I quit the article of George I., mention two subjects
+of very unequal import, which belong peculiarly to his reign.
+The first was the deprivation of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester.
+Nothing more offensive to men of priestly principles could easily
+have happened: yet, as in a country of which the constitution was
+founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where thinking men
+had so recently exerted themselves to explode the prejudices
+attached to the persons of Kings and churchmen, it was impossible
+to defend the Bishop's treason but by denying it; or to condemn
+his condemnation, but by supposing illegalities in the process:
+both were vehemently urged by his faction, as his innocence was
+pleaded by himself.  That punishment and expulsion from his
+country may stagger the virtue even of a good man, and exasperate
+him against his country, is perhaps natural, and humanity ought
+to Pity it.  But whatever were the prepossessions of his friends
+in his favour, charity must now believe that Atterbury was always
+an ambitious, turbulent priest, attached to the House of Stuart,
+and consequently no friend to the civil and religious liberties
+of his country; or it must be acknowledged, that the
+disappointment of his ambition by the Queen's death, and the
+proscription of his ministerial associates, had driven on
+attempts to restore the expelled family in hopes of realizing his
+aspiring views.  His letters published by Nichols breathe the
+impetuous spirit of his youth.  His exclamation on the Queen's
+death, when he offered to proclaim the Pretender at Charing Cross
+in pontificalibus, and swore, on not being supported, that there
+was the best cause in England lost for want of spirit, is now
+believed also.  His papers, deposited with King James's in the
+Scottish College at Paris, proclaimed in what sentiments he died;
+and the facsimiles of his letters published by Sir David
+Dalrymple leave no doubt of his having in his exile entered into
+the service of the Pretender.  Culpable -is he was, who but must
+lament that so classic a mind had only assumed so elegant and
+amiable a semblance as he adopted after the disappointment of his
+prospects and hopes? His letter in defence of the authenticity of
+Lord Clarendon's History, is one of the most beautiful and
+touching specimens of eloquence in our language.
+
+It was not to load the character of the bishop, nor to affect
+candour by applauding his talents, that I introduced mention of
+him, much less to impute to him -,my consciousnesses of the
+intended crime that I am going to relate.  The person against
+whom the blow was supposed to be meditated never, in the most
+distant manner, suspected the bishop of being privy to the
+plot-No: animosity of parties, and malevolence to the champions
+of the House of Brunswick, no doubt suggested to some blind
+zealots the perpetration of a crime which would necessarily have
+injured the bishop's cause, and could by no means have prevented
+his disgrace.
+
+Mr. Johnstone, an ancient gentleman, who had been secretary of
+state for Scotland, his country, in the reign of King William,
+was a zealous friend of my father, Sir Robert, and who, in that
+period of assassination plots, had imbibed such a tincture of
+suspicion that he was continually notifying similar machinations
+to my father, and warning him.  to be on his guard against them.
+Sir Robert, intrepid and unsuspicious, (97) used to rally his
+good monitor; and, when serious, told him that his life was too
+constantly exposed to his enemies to make it of any use to be
+watchful on any particular occasion; nor, though Johnstone often
+hurried to him with intelligence of such designs, did he ever see
+reason, but once, to believe in the soundness of the information.
+That once arrived thus: a day or two before the bill of pains and
+penalties was to pass the House of Commons against the Bishop of
+Rochester, Mr. Johnstone advertised Sir Robert to be circumspect,
+for three or four persons meditated to assassinate him as he
+should leave the house at night.  Sir Robert laughed, and forgot
+the notice.  The morning after the debate, Johnstone came to Sir
+Robert with a kind of good-natured insult, telling him, that
+though he had scoffed his advice, he had for once followed it,
+and by so doing preserved his life.  Sir Robert understood not
+what he meant, and protested he had not given more credit than
+usual. to his warning.  "Yes," said Johnstone, "but you did; for
+you did not come from the House last night in your own chariot."
+Walpole affirmed that he did; but his friend persisting in his
+asseveration, Sir Robert called one of the footmen, who replied,
+"I did call up your honour's carriage; but Colonel Churchill
+being with you, and his chariot driving up first, your honour
+stepped into that, and your own came home empty."
+Johnstone, triumphing on his own veracity, and pushing the
+examination farther, Sir Robert's coachman recollected that, as
+he left Palace-yard, three men, much muffled, had looked into the
+empty chariot.  The mystery was never farther cleared up; and my
+father frequently said it was the only instance of the kind in
+which he had ever seen any appearance of a real design.
+
+The second subject that I promised to mention, and it shall be
+very briefly, was the revival of the Order of the Bath.  It was
+the measure of Sir Robert Walpole, and was an artful bank of
+thirty-six ribands to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places.
+He meant, too, to stave off the demand for garters, and intended
+that the red should be a step to the blue, and accordingly took
+one of the former himself.  He offered the new order to old
+Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for her grandson the duke, and for
+the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her grand-daughters.
+(98) She haughtily replied, they should take nothing but the
+garter. "Madam," said Sir Robert coolly, "they who take the bath
+will the sooner have the garter." The next year he took the
+latter himself with the Duke of Richmond, both having been
+previously installed knights of the revived institution.
+
+Before I quit King George I. I will relate a story, very
+expressive of his good-humoured presence of mind.
+
+On one of his journeys to Hanover his coach broke.  At a distance
+in view was the chateau of a considerable German nobleman.  The
+king sent to borrow assistance.  The possessor came, conveyed the
+king to his house, and begged the honour of his Majesty's
+accepting a dinner while his carriage was repairing; and, while
+the dinner was preparing, begged leave to amuse his Majesty with
+a collection of pictures which he had formed in several tours to
+Italy.  But what did the king see in one of the rooms but an
+unknown portrait of a person in the robes and with the regalia of
+the sovereigns of Great Britain!  George asked whom it
+represented.  The nobleman replied, with much diffident but
+decent respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had been
+acquainted with the Chevalier de St. George. who had done him the
+honour of sending him that picture. "Upon my word," said the king
+instantly, "it is very like to the family." It was impossible to
+remove the embarrassment of the proprietor with more good
+breeding.
+
+(97) At the time of the Preston rebellion, a Jacobite, who
+sometimes furnished Sir Robert with intelligence, sitting alone
+with him one night, suddenly putting his hand into his bosom and
+rising, said, "Why do not I kill you now?"  Walpole starting up,
+replied, "Because I am a younger man and a stronger."  They sat
+down again, and discussed the person's information But Sir Robert
+afterwards had reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention
+of assassination, but had hoped, by intimidating, to extort money
+from him.  Yet if no real attempt was made on his life, it was
+not from want of suggestions to it: one of the weekly journals
+pointed out Sir Robert's frequent passing a Putney bridge late at
+night, attended but by one or two servants, on his way to New
+Park, as a proper place; and after Sir Robert's death, the second
+Earl of Egmont told me, that he was once at a consultation of the
+Opposition, in which it was proposed to have Sir Robert murdered
+by a mob, of which the earl had declared his abhorrence.  Such an
+attempt was actually made in 1733, at the time of the famous
+excise bill.  As the minister descended the stairs of the House
+of commons on the night he carried the bill, he was guarded on
+one side by his second son Edward, and on the other by General
+Charles Churchill; but the crowd behind endeavoured to throw him
+down, as he was a bulky man, and trample him to death; and that
+not succeeding, they tried to strangle him by pulling his red
+cloak tight-but fortunately the strings broke by the violence of
+the tug.
+
+(98) Wriothesly, Duke of Bedford, had married Lady Anne Egerton,
+only daughter of Scroop, Duke of Bridgewater, by Lady Elizabeth
+Churchill, daughter of John, Duke of Marlborough.  See VOL. I. 8.
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Accession of George the Second-Sir Spencer Compton-Expected
+Change in Administration-Continuation of Lord Townshend-and Sir
+Robert Walpole by the Intervention of Queen Caroline-Mrs. Howard,
+afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Her character by
+Swift-and by Lord Chesterfield.
+
+
+The unexpected death of George I. on his road to Hanover was
+instantly notified by Lord Townshend, secretary of state, who
+attended his Majesty, to his brother Sir Robert Walpole, who as
+expeditiously was the first to carry the news to the
+successor and hail him King.  The next step was, to ask who his
+Majesty would please should draw his speech to the
+Council.  "Sir Spencer Compton," replied the new monarch.  The
+answer was decisive, and implied Sir Robert's dismission.  Sir
+Spencer Compton was Speaker of the House of Commons, and
+treasurer, I think, at that time, to his Royal Highness, who by
+that first command, implied his intention of making Sir Spencer
+his prime-minister.  He was a worthy man, of
+exceedingly grave formality, but of no parts, as his conduct
+immediately proved.  The poor gentleman was so little
+qualified to accommodate himself to the grandeur of the
+moment, and to conceive how a new sovereign should address
+himself to his ministers, and he had also been so far from
+meditating to supplant the premier,(99) that, in his distress, it
+was to Sir Robert himself that he had recourse, and whom he
+besought to make the draught of the Kin(,'s speech for him.  The
+new Queen, a better judge than her husband of the
+capacities of the two candidates, and who had silently watched
+for a moment proper for overturning the new designations, did not
+lose a moment in observing to the King how prejudicial it would
+be to his affairs to prefer to the minister in
+possession a man in whose own judgment his predecessor was the
+fittest person to execute his office.  From that moment there was
+no more question of Sir Spencer Compton as prime-minister.  He
+was created an earl, soon received the garter, and became
+president of that council, at the head of which he was much
+fitter to sit than to direct.  Fourteen years afterwards, he was
+again nominated by the same Prince to replace Sir Robert as first
+lord of the treasury on the latter's forced
+resignation, but not -.is prime-minister; the conduct of
+affairs being soon ravished from him by that dashing genius the
+Earl of Granville, who reduced him to a cipher for the little
+year in which he survived, and in which his incapacity had been
+obvious.
+
+The Queen, impatient to destroy all hopes of change, took the
+earliest opportunity of declaring her own sentiments.  The
+instance I shall cite will be a true picture of courtiers.  Their
+Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in
+Leicester-fields(100)on the very evening of their receiving
+notice of their accession to the Crown, and the next day all the
+nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands; my
+mother amongst the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton's designation,
+and not its evaporation, being known, could not make her way
+between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor
+could approach nearer to the Queen than the
+third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her
+Majesty than the Queen said aloud, "There, I am sure, I see a
+friend!"  The torrent divided and shrunk to either side; "and as
+I came away," said my mother, "I might have walked over their
+heads if I had pleased."
+
+The preoccupation of the Queen in favour of Walpole must be
+explained.  He had early discovered that, in whatever
+gallantries George Prince of Wales indulged or affected, even the
+person of his Princess was dearer to him than any charms in his
+mistresses; and though Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk) was
+openly his declared favourite, as avowedly as the Duchess of
+Kendal was his father's, Sir Robert's sagacity
+discerned that the power would be lodged with the wife, not with
+the mistress; and he not only devoted himself to the
+Princess; but totally abstained from even visiting Mrs.
+Howard; while the injudicious multitude concluded. that the
+common consequences of an inconstant husband's passion 'for his
+concubine would follow, and accordingly warmer, if not public
+vows were made to the supposed favourite, than to the Prince's
+consort.  They, especially, who in the late reign had been out of
+favour at court, had, to pave their future path to favour, and to
+secure the fall of Sir Robert Walpole,
+sedulously, and no doubt zealously, dedicated themselves to the
+mistress: Bolingbroke secretly, his friend Swift openly, and as
+ambitiously, cultivated Mrs. Howard; and the
+neighbourhood of Pope's villa to Richmond facilitated their
+intercourse, though his religion forbade his entertaining
+views beyond those of serving his friends.  Lord Bathurst,
+another of that connexion, and Lord Chesterfield, too early for
+his interest, founded their hopes on Mrs. Howard's
+influence; but astonished and disappointed at finding Walpole not
+shaken from his seat, they determined on an experiment that
+should be the touchstone of Mrs. Howard's credit.  They persuaded
+her to demand of the new King an Earl's coronet for Lord
+Bathurst.  She did-the Queen put in her veto, and Swift, in
+despair, returned to Ireland, to lament Queen Anne, and curse
+Queen Caroline, under the mask of patriotism, in a
+country he abhorred and despised.(101)
+
+To Mrs. Howard, Swift's ingratitude was base.  She,
+indubitably, had not only exerted all her interest to second his
+and his faction's interests, but loved Queen Caroline and the
+minister as little as they did; yet, when Swift died, he left
+behind him a Character of Mrs. Howard by no means
+flattering, which was published in his posthumous works.
+
+On its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become Lady Suffolk) said to me,
+in her calm, dispassionate manner, "All I can say is, that it is
+very different from one that he drew of me, and sent to me, many
+years ago, and which I have, written by his own
+hand."(102
+
+Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous-as his character of her,
+but under a feigned name, was printed in his life, though in a
+paper of which he was not known to be the author-was not more
+consistent.  Eudosia, described in the weekly journal called
+Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was meant for Lady Suffolk:
+yet was it no fault of hers that he was
+proscribed at court; nor did she perhaps ever know, as he
+never did till the year before his death, when I acquainted him
+with it by his friend Sir John Irwin, why he had been put into
+the Queen's Index expurgatorius.(102)  The queen had an obscure
+window at St. James's that looked into a dark passage, lighted
+only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard's
+apartment.  Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at court, had
+won so large a sum of money, that he thought it imprudent to
+carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress.
+Thence the queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord
+Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court- and finding
+himself desperate, went into opposition.  My father himself long
+afterwards told me the story, and had become the principal object
+of the peer's satiric wit, though he had not been the mover of
+his disgrace.  The weight of that anger fell more disgracefully
+on the king, as I shall mention in the next chapter.
+
+I will here interrupt the detail of what I have heard of the
+commencement of that reign, and farther anecdotes of the queen
+and the mistress, till I have related the second very
+memorable transaction of that era; and which would come in
+awkwardly, if postponed till I have despatched many subsequent
+particulars.
+
+(99) Sir Spencer Compton, afterwards Earl of Wilmington, was so
+far from resenting Sir Robert's superior talents, that he
+remained steadfastly -,attached to him; and when the famous
+motion for removing Sir Robert was made in both Houses, Lord
+Wilmington, though confined to his bed, and with his head
+blistered, rose and went to the House of Lords, to vote
+against a measure that avowed its own injustice, by being
+grounded only on popular clamour.
+
+(100) It was the town residence of the Sidneys, Earls of
+Leicester, of whom it was hired, as it was afterwards by
+Frederick, Prince of Wales, on a similar quarrel with his
+father.  He added to it Savile House, belonging to Sir George
+Savile, for his children.
+
+(101) Mr. Croker, in his biographical notice of Lady Suffolk,
+prefixed to the edition of her Letters, thus satisfactorily
+confutes this anecdote: "On this it is to be observed, that
+George the Second was proclaimed on the 14th of June 1727, that
+Swift returned to Ireland in the September of the same year, and
+that the first creation of peers in that reign did not take place
+till the 28th of May 1728.  Is it credible, that Mrs. Howard
+should have made such a request of the new King, and suffered so
+decided a refusal ten or eleven months before any peers were
+made?  But, again, upon this first
+creation of peers Mrs. Howard's brother is the second name.  Is
+it probable that, with so great an object for her own
+family in view, she risked a solicitation for Lord Bathurst? But
+that which seems most convincing, is Swift's own
+correspondence.  In a letter to Mrs.  of the 9th of July 1727, in
+which, rallying her on the solicitation to which the new King
+would be exposed, he says, - 'for my part, you may be secure,
+that I will never venture to recommend even a mouse to Mrs.
+Cole's cat, or a shoe-cleaner to your meanest domestic.'" Vol. i.
+p. xxv-E.
+
+(102) "This," says her biographer, "is a complete mistake, to
+give it no harsher name.  The Character which Swift left
+behind, and which was published in his posthumous works, is the
+very same which Lady Suffolk had in her possession.  If it be not
+flattering, it is to Swift's honour that he 'did not condescend
+to flatter her in the days of her highest favour; and the
+accusation of having written another less favourable, is wholly
+false." Ibid. vol. i. p. xxxviii.-E.
+
+(103) "It certainly would have been extraordinary," observes Mr.
+Croker, "that Lord Chesterfield, in 1137, when he was on terms of
+the most familiar friendship with Lady Suffolk,
+should have published a deprecatory character of her, and in
+revenge too, for being disgraced at court-Lady Suffolk being at
+the same time in disgrace also.  But, unluckily for
+Walpole's conjecture, the character of Eudosia (a female
+savant, as the name imports,) has not the slightest
+resemblance to Lady Suffolk, and contains no allusion to
+courts or courtiers." Ibid. vol. ii. p. xxxiii-E.
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Destruction of George the First's will.
+
+At the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. Wake,
+Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the will of the late King, and
+delivered it to the successor, expecting it would be
+opened and read in council.  On the contrary, his Majesty put it
+into his pocket, and stalked out of the room without
+uttering a word on the subject.  The poor prelate was
+thunderstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the courage to
+demand the testament's being opened, or at least to have it
+registered.  No man present chose to be more hardy than the
+person to whom the deposit had been trusted-perhaps none of them
+immediately conceived the possible violation of so solemn an act
+so notoriously existent; still, as the King never
+mentioned the will more, whispers only by degrees informed the
+public that the will was burnt; at least that its injunctions
+were never fulfilled.
+
+
+What the contents were was never ascertained.  Report said, that
+forty thousand pounds had been bequeathed to the Duchess of
+Kendal; and more vague rumours spoke of a large legacy to the
+Queen of Prussia, daughter of the late King.  Of that
+bequest demands were afterwards said to have been frequently and
+roughly made by her son the great King of Prussia, between whom
+and his uncle subsisted much inveteracy.
+
+The legacy to the ]Duchess was some time after on the brink of
+coming to open and legal discussion.  Lord Chesterfield
+marrying her niece and heiress, the Countess of Walsingham, and
+resenting his own proscription at court, was believed to have
+instituted, or at least to have threatened, a suit for recovery
+of the legacy to the Duchess, to which he was then become
+entitled; and it was as confidently believed that he was quieted
+by the payment of twenty thousand pounds.
+
+But if the Archbishop had too timidly betrayed the trust
+reposed in him from weakness and want of spirit, there were two
+other men who had no such plea of imbecility, and who, being
+independent, and above being awed, basely sacrificed their honour
+and their integrity for positive sordid gain.  George the First
+had deposited duplicates of his will with two sovereign German
+princes: I will not specify them, because at this distance of
+time I do not, perfectly recollect their
+titles; but I was actually, some years ago, shown a copy of a
+letter from one of our ambassadors abroad to-a secretary of state
+at that period, in which the ambassador said, one of the princes
+in question would accept the proffered subsidy, and had
+delivered, or would deliver, the duplicate of the King's will.
+The other trustee, was no doubt, as little
+conscientious and as corrupt.  It is pity the late King of
+Prussia did not learn their infamous treachery.
+
+Discoursing once with Lady Suffolk on that suppressed
+testament, she made the only plausible shadow of an excuse that
+could be made for George the Second.  She told me that George the
+First had burnt two wills made in favour of his son.  They were,
+probably, the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell; or one of
+them might be that of his mother, the
+Princess Sophia.  The crime of the first George could only
+palliate, not justify, the criminality of the second; for the
+second did -not punish the maturity, but the innocent.  But bad
+precedents are always dangerous, and too likely to be
+copied. (104)
+
+(104) On the subject of the royal will, Walpole, in his
+Memoires, vol. ii. p. 458, relates the following
+anecdote:-"The morning after the death of George the Second, Lord
+Waldegrave showed the Duke of Cumberland an extraordinary piece:
+it was endorsed, 'very private paper,' and was a letter from the
+Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave; in which his
+Grace informed the Earl, then our ambassador in
+France, that he had received by the messenger the copy of the
+will and codicil of George the First; that he had delivered it to
+his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it: 'So,'
+adds the Duke, 'we do not know whether it confirms the other or
+not;' and he proceeds to say, 'Despatch a messenger to the Duke
+Of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which he is granted all he
+desired; and we expect, by return of the
+messenger, the original will from him.'  George the First had
+left two wills; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of
+Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle.  He had been
+in the right to take these precautions: he himself had burned his
+wife's testament, and her and her father's, the duke of Zell;
+both of whom had made George the Second their heir--a paliative
+of the latter's obliquity, if justice would allow of any
+violation."  From the following passage in
+Boswell's Life of Johnson, the Doctor appears to have given
+credence to the story of the will:--"tom Davies instanced
+Charles the Second; Johnson taking fire at an attack upon that
+prince, exclaimed, "charles the Second was licentious in his
+practice, but he always had a reverence for what was good;
+Charles the Second was not such a man as George the Second; he
+did not destroy his father's will' he did not betray those over
+whom he ruled' he did not let the French fleet pass
+ours.'  He roared with prodigious violence against George the
+Second.  When he ceased, Moody interjected, in an Irish tone, and
+a comic look, 'Ah! poor George the Second!'" See vol. v. p. 284,
+ed. 1835.-E.
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Miss
+Bellenden-Her Marriage with Colonel John Campbell, afterwards
+fourth Duke of Argyle-Anecdotes of Queen Caroline-her last
+Illness and Death-Anecdote of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-Last
+Years of George the Second-Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady
+Sundon-Lady Diana Spencer-Frederick, Prince of Wales-Sudden
+Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton Court to St.
+James's -Birth of a Princess-Rupture with the King-Anecdotes of
+Lady Yarmouth.
+
+I will now resume the story of Lady Suffolk whose history, though
+she had none of that influence on the transactions of the cabinet
+that was expected, will still probably be more entertaining to
+two young ladies than a magisterial detail of political events,
+the traces of which at least may be found in journals and brief
+chronicles of the times.  The interior of courts, and the lesser
+features of history, are precisely those with which we are least
+acquainted,-I mean of the age preceding our own.  Such anecdotes
+are forgotten in the multiplicity of those that ensue, or reside
+only in the memory of idle old persons, or have not yet emerged
+into publicity from the portefeuilles of such garrulous
+Brant`omes as myself.  Trifling I will not call myself; for,
+while I have such charming disciples as you two to inform; and
+though acute or plodding politicians, for whom they are not
+meant, may condemn these pages; which is preferable, the labour
+of an historian who toils for fame and for applause from he knows
+not whom; or my careless commission to paper of perhaps
+insignificant passages that I remember, but penned for the
+amusement of a pair of such sensible and cultivated minds as I
+never met at so early an age, and whose fine eyes I do know will
+read me With candour, and allow me that mite of fame to which I
+aspire, their approbation of my endeavours to divert their
+evenings in the country?  O Guicciardin! is posthumous renown so
+valuable as the satisfaction of reading these court-tales to the
+lovely Berrys?
+
+Henrietta Hobart was daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir
+John Hobart, Knight of the Bath on the revival of the order, and
+afterwards by her interest made a baron; and since created Earl
+of Buckinghamshire.
+
+She was first married to Mr. Howard, the younger brother of more
+than one Earl of Suffolk; to which title he at last succeeded
+himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl of that
+branch.  She had but the slender fortune of an ancient baronet's
+daughter; and Mr. Howard's circumstances were the reverse of
+opulent.  It was the close of Queen Anne's reign: the young
+couple saw no step more prudent than to resort to Hanover, and
+endeavour to ingratiate themselves with the future sovereigns of
+England.  Still so narrow was their fortune, that Mr. Howard
+finding it expedient to give a dinner to the Hanoverian
+ministers, Mrs. Howard is said to have sacrificed her beautiful
+head of hair to pay for the expense.  It must be recollected,
+that at that period were in fashion those enormous full-bottomed
+wigs, which often cost twenty and thirty guineas.  Mrs. Howard
+was extremely acceptable to the intelligent Princess Sophia; but
+did not at that time make farther impression on the Electoral
+Prince, than, on his father's succession to the crown, to be
+appointed one of the bedchamber-women to the new Princess of
+Wales.
+
+The elder Whig politicians became ministers to the King.  The
+most promising of the young lords and gentleman of that party,
+and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the
+new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales.  The apartment of
+the bedchamber-woman in waiting became the fashionable evening
+rendez-vous of the most distinguished wits and beauties.  Lord
+Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr Lord
+Hervey, elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and
+reckoned to have superior parts, General (at that time only
+Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others not necessary to rehearse,
+were constant attendants: Miss Lepelle, afterwards Lady Hervey,
+my mother, Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous
+George, and herself of much vivacity and pretty, Mrs. Howard, and
+above all for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden, one of the
+maids of honour.  Her face and person were charming; lively she
+was almost to `etourderie; (105) and so agreeable she was, that I
+never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries
+who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever
+knew.  The Prince frequented the waiting-room, and soon felt a
+stronger inclination for her than he ever entertained but for his
+Princess.  Miss Bellenden by no means felt a reciprocal passion.
+The Prince's gallantry was by no means delicate; and his avarice
+disgusted her.  One evening sitting by her, he took out his purse
+and counted his money.  He repeated the numeration: the giddy
+Bellenden lost her patience, and cried out, "Sir, I cannot bear
+it! if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room."
+The chink of the gold did not tempt her more than the person of
+his Royal Highness.  In fact, her heart was engaged; and so the
+Prince, finding his love fruitless, suspected.  He was even so
+generous as to promise her, that if she would discover the object
+of her Choice, and would engage not to marry without his privity,
+he would consent to the match, and would be kind to her husband.
+She gave him the promise he exacted, but without acknowledging
+the person; and then, lest his Highness should throw any obstacle
+in the way, married, without his knowledge, Colonel Campbell, one
+of the grooms of his bedchamber, and who long afterwards
+succeeded to the title of Argyle at the death of Duke Archibald.
+(106)  The Prince never forgave the breach of her word; and
+whenever she went to the drawing-room, as from her husband's
+situation she was sometimes obliged to do, though trembling at
+what she knew she was to undergo, the Prince always stepped up to
+her, and whispered some very harsh reproach in her ear.  Mrs.
+Howard was the intimate friend of Miss Bellenden; had been the
+confidante of the Prince's passion; and, on Mrs. Campbell's
+eclipse, succeeded to her friend's post of favourite, but not to
+her resistance.
+
+>From the steady decorum of Mrs. Howard, I should conclude that
+she would have preferred the advantages of her situation to the
+ostentatious `eclat of it: but many obstacles stood in the way of
+total concealment; nor do I suppose that love had any share in
+the sacrifice she made of her virtue.  She had felt poverty, and
+was far from disliking power.  Mr. Howard was probably as little
+agreeable to her as he proved worthless.  The King, though very
+amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly idea he had
+entertained of gallantry being becoming, than by a love of
+variety; and he added the more egregious folly of fancying that
+inconstancy proved he was not governed; but so awkwardly did he
+manage that artifice, that it but demonstrated more clearly the
+influence of the Queen.  With such a disposition, secrecy would
+by no means have answered his Majesty's views; yet the publicity
+of the intrigue was especially owing to Mr. Howard, who, far from
+ceding his wife quietly, went one night into the quadrangle of
+St. James's, and vociferously demanded her to be restored to him
+before the guards and other audience.  Being thrust out, he sent
+a letter to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury, reclaiming her,
+and the Archbishop by his instructions consigned the summons to
+the Queen, who had the malicious pleasure of delivering the
+letter to her rival. (107)
+
+Such intemperate proceedings by no means invited the new mistress
+to leave the asylum of St. James's.  She was safe while under the
+royal roof: even after the rupture between the King and Prince
+(for the affair commenced in the reign of the first George), and
+though the Prince, on quitting St. James's, resided in a private
+house, it was too serious an enterprise to attempt to take his
+wife by force out of the palace of the Prince of Wales.  The case
+was altered, when, on the arrival of summer, their Royal
+Highnesses were to remove to Richmond.  Being only woman of the
+bedchamber, etiquette did not allow Mrs. Howard the entr`ee of
+the coach with the Princess.  She apprehended that Mr. Howard
+might seize her on the road.  To baffle such an attempt, her
+friends, John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of
+Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them by eight
+o'clock in the morning of the day, at noon of which the Prince
+and Princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house
+at Richmond.  During the summer a negotiation was commenced with
+the obstreperous husband, and he sold his own noisy honour and
+the possession of his wife for a pension of twelve hundred
+a-year. (108)
+
+These now little-known anecdotes of Mr. Howard's behaviour I
+received between twenty and thirty years afterwards, from the
+mouth of Lady Suffolk herself.  She had left the court about the
+year 1735, and passed her summers at her villa of Marble Hill, at
+Twickenham, living very retired both there and in London.  I
+purchased Strawberry Hill in 1747; and being much acquainted with
+the houses of Dorset, Vere, and others of Lady Suffolk's
+intimates, was become known to her; though she and my father had
+been at the head of two such hostile factions at court.  Becoming
+neighbours, and both, after her second husband's death, living
+single and alone, our acquaintance turned to intimacy.  She was
+extremely deaf, (109) and consequently had more satisfaction in
+narrating than in listening; her memory both of remote and of the
+most recent facts was correct beyond belief. I, like you, was
+indulgent to, and fond of old anecdotes.  Each of us knew
+different Parts of many court stories, and each was eager to
+learn what either could relate more; and thus, by comparing
+notes, we sometimes could make out discoveries of a third
+circumstance, (110) before unknown to both.  Those evenings, and
+I had many of them in autumnal nights, were extremely agreeable;
+and if this chain of minutiae proves so to you, you owe perhaps
+to those conversations the fidelity of my memory, which those
+repetitions recalled and stamped so lastingly.
+
+In this narrative will it be unwelcome to you, if I subjoin a
+faithful portrait of the heroine of this part?  lady Suffolk was
+of a just height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest
+light brown hair; was remarkably genteel, and always well dressed
+with taste and simplicity.  Those were her personal charms, for
+her face was regular and agreeable rather than beautiful and
+those charms she retained with little diminution to her death at
+the age of seventy-nine. (111) Her mental qualifications were by
+no means shining; her eyes and countenance showed her character,
+which was grave and mild.  Her strict love of truth and her
+accurate memory were always in unison, and made her too
+circumstantial on trifles.  She was discreet without being
+reserved; and having no bad qualities, and being constant to her
+connexions, she preserved uncommon respect to the end of her
+life; and from the propriety and decency of her behaviour was
+always treated as if her virtue had never been questioned; her
+friends even affecting to suppose, that her connexion with the
+King had been confined to pure friendship.  Unfortunately, his
+Majesty's passions were too indelicate to have been confined to
+Platonic love for a woman who was deaf, (112)-sentiments he had
+expressed in a letter to the Queen, who, however jealous of Lady
+Suffolk, had latterly dreaded the King's contracting a new
+attachment to a younger rival, and had prevented Lady Suffolk
+from leaving the court as early as she had wished to do.  "I
+don't know," said his Majesty, "why you will not let me part with
+an old deaf woman, of whom I am weary."
+
+Her credit had always been extremely limited by the Queen's
+superior influence, and by the devotion of the minister to her
+Majesty.  Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her
+brother, Lady Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate
+recommendations.  Her own acquisitions were so moderate, that,
+besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand
+pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased.  She
+left the court with an income so little to be envied, that,
+though an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some
+annuities on lives not so prolonged as her own she found herself
+straitened; and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave
+twenty thousand pounds to her family.  On quitting court, she
+married Mr. George Berkeley, and outlived him. (113)
+
+No established mistress of a sovereign ever enjoyed less of the
+brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk.  Watched and
+thwarted by the Queen, disclaimed by the minister, she owed to
+the dignity of her own behaviour, and to the contradiction of
+their enemies, the chief respect that was paid to her, and which
+but ill compensated for the slavery of her attendance, and the
+mortifications she endured.  She was elegant; her lover the
+reverse, and most unentertaining, and void of confidence in her.
+His motions too were measured by etiquette and the clock.  He
+visited her every evening at nine; but with such dull
+punctuality, that he frequently walked about his chamber for ten
+minutes with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute was not
+arrived.
+
+But from the Queen she tasted yet more positive vexations.  Till
+she became Countess of Suffolk, she constantly dressed the
+Queen's bead, who delighted in subjecting her to such servile
+offices, though always apologizing to her good Howard.  Often her
+Majesty had more complete triumph.  It happened more than once,
+that the King, coming into the room while the Queen was dressing,
+has snatched off the handkerchief, and, turning rudely to Mrs.
+Howard, has cried, "Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you
+hide the Queen's."
+
+It is certain that the King always preferred the Queen's person
+to that of any other woman; nor ever described his idea of
+beauty, but he drew the picture of his wife.
+
+Queen Caroline is said to have been very handsome at her
+marriage, soon after which she had the small-pox; but was little
+marked by it, and retained a most pleasing countenance.  It was
+full of majesty or mildness as she pleased, and her penetrating
+eyes expressed whatever she had a mind they should.  Her voice
+too was captivating, and her hands beautifully small, plump, and
+graceful.  Her understanding was uncommonly strong; and so was
+her resolution.  From their earliest connexion she had determined
+to govern the King, and deserved to do so; for her submission to
+his will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and his honour
+and interest always took place of her own: so that her love of
+power that was predominant, was dearly bought, and rarely ill
+employed.  She was ambitious too of fame; but, shackled by her
+devotion to the King, she seldom could pursue that object.  She
+wished to be a patroness of learned men but George had no respect
+for them or their works; and her Majesty's own taste was not very
+exquisite, nor did he allow her time to cultivate any studies.
+Her Generosity would have displayed itself, for she valued money
+but as the instrument of her good purposes: but he stinted her
+alike in almost all her passions; and though she wished for
+nothing more than to be liberal, she bore the imputation of his
+avarice, as she did of others of his faults.  Often, when she had
+made prudent and proper promises of preferment, and could not
+persuade the King to comply, she suffered the breach of word to
+fall on her, rather than reflect on him.  Though his affection
+and confidence in her were implicit, he lived in dread of being
+supposed to be governed by her; and that silly parade was
+extended even to the most private moments of business with my
+father.  Whenever he entered, the Queen rose, courtesied, and
+retired or offered to retire.  Sometimes the King condescended to
+bid her stay-on both occasions she and Sir Robert. had previously
+settled the business to be discussed.  Sometimes the King would
+quash the proposal in question, and yield after retalking it over
+with her-but then he boasted to Sir Robert that he himself had
+better considered it.
+
+One of the Queen's delights was the improvement of the garden at
+Richmond; and the King believed she paid for all with her own
+money-nor would he ever look at her intended plans, saying he did
+not care how she flung away her own revenue.  He little suspected
+the aids Sir Robert furnished to her from the treasury.  When she
+died, she was indebted twenty thousand pounds to the King.
+
+Her learning I have said was superficial; her knowledge of
+languages as little accurate.  The King, with a bluff Westphalian
+accent, spoke English correctly.  The Queen's chief study was
+divinity, and she had rather weakened her faith than enlightened
+it.  She was at least not orthodox; and her confidante, Lady
+Sundon, an absurd and pompous simpleton, swayed her countenance
+towards the less-believing clergy.  The Queen, however, was so
+sincere at her death, that when Archbishop Potter was to
+administer the sacrament to her, she declined taking it, very few
+persons being in the room.  When the prelate retired, the
+courtiers in the ante-room crowded round him, crying, "My lord,
+has the queen received?"  His grace artfully eluded the question,
+only saying most devoutly , "Her Majesty was in a heavenly
+disposition"-and the truth escaped the public.
+
+She suffered more unjustly by declining to see her son, the
+Prince of Wales, to whom she sent her blessing and forgiveness;
+but conceiving the extreme distress it would lay on the King,
+should he thus be forced to forgive so impenitent a son, or to
+banish him again if once recalled, she heroically preferred a
+meritorious husband to a worthless child.
+
+The Queen's greatest error was too high an opinion of her own
+address and art; she imagined that all who did not dare to
+contradict her were imposed upon; and she had the additional
+weakness of thinking that she could play off @any persons without
+being discovered.  That mistaken humour, and at other times her
+hazarding very offensive truths, made her many enemies; and her
+duplicity in fomenting jealousies between the ministers, that
+each might be more dependent on herself, was no sound wisdom.  It
+was the Queen who blew into a flame the ill-blood between Sir
+Robert Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend.  Yet
+though she disliked some of the cabinet, she never let her own
+prejudices disturb the King's affairs, provided the obnoxious
+paid no court to the mistress.  Lord Islay was the only man, who,
+by managing Scotland for Sir Robert Walpole, was maintained by
+him in spite of his attachment to Lady Suffolk.
+
+The Queen's great secret was her own rupture, which, till her
+last illness, nobody knew but the King, her German nurse, Mrs.
+Mailborne, and one other person.  To prevent all suspicion, her
+Majesty would frequently stand some minutes in her shift talking
+to her ladies (114) and though labouring with so dangerous a
+complaint, she made it so invariable a rule never to refuse a
+desire of the King, that every morning at Richmond she walked
+several miles with him; and more than once, when she had the gout
+in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready
+to attend him.  The pain, her bulk, and the exercise, threw her
+into such fits of perspiration as vented the gout; but those
+exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper.  It was great
+shrewdness in Sir Robert Walpole, who, before her distemper broke
+out, discovered her secret.  On my mother's death, who was of the
+Queen's age, her Majesty asked Sir Robert many physical
+questions; but he remarked that she oftenest reverted to a
+rupture, which had not been the illness of his wife.  When he
+came home, he said to me, "Now, Horace, I know by possession of
+what secret Lady Sundon (115)has preserved such an ascendant over
+the Queen." He was in the right.  How Lady Sundon had wormed
+herself into that mystery was never known.  As Sir Robert
+maintained his influence over the clergy by Gibson, Bishop of
+London, he often met with troublesome obstructions from Lady
+Sundon, who espoused, as I have said, the heterodox clergy; and
+Sir Robert could never shake her credit.
+
+Yet the Queen was constant in her protection of Sir Robert, and
+the day before she died gave a strong mark of her conviction that
+he was the firmest supporter the King had.  As they two alone
+were standing by the Queen's bed, she pathetically recommended,
+not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant.
+Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation would leave
+a fatal impression; but a short time after, the King reading with
+Sir Robert some intercepted letters from Germany, which said that
+now the Queen was 'gone, Sir Robert would have no protection: "On
+the contrary," said the King, "you know she recommended me to
+you."  This marked the notice he had taken of the expression; and
+it was the only notice he ever took of it: nay, his Majesty's
+grief was so excessive and so sincere, that his kindness to his
+minister seemed to increase for the Queen's sake.
+
+The Queen's dread of a rival was a feminine weakness; the
+behaviour of her elder son was a real thorn.  He early displayed
+his aversion to his mother, who perhaps assumed too much at
+first; yet it is certain that her good sense, and the interest of
+her family, would have prevented, if possible, the mutual dislike
+of the father and son, and their reciprocal contempt.  As the
+Opposition gave into all adulation towards the Prince, his
+ill-poised head and vanity swallowed all their incense.  He even
+early after his arrival had listened to a high act of
+disobedience.  Money he soon wanted: old Sarah, Duchess of
+Marlborough, (116) e ever proud and ever malignant, was persuaded
+to offer her favourite Granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer,
+afterwards Duchess of Bedford, to the Prince of' Wales, with a
+fortune of a hundred thousand pounds.  He accepted the proposal,
+and the day was fixed for their being secretly married at the
+Duchess's lodge in the Great park at Windsor.  Sir Robert Walpole
+got intelligence of the project, prevented it, and the secret was
+buried in silence.
+
+Youth, folly, and indiscretion, the beauty of the young lady, and
+a large sum of ready money, might have offered something like a
+plea for so rash a marriage, had it taken place; but what could
+excuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and barbarous
+insult offered to the King and Queen, by Frederick's taking his
+wife out of the palace of Hampton Court in the middle of the
+night, when she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the
+imminent risk of the lives of her and the child, to the unaired
+palace and bed at St. James's?  Had he no way of affronting his
+parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the
+crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is no more void
+of reflection.  The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism
+closed with paltry hypocrisy.  The Queen on the first notice of
+her son's exploits, set out for St. James's to visit the Princess
+by seven in the morning.  The gracious Prince, so far from
+attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother; but on her
+retreat gave her his hand, led her into the street to her
+coach-still dumb!-but a crowd being assembled at the gate, he
+kneeled down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her Majesty's hand.
+Her indignation must have shrunk into contempt.
+
+After the death of the Queen, Lady Yarmouth (117) came over, who
+had been the King's mistress at Hanover during his latter
+journeys-and with the Queen's privity, for he always made her the
+of his amours; which made Mrs. Selwyn once tell him, he should be
+the last man with whom she would have an intrigue, for she knew
+he would tell the Queen.  In his letters to the latter from
+Hanover, he said, "You must love the Walmoden, for she loves me."
+She was created a countess, and had much weight with him; but
+never employed her credit but to assist his ministers, or to
+convert some honours and favours to her own advantage.  She had
+two sons, who both bore her husband's name; but the younger,
+though never acknowledged, was supposed the King's, and
+consequently did not miss additional homage from the courtiers.
+That incense being one of the recommendations to the countenance
+of Lady Yarmouth, drew Lord Chesterfield into a ridiculous
+distress.  On his being made secretary of state, be found a fair
+young lad in the antechamber at St. James's, -who seeming much at
+home, the earl, concluding it was the mistress's son, was profuse
+of attentions to the boy, and more prodigal still of his
+prodigious regard for his mamma.  The shrewd boy received all his
+lordship's vows with indulgence, and without betraying himself:
+at last he said, "I suppose your lordship takes me for Master
+Louis; but I am only Sir William Russel, one of the pages."
+
+The King's last years passed as regularly as clockwork.  At nine
+at night he had cards in the apartment of his daughters, the
+Princesses Amelia and Caroline, with Lady Yarmouth, two or three
+of the late Queen's ladies, and as many of the most favoured
+officers of his own household.  Every Saturday in summer he
+carried that uniform party, but without his daughters, to dine at
+Richmond: they went in coaches and six in the middle of the day ,
+with the heavy horse-guards kicking up the dust before
+them-dined, walked an hour in the garden, returned in the same
+dusty parade; and his Majesty fancied himself the most gallant
+and lively prince in Europe.
+
+His last year was glorious and triumphant beyond example; and his
+death was most felicitous to himself, being without a Pang,
+without tasting a reverse, and when his sight and hearing were so
+nearly extinguished that any prolongation could but have swelled
+to calamities. (118)
+
+(105) She is thus described in a ballad, made upon the quarrel
+between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the
+christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his
+household were ordered to quit St. James's:-
+
+"But Bellenden we needs must praise,
+Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
+Sings over the hills and far away,
+Despising doleful dumps."-E.
+
+(106) Colonel John Campbell succeeded to the dukedom in 1761:
+Mrs. Campbell died in 1736.  She was the mother of the fifth Duke
+of Argyle and three other sons, and of Lady Caroline, who
+married, first, the Earl of Aylesbury, and, secondly, Walpole's
+bosom friend, Marshal Conway.-E.
+
+(107) "The letter which Walpole alludes to," says Mr. Croker, "is
+in existence.  It is not a letter from Mr. Howard to his lady,
+but from the Archbishop to the Princess; and although his grace
+urges a compliance with Mr. Howard's demand of the restoration of
+his wife, he treats it not as a matter between them, but as an
+attack on the Princess herself, whom the Archbishop considers as
+the direct protectress of Mrs. Howard, and the immediate cause of
+her resistance.  So that in this letter at least there is no
+ground for imputing to Mrs. Howard any rivalry with the Princess,
+or to the Princess any malicious jealousy of Mrs. Howard." Vol.
+i. p. xiv.-E.
+
+(108) Mr. Croker asserts, that "neither in Mrs. Howard's
+correspondence with the King, nor in the notes of her
+conversation with the Queen, nor in any of her most confidential
+papers, has he found a single trace of the feeling which Walpole
+so confidently imputes."  Upon this assertion, Sir Walter Scott,
+in a review of the Suffolk Correspondence, pleasantly
+remarks,-"We regret that the editor's researches have not enabled
+him to state, whether it is true that the restive husband sold
+his own noisy honour and the possession of his lady for a pension
+of twelve hundred a-year.  For our own parts, without believing
+all Walpole's details, we substantially agree in his opinion,
+that the King's friendship was by no means Platonic or refined;
+but that the Queen and Mrs. Howard, by mutual forbearance, good
+sense, and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal: after all,
+the question has no great interest for the present generation,
+since scandal is only valued when fresh, and the public have
+generally enough of that poignant fare, without ripping up the
+frailties of their grandmothers."  Sir Walter sums up his notice
+of the inaccuracies occurring in these Reminiscences, with the
+following just and considerate reflection: "When it is
+recollected that the noble owner of Strawberry Hill was speaking
+of very remote events, which he reported on hearsay, and that
+hearsay of old standing, such errors are scarcely to be wondered
+at, particularly when they are found to correspond with the
+partialities and prejudices of the narrator.  These,
+strengthening as we grow older, gradually pervert or at least
+alter, the accuracy of our recollections, until they assimilate
+them to our feelings, while,
+
+"As beams of warm imagination play,
+The memory's faint traces melt away.
+See Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 201.-E.
+
+(109) Pope alludes to this personal defect in his lines "On a
+certain Lady at court:"
+
+"I know a thing that's most uncommon;
+(Envy be silent, and attend!)
+I know a reasonable woman,
+handsome and witty, yet a friend.
+Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour;
+Not grave through pride, or gay through folly--
+An equal mixture of good humour
+And sensible, soft melancholy.
+'Has she no faults then,' (Envy says,) 'Sir?'
+'Yes, she has one, I must aver;
+When all the world conspires to praise her--
+The woman's deaf, and does not hear.'"-E.
+
+(110) The same thing has happened to me by books.  A passage
+lately read has recalled some other formerly perused; and both
+together have opened to me, or cleared up some third fact, which
+neither separately would have expounded.
+
+(111) Lady Suffolk died in July, 1767.-E.
+
+(112) Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness.  Cheselden,
+the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her that he had
+hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the
+drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned
+convict then in Newgate, who was deaf.  If the man could be
+pardoned, he would try it; and, if he succeeded, would practise
+the same cure on her ladyship.  She obtained the man's pardon,
+who was cousin to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended
+discovery to save his relation-and no more was heard of the
+experiment.  The man saved his ear too-but Cheselden was
+disgraced at court.
+
+(113) Lady Suffolk formally retired from court in 1734, and in
+the following year married the Honourable George Berkeley,
+youngest son of the second Earl of Berkeley.  He was Master of
+St. Catherine's, in the Tower, and had served in two parliaments
+as member for Dover.  He died in 1746.-E.
+
+(114) While the Queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the
+outward room, where hung a naked Venus.  Mrs. Selwyn,
+bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the
+chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, begin the
+service.  He said archly, "And a very proper altar-piece is here,
+Madam!"  Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the
+door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped.  The
+Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed.  He replied, "he would
+not whistle the word of God through the keyhole."
+
+(115) Mrs. Clayton, wife of Robert Clayton, Esq. of the Treasury,
+bedchamber-woman to the Queen.  This lady, who had the art to
+procure her husband to be created Lord Sundon, possessed over her
+royal mistress an influence of which even Sir Robert Walpole was
+jealous.-E.
+
+(116) That woman, who had risen to greatness and independent
+wealth by the weakness of another Queen, forgot, like Duc
+d'Epernon, her own unmerited exultation, and affected to brave
+successive courts, though sprung from the dregs of one.  When the
+Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess Royal, Anne, a
+boarded gallery with a penthouse roof was erected for the
+procession from the windows of the great drawing-room at St.
+James's cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary.
+The Prince being indisposed, and going to Bath, the marriage was
+deferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained,
+darkening the windows of Marlborough House.  The Duchess cried,
+"I wonder when my neighbour George will take away his
+orange-chest!"--which it did resemble.  She did not want that
+sort of wit,* which ill-temper, long knowledge of the world, and
+insolence can sharpen-and envying the favour which she no longer
+possessed, Sir R. Walpole was often the object of her satire.
+Yet her great friend, Lord Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined
+her to preserve very different sentiments.  The Duchess and my
+father and mother were standing by the Earl's bed at St. Albans
+as he was dying.  Taking Sir Robert by the hand, Lord Godolphin
+turned to the Duchess, and said, "Madam, should 'you ever desert
+this young man, and there should be a possibility of returning
+from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you." Her grace did
+not believe in spirits.
+
+* Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark to France, being at Paris
+soon after the King his master had been there, and a French lady
+being so ill-bred as to begin censuring the King to him, saying,
+"Ah! Monsieur, c'est une t`ete!"-"Couronn`ee," replied he
+instantly, stopping her by so gentle a hint.
+
+(117) Amelia Sophia, wife of the Baron de Walmoden, Created
+Countess of Yarmouth in 1739.
+
+(118) For an interesting account of the death of George the
+Second, on the 24th of October, 1760, and also of his funeral in
+Westminster Abbey, see Walpole's letters to Mr. Montagu on the
+25th of that month, and of the 13th of November.-E.
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+George the Second's Daughters-Anne, Princess of Orange-Princess
+Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of Cumberland.
+
+I am tempted to drain my memory of all its rubbish, and will set
+down a few more of my recollections, but with less method than I
+have used in the foregoing pages.
+
+I have said little or nothing of the King's two unmarried
+daughters.  Though they lived in the palace with him, he never
+admitted them to any share in his politics; and if any of the
+ministers paid them the compliment of seeming attachment, it was
+more for the air than for the reality.  The Princess Royal, Anne,
+married in Holland, was of a most imperious and ambitious nature;
+and on her mother's death, hoping to succeed to her credit, came
+to Holland on pretence of ill health; but the King, aware of her
+plan, Was so offended that he sent her to Bath as soon as she
+arrived, and as peremptorily back to Holland-I think, without
+suffering her to pass two nights in London.
+
+Princess Amelia, as well disposed to meddle, was confined to
+receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in
+love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connexion
+with her there was more reality.
+
+Princess Caroline, one of the most excellent of women, was
+devoted to the Queen, who, as well as the King, had such
+confidence in her veracity, that on any disagreement among their
+children, they said, "Stay, send for Caroline, and then we shall
+know the truth."
+
+The memorable Lord Hervey had dedicated himself to the Queen, and
+certainly towards her death had gained great ascendance with her.
+She had made him privy-seal; and as he took care to keep as well
+with Sir Robert Walpole, no man stood in a more prosperous light.
+
+
+But Lord Hervey, who handled all the weapons of a court, (119)
+had also made a deep impression on the heart of the virtuous
+Princess Caroline; and as there was a mortal antipathy between
+the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey, the court was often on the
+point of being disturbed by the enmity of the favourites of the
+two Princesses.  The death of the Queen deeply affected her
+daughter Caroline; and the change of the ministry four years
+after, dislodged Lord Hervey whom for the Queen's sake the King
+would have saved, and who very ungratefully satirized the King in
+a ballad, as if he had sacrificed him voluntarily.
+Disappointment, rage, and a distempered constitution carried Lord
+Hervey off, and overwhelmed his Princess - she never appeared in
+public after the Queen's death; and, being dreadfully afflicted
+with the rheumatism, never stirred out of her apartment, and
+rejoiced at her own dissolution some years before her father.
+
+Her sister Amelia leagued herself with the Bedford faction during
+the latter part of her father's life.  When he died, she
+established herself respectably; but enjoying no favour with her
+nephew, and hating the Princess-dowager, she made a plea of her
+deafness, and soon totally abstained from St. James's.
+
+The Duke of Cumberland, never, or very rarely, interfered in
+politics.  Power he would have liked, but never seemed to court
+it.  His passion would have been to command the army, and he
+would, I doubt, have been too ready to aggrandize the crown by
+it: but successive disgusts weaned his mind from all pursuits,
+and the grandeur of his sense, (120) and philosophy made him
+indifferent to a world that had disappointed all his views.  The
+unpopularity which the Scotch and Jacobites spread against him
+for his merit in suppressing the rebellion, his brother's
+jealousy, and the contempt he himself felt for the Prince, his
+own ill success in his battles abroad, and his father's
+treacherous sacrifice of him on the convention of Closterseven,
+the dereliction of his two political friends, Lord Holland and
+Lord Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the Princess-dowager;
+all those mortifications centring on a constitution evidently
+tending to dissolution, made him totally neglect himself, and
+ready to shake off being, as an encumbrance not worth the
+attention of a superior understanding.
+
+>From the time the Duke first appeared on the stage of the public,
+all his father's ministers had been blind to his Royal Highness's
+capacity, or were afraid of it.  Lord Granville, too giddy
+himself to sound a young Prince, had treated him arrogantly when
+the King and the Earl had projected a match for him with the
+Princess of Denmark.  The Duke, accustomed by the Queen and his
+governor, Mr. Poyntz, to venerate the wisdom of Sir Robert
+Walpole, then on his death-bed, sent Mr. Poyntz, the day but one
+before Sir Robert expired, to consult him how to avoid the match.
+Sir Robert advised his Royal Highness to stipulate for an ample
+settlement.  The Duke took the sage counsel, and heard no more of
+his intended bride.
+
+The low ambition of Lord Hardwicke, the childish passion for
+power of the Duke of Newcastle, and the peevish jealousy of Mr.
+Pelham, combined on the death of the Prince of Wales, to exclude
+the Duke of Cumberland from the regency (in case of minority,)
+and to make them flatter themselves that they should gain the
+favour of the Princess-dowager by cheating her with the semblance
+of power.  The Duke resented the slight, but scorned to make any
+claim.  The Princess never forgave the insidious homage; and, in
+concurrence with Lord Bute, totally estranged the affection of
+the young King from his uncle, nor allowed him a shadow of
+influence.
+
+(119) He had broken with Frederick, Prince of Wales, on having
+shared the favours of his mistress, Miss Vane, one of the Queen's
+maids of honour.  When she fell in labour at St. James's, and was
+delivered of a son, which she ascribed to the Prince, Lord Hervey
+and Lord Harrington each told Sir Robert Walpole that he believed
+himself father of the child.
+
+(120) the Duke, in his very childhood, gave a mark of his sense
+and firmness.  He had displeased the Queen, an(f she sent him up
+to his chamber.  When he appeared again, he was sullen.
+"William," said the Queen, "what have you been doing?"--
+"Reading."--"Reading what?"--"The Bible."--"And what did you read
+there?"--"About Jesus and Mary.=--"And what about them?"--"Why,
+that Jesus said to Mary, Woman! what hast thou to do with me?"
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of Catherine
+Duchess of Buckingham.
+
+I have done with royal personages: shall I add a codicil on some
+remarkable characters that I remember? As I am writing for young
+ladies, I have chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own sex; they,
+too, shall compose my last chapter: enter the Duchesses of
+Marlborough and Buckingham.
+
+Those two women were considerable personages in their day.  The
+first, her own beauty, the superior talents of her husband in
+war, and the caprice of a feeble princess, raised to the highest
+pitch of power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to her by
+her lord, and accumulated in concert with her, gave her weight in
+a free country.  The other, proud of royal, though illegitimate
+birth, was, from the vanity of that birth, so zealously attached
+to her expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never ceased
+labouring to effect his restoration; and, as the opposition to
+the House of Brunswick was composed partly of principled
+Jacobites-of Tories, who either knew not what their own
+principles were, or dissembled them to themselves, and of Whigs,
+who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in concert with the
+Jacobites and rejoiced in their assistance-two women of such
+wealth, rank, and enmity to the court, were sure of great
+attention from all the discontented.
+
+The beauty of the Duchess of Marlborough had always been of the
+scornful and imperious kind, and her features and air announced
+nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her
+beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord.  One of her
+principal charms was a prodigious abundance of fine fair hair.
+One day at her toilet, in anger to him, she cut off those
+commanding tresses, and flung them in his face.  Nor did her
+insolence stop there, nor stop till it had totally estranged and
+worn out the patience of the poor Queen, her mistress.  The
+Duchess was often seen to give her Majesty her fan and gloves,
+and turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells.
+
+Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she
+treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt.
+Her eldest daughter (121) and she were long at variance, and
+never reconciled.  When the young Duchess exposed herself by
+placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and
+bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother,
+quoting the words, said, "I know not what pleasure she might have
+in his company, but I am sure it was no honour."(122)  With her
+youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, old Sarah agreed as
+ill.  "I wonder," said the Duke of Marlborough to them, "that you
+cannot agree, you are so alike!"  Of her granddaughter, the
+Duchess of Manchester, daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, she
+affected to be fond.  One day she said to her, "Duchess of
+Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily-but
+you have a mother!"-"And she has a mother!" answered the Duchess
+of Manchester, who was all spirit, justice, and honour, and could
+not suppress sudden truth.
+
+One of old Marlborough's capital mortifications sprang from a
+granddaughter.  The most beautiful of her four charming
+daughters, Lady Sunderland,(123) left two sons,(124) the second
+Duke of Marlborough, and John Spencer, who became her heir, and
+Anne Lady Bateman, and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned,
+and who became Duchess of Bedford.  The Duke and his brother, to
+humour their grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest
+she never loved.  He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not
+more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm
+passions and such vast expectations.  He was modest and diffident
+too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and
+avaricious grandmother.  HIS sister, Lady Bateman, had the
+intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of
+Sunderland.  She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord
+Holland, and both had great influence over the Duke of
+Marlborough.  What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the
+court so great a subject as the Duke! Nor was it much less
+important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons
+for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the
+obligation to her.  Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and
+persuaded her brother to marry a handsome young lady, who,
+unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter
+enemy to his grandfather, the victorious Duke.  The grandam's
+rage exceeded all bounds.  Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she
+blackened the face, and wrote on it, "Now her outside is as black
+as her inside." The duke she turned out of the little lodge in
+Windsor Park; and then pretending that the new Duchess and her
+female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and
+gardens, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures,
+representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the Duchess
+carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm.
+
+Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to
+go over to the court.  With her coarse intemperate humour, she
+said, "that was the Fox that had stolen her goose."  Repeated
+injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her.  Fearing
+that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which
+she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice,
+and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public
+with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire,
+metamorphosed into the widow Black-acre.  Her grandson, in his
+suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire
+by the Emperor. "I retained it," said the beldam, " lest he
+should pick out the diamonds and pawn them."
+
+I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity,
+which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary
+-Wortley Montague.  Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond
+ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen
+Caroline's family for a certain peer; and, decked with those
+jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess; who, as soon as she was
+gone, said, "What an impudent creature, to come hither with her
+bribe in her ear!"  "Madam," replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was
+present, "how should people know where wine' is sold, unless a
+bush is hung out?"
+
+The Duchess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth
+to James II.(125) as the Marlborough was by the favour of his
+daughter.  Lady Dorchester,(126) the mother of the former,
+endeavoured to curb that pride, and, one should have thought,
+took an effectual method, though one few mothers would have
+practised.  "You need not be so vain," said the old profligate,
+"for you are not the King's daughter, but Colonel Graham's."
+Graham was a fashionable man of those days and noted for dry
+humour.  His legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was
+extremely like to the Duchess of Buckingham: "Well! well!" said
+Graham, "Kings are all powerful, and one must not complain; but
+certainly the same man begot those two women."  To discredit the
+wit of both parents, the Duchess never ceased labouring to
+restore the House of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to
+it.  Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that
+purpose.  She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where
+lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it.  A poor
+Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took
+notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin
+was become threadbare-and so it remained.
+
+Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her
+plots were not undiscovered by Sir Robert Walpole, who was
+remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and
+resolved to try what might be done through him himself.  I forget
+how she contracted an acquaintance with him: I do remember that
+more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself,
+which probably were transmitted through her.  Sir Robert always
+carried them to George II. who endorsed and returned them.  That
+negotiation not succeeding. the Duchess made a more home push.
+Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter, (afterwards Lady
+Mary Churchill,) she sent for Sir Robert, and asked him if he
+recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord
+Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He affected not to
+understand her. "Was not he allowed," urged the zealous Duchess,
+"to match his daughter to the Duke of York?" Sir Robert smiled,
+and left her.
+
+Sir Robert being forced from court, the Duchess thought the
+moment (127) favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but
+conscious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over
+her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath),
+and left the deed in his custody.  What was her astonishment,
+when on her return she redemanded the instrument!-It was
+mislaid-he could not find it-he never could find it! The Duchess
+grew clamorous.  At last his friend Lord Mansfield told him
+plainly,- he could never show his face unless he satisfied the
+Duchess.  Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate.
+The transaction was recorded in print by Sir Charles Hanbury
+Williams, in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called a
+Congratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes of the same
+personage, and was not less acute than Sir Charles's Odes on the
+same here.  The Duchess dying not long after Sir Robert's
+entrance into the House of Lords, Lord Oxford, one of her
+executors, told him there, that the Duchess had struck Lord Bath
+out of her will, and made him, Sir Robert, one of her trustees in
+his room. "Then," said Sir Robert, laughing, @ I see, my lord,
+that I have got Lord Bath's place before he has got mine." Sir
+Robert had artfully prevented the last.  Before he quitted the
+King, he persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the
+change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Peers, his
+great credit lying in the other house; and I remember my father's
+action when he returned from court and told me what he had
+done-,, I have turned the key of the closet on him,"-making that
+motion with his hand.  Pulteney had jumped at the proffered
+earldom, but saw his error when too late; and was so enraged at
+his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the
+House of Lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he
+would never take it up-but he had kissed the King's hand for it,
+and it was too late to recede.
+
+But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to
+her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as
+were appropriate to her rank.  She had made a funeral for her
+husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed
+that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age;
+and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him
+and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster
+Abbey.  It was for the
+procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of
+Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the
+corpse of the Duke. "It carried my Lord Marlborough," replied the
+other, and shall never be used for any body else."  "I have
+consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, and he tells
+me I may have a finer for twenty pounds."
+
+One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was marrying a grandson
+she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey.  That intriguing man, sore,
+as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to
+revenge or exalt himself.  Professions or recantations of any
+principles cost him nothing: at least the consecrated day which
+was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess made it
+presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his
+daughter, he must have
+sworn fealty to the House of Stuart.  It was on the martyrdom of
+her grandfather: she received him in the great drawing-room of
+Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning,
+attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal
+martyr.
+
+It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies
+to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them.  Having drawn
+his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each
+Duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other.  The Buckingham
+believed him: the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself,
+and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it;-and yet he left
+the copy behind him!(128)
+
+Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a
+picture of herself to the Duchess of Marlborough, as Pope did
+under covert of another lady.  Dining with the Duchess after the
+Duke's disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius: "But
+how," said she, "could so great a general be so abandoned?" "Oh!
+Madam," said the Bishop, "do not you know what a brimstone of a
+wife he had'!"
+
+Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I
+have been relating.  No matter; they will go under the article of
+my dotage-and very properly-I began with tales of my nursery, and
+prove that I have been writing in my second childhood.
+
+H. W. January 13th, 1789.
+
+(121) The Lady Henrietta, married to Lord Godolphin, who, by act
+of Parliament, succeeded as Duchess of Marlborough.  She died in
+1738, childless; and the issue of her next sister, Lady
+Sunderland, succeeded to the duchy of Marlborough.-E.
+
+(122) "For reasons," says Dr.  Johnson, "either not known, or not
+mentioned, Congreve bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand
+pounds to the Duchess; the accumulation of attentive parsimony,
+which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given
+great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended,
+at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to
+difficulties and distress."-E.
+
+(123) Lady Sunderland was a great politician; and having, like
+her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while combing it
+at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or interests she wished
+to influence.
+
+(124) She had an elder son, who died young, while only Earl of
+Sunderland.  He had parts, and all the ambition of his parents
+and of his family (which his younger brother had not); but George
+II. had conceived such an aversion to his father, that he would
+not employ him.  The young Earl at last asked Sir Robert Walpole
+for an ensigncy in the Guards.  The minister, astonished at so
+humble a request from a man of such consequence, expressed his
+surprise.  "I ask it," said the young lord, "to ascertain whether
+it is determined that I shall never have any thing." He died soon
+after at Paris.
+
+(125) By Catherine Sedley, created by her royal lover Countess of
+Dorchester for life.-E.
+
+(126) Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for saying
+that she wondered for what James chose his mistresses: "We are
+none of us handsome," said she; "and if we have wit, he has not
+enough to find it out." But I do not know whether it is as
+public, that her style was gross and shameless.  Meeting the
+Duchess of Portsmouth and Lady Orkney, the favourite of King
+William, at the drawing-room of George the First, "God!" said
+she, "who would have thought that we three whores should have met
+here?"  Having, after the King's abdication, married Sir David
+Collyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, " If any
+body should call you sons of a whore, you must bear it; for you
+are so: but if they call you bastards, fight till you die; for
+you are an honest man's sons." Susan, Lady Bellasis, another of
+King James's mistresses, had wit too, and no beauty.  Mrs.
+Godfrey had neither.  Grammont has recorded why she was chosen.
+
+(127) I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the
+distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the
+right period, nor whether it did not take place before Sir
+Robert's fall.  Nothing material depends on the precise period.
+
+(128) The story is thus told by Dr. Warton:-" These lines were
+shown to her grace, as if they were intended for the portrait of
+the Duchess of Buckingham; but she soon stopped the person who
+was reading them to her, as the Duchess of Portland informed me,
+and called out aloud, "I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly
+enough for whom they are designed;" and abused Pope most
+plentifully on the subject: though she was afterwards reconciled
+to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to
+suppress this portrait, which he a accepted, it is said, by the
+persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount; and, after the Duchess's death, it
+was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards inserted in
+his Moral Essays.  This is the greatest blemish on our poet's
+moral character."-E.
+
+
+
+The following extracts from Letters of Sarah, Duchess of
+Marlborough, were copied by me from the original letters
+addressed to the Earl of Stair, left by him to Sir David
+Dalrymple, his near relative, and lent to me by Sir David's
+brother, Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, long employed as Geographer in
+the service of the East India company.  They formed part of a
+large volume of ms. letters, chiefly from the same person.
+
+The Duchess of Marlborough's virulence, her prejudices, her style
+of writing, are already well known, and every line of these
+extracts will only serve to confirm the same opinion of all
+three.  But it will, probably, be thought curious thus to be able
+to compare the notes of the opposite political parties, and their
+different account of the same trifling facts, magnified by the
+prejudices of both into affairs of importance.
+
+January, 1840
+
+
+
+        EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF
+MARLBOROUGH,
+                           TO THE EARL OF STAIR,
+                   ILLUSTRATIVE OF "THE REMINISCENCES."
+                          (NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.)
+
+
+(See Reminiscences, p. 97.)
+
+London, Feb. 24th, 1738.
+. . . . As to Norfolk House, (129) I have heard there is a great
+deal of company, and that the Princess of Wales, tho' so very
+young, behaves so as to please every body; and I think her
+conversation is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room
+than the wise queen Caroline's was, who never was half an hour
+without saying something shocking to some body or other, even
+when she intended to oblige, and generally very improper
+discourse for a public room.
+
+
+[See p. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii]
+
+London, December 24th, 1737.
+My Lord,
+I received the favour of yours of the 17th December yesterday.  I
+have nothing material to say to you since my last.  His Majesty
+saw the Queen's women servants first, which was a very mournful
+sight, for they all cried extremely; and his Majesty was so
+affected that he began to speak, but went out of the room to
+recover himself.  And yesterday he saw the foreign ministers and
+his horses, which I remember Dean Swift gives a great character
+of; and was very sorry to leave them for the conversation of his
+countrymen in England.; and I think he was much in the right.
+
+
+[See P. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)
+
+Marlborough House, Nov. 15, 1737.
+It is not many days since I wrote to your lordship by post, but
+one can't be sure those letters are sent.  However, I have a mind
+to give you an account of what, perhaps, you may not have so
+particularly from any other hand.  This day, se'nnight the Queen
+was taken extremely ill; the physicians were sent for, and from
+the account that was given, they treated her as if she had the
+gout in her stomach: but, upon a thorough investigation of the
+matter, a surgeon desired that she would put her hand where the
+pain was that she complained of, which she did; and the surgeon,
+following her hand with his, found it was a very large rupture,
+which had been long Concealed.  Upon this, immediately they cut
+it, and some little part of the gut, which was discoloured.  Few
+of the knowing people have had any hopes for many days; for they
+still apprehend a mortification, and she can't escape it unless
+the physicians can make something pass thro' her, which they have
+not yet been able to do in so many days.  The King and the Royal
+Family have taken leave of her more than once; and his Majesty
+has given her leave to make her will, which she has done; but I
+fancy it will be in such a manner that few, if any, will know
+what her money amounts to.  Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk,
+and came to -London but last night.  I can't but think he must be
+extremely uneasy at this misfortune; for I have a notion that
+many of his troops will slacken very much, if not quite leave
+him, when they see he has lost his sure support.  But there is so
+much folly, and mean corruption, etc.
+
+
+London, December 1st, 1737.
+. . . . As to what has passed in the Queen's illness, and since
+her death, one can't depend on much one hears; and they are
+things that it is no great matter whether they are true or false.
+But one thing was odd: whether out of folly, or any thing else, I
+can't say, but the Duke of Newcastle did not send Sir Robert
+Walpole news of her illness, nor of her danger, as soon as he
+might have done; and after he came to town, which was but a few
+days before she died, and when she could no more live than she
+can now come out of her coffin, the physicians, and all that
+attended her, were ordered to say she was better, and that they
+had some hopes.  What the use of that was I cannot conceive.  And
+the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret: yet
+it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years;
+that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts
+were mortified.  This is another mystery which I don't
+comprehend; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the
+pain it gives more than common dissolutions? etc.
+
+
+
+[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)
+
+I AM Of the opinion, from woful experience, that, from flattery
+and want of understanding, most princes are alike; and,
+therefore, it is to no purpose to argue against their passions,
+but to defend ourselves, at all events, against them.
+
+
+
+[See P. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter VII]
+
+Wimbledon, 17th Aug. 1737.
+There has been a very extraordinary quarrel at court, which, I
+believe, nobody will give you so exact an account of as myself.
+The 31st of last month the Princess fell in labour.  The King and
+Queen both knew that she was to lie in -,it St. James's, where
+every thing was prepared.  It was her first child, and so little
+a way to London, that she thought it less hazard to go
+immediately away from Hampton Court to London, where she had all
+the assistance that could be, and every thing prepared, than to
+stay at Hampton Court, where she had nothing, and might be forced
+to make use of a country midwife.  There was not a minute's time
+to be lost in debating this matter, nor in ceremonials; the
+Princess begging earnestly of the Prince to carry her to St.
+James's, in such a hurry that gentlemen went behind the coach
+like footmen.  They got to St. James's safe, and she was brought
+to bed in one hour after.  Her Majesty followed them as soon as
+she could, but did not come till it was all over.  However, she
+expressed a great deal of anger to the Prince for having carried
+her away, tho' she and the child were very well.  I should have
+thought it had been most natural for a grandmother to have said
+she had been mightily frightened, but was glad it was so well
+over.  The Prince said all the respectful and dutiful things
+imaginable to her and the King, desiring her Majesty to support
+the reasons which made him go away as he did without acquainting
+his Majesty with it: and, I believe, all human creatures will
+allow that this was natural, for a man not to debate a thing of
+this kind, nor to lose a minute's time in ceremony, which was
+very useless, considering that it is a great while since the King
+has spoke to him, or taken the least notice of him.  The Prince
+told her Majesty he intended to go that morning to pay his duty
+to the King, but she advised him not.  This was Monday morning,
+and she said Wednesday was time enough; and, indeed, in that I
+think her Majesty was in the right.  the Prince submitted to her
+counsel, and only writ a most submissive and respectful letter to
+his Majesty, giving his reasons for what he had done.  And this
+conversation ended, that he hoped his Majesty would do him the
+honour to be godfather to his daughter, and that he would be
+pleased to name who the godmothers should be; and that he left
+all the directions of the christening to his Majesty's pleasure.
+The queen answered that it would be thought the asking the King
+to be godfather was too great a liberty, and advised him not to
+do it.  When the Prince led the Queen to her coach, which she
+would not have had him done, there was a great concourse of
+people; and, notwithstanding all that had passed before, she
+expressed so much kindness that she hugged and kissed him with
+great passion.  the King, after this, sent a message in writing,
+by my Lord Essex, in the following words:-that his Majesty looked
+upon what the Prince had done, in carrying the Princess to London
+in such a manner, as a deliberate indignity offered to himself
+and to the Queen, and resented it in the highest degree, and
+forbid him the Court.  I must own I cleared Sir Robert in my own
+mind of this counsel, thinking he was not in town: but it has
+proved otherwise, for he was in town; and the message is drawn up
+in such a manner that nobody doubts of its being done by sir
+Robert.  All the sycophants and agents of the court spread
+millions of falsities on this occasion; and all the language
+there was, that this was so great a crime that even those who
+went with the Prince ought to be proscribed.  How this will end
+nobody yet knows; at least I am sure I don't; but I know there
+was a council today held at Hampton court.  I have not heard yet
+of any christening being directed, but for that I am in no manner
+of pain: for, if it be never christened, I think 'tis in a better
+state than a great many devout people that I know.  Some talk as
+if they designed to take the child away from the Princess, to be
+under the care of her Majesty, who professes vast kindness to the
+Princess; and all the anger is at the Prince.  Among common
+subjects I think the law is, that nobody that has any interest in
+an estate is to have any thing to do with the person who is heir
+to it.  What prejudice this sucking child can do to the crown I
+don't see; but, to be sure, her Majesty will be very careful of
+it.  What I apprehend most. is, that the crown will be lost long
+before this little Princess can possibly enjoy it; and, if what I
+have heard to-day be true, I think the scheme of France is going
+to open; for I was told there was an ambassador to come from
+France whose goods had been landed in England, and that they have
+been sent back.  But I won't answer for the truth of that, as I
+will upon every thing else in this letter.
+
+
+
+[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter VII]
+
+June 20th, 1738.
+My Lord,
+I write to you this post, to give you an account of what I
+believe nobody else will so particularly, that Madame Walmond
+(130) was presented in the drawing-room to his Majesty on
+Thursday.  As she arrived some days before, there can be no doubt
+that it was not the first meeting, tho' the manner of her
+reception had the appearance of it; for his Majesty went up to
+her and kissed her on both sides, which is an honour, I believe,
+never any lady had from a king in public.  And when his Majesty
+went away, Lord Harrington presented the great men in the
+ministry and the foreign ministers in the drawing-room; the
+former of which performed their part with the utmost respect and
+submission.  This is, likewise, quite new; for, though all kings
+have had mistresses, they were attended at their own lodgings,
+and not in so public a manner.  I conclude they performed that
+ceremony too; but they could not lose the first opportunity of
+paying their respects, though ever so improperly.
+
+These great men were, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Walpole,
+my Lord Wilmington, my Lord Harrington, and Mr. Pelham.  My Lord
+Hervey had not the honour to be on the foot of a minister.   . .
+.
+
+I have nothing more to say, but that this Madame Walmond is at
+present in a mighty mean dirty lodging in St. James's Street.
+Her husband came with her, but he is going away; and that house
+that was Mr. Seymour's, in Hyde Park, which opens into the King's
+garden, is fitting up for her; -and the Duchess of Kendal's
+lodgings are making ready for her at St. James's.  There is
+nothing more known at present as to the settlement, but that
+directions are given for one upon the establishment of Ireland.
+perhaps that mayn't exceed the Duchess of Kendal's, which was
+three thousand pounds a-year.  But 'tis easy for the first
+minister to increase that as she pleases.
+
+
+
+[See p. 101.]
+
+London, December 3rd, 1737.
+I saw one yesterday that dined with my Lord Fanny, (131) who, as
+soon as he had dined, was sent for to come up to his Majesty, and
+there is all the appearance that can be of great favour to his
+lordship.  I mentioned him in my last, and I will now give you an
+account of some things concerning his character, that I believe
+you don't know.  What I am going to say I am sure is as true as
+if I had been a transactor in it myself.  And I will begin the
+relation with Mr. Lepelle, my Lord Fanny's wife's father, having
+made her a cornet in his regiment as soon as she was born, which
+is no more wrong to the design of an army than if she had been a
+son: and she was paid many years after she was a maid of honour.
+She was extreme forward and pert; and my Lord Sunderland got her
+a pension of the late King, it being too ridiculous to continue
+her any longer an officer in the army.  And into the bargain, she
+was to be a spy; but what she could tell to deserve a pension, I
+cannot comprehend.  However, King George the First used to talk
+to her very much; and this encouraged my Lord Fanny and her to
+undertake a very extraordinary project: and she went to the
+drawing-room every night, and publicly attacked his Majesty in a
+most vehement manner, insomuch that it was the diversion of all
+the town; which alarmed the Duchess of Kendal, and the ministry
+that governed her, to that degree, lest the King should be put in
+the opposers' hands, that they determined to buy my Lady H- off;
+and they gave her 4000 pounds to desist, which she did, and my
+Lord Fanny bought a good house with it, and furnished it very
+well.
+
+[See p. 106. Reminiscences, Chapter IX]
+
+London, March 19th, 1738.
+My Lord,
+I have received the favour of yours of the 11th by the post, but
+not that which you mention by another hand.  And since you can
+like such sort of accounts as I am able to give you, I will
+continue to do it.  I think it is very plain now that Sir Robert
+don't think it worth his while to make any proposals where it was
+once suspected he would.  And his wedding was celebrated as if he
+had been King of France, and the apartments furnished in the
+richest manner: crowds of people of the first quality being
+presented to the bride, who is the daughter of a clerk that sung
+the psalms in a church where Dr. Sacheverell was.  After the
+struggle among the court ladies who should have the honour of
+presenting her, which the Duchess of Newcastle obtained, it was
+thought more proper to have her presented by one of her own
+family; otherwise it would look as if she had no alliances: and
+therefore that ceremony was performed by Horace Walpole's wife,
+who was daughter to my tailor, Lumbar.  I read in a print lately,
+that an old gentleman, very rich, had married a maiden lady with
+two fatherless children but the printer did not then know the
+gentleman's name.
+
+
+
+March 27th, 1738.
+'I think I did not tell you that the Duke of Dorset waited on my
+Lady Walpole to congratulate her marriage, with the same ceremony
+as if it had been one of the Royal Family, with his white staff,
+which has not been used these many years, but when they attend
+the Crown.  But such a wretch as he is I hardly know; and his
+wife, whose passion is only money, assists him in his odious
+affair with Lady Betty Jermyn, who has a great deal to dispose
+of; who, notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family,
+married an innkeeper's son.  But indeed there was some reason for
+that; for she was ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had
+an unlucky accident with one of her father's servants; and by
+that match she got money to entertain herself all manner of ways.
+I tell you these things, which did not happen in your time of
+knowledge, which is a melancholy picture of what the world is
+come to; for this strange woman has had a great influence over
+many.
+
+
+Feb. 24th. 1738.
+Monday next is fixed for presenting Mrs. Skerrit at court: and
+there has been great solicitation from the court ladies who
+should do it, in which the Duchess of Newcastle has succeeded,
+and all the apartment is made ready for Sir Robert's lady, at his
+house at the Cockpit. (132)  I never saw her in my life, but at
+auctions; but I remember I liked her as to behaviour very well,
+and I believe she has a great deal of sense: and I am not one of
+the number that wonder so much at this match; for the King of
+France married Madame de Maintenon, and many men have done the
+same thing.  But as to the public, I do believe never was any man
+so great a villain as Sir Robert.
+
+
+Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 1741.
+.....Some changes are made as to employments; but very few are
+brought in but such as will be easily governed, and brought to
+act so as to keep their places.  I have inquired often about your
+lordship, who I have not yet heard named in this alteration.  And
+I have been told that Lords Chesterfield and Gower are to have
+nothing in the government, which I think a very ill sign of what
+is intended;  because that can be for no reason but because you
+are all such men as are incapable of ever being prevailed on by
+any arts to act any thing contrary to honour and the true
+interests of our country.
+
+(129) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.
+
+(130 Welmoden.
+
+(131 John, Lord Hervey, so called by Pope.
+
+(132) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                     Correspondence of Horace walpole
+                              Earl of Orford
+
+
+
+
+121 Letter 1
+To Richard West, Esq. (133)
+King's College, Nov 9, 1735,
+
+Dear West,
+You expect a long letter from me, and have said in verse all that
+I intended to have said in far inferior prose.  I intended
+filling three or four sides with exclamations against a
+University life; but you have showed me how strongly they may be
+expressed in three or four lines.  I can't build without straw;
+nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of
+dirt: a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as
+a hero of a poem, and Cambridge sophs are too low to introduce
+into a letter that aims not at punning:
+
+Haud equidem invideo vati, quem pulpita pascunt.
+
+But why mayn't we hold a classical correspondence? I can
+never forget the many agreeable hours we have passed in
+reading Horace and Virgil; and I think they are topics
+will never grow stale.  Let us extend the Roman empire,
+and cultivate two barbarous towns o'er -run with rusticity and
+Mathematics.  The creatures are so used to a circle,
+that they Plod on in the same eternal round, with their
+whole view confined to a punctum, cujus nulla est pars:
+"Their time a moment, and a point their space."
+
+Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus
+Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent
+Tu coluisse novem Musas, Romane, memento;
+Hae tibi crunt artes. . . .
+
+We have not the least poetry stirring here; for I can't
+call verses on the 5th of November and 30th of January
+by that name, more than four lines on a chapter in the New
+Testament is an epigram.  Tydeus (134) rose and set at Eton: he
+is only known here to be a scholar of King's.  Orosmades  and
+Almanzor are just the same; that is, I am almost the only person
+they are acquainted with, and consequently the only person
+acquainted with their excellencies.  Plato improves every day; so
+does my friendship with him.  These three
+divide my whole time, though I believe you will guess
+there is no quadruple alliance; (135) that was a happiness which
+I only enjoyed when you was at Eton.  A short account of the Eton
+people at Oxford would much oblige, my dear West, your faithful
+friend,
+H. WALPOLE.
+
+
+(133) Richard West was the only son of the Right Honourable
+Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by Elizabeth,
+daughter of the celebrated Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury.  When
+this correspondence commences, Mr. West was nineteen years old,
+and Mr. Walpole one year younger.  [West died on the 1st of
+January, 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six.  He had a
+great genius for poetry.  His correspondence
+with Gray, and several of his poems, are included
+in the collection of letters published by Mr. Mason.
+West's father published an able discourse of treasons and bills
+of attainder, and a tract on the manner of creating peers.  He
+also wrote several essays in "The Freethinker;" and was the
+reputed author of a tragedy called "Hecuba;" which was performed
+at Drury Lane theatre in 1726.]
+
+(134) Tydeus, Orosmades, Almanzor, and Plato, were names
+which had been given by them to some of their Eton
+schoolfellows.
+
+(135) Thus as boys they had called the intimacy formed at Eton
+between Walpole, Gray, West, and Ashton.
+
+
+
+                                   1736
+
+122 Letter 2
+To George Montagu, Esq. (136)
+King's College, May 2, 1736.
+
+Dear Sir,
+Unless I were to be married myself, I should despair ever
+being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done: had I
+known your talent before, I would have desired an
+epithalamium.  I believe the princess (137) will have more
+beauties bestowed on her by the occasional poets, than even a
+painter would afford her.  They will cook up a new Pandora, and
+in the bottom of the box enclose Hope, that all they have said is
+true.  A great many, out of excess of good breeding, having heard
+it was rude to talk Latin before women, propose complimenting her
+in English; which she will be much the
+better for.  I doubt most of them instead of fearing their
+compositions should not be understood, should fear they
+should: they write they don't know what, to be read by they don't
+know who.  You have made me a very unreasonable request, which I
+will answer with another as extraordinary: you desire I would
+burn your letters; I desire you would keep mine.  I know but of
+one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending
+you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge three-pence for a
+half-penny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a
+farthing.  You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium,
+as you call it, and conclusion.  I hope, for the future, our
+correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George,
+and dear Harry; not as formally as if we were playing a game at
+chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the
+honour Of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whether he
+would move.  In one point I would have our correspondence like a
+game at chess; it should last all our lives-but I hear you cry
+check; adieu! Dear George, yours ever.
+
+(136) George Montagu was the son of Brigadier-General Edward
+Montagu, and nephew to the Earl of Halifax.  He was member of
+parliament for Northampton, usher of the black rod in Ireland
+during the lieutenancy of the Earl of Halifax, ranger of
+Salsey Forest, and private secretary to Lord North when
+chancellor of the exchequer.  [And of him "it is now only
+remembered," says the "Quarterly Review," vol. xix. p. 131, "that
+he was a gentleman-like body of the vieille cour, and that he was
+usually attended by his brother John, (the Little John of
+Walpole's correspondence,) who was a midshipman at the age of
+sixty, and found his chief occupation in carrying about his
+brother's snuff-box."]
+
+(137) Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, married, in April,
+1736, to Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales.
+
+
+
+
+123 Letter 3
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+King's College, May 6, 1736.
+
+Dear George,
+I agree with you entirely in the pleasure you take
+in talking over old stories, but can't say but I meet
+every day with new circumstances, which will be still
+more pleasure to me to recollect.  I think at our age
+'tis excess of joy, to think, while we are running over
+past happinesses, that it is still in our power to enjoy
+as great.  Narrations of the greatest actions of other people are
+tedious in comparison of the serious trifles that every man can
+call to mind of himself while he was learning
+those histories.  Youthful passages of life are the chippings of
+Pitt's diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottos; the
+stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle
+and agreeable.  Alexander, at the head of the world,
+never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age
+have enjoyed at the head of a school.  Little intrigues,
+little schemes, and policies engage their thoughts;
+and, at the same time that they are laying the foundation for
+their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in
+furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old
+men cannot be said to be children a second time
+with greater truth from any one cause, than their living
+over again their childhood in imagination.  To reflect
+on the season when first they felt the titillation of love, the
+budding passions, and the first dear object of their
+wishes! how unexperienced they gave credit to all the tales of
+romantic loves! Dear George, were not the playing fields at Eton
+food for all manner of flights?  No old maid's gown, though it
+had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King
+George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor
+plains have in my idea.  At first I was contented with tending a
+visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of
+the cascade under the bridge.  How happy should I have been to
+have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it,
+and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further
+into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia
+to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view
+than the Capitoli immobile saxum.  I wish a committee of the
+House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate; or a bill appear
+half so agreeable as a billet-doux.  You see how deep you have
+carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but
+shall talk of them with more to you.  I can't say I am sorry I
+was never quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a
+match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but,
+thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty. The
+beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or
+conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and
+pommelling king Amulius's herdsmen.  I was sometimes troubled
+with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one
+should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his
+hands, they were both so callous.  One of the most agreeable
+circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of
+yourself, Charles,(138) and Your sincere friend.
+
+(138) Colonel Charles Montagu, afterwards Lieutenant-General, and
+Knight of the Bath, and brother of George Montagu.  He married
+Elizabeth Villiers, Viscountess Grandison,
+daughter of the Earl of Grandison.
+
+
+
+124 Letter 4
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+King's College, May 20, 1736.
+
+Dear George:
+You will excuse my not having written to you, when you hear I
+have been a jaunt to Oxford.  As you have seen it, I shall only
+say I think it one of the most agreeable places I ever set my
+eyes on.  In our way thither we stopped at the Duke of Kent's,
+(139) at Wrest. (140)  On the great staircase is a picture of the
+duchess; (141) I said it was very like; oh, dear sir! said Mrs.
+Housekeeper, it's too handsome for my lady duchess; her grace's
+chin is much longer than that.
+
+In the garden are monuments in memory of Lord Harold (142) Lady
+Glenorchy, (143) the late duchess,(144) and the present duke.  At
+Lord Clarendon's (145) at Cornbury,(146) is a
+prodigious quantity of Vandykes; but I had not time to take down
+any of their dresses.  By the way, you gave me no account of the
+last masquerade. Coming back, we saw Easton Neston,(147) a seat
+of Lord Pomfret, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine
+statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed
+emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossuses, Venuses,
+headless carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and
+hieroglyphics.(148)  I saw Althorp(149) the same day, where are a
+vast many pictures-some mighty good; a gallery with the Windsor
+beauties, and Lady Bridgewater(150) who is full as handsome as
+any of them; a bouncing head of, I believe, Cleopatra, called
+there the Duchess of Mazarine.  The park is enchanting.  I forgot
+to tell you I was at Blenheim, where I saw nothing but a cross
+housekeeper, and an impertinent porter, except a few pictures, a
+quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house, and
+about this quarry, quantities of inscriptions in honour of the
+Duke of Marlborough, and I think of her grace too.
+
+Adieu! dear George, Yours ever.
+
+The verses are not published.
+
+(139) Henry de Grey, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Kent, son of
+Anthony Earl of Kent, and Mary, daughter of Lord Lucas. [The
+duke, who had been so created in 1710, having lost all his sons
+during his lifetime, obtained a new patent in 1740,
+creating him Marquis Grey, with remainder to his
+grand-daughter Jemima Campbell, daughter of his eldest
+daughter, Lady amabel Grey, by her husband John, third Earl of
+Breadalbane.  On the death of the duke, in June 1740, the
+marquisate of Grey and barony of Lucas, together with the
+Wrest House and all the vast estates of the duke, devolved upon
+his grand-daughter, Lady Jemima Campbell, then Lady
+Jemima Royston, she having married Philip Viscount Royston,
+eldest son of the Earl of Hardwicke, by whom she had two
+daughters, Amabel married in July 1772, to Lord Polwarth, only
+son of the Earl of Marchmont, created a peer of Great Britain by
+the title of Baron Hume of Berwick, and who died in 1781 without
+issue: her ladyship was advanced to the dignity of Countess de
+Grey by letters patent, in 1816, with remainder of that earldom
+to her sister Mary Jemima, wife of Thomas second Lord Grantham,
+and that lady's male issue.  Lady Grantham died in 1830; and upon
+the death of the countess, in 1833, she was succeeded under the
+patent by her nephew Lord Grantham, the present Earl de Grey.]
+
+(140) Wrest House in Bedfordshire. [It is remarkable that, from
+the death of the Duke of Kent, Wrest House has never
+remained a second generation in the same family, but has
+descended successively through females to the families of
+Yorke Earl of Hardwicke, Hume Earl of Marchmont, and is now
+vested in that of Robinson Lord Grantham, the
+great-great-grandson of the duke.)
+
+(141) Lady Sophia Bentinck, second wife of the Duke of Kent, and
+daughter to William Earl of Portland.
+
+(142) Anthony Earl of Harold, eldest son of the Duke of Kent.
+[Married to Lady Mary Grafton, daughter of the Earl of Thanet.
+He died without issue, in 1723, in consequence of an ear of
+barley sticking in his throat.  His widow, who survived many
+years, afterwards married John first Earl Gower.]
+
+(143) Amabella, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kent, married to
+John Campbell, Lord Viscount Glenorchy, son of Lord
+Breadalbane.
+
+(144) Jemima, eldest daughter of Lord Crewe, and first wife of
+the Duke of Kent.
+
+(145) Henry Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, son of Laurence Earl
+of Rochester.
+
+(146) In the county of Oxford.
+
+(147) Easton Neston, the ancient family seat of the Fermor
+family, had been rebuilt by Sir William Fermor who was
+elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Lempster of
+Lempster, or Leominster, county of Hereford; and whose only son
+Thomas, second baron, was advanced to the earldom of
+Pomfret in 1721.-E.
+
+(148) Part of the invaluable collection of the great Earl of
+Arundel.  They had been formerly purchased by John Lord
+Jefferies, Baron of Wem; and in 1755 were presented by his
+daughter, the Countess-dowager of Pomfret, to the University of
+Oxford.-E.
+
+(149) The seat of Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland; who, upon
+the demise of his aunt Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Duke of
+Marlborough, succeeded to the honours of his illustrious
+grandfather.  Althorp is now the seat of Earl Spencer.  An
+account of the mansion, its pictures, etc. was published by Dr.
+Dibdin, in 1822, under the title of "Edes Althorpianae," as a
+supplement to his "Bibliotheca Spenceriana."-E.
+
+(150) Elizabeth, third daughter of the great Duke of
+Marlborough, and wife of Scroop, Earl and afterwards first Duke
+of Bridgewater.  She died, however, previous to her
+husband's advancement to the dukedom.-E.
+
+
+
+126 Letter 5
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+King's College, May 30, 1736.
+
+Dear George,
+You show me in the prettiest manner how much you like
+Petronius Arbiter; I have heard you commend him, but I am more
+pleased with your tacit approbation of writing like him, prose
+interspersed with verse: I shall send you soon in return some
+poetry interspersed with prose; I mean the Cambridge
+congratulation with the notes, as you desired.  I have
+transcribed the greatest part of what was tolerable at the
+coffee-houses; but by most of what you will find, you will hardly
+think I have left any thing worse behind.  There is lately come
+out a new piece, called A Dialogue between
+Philemon and Hydaspes on false religion, by one Mr.
+Coventry,(151) A.M., and fellow, formerly fellow-commoner, of
+Magdalen.  He is a young man, but 'tis really a pretty thing.  If
+you cannot get it in town, I will send it with the verses.  He
+accounts for superstition in a new manner, and I think a Just
+One; attributing it to disappointments in love.  He don't
+resolve it all into that bottom; ascribes it almost wholly as the
+source of female enthusiasm; and I dare say there's ne'er a girl
+from the age of fourteen to four-and-twenty, but will subscribe
+to his principles, and own, if the dear man were dead that she
+loves, she would settle all her affection on heaven, whither he
+was gone.
+
+Who would not be an Artemisia, and raise the stately mausoleum to
+her lord; then weep and watch incessant over it like the Ephesian
+matron!
+
+I have heard of one lady, who had not quite so great a
+veneration for her husband's tomb, but preferred lying alone in
+one, to lying on his left hand; perhaps she had an aversion to
+the German custom of left-handed wives.  I met yesterday with a
+pretty little dialogue on the subject of constancy tis between a
+traveller and a dove
+
+LE PASSANT.
+Que fais tu dans ce bois, plaintive Tourturelle?
+
+LA ToURTURELLE.
+Je g`emis, j'ai perdu ma compagne fidelle.
+
+LE PASSANT.
+Ne crains tu pas que l'oiseleur
+Ne te fasse mourir comme elle?
+
+La Tourturelle.
+Si ce n'est lui, ce sera ma douleur.
+
+'Twould have been a little more apposite, if she had grieved for
+her lover.  I have ventured to turn it into that view,
+lengthened it, and spoiled it, as you shall see.
+
+P.-Plaintive turtle, cease your moan;
+Hence away;
+In this dreary wood alone
+Why d'ye stay?
+
+
+
+T.-These tears, alas! you see flow
+For my mate!
+P.-Dread you not from net or bow
+His sad fate?
+
+T.-If, ah! if they neither kill,
+Sorrow will.
+
+You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell
+you, I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a
+disconsolate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by
+the barbarity of a gun.  She coos and calls me so movingly,
+'twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it
+grieves me to pity her.  She is so allicholy as any thing.  I'll
+warrant you now she's as sorry as one of us would be.  Well, good
+man, he's gone, and he died like a lamb.  She's an unfortunate
+woman, but she must have patience; tis what we must all come to,
+and so as I was saying, Dear George, good bye t'ye,
+Yours sincerely.
+
+P. S. I don't know yet when I shall leave Cambridge.
+
+(151) Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who
+had a good estate in Cambridgeshire.  He was born in 1710, and
+died in 1752.  He wrote four additional Dialogues.  The five were
+republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev.
+Francis Coventry.  The following is transcribed from the MSS. of
+the Rev.  W. Cole:-
+
+"When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a
+religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much
+so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the
+prisoners in the Castle.  Afterwards, both Mr.
+Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the
+question."-E.
+
+
+
+127 Letter 6
+To Richard West, Esq.
+King's College, Aug. 17, 1736.
+
+Dear West,
+Gray is at Burnham,(152) and, what is surprising, has not been at
+Eton.  Could you live so near it without seeing it?
+That dear scene of our quadruple-alliance would furnish me with
+the most agreeable recollections.  'Tis the head
+of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out
+into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge.  You seem to be
+the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself;
+while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three
+younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of
+London [154] and Horace.  We don't wish you dead to enjoy your
+seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you.  I hope you are a mere
+elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in
+the way you 'were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to
+betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or
+mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not
+turn to any Profession, would you receive me, and supply me out
+of your stock, where you have such plenty? I have been so used to
+the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to
+apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater.  Sober cloth of
+syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what's worse, I hate clothes
+that one must prove to be of no colour at all.  If the Muses
+coelique vias et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta
+lumescant.  why accipiant: but 'tis thrashing, to study
+philosophy in the abstruse authors.  I am not against cultivating
+these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite
+neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world.
+Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for
+they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less
+than any one.  Great mathematicians have been of great use;
+but the generality of them are quite unconversible: they
+frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can't
+see through them.  I tell you what I see; that by living
+amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are
+all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every
+paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal
+almost knows.  By the way, your letters come under this
+description; for they contain nothing but what almost every
+mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are
+extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of
+making them:-no one is better acquainted with it than
+Your sincere friend.
+
+(152) in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.
+
+(153) Thomas Ashton.  He was afterwards fellow of Eton College,
+rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the
+Society of Lincoln's-inn.  It was to him that Mr. Walpole
+addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in
+Dodsley's collection of poems.
+
+(154) Thomas Gray, the poet.
+
+
+                                   1737
+
+
+128 Letter 7
+To George Montagu Esq.
+King's College, March 20, 1737.
+
+Dear George,
+The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in
+yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by
+waiting on you myself.  'Tis not in my power, from more
+circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to
+accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy: you add to the
+pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly.  You I am
+infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of
+making you forget for a minute that you don't propose stirring
+from the dear place you are now in.  Poppies indeed are the chief
+flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady;
+at least not till the other flowers have been
+gathered.  Prince Volscius's boots were made of love-leather, and
+honour-leather; instead of honour, some people's are made of
+friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on
+this, I can almost believe you are equipped for
+travelling farther than Rheims.  'Tis no little inducement to
+make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left
+off there; that you may be polite and not be thought
+awkward for it.  You know the pretty men of the age in England
+use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-
+horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for
+themselves.  The little freedoms you tell me you use take off
+from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are
+dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity.  If you had
+been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new
+Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her
+first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a
+distance that suited respect and conversation.  Adieu, dear
+George,
+Yours most heartily.
+
+(156)  Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord
+Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to
+Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of
+John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during
+his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under
+Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair.  Lady
+Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present
+letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss
+Skerrit.  Walpole's well-known fondness for his mother is alluded
+to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-" But
+while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole's
+death, on Saturday night last.  Forgive me if the thought of what
+my poor Horace must feel on that account
+obliges me to have done."]
+
+
+
+129 Letter 8
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Christopher Inn, Eton.
+
+The Christopher.  Lord! how great I used to think anybody just
+landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send
+for-here I am, like Noah, just returned into
+his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me.  By
+the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound-I recollect so
+much, and remember so little-and want to play about-and am so
+afraid of my playfellows-and am ready to shirk Ashton and can't
+help making fun of myself-and envy a dame over the way, that has
+just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little
+hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably!  and I could be
+so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first
+time the word was ever applicable to me.  In short, I should be
+out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young
+again I am
+one minute, and how old the next.  But do come and feel
+with me, when you will-to-morrow-adieu! If I don't compose myself
+a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton
+is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for
+laughing at church; but how to belt it, to see him
+in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up
+funking at a conduit to be catechised.  Good night; yours.
+
+
+
+                                   1739
+
+
+130 Letter 9
+                       To Richard West, Esq.
+Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. (157)
+
+Dear West,
+You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not
+find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all
+variation of pleasures.  The operas, indeed, are much frequented
+three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance
+than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as
+much as it does harmony.  We have not yet been at the Italian
+playhouse; scarce any one goes there.  Their best amusement, and
+which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of
+the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it
+is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the
+play good or bad-except on
+Moli`ere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of.  Gray
+and I have been at the Avare to-night; I cannot at all commend
+their performance of it.  Last night I was in the Place de Louis
+le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome,
+though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned
+one of the finest burials that ever was in France.  It was the
+Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France.  It
+began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from
+thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to b interred in
+the church of the Celestins, where is his family-vault.  About a
+week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see
+the church, which is old and small., but fuller of fine ancient
+monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw
+on the road, and excels Westminster; for the windows are all '
+painted in mosaic, and the tombs as fresh and well preserved as
+if they were of yesterday.  In the Celestins' church
+is a votive column to Francis II., which says, that it is one
+assurance of his being immortalised, to have had the martyr Mary
+Stuart for his wife.  After this long digression, I return to the
+burial, which was a most vile thing. A long procession of
+flambeaux and friars; no plumes, trophies, banners,
+led horses, scutcheons, or open chariots; nothing but friars,
+white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.  This goodly
+ceremony began at nine at night, and did not finish till three
+this morning; for, each church they passed, they stopped
+for a hymn and holy water.  By the bye, some of these choice
+monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep
+one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet
+mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold
+flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the
+feet of the deceased before it awakened them.  The French love
+show; but there is a meanness runs through it all.  At the house
+where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with
+crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a
+dozen places with paper.  At dinner they give you three courses;
+but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter,
+puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish.  None, but
+Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough
+for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would-laugh extremely at
+their signs: some live at
+the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some at the sucking
+cat.  YOU would not easily guess their notions of honour: I'll
+tell you one: it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to
+be 'in @he army, or in the king's service as they
+call it, and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses:
+there are at least an hundred and fifty people of the first
+quality in Paris who live by it.  You may go into their houses at
+all hours of the night, And find hazard, pharaoh, etc.  The men
+who keep the hazard tables at the duke de Gesvres' pay him twelve
+guineas each night for the privilege.  Even the princesses of the
+blood are dirty enough to have shares in the banks kept at their
+houses. We have seen two or three of them; but they are not
+young, nor remarkable but for wearing their red of a deeper dye
+than other women, though all use it extravagantly.
+
+The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any
+excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in
+the Tuileries; but we have seen almost every thing else that is
+worth seeing in Paris, though that is very
+considerable.  They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number
+and magnificence.  The tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin at the
+Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine,
+especially the former. We have seen very little of the people
+themselves, who are not inclined to be propitious to strangers,
+especially if they do not play and speak the language readily.
+There are many English here: Lord Holderness, Conway(158) and
+Clinton, (159) and Lord George Bentinck; (160) Mr. Brand,(161)
+Offley, Frederic, Frampton, Bonfoy, etc.  Sir John
+Cotton's son and a Mr. Vernon of Cambridge passed through Paris
+last week.  We shall stay here about a fortnight longer,
+and then go to Rheims with Mr. Conway for two or three months.
+When you have nothing else to do, we shall be glad to hear from
+you; and any news.  If we did not remember there was such a place
+as England, we should know nothing of it: the French never
+mention it, unless it happens to be in one of their proverbs!
+Adieu!  Yours ever.
+
+To-morrow we go to the Cid.  They have no farces but  petites
+pieces like our "Devil to Pay."
+
+(157) Mr. Walpole left Cambridge towards the end of the year
+1738, and in March, 1739, began his travels by going to Paris,
+accompanied by Mr. Gray.
+
+(158) Francis, second Lord Conway, in 1750, created Viscount
+Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford, and in 1793, Earl of Yarmouth and
+Marquis of Hertford.  He was the elder brother of General Conway,
+and grandfather of the present Marquis.
+
+(159) Hugh Fortescue, in whose favour the abeyance into
+which the barony of Clinton had fallen on the death of
+Edward, thirteenth Baron Clinton, was terminated by writ of
+summons, in 1721.  He was created, in 1746, Lord Fortescue and
+Earl
+of Clinton; and died unmarried, in 1751.-E.
+
+(160) Son of Henry, second Earl and first Duke of Portland; he
+died in 1759.-E.
+
+(161) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, who afterwards
+married Lady Caroline Pierrepoint, daughter of the Duke of
+Kingston by his second wife,
+and half-sister of Lady Mary Wortley.-E.
+
+
+
+132 Letter 10
+To Richard West, Esq.
+>From Paris, 1739.
+
+Dear West,
+I should think myself to blame not to try to divert you, when you
+tell me I can.  From the air of your letter you seem to want
+amusement, that is, you want spirits.  I
+would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of,
+and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is
+more suitable to your complaint.  If you would promise me to read
+them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of
+plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch
+to 'Dick's' the first opportunity.-Stand by, clear the way, make
+room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!--But no:
+it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to
+Gray the office of writing its panegyric.(162)  He likes it.
+They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to
+shine., the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and
+the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be
+installed!  Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have
+done nothing but dispute about it.  They say, we did not see it
+to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden
+en passant, and slubbered over Trianon.  I say, we saw nothing.
+However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of
+littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts,
+and fringed with gold rails.  The rooms
+are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble,
+but totally wainscoted with looking-glass.  The garden is
+littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its
+tutelary deity.  In particular, the elementary god of fire
+solaces himself in one.  In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a
+mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters.  There are avenues of
+water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up
+cascadelins.  In short, 'tis a garden for a great child.  Such
+was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies
+and his generals, left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of
+glory.
+
+We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the
+air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with: it
+was the convent of the Chartreux.  All the conveniences, or
+rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are
+assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion,
+and despair would require.  But yet 'tis pleasing.  Soften the
+terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a
+little, and 'tis a charming solitude.  It stands on a large space
+of ground, is old and irregular.  The chapel is gloomy: behind
+it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure
+hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish
+council.  The large cloister surrounds their buryingground.  The
+cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells,
+which are built like little huts detached from each other.  We
+were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long
+initiated into the order.  He was extremely civil, and called
+himself Dom Victor.  We have promised to visit him often.  Their
+habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in
+his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and
+cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree.  He has
+four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung
+with good prints.  One of them is a library, and another a
+gallery.  He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner
+in breeding-cages. in his garden was a bed of good tulips in
+bloom, flowers and
+fruit-trees, and all neatly kept.  They are permitted at certain
+hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to go
+out of their convent.  But what we chiefly went to see was the
+small  cloister, with the history of St. Bruno their founder,
+painted by Le Sceur.  It consists of twenty-two pictures, the
+figures a good deal less than life.  But sure they are amazing! I
+don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel
+all I have seen in Paris and England.  The figure of the dead man
+who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest
+ideas of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of
+damnation, pain and cursing.  A Benedictine monk, who was there
+at the same time, said to me of this picture C'est une fable,
+mais on la croyoit autrefois.  Another, who
+showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as much
+ridicule for them.  The pictures I have been speaking of
+are ill preserved, and some of the finest heads defaced,
+which was done at first by a rival of Le Soeur's.  Adieu! dear
+West, take care of your health; and some time or other we will
+talk over all these things with more pleasure than I have had in
+seeing them.
+
+Yours ever.
+
+(162) For Gray's description of Versailles, which he
+styles " a huge heap of littleness," see his letter to West of
+the 22nd of May, 1739. (Works, by Mitford, vol. ii.
+P. 46).edited by the Rev.  John Mitford.-E.
+
+
+
+134 Letter 11
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Rheims, (163) June 18, 1739, N. S.
+
+Dear West,
+How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine.  I have
+consented that Gray shall give an account of our situation and
+proceedings; (164) and have left myself at the mercy of my own'
+invention--a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid
+applying to if I can possibly help it.  I had prepared the
+ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to
+serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me.  However, I
+was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and
+dance in it, and was determined to write the words and Sing the
+tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one,
+be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this
+thought, though an admirable one.  Well, but now I have put it
+into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it.  For that
+individual one, believe me 'tis nothing without the tune and the
+dance; but to stay your
+stomach, I -will send you one of their vaudevilles or Ballads,
+(165) which they sing at the comedy after their
+petites pi`eces.
+
+You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with
+French on one side and English on t'other; I deal in nothing else
+at present, and talk a couple of words of each language
+alternately, from morning till night.  This has put my mouth a
+little out of tune at present but I am trying to recover the use
+of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by
+shewing the title-pages of all my English books.  Besides this, I
+have paraphrased half of the first act of your new GustavUS (166)
+which was sent us to Paris: a most dainty performance, and just
+what you say of it.  Good night, I am sure you must be tired: if
+you are not, I am.  yours ever.
+
+(163) Mr. Walpole, with his cousin Henry Seymour Conway and Mr.
+Gray, resided three months at Rheims, principally to
+acquire the French language.
+
+(164) Gray's letter to West has not been preserved; but one
+addressed to his mother, on the 21 st of June, containing an
+account of Rheims and the society, is printed in his Works, vol.
+ii. p. 50.-E.
+
+(165) This ballad does not appear.
+
+(166) The tragedy of "Gustavus Vasa," by Henry Brooke, author of
+"The Fool of Quality."  It was rehearsed at Drury Lane; but, as
+it was supposed to satirize Sir Robert Walpole, it was prohibited
+to be acted.  This, however, did Brooke no injury, as he was
+encouraged to publish the play by subscription.-E.
+
+
+
+134 Letter 12
+To Richard  West, Esq.
+Rheims, July 20, 1739.
+
+Gray says, Indeed you ought to write to West.-Lord, child, so I
+would, if I knew what to write about.  If I were in London and he
+at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war,
+Spaniards, camps, and conventions; but d'ye think he
+cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they
+come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last
+night at Mr. Cockbert's?--No, but you may tell him what you have
+heard of Compiegne; that they have balls twice a week after the
+play, and that the Count d'Eu gave the king a most flaring
+entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was
+represented in flowering shrubs.  Dear West, these are the things
+I must tell you; I don't know how to make 'em look
+significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little
+moment.(167)  I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when
+we are going to have all manner of diversions.  The comedians
+return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example; and in a
+very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three
+battalions and an hundred of officers; all men of a
+certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world.  Our
+women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in
+expecting them; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a
+finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival.  La Barone
+already counts upon fifteen of them: and Madame Lelu, finding her
+linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze.
+
+I won't plague you any longer with people you don't know, I mean
+French ones; for you must absolutely hear of an
+Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims.  About two days ago,
+about four o'clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after
+dinner,-from all which you may conclude we dine at two
+o'clock,-as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and
+in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a
+morning gray coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and
+slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a
+message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr.
+Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on
+him.  We scuttled upstairs in great confusion, but with no other
+damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the
+dropping a slipper by the way.  Having ordered the room to be
+cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began
+to consider who Mr. More should be.  Is it Mr. More of Paris!
+No.  Oh, 'tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham's husband?  No, it can't
+be he.  A Mr. More, then, that lives in the
+Halifax family?  No. In short, after thinking of ten thousand
+more Mr. Mores, we concluded it could never be a one of 'em.  By
+this time Mr.  More arrives; but such a Mr. More!  a young
+gentleman out of the wilds of Ireland, who has never been in
+England, but has got all the ordinary language of that
+kingdom; has been two years at Paris, where he dined at an
+ordinary with the refugee Irish, and learnt fortification-,,
+which he does not understand at all, and which yet is the only
+thing he knows.  In short, he is a young swain of very uncouth
+phrase, inarticulate speech, and no ideas. This hopeful child is
+riding post into Lorrain, or any where else, he is not
+certain; for if there is a war he shall go home again: for we
+must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know; and if the
+Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in
+Europe; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and
+our hornworks; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass,
+which they can't fill up with things-Here Mr. Conway helped him
+to fascines.  By this time I imagine you have
+laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were; but
+he's gone.  This is the day that Gray and I intended for the
+first of a southern circuit; but as Mr. Selwyn and George Montagu
+design us a visit here, we have put off our journey for some
+weeks.  When we get a little farther, I hope our
+memories will brighten: at present they are but dull, dull as
+Your humble servant ever.
+
+P. S. I thank you ten thousand times for your last letter: when I
+have as much wit and as much poetry in me, I'll send you as good
+an one.  Good night, child!
+
+(167) The three following paragraphs are a literal translation of
+French expressions to the same imports.
+
+
+
+136 Letter 13
+To Richard West, Esq.
+>From a Hamlet among the Mountains of Savoy,
+Sept. 28, 1739, N. S.
+
+Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator
+Rosa-the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace!  Here
+we are, the lonely lords of glorious, desolate prospects.  I have
+kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as
+long as I staid in France: I am now a quarter of an hour out of
+it, and write to you.  Mind, 'tis three months since we heard
+from you.  I begin this letter -among the clouds; where I shall
+finish, my neighbour Heaven probably knows: 'tis an odd wish in a
+mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the
+atmosphere.  You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars
+hen you least think of it; and that I should write it too!  Lord,
+how potent that sounds! But I am to undergo many
+transmigrations before I come to "yours ever." Yesterday I was a
+shepherd of Dauphin`e; to-day an Alpine savage; to-morrow a
+Carthusian monk; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist.  I have one
+quality which I find remains with me in all worlds and in all
+aethers; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for
+it in this-'tis my esteem for you: this is a common thought among
+you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here: as new to
+remember one's friends in the world one has left, as for you to
+remember those you have lost.
+
+Aix in Savoy, Sept. 30th.
+
+We are this minute come in here, and here's an awkward abb`e this
+minute come in to us.  I asked him if he would sit down.  Oui,
+oui, oui.  He has ordered us a radish soup for supper, and has
+brought a chess-board to play with Mr. Conway.  I have left 'em
+in the act, and am set down to write to you.  Did you ever see
+any thing like the prospect we saw yesterday? I never did.  We
+rode three leagues to see the Grande Chartreuse; (168)
+expected bad roads and the finest convent in the kingdom.  We
+were disappointed pro and con.  The building is large and plain,
+and has nothing remarkable but its primitive simplicity; they
+entertained us in the neatest manner, with eggs, pickled salmon,
+dried fish, conserves, cheese, butter, grapes, and figs, and
+pressed us mightily to lie there.  We tumbled into the hands of a
+lay-brother, who, unluckily having the charge of the meal and
+bran, showed us little besides.  They desired us to set down our
+names in the list of strangers, where, among others, we found two
+mottos of our countrymen, for whose stupidity and brutality we
+blushed.  The first was of Sir j * * * D * * *, who had wrote
+down the first stanza of justum et tenacem, altering the last
+line to Mente quatit Carthusiana.  The second was of one D * *,
+Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia; et hic ventri indico bellum.  The
+Goth!-But the road, West, the road!  winding round a prodigious
+mountain, and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging
+woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds!  Below, a torrent
+breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks!
+Sheets of @cascades forcing their silver speed down channelled
+precipices, and hasting into the roughened river at the bottom!
+Now and then an old foot-bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning
+cross, a cottage, or the ruin of an hermitage!  This sounds too
+bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold
+for one that has.  If I could send you my letter post between two
+lovely tempests that echoed each other's wrath you might have
+some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were reading it.
+Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any
+prospect, stands the Chartreuse.  We staid there two hours, rode
+back through this charming picture, wished for a painter, wished
+to be poets! Need I tell you we wished for you? Good night!
+
+Geneva, Oct. 2.
+
+By beginning a new date, I should begin a new letter; but I have
+seen nothing yet, and the Post is going Out: 'tis a strange
+tumbled dab, and dirty too, I am sending you; but what can I do?
+There is no possibility of writing such a long history over
+again.  I find there are many English in the town; Lord Brook,
+(169) Lord Mansel, (170) Lord Hervey's eldest son,(171) and a son
+of-of Mars and Venus, or of Antony and Cleopatra, or, in short,
+of-.  This is the boy, in the bow of whose hat Mr. Hedges pinned
+a pretty epigram.  I don't know if you ever heard it; I'll
+suppose you never did, because it will fill up my letter:
+
+"Give but Cupid's dart to me,
+Another Cupid I shall be:
+No more distinguish'd from the other,
+Than Venus would be from my mother."
+
+Scandal says, Hedges thought the two last very like; and it says
+too, that she was not his enemy for thinking so.
+
+Adieu! Gray and I return to Lyons in three days.  Harry stays
+here.  Perhaps at our return we may find a letter from you: it
+ought to be very full of excuses, for you have been a lazy
+creature: I hope you have, for I would not owe your silence to
+any other reason.
+Yours ever.
+
+(168) It was on revisiting it, when returning to England after
+his unfortunate quarrel with Walpole, that Gray inscribed his
+beautiful "Alcaic Ode" in the album of the fathers of this
+monastery.  Gray's account of this grand scene, where "not a
+precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with
+religion and poetry," will be found in his letter to West, dated
+Turin, Nov. 16, N. S. 1739. Works, vol. ii. p. 69.-E.
+
+(169) Francis Lord Brooke, advanced to the dignity of Earl Brooke
+in 1746.-E.
+
+(170) Thomas Lord Mansell, who died in 1743, without issue.  He
+was succeeded in the title by his uncles Christopher and Bussy;
+and, On the death of the latter in 1744, it became extinct.-E.
+
+(171) George William Hervey, who succeeded his grandfather as
+Earl of Bristol in 1751, and died Unmarried in 1775.-E.
+
+
+
+
+138 Letter 14
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Turin, Nov. 11, 1739, N. S.
+
+So, as the song says, we are in fair Italy! I wonder we are; for
+on the very highest precipice of Mount Cenis, the devil of
+discord, in the similitude of sour wine, had got amongst our
+Alpine savages, and set them a-fighting with Gray and me in the
+chairs: they rushed him by me on a crag, where there was scarce
+room for a cloven foot.  The least slip had tumbled us into such
+a fog, and such an eternity, as we should never have found our
+way out of again.  We were eight days in coming hither from
+Lyons; the four last in crossing the Alps.  Such uncouth rocks,
+and such uncomely inhabitants!  My dear West, I hope I shall
+never see them again!  At the foot of Mount Cenis we were obliged
+to quit our chaise, which was taken all to pieces and loaded on
+mules; and we were carried in low arm-chairs on poles, swathed in
+beaver bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, and
+bear-skins.  When we came to the top, behold the snows fallen!
+and such quantities, and conducted by such heavy clouds that hung
+glouting, that I thought we could never have waded through them.
+The descent is two leagues, but steep and rough as O * * * *
+father's face, over which,
+you know, the devil walked with hobnails in his shoes.  But the
+dexterity and nimbleness of the mountaineers are
+inconceivable: they run with you down steeps and frozen
+precipices, where no man, as men are now, could possibly walk.
+We had twelve men and nine mules to carry us, our servants, and
+baggage, and were above five hours in this agreeable jaunt The
+day before, I had a cruel accident, and so extraordinary an one,
+that it seems to touch upon the traveller.  I had brought with me
+a little black spaniel of King Charles's breed; but the
+prettiest, fattest, dearest creature!  I had let it out of the
+chaise for the air, and it was waddling along close to the head
+of the horses, on the top of the highest Alps, by the side of a
+wood of firs. There darted out a young wolf, seized poor dear
+Tory (172) by the throat, and, before we could possibly prevent
+it, sprung up the side of the rock and carried him off.  The
+postilion jumped off and struck at him with his whip, but in
+vain.  I saw it and screamed, but in vain; for the road was so
+narrow, that the servants that were behind could not get by the
+chaise to shoot him.  What is the extraordinary part is, that it
+was but two o'clock, and broad sunshine.  It was shocking to see
+anything one loved run away with to so
+horrid a death.  .... .
+
+Just coming out of Camber, which is a little nasty old hole, I
+copied an inscription set up at the end of a great road, which
+was practised through an immense solid rock by bursting it
+asunder with gunpowder.  The Latin is pretty enough, and so I
+send it
+you:
+
+"Carolus Emanuel II.  Sab. dux, Pedem. princeps, Cypri
+rex,public`a felicitate part`a, singulorum commodis intentus,
+breviorem securioremque viam regiam, natur`a occlusam, Romanis
+intentatam, mteris desperatam, dejectis scopulorum repagulus,
+aquata montiuminiquitate, quae cervicibus imminebant precipitia
+pedibus substernens, aeternis populorum commerciis patefecit.
+ A.D. 1670."
+
+We passed the Pas de Suze, where is a strong fortress on a rock,
+between two very neighbouring mountains; and then, through a fine
+avenue of three leagues, we at last discovered Tturin:--
+
+"E l'un k l'altro mostra, ed in tanto oblia
+La noia, e'l mal 'delta passata via."'
+
+'Tis really by far one of the prettiest cities I have seen; not
+one of your large straggling ones that can afford to have twenty
+dirty suburbs, but, clean and compact, very new and very regular.
+The king's palace is not of the proudest without, but of the
+richest within; painted, gilt, looking-glassed, very costly, but
+very tawdry; in short, a very popular palace.  We were last night
+at the Italian comedy-the devil of a house and the devil of
+actors! Besides this, there is a sort of an heroic tragedy,
+called "La rapprentatione dell' Anima Damnata."(173)  A woman, a
+sinner, comes in and makes a solemn prayer to the Trinity: enter
+Jesus Christ and the Virgin: he scolds, and exit: she tells the
+woman her son is very angry, but she don't know, she will see
+what she can do.  After the play we were introduced to the
+assembly, which they call the conversazione: there were many
+people playing at ombre, pharaoh, and a game called taroc, with
+cards so high, (174) to the number of seventy-eight.  There are
+three or four English here Lord Lincoln,(175) with Spence,(176)
+your professor of poetry; a Mr. B*** and a Mr. C*** a man that
+never utters a syllable.  We have tried all stratagems to make
+him speak.  Yesterday he did at last open his mouth, and said
+Bec.  all laughed so at the novelty of the thing that he shut it
+again, and will never speak more.  I think you can't complain now
+of my not writing to you.  What a volume of trifles!  I wrote
+just the fellow to it from Geneva; had it you?  Farewell! Thine.
+
+(172) This incident is described also by Gray in one of his
+letters to his mother. "If the dog," he adds, "had not been
+there, and the creature had thought fit to lay hold of one of the
+horses, chaise and we, and all, must inevitably have tumbled
+above fifty fathoms perpendicularly down the precipice."-E.
+
+(173) This representation is also mentioned by Spence, in a
+letter to his mother:-"In spite of the excellence," he says, "of
+the actors, the greatest part of the entertainment to me was the
+countenances of the people in the pit and boxes.  When the devils
+were like to carry off the Damned Soul, every body was in the
+utmost consternation and when St. John spoke so obligingly to
+her, they were ready to cry out for joy.  When the Virgin
+appeared on the stage, every body looked respectful; and, on
+several words spoke by the actors, they pulled off, their hats,
+and crossed themselves.  What can you think of a people, where
+their very farces are religious, and where they are so
+religiously received?  It was from such a play as this (called
+Adam and Eve) that Milton when he was in Italy, is said to have
+taken the first hint for his divine poem of "Paradise Lost."
+What small beginnings are there sometimes to the greatest
+things!-E.
+
+(174) In the manuscript the writing of this word is extraordinary
+tall.
+
+(175) Henry ninth Earl of Lincoln, who having, in 1744, married
+Catherine, eldest daughter and heiress of the Right Honourable
+Henry Pelham, inherited, in 1768, the dukedom of
+Newcastle-under-Line at the demise of the countess's uncle,
+Thomas Pelham Holles, who, in 1756, had been created Duke of
+Newcastle-under-Line, with special remainder to the Earl of
+Lincoln.-E.
+
+(176) The Rev.  Joseph Spence, the author of one of the best
+collections of ana the English language possesses-the well-known
+"Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men," of
+which the best edition is that edited by Singer.-E.
+
+
+
+
+140 Letter 15
+To Richard West, Esq.
+>From Bologna, 1739.
+
+I don't know why I told Ashton I would send you an account of
+what I saw: don't believe it, I don't intend it.  Only think what
+a vile employment 'tis, making
+catalogues!  And then one should have that odious Curl (177) get
+at one's letters, and publish them like Whitfield's
+Journal, or for a supplement to the Traveller's Pocket
+Companion.  Dear West, I protest against having seen any thing
+but what all the world has seen; nay, I have not seen half that,
+not-some of the most common things; not so much as a miracle.
+Well, but you don't expect it, do you?  Except
+pictures.  and statues, we are not very fond of sights; don't go
+a-staring after crooked towers and conundrum staircases.  Don't
+you hate, too, a jingling epitaph (178) of one Procul and one
+Proculus that is here?  Now and then we drop in at a procession,
+or a high-mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange attire, and hate
+the foul monkhood.  Last week, was the feast of the Immaculate
+Conception.  On the eve we went to the
+Franciscans' church to hear the academical exercises.  There were
+moult and moult clergy, about two dozen dames, that
+treated one another with illustrissima and brown kisses, the
+vice-legate, the gonfalonier, and some senate.  The
+vice-legate, whose conception was not quite so immaculate, is a
+young personable person, of about twenty, and had on a
+mighty pretty cardinal-kind of habit; 'twould make a
+delightful masquerade dress.  We asked his name: Spinola.  What,
+a nephew of the cardinal-legate?  Signor, no: ma credo che gli
+sia qualche cosa.  He sat on the right hand with the gonfalonier
+in two purple fauteuils.  Opposite was a throne of crimson
+damask, with the device of the Academy, the Gelati; and trimmings
+of gold.  Here sat at a table, in black, the head of' the
+academy, between the orator and the first poet At two
+semicircular tables on either hand sat three poets and three;
+silent among many candles.  The chief made a little introduction,
+the orator a long Italian vile harangue.  Then the chief, the
+poet, and the poets,-who were a Franciscan, an Olivetan, an old
+abb`e, and three lay,-read their
+compositions; and to-day they are pasted up in all parts of the
+town.  As we came out of the church, we found all the
+convent and neighbouring houses lighted all over with
+lanthorns of red and yellow paper, and two bonfires.  But you are
+sick of this foolish ceremony; I'll carry you to no more -. I
+will only mention, that we found the Dominicans' church here in
+mourning for the inquisitor: 'twas all hung with black cloth,
+furbelowed and festooned with yellow gauze.  We have seen a
+furniture here in a much prettier taste; a gallery of Count
+Caprara's: in the panels between the windows are pendent trophies
+of various arms taken by one of his ancestors from the Turks.
+They are whimsical, romantic, and have a pretty effect.  I looked
+about, but could not perceive the portrait of the lady at whose
+feet they were indisputably offered. In coming out of Genoa we
+were more lucky; found the very spot where Horatio and Lothario
+were to have fought, "west of the town, a mile among the rocks."
+
+My dear West, in return for your epigrams of Prior, I will
+transcribe some old verses too, but which I fancy I can show you
+in a sort of a new light.  They are no newer than Virgil, and
+what is more odd, are in the second Georgic.  'Tis, that I have
+observed that he not only excels when he is like himself, but
+even when he is very like inferior poets: you will say that they
+rather excel by being like him: but mind, they are all near one
+another:
+
+"Si non ingenter oribus domus alta superbis
+Mane sa@atame totis vomit Eedibus uridam:"
+
+And the four next lines; are they not just like Martial? In the
+following he is as much Claudian"
+
+"Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum
+Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;
+Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro."
+
+Then who are these like?
+
+"nec ferrea jura, insanumque forum,
+aut populi tabularia vidit.
+Sollicitant alii remis freta ceca, ruuntque
+In ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum.
+Hic petit excidiis urbem miseresque Penates,
+Ut gemma, bibat, et Sarrano indormiat ostro."
+
+Don't they seem to be Juvenal's?-There are some more, which to me
+resemble, Horace; but perhaps I think so from his having some on
+a parallel subject.  Tell me if I am mistaken; these are they:
+
+"Interea dulces pendent eircum oscula nati:
+Casta pudicitiam servat domus-"
+
+inclusively to the end of these:
+
+
+"Hanc olim veteres vitam colti`ere Sabini
+Hanc Remus et frater: sic fortis Etruria crevit,
+Scilicet et retum facta est pulcherrima Roma."
+
+If the imagination is whimsical; well at least, 'tis like me to
+have imagined it.  Adieu, child! We leave Bologna
+to-morrow.  You know 'tis the third city in Italy for
+pictures: knowing that, you know all.  We shall be three days
+crossing the Apennine to Florence: would it were over!
+
+My dear West, I am yours from St. Peter's to St. Paul's!
+
+(177) Edmund Curll, the well-known bookseller.  The letters
+between Pope and many of his friends falling into Curll's hands,
+they were by him  printed and sold.  As the volume contained some
+letters from noblemen,  Pope incited a prosecution against him in
+the House of Lords for breach of privilege; but, when the orders
+of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been
+infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek
+some other remedy.-E.
+
+(178) The Epitaph on the outside of the wall of the church of St.
+Proculo-
+
+Si procul `a Proculo Proculi campana fuisset, Jam procul `a
+Proculo Proculus ipse foret.  A.D. 1392.
+
+
+
+142 Letter 16
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Florence, Jan. 24, 1740, N. S.
+
+Dear West,
+I don't know what volumes I may send you from Rome; from
+Florence I have little inclination to send you any.  I see
+several things that please me calmly, but `a force d'en avoir vu
+I have left off screaming Lord! this! and Lord! that!  To speak
+sincerely, Calais surprised me more than any thing I have seen
+since.  I recollect the joy I used to propose if I could but once
+see the great duke's gallery; I walk into it now with as little
+emotion as I should into St. Paul's.  The statues are a
+congregation of good sort of people, that I have a great deal of
+unruffled regard for.  The farther I travel the less I wonder at
+any thing: a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen
+custom; and men are
+so much the same every where, that one scarce perceives any
+change of situation.  The same weaknesses, the same passions that
+in England plunge men into elections, drinking, whoring, exist
+here, and show themselves in the shapes of Jesuits,
+Cicisbeos, and Corydon ardebat Alexins.  The most remarkable
+thing I have observed since I came abroad, is, that there are no
+people so obviously mad as the English.  The French, the
+Italians, have great follies, great faults; but then they are so
+national, they cease to be striking.  In England, tempers vary so
+excessively, that almost every one's faults are
+peculiar to himself.  I take this diversity to proceed partly
+from our climate, partly from our government: the first is
+changeable, and makes us queer; the latter permits our
+queernesses to operate as they please.  If one
+could avoid contracting this queerness, it must certainly be the
+most entertaining to live in England, where such a variety of
+incidents continually amuse.  The incidents of a week in London
+would furnish all Italy with news for a twelvemonth.  The only
+two circumstances of moment in the life of an
+Italian, that ever give occasion to their being mentioned, are,
+being married, and in a year after taking a cicisbeo.  Ask the
+name, the husband, the wife, or the cicisbeo, of any person, et
+voila qui est fini.
+Thus, child, 'tis dull dealing here! Methinks your Spanish war is
+little more livel By the gravity of the proceedings, one would
+think both nations were Spaniard.  Adieu! Do you
+remember my maxim, that you used to laugh at? Every body does
+every thing, and nothing comes on't.  I am more convinced of it
+now than ever.  I don't know whether S***w,'s was not still
+better, Well, gad, there is nothing in nothing.  You see how I
+distil all my speculations and improvements, that they may lie in
+a small compass.  Do you remember the story of the prince, that,
+after travelling three years, brought home nothing but a nut?
+They cracked it: in it was wrapped up a piece of silk, painted
+with all the kings, queens, kingdoms. and every thing in the
+world: after many unfoldings, out stepped a little dog, shook his
+ears, and fell to dancing a saraband.  There is a fairy tale for
+you.  If I had any thing as good as your old song, I would send
+it too; but I can only thank you for it, and bid you good night.
+Yours ever.
+
+P. S. Upon reading my letter, I perceive still plainer the
+sameness that reigns here; for I find I have said the same thing
+ten times over.  I don't care, I have made out a letter, and that
+was all my affair.
+
+
+
+143 Letter 17
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Florence, February 27, 1740, N. S.
+
+Well, West, I have found a little unmasqued moment to Write to
+you; but for this week past I have been so muffled up in my
+domino, that I have not had the command of my elbows.  But what
+have you been doing all the mornings?  Could you not
+write then?-No, then I was masqued too; I have done nothing but
+slip out of my domino into bed, and out of bed into my domino.
+The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian; all the morn
+one makes parties in masque to the shops and
+coffee-houses, and all the evening to the operas and balls.  Then
+I have danced, good gods! how have I danced!  The
+Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances: Cold and
+raw-they only know by the tune; Blowzybella is almost Italian,
+and Buttered peas is Pizelli ag buro.  There are but three days
+more; but the two last are to have balls all the morning at the
+fine unfinished palace of the Strozzi; and the Tuesday night a
+masquerade after supper: they sup first, to eat gras, and not
+encroach upon Ash-Wednesday.  What makes masquerading more
+agreeable here than in England, is
+the great deference that is showed to the disguised.  Here they
+do not catch at those little dirty opportunities of
+saying any ill-natured thing they know of you, do not abuse you
+because they may, or talk gross bawdy to a woman of
+quality.  I found the other day, by a play of Etheridge's, that
+we have had a sort of Carnival even since the
+Reformation; Ytis in "She would if She could," they talk of going
+a-mumming in Shrove-tide.(179)-After talking so much of
+diversions, I fear you will attribute
+to them the fondness I own I contract for Florence; but it has so
+many other charms, that I shall not want excuses for
+my taste.  The freedom of the Carnival has given me
+opportunities to make several acquaintances.; and if I have no
+found them refined, learned, polished, like some other cities,
+yet they are civil, good-natured, and fond of the English-.
+Their little partiality for themselves, opposed to the
+violent vanity of the French, makes them very amiable in my eyes.
+I can give you a comical instance of their great
+prejudice about nobility; it happened yesterday.  While we were
+at dinner at Mr. Mann'S. (180) word was brought by his secretary,
+that a cavalier demanded audience of him upon an affair of
+honour.  Gray and I flew behind the curtain of the door.  An
+elderly gentleman, whose attire was not certainly correspondent
+to the greatness of his birth, entered, and
+informed the British minister, that one Martin. an English
+painter, had left a challenge for him at his house, for having
+said Martin was no gentleman.  He would by no means have spoke of
+the duel before the transaction of it, but that his honour, his
+blood, his etc. would never permit him to fight with one who was
+no cavalier; which was what he came to inquire of his excellency.
+We laughed loud laughs, but unheard: his fright or his nobility
+had closed his ears.  But mark the sequel: the instant he was
+gone, my very English curiosity hurried me out of the gate St.
+Gallo; 'twas
+the place and hour appointed.  We had not been driving about
+above ten minutes, but out popped a little figure, pale but
+cross, with beard unshaved and hair uncombed, a slouched hat, and
+a considerable red cloak, in which was wrapped, under his arm,
+the fatal sword that was to revenge the highly injured Mr.
+Martin, painter and defendant.  I darted my head out of the
+coach, just ready to say, " Your servant, Mr. Martin," and talk
+about the architecture of the triumphal arch that was building
+there; but he would not know me, and walked off.  We left him to
+wait for an hour, to grow very cold and very
+valiant the more it grew past the hour of appointment.  We were
+figuring all the poor creature's huddle of thoughts, and confused
+hopes of victory or fame, of his unfinished pictures, or his
+situation upon bouncing into the next world.  You will think us
+strange creatures; but 'twas a pleasant sight, as we knew the
+poor painter was safe.  I have thought of it since, and am
+inclined to believe that nothing but two English could have been
+capable of such a jaunt.  I remember, 'twas reported in London,
+that the plague was at a house in the city, and all the town went
+to see it.
+
+I have this instant received your letter.  Lord!  I am glad I
+thought of those parallel passages, since it made you
+translate them.  'Tis excessively near the original; and yet, I
+don't know, 'tis very easy too.-It snows here a little
+to-night, but
+it never lies but on the mountains.  Adieu!  Yours ever.
+
+P.S. What is the history of the theatres this winter?
+
+(179) Sir Charles Etheridge.  "She would if She could," was
+brought out at the Duke of York's theatre in February, 1668:
+Pepys, who was present, calls it "a silly, dull thing; the design
+and end being mighty insipid."-E.
+
+(180) Sir Horace Mann, created a baronet in 1755. He was
+appointed minister plenipotentiary from England to the court of
+Florence in 1740, and continued so until his death, on the 6th
+November 1786.-E.
+
+
+
+145 Letter 18
+To The Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, (181)
+Florence, March 6, 1740, N. S.
+
+
+Harry, my dear, one would tell you what a monster you are, if one
+were not sure your conscience tells you so every time you think
+of me.  At Genoa, in the year of our Lord one
+thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine, I received the last
+letter from you; by your not writing to me since, I imagine you
+propose to make this a leap year.  I should have sent many a
+scold after you in this long interval, had I known where to have
+scolded; but you told me you should leave Geneva
+immediately.  I have despatched sundry inquiries into England
+after you, all fruitless.  At last drops in a chance letter to
+Lady Sophy Farmor, (182) from a girl at Paris, that tells her for
+news, Mr. Henry Conway is here.  Is he, indeed? and why was I to
+know it only by this scrambling way? Well, I hate you for this
+neglect, but I find I love you well enough to tell you so.  But,
+dear now, don't let one fall into a train of excuses and
+reproaches; if the god of indolence is a
+mightier deity with you than the god of caring for one, tell me,
+and I won't dun you; but will drop your correspondence as
+silently as if I owed you money.
+
+If my private consistency was of no weight with you, yet, is a
+man nothing who is within three days' journey of a conclave?
+Nay, for what you knew, I might have been in Rome.  Harry, art
+thou so indifferent, as to have a cousin at the election of a
+pope (183) without courting him for news? I'll tell you, were I
+any where else, and even Dick Hammond were at Rome, I think
+verily I should have wrote to him.  Popes, cardinals,
+adorations, coronations, St. Peter's!  oh, what costly sounds!
+and don't you write to one yet?  I shall set out in about a
+fortnight, and pray then think me of consequence.
+
+I have crept on upon time from day to day here; fond of
+Florence to a degree: 'tis infinitely the most agreeable of all
+the places I have seen since London: that you know one loves,
+right or wrong, as one does one's nurse.  Our little Arno is not
+bloated and swelling like the Thames, but 'tis vastly pretty,
+and, I don't know how, being Italian, has
+something visionary and poetical in its stream.  Then one's
+unwilling to leave the gallery, and-but-in short, one's
+unwilling to get into a postchaise.  I am surfeited with
+mountains and inns, as if I had eat them.  I have many to pass
+before I see England again, and no Tory to entertain me on the
+road?  Well, this thought makes me dull, and that makes me
+finish.  Adieu!
+Yours ever.
+
+P. S. Direct to me, (for to be sure you will not be so
+outrageous as to leave me quite off), recornmand4 i Mons.
+Mann, Ministre de sa Majest`e Britannique @ Florence.
+
+(181) Second Son of Francis first Lord Conway. by Charlotte
+Shorter, his third wife.  He was afterwards secretary in
+Ireland during the vice-royalty of William fourth Duke of
+Devonshire; groom of the bedchamber to George II. and George
+III.; secretary of state in 1765; lieutenant-general of the
+ordnance in 1770; commander in chief in 1782; and a field-
+marshal in 1793.  This correspondence commences when Mr.
+Walpole was twenty-three years old, and Mr. Conway two years
+younger.  They had gone abroad together, with Mr. Gray, in the
+year 1739, had spent three months together at Rheims, and
+afterwards separated at Geneva.
+
+(182) Daughter of the first Earl of Pomfret, and married,, in
+1744, to John second Lord Carteret and first Earl of
+Granville.-E.
+
+(183) As successor of Clement XII., who died in the
+eighty-eighth year of his age, and the tenth of his
+pontificate, on the 6th Feb. 1740.  The cardinals being
+uncertain whom to choose, Prosper Lamberteri, the learned and
+tolerant Archbishop of Ancona, said, with his accustomed
+good-humour, "If you want a saint, choose Gotti; if a
+politician, Aldrosandi: but if a good man, take me."  His
+advice was followed, and he ascended the papal throne as
+Benedict XIV.-E.
+
+
+
+146 Letter 19
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Siena, March 22, 1740, N. S.
+
+Dear West, Probably now you will hear something of the
+Conclave: we have
+left Florence, and are got hither on the way to a pope.  In three
+hours' time we have seen all the good contents of this city: 'tis
+old, and very snug, with very few inhabitants.  You must not
+believe Mr. Addison about the wonderful Gothic nicety of the
+dome: the materials are richer, but the workmanship and taste not
+near so good as in several I have seen.  We saw a college of the
+Jesuits, where there are taught to draw above fifty boys: they
+are disposed in long chambers in the manner of Eton, but
+cleaner.
+N. B. We were not bolstered; (184) so we wished you with us.  Our
+Cicerone, who has less classic knowledge, and more
+superstition than a colleger, upon showing
+147 us the she-wolf, the arms of Siena, told us that Romolus and
+Remus were nursed by a wolf, per la volonta di Dio, si pu`o dire;
+and that one might see by the arms, that the same founders built
+Rome and Siena.  Another dab of Romish superstition, not
+unworthy
+of Presbyterian divinity, we met with in a book of drawings:
+'twas the Virgin standing on a tripod composed of Adam, Eve, and
+the Devil, to express her immaculate conception.
+
+You can't imagine how pretty the country is between this and
+Florence; millions of little hills planted with trees, and tipped
+with villas or convents.  We left unseen the great Duke's
+villas
+and several palaces in Florence, till our return from Rome: the
+weather has been so cold, how could one go to them?  In Italy
+they seem to have found out how hot their climate is, but not how
+cold; for there are scarce any chimneys, and most of the
+apartments painted in fresco so that one has the additional
+horror of freezing with imaginary marble.  The men hang little
+earthen pans of coals upon their wrists, and the women have
+portable stoves under their petticoats to warm their
+nakedness,
+and carry silver shovels in their pockets, with which their
+Cicisbeos stir them-Hush! by them, I mean their stoves.  I have
+nothing more to tell you; I'll carry my letter to Rome and finish
+it there.
+
+R`e di Coffano, March 23, where lived one of the three kings.
+The King of Coffano carried presents of myrrh, gold, and
+frankincense, I don't know where the devil he found them; for in
+all his dominions we have not seen the value of a shrub.  We have
+the honour of lodging under his roof to-night.  lord! such a
+place, such an extent of ugliness! A lone inn upon a black
+mountain, by the side of an old fortress!  no curtains or
+windows, only shutters! no testers to the beds! no earthly thing
+to eat but some eggs and a few little fishes! This lovely
+spot
+is now known by the name of Radi-cofani.  Coming down a steep
+hill with two miserable hackneys, one fell under the chaise; and
+while we were disengaging him, a chaise came by with a person in
+a red cloak, a white handkerchief on its head, and a black hat:
+we thought it a fat old woman; but it spoke in a shrill little
+pipe, and proved itself to be Senesini. (185) I forgot to tell
+you an inscription I copied from the portal of the dome of Siena:
+
+Annus centenus Roma seraper est jubilenus:
+Crimina laxantur si penitet ista dortantur; Sic ordinavit
+Bonifacius et roboravit.
+
+Rome, March 26
+
+We are this instant arrived, tired and hungry! O! the charming
+city-I believe it is-for I have not seen a syllable yet, only the
+Pons Milvius and an obelisk.  The Cassian and Flaminian ways were
+terrible disappointments; not one Rome tomb left; their very
+ruins ruined.  The English are numberless.  My dear West, I know
+at Rome you will not have a grain of pity for one; but indeed
+'tis dreadful, dealing with schoolboys just broke loose, or old
+fools that are come abroad at forty to see the world, like Sir
+Wilful Witwould.
+
+I don't know whether you will receive this, or any other I write;
+but though I shall write often, you and Ashton must not wonder if
+none come to you; for though I am harmless in my nature, my name
+has some mystery in it.(186)  Good night! I have no more time or
+paper.  Ashton, child, I'll write to you next post.  Write us no
+treasons, be sure!
+
+(184) An Eton phrase.
+
+(185) Francesco Bernardi, better known by the name of
+Senesino, a celebrated singer, who, having been engaged for the
+opera company formed by Handel in 17@20, remained here as
+principal singer until 1726, when the state of his health
+compelled him to return to Italy.  In 1730 he revisited England,
+where he remained until about 1734.  He was the contemporary, if
+not the rival of Farinelli; and Mr. Hogarth, in his "Memoirs of
+the Musical Drama," (i. 431,) tells us, that when Senesino and
+Farinelli were in England together, they had not for some time
+the opportunity of hearing each other, in consequence of their
+engagements at different theatres.  At last, however, they were
+both engaged to sing on the same stage.  Senesino had the part of
+a furious tyrant, and Farinelli the part of an unfortunate hero
+in chains; but, in the course of the first act, the captive so
+softened the heart of the tyrant, that Senesino, forgetting his
+stage character, ran to Farinelli, and embraced him in his
+own.-E.
+
+(186) He means the name of Walpole at Rome, where the
+Pretender and many of his adherents then resided.
+
+
+
+
+148 letter 20
+To                     Richard West, Esq.
+Rome, April 16th, 1740, N. S.
+
+I'll tell you, West, because one is amongst new things, you think
+one can always write new things.  When I first came
+abroad, every thing struck me, and I wrote its history: but now I
+am grown so used to be surprised, that I don't perceive any
+flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties;
+curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to
+fancy that other people nnow as much of places as One's Self; or,
+at least, one does not remember that they do not.  It
+appears to me as odd to write to you of St.
+Peter's, as it would do to you to write of Westminster Abbey.
+Besides, as one looks at churches, etc. with a book of travels in
+one's hand, and sees every thing particularized there, it would
+appear transcribing, to write upon the same subjects.  I know you
+will hate me for this declaration; I remember how ill I used to
+take it when any body served me so that was
+travelling.  Well, I will tell you something, if you will love
+me: You have seen prints of the ruins of the temple of Minerva
+Medica; you shall only hear its situation, and then figure what a
+villa might be laid out there. 'Tis in the middle of a garden: at
+a little distance are two subterraneous grottos, which were the
+burial-places of the liberti of Augustus.
+There are all the niches and covers of the urns and the
+inscriptions remaining; and in one, very considerable remains of
+an ancient stucco Ceiling with paintings in grotesque.  Some of
+the walks would terminate upon the Castellum Aquae Martioe, St.
+John Lateran, and St. Maria Maggiore, besides other churches; the
+walls of the garden would be two
+aqueducts. and the entrance through one of the old gates of Rome.
+This glorious spot is neglected, and only serves for a small
+vineyard and kitchen-garden.
+
+I am very glad that I see Rome while it yet exists: before a
+great number of years are elapsed, I question whether it will be
+worth seeing.  Between the ignorance and poverty of the present
+Romans, every thing is neglected and falling to decay; the villas
+are entirely out of repair, and the palaces so ill kept, that
+half the pictures are spoiled by damp.  At the
+villa Ludovisi is a large oracular head of red marble,
+colossal, and with vast foramina for the eyes and mouth: the man
+that showed the palace said it was un ritratto della
+famiglia?  The Cardinal Corsini has
+so thoroughly pushed on the misery of Rome by impoverishing it,
+that there is no money but paper to be seen.  He is
+reckoned to have amassed three millions of crowns.  You may judge
+of' the affluence the nobility live in, when I assure you, that
+what the chief princes allow for their own eating is a testoon a
+day; eighteen pence: there are some extend their expense to five
+pauls, or half a crown: Cardinal Albani is called extravagant for
+laying out ten pauls for his dinner and supper.  You may imagine
+they never have any entertainments: so far from it, they never
+have any company.  The princesses and duchesses particularly lead
+the dismallest of lives.
+Being the posterity of popes, though of worse families than the
+ancient nobility, they expect greater
+respect than my ladies the countesses and marquises will pay
+them; consequently they consort not, but mope in a vast palace
+with two mniserable tapers, and two or three monsignori, whom
+they are forced to court and humour, that they may not be
+entirely deserted.  Sundays they do issue forth in a most
+unwieldy coach to the Corso.
+
+In short 'child, after sunset one passes one's time here very
+ill; and if I did not wish for you in the mornings, it would be
+no compliment to tell you that I do in the evening.  Lord! how
+many English I could change for you, and yet buy you
+wondrous cheap! And, then French and Germans I could fling into
+the bargain by dozens.  Nations swarm here.  You will have a
+great fat French cardinal garnished with thirty abb`es roll into
+the area of St. Peter's, gape, turn short, and talk of the chapel
+of Versailles.  I heard one of them say t'other day, he had been
+at the Capitale.  One asked of course how he liked it-.Oh! il y a
+assez de belles choses.
+
+Tell Ashton I have received his letter, and will write next post
+but I am in a violent hurry and have no more time; so Gray
+finishes this delicately.
+
+NOT so delicate; nor indeed would his conscience suffer him to
+write to you, till he received de vos nouvelles, if he had not
+the tail of another person's letter to use by way of evasion.  I
+sha'n't describe, as being in the only place in the world that
+deserves it which may seem an odd reason-but they say as how it's
+fulsome, and every body does it (and I suppose every body says
+the same thing); else I should tell'you a vast deal about the
+Coliseum, and the Conclave, and the Capitol, and these matters.
+A-propos du Colis`ee, if you don't know what it is, the Prince
+Borghese will be very capable of giving you some account of it,
+who told an Englishman that asked what it was built for: "They
+say 'twas for Christians to fight with tigers in."  We are just
+come from adoring a great piece of the true cross, St. Longinus's
+spear, and St. Veronica's handkerchief; all of which have been
+this evening exposed to view in St. Peter's.  In the same place,
+and on the same occasion last night, Walpole saw a poor
+creature naked to the waist discipline himself with a scourge
+filled with iron prickles, till he made hii-nself a raw
+doublet, that he took for red satin torn, and showing the skin
+through.  I should tell you, that he fainted away three times at
+the sight, and I twice
+and a half at the repetition of it.  All this is performed by the
+light of a vast fiery cross, composed of hundreds of
+little crystal latmps, which appears through the great altar
+under the grand tribuna, as if hanging by itself in the air.  All
+the confraternities of the city resort thither in solemn
+procession, habited in linen frocks, girt with a cord, and their
+heads covered with a cowl all over, that has only two holes
+before to see through.  Some of these are all black, others
+parti-coloured and white: and with these masqueraders that vast
+church is filled, who are seen thumping their
+breasts, and kissing the pavement with extreme devotion.  But
+methinks I am describing:-'tis an ill habit; but this, like every
+thing else will wear off We have sent you our compliments by a
+friend of yours, and correspondent in a corner, who seems a very
+agreeable man; one Mr. Williams; I am sorry he staid so little a
+while in Rome.  I forget Porto-Bello (187)  all this while; pray
+let us know where it is, and whether you or Ashton had any hand
+in the taking of'it.  Duty to the admiral.  Adieu! Ever yours,
+
+T. GRAY.
+
+(187) Porto-Bello, taken from the Spaniards by Admiral Vernon,
+with six ships only, On the 21st Nov. 1740.  By the articles of
+the capitulation, the town was not to be plundered, nor the
+inhabitants molested in the smallest degree; and the governor and
+inhabitants expressed themselves in the highest terms, when
+speaking of the humanity and generosity with which they had been
+treated by the admiral and the officers of the
+squadron under his command.-E.
+
+
+
+150 Letter 21
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Rome, April, 23, 1740, N. S.
+
+As I have wrote you two such long letters lately, my dear Hal, I
+did not hurry myself to answer your last; but choose to write to
+poor SelWyn (188) Upon his illness.  I pity you excessively upon
+finding him in such a situation- what a shock it must have been
+to you!  He deserves so much love from all that know him, and you
+owe him so much friendship, that I can scarce conceive a greater
+shock.  I am very glad you did not write to me till he was out of
+danger; for this great distance would have added to my pain, as I
+must have waited so long for another letter.  I charge you, don't
+let him relapse into balls: he does not love them, and, if you
+please, your example may keep him out of them.  You are extremely
+pretty people to be dancing and trading with French poulterers
+and pastry cooks, when a hard frost is starving half the nation,
+and the Spanish war ought to be employing the other half.  We are
+much more public spirited here; we live upon the public news, and
+triumph abundantly upon the taking Porto-Bello.  If you are not
+entirely debauched with your balls, you must be pleased with an
+answer of Lord Harrington's (189) to the governor of
+Rome.  He asked him what they had determined about the
+vessel that the Spaniards took under the canon of Civita
+Vecchia, whether they had restored it to the English?  The
+governor said, they had done justice.  My lord replied, "If you
+had not, we should have' done it ourselves."  Pray
+reverence our spirit, Lieutenant Hal.
+
+Sir, MoscovitEO (190) is not a pretty woman, and she does
+sing ill; that's all.
+
+My dear Harry, I must now tell you a little about myself,
+and answer your questions.  How I like the inanimate part of Rome
+you will soon perceive at my arrival in England; I am far gone in
+medals, lamps, idols, prints, etc." and all the small commodities
+to the purchase of which I can attain; I would buy the Coliseum
+if I could: Judge.  My mornings are spent in the most agreeable
+manner; my evenings ill enough.  Roman conversations are dreadful
+things! such untoward
+mawkins as the princesses! and the princes are worse.  Then the
+whole city is littered with French and German abb`es,
+who make up a dismal contrast with the inhabitants.  The
+conclave is far from enlivening us; its secrets don't
+transpire.  I could give you names of this cardinal and
+that, that are talked of, but each is contradicted the next hour.
+I was there t'other day to visit one of them, and one of the most
+agreeable, Alexander Albani.  I had the
+opportunity of two cardinals making their entry: upon that
+occasion the gate is unlocked, and their eminences come to talk
+to their acquaintance over the threshold.  I have
+received great civilities from him I named to you, and I
+wish he were out, that I might receive greater: a friend of his
+does the honours of Rome for him; but you know that it is
+unpleasant to visit by proxy.  Cardinal Delei, the object of the
+Corsini faction, is dying; the hot weather will probably despatch
+half a dozen more. Not that it is hot yet; I am now writing to
+you by my fireside.
+
+Harry, you saw Lord Deskfoord (191) at Geneva; don't you
+like him?  He is a mighty sensible man.  There are few young
+people have so good understandings.  He is mighty grave, and so
+are you; but you can both be pleasant when you have a
+mind.  Indeed, one can make you pleasant, but his solemn
+Scotchery is a little formidable: before you 1 can play the fool
+from morning to night, courageously.  Good night.  I
+have other letters to write, and must finish this.
+Yours ever.
+
+(188) John Selwyn, elder brother of George Augustus Selwyn.  He
+died about 1750.
+
+(189)William Marquis of Hartington.  He succeeded his father as
+fourth Duke of Devonshire in 1755.-E.
+
+(190) Notwithstanding she laboured under such
+disadvantages-and want of beauty and want of talent are
+serious ones to a cantatrice,-it will be seen from Walpole's
+letter to Mann, 5th Nov. 1741, that the Moscovita, on her
+arrival here, received six hundred guineas for the season,
+instead of four hundred, the salary previously given to the ,
+second woman;" and became, moreover, the mistress of Lord
+Middlesex, the director of the opera.-E.
+
+(191) Son of the Earl of Findlater and Seafield, who
+succeeded his father in 1764, and died in 1770.-E.
+
+
+
+
+152 Letter 22
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Rome, May 7, 1740, N. S.
+
+Dear West,
+'Twould be quite rude and unpardonable in one not to wish you joy
+upon the great conquests that you are all committing all over the
+world.  We heard the news last night from Naples, that Admiral
+Haddock (192) had met the Spanish convoy going to Majorca, and
+taken it all, all; three thousand men, three
+colonels, and a Spanish grandee.  We conclude it is true, for the
+Neapolitan Majesty mentioned it at dinner.  We are going thither
+in about a week, to wish him joy of it too.  'Tis with some
+apprehensions we go too, of having a pope chosen in the interim:
+that would be cruel, you know.  But, thank our stars, there is no
+great probability of it.  ' Feuds and contentions run high among
+the eminences.  A notable one happened this week.  Cardinal
+Zinzendorff and two more had given their votes for the general of
+the Capucins: he is of the Barberini
+family, not a cardinal, but a worthy man.  Not effecting any
+thing, Zinzendorff voted for Coscia, and declared it publicly.
+Cardinal Petra reproved him; but the German replied, he
+thought Coscia as fit to be pope as any of them.  It seems, his
+pique to the whole body is, their having denied a daily admission
+of a pig into the conclave for
+his eminence's use who, being much troubled with the gout, was
+ordered by his mother to bathe his leg in pig's blood every
+morning.
+
+Who should have a vote t other day but the Cardinalino of
+Toledo!  Were he older, the Queen of Spain might possibly
+procure more than one for him, though scarcely enough.
+
+Well, but we won't talk Politics: shall we talk antiquities?
+Gray and I discovered a considerable curiosity lately.  In an
+unfrequented quarter of the Colonna garden lie two immense
+fragments of marble, formerly part of a frieze to some building;
+'tis not known of what.  They are of Parian marble: which may
+give one some idea of the magnificence of the rest of the
+building for these pieces were at the very top.  Upon inquiry, we
+were told they had been measured by an architect, who declared
+they were larger than any member of St. Peter's.  The length of
+one of the pieces is above sixteen feet.  They were formerly sold
+to a stonecutter for five thousand crowns, but Clement XI. would
+not permit them to be sawed, annulled the bargain, and laid a
+penalty of twelve thousand crowns upon the family if they parted
+with them.  I think it was a right judged thing.  Is it not
+amazing, that so vast a structure should not be known of, or that
+it should be so entirely destroyed?  But indeed at Rome this is a
+common surprise; for, by the remains one sees of the Roman
+grandeur in their structures, 'tis evident that there must have
+been more pains taken to destroy those piles than to raise them.
+They are more demolished than any time or chance could have
+effected.  I am persuaded that in an hundred years Rome will not
+be worth seeing; 'tis less so now than one would believe.  All
+the public pictures are decayed or decaying; the few ruins cannot
+last long; and the statues and private collections must be sold,
+from the great poverty of the families.  There are now selling no
+less than three of the principal collections, the Barberini, the
+Sacchetti, and Ottoboni: the latter
+belonged to the cardinal who died in the conclave.  I must give
+you an instance of his generosity, or rather ostentation.  When
+Lord Carlisle was here last year, who is a great
+virtuoso, he asked leave to see the cardinal's collection of
+cameos and intaglios.  Ottoboni gave leave, and ordered the
+person who showed them to observe which my lord admired most.  My
+lord admired many: they were all sent him the next morning. He
+sent the cardinal back a fine gold repeater; who returned him an
+acate snuff box, and more cameoes of ten
+times the value.  Voila qui est fini!  Had my lord produced more
+golden repeaters, it would have been begging more cameos.
+Adieu, my dear West! You see I write often and much, as you
+desired it.  Do answer one now and then, with any little job that
+is done in England.  Good night.  Yours ever.
+
+(192) This report, which proved unfounded, was grounded on the
+fact, that on the 18th of April his Majesty's ships Lenox, Kent,
+and Orford, commanded by Captains Mayne, Durell, and Lord
+Augustus Fitzroy, part of Admiral Balchen's squadron
+being on a cruise about forty leagues to the westward of Cape
+Finisterre, fell in with the Princessa, esteemed the finest ship
+of war in the Spanish navy, and captured her, after an engagement
+of five hours.-E.
+
+(193) Henry fourth Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the
+present Earl.  In 1742, he married Isabella, the daughter of
+William fourth Lord Byron, and died in 1758.-E.
+
+(194) Cardinal Ottoboni, Dean of the Sacred College, who died in
+1740: he had been made a cardinal in 1689.-E.
+
+
+
+
+153 Letter 23
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Naples, June 14, 1740, N. S.
+
+
+Dear West,
+One hates writing descriptions that are to be found in every book
+of travels; but we have seen something to-day that I am sure you
+never read of, and perhaps never heard of.  Have
+you ever heard of a subterraneous town? a whole Roman town, with
+all its edifices, remaining under ground? Don't fancy the
+inhabitants buried it there to save it from the Goths: they were
+buried with it themselves; which is a caution we are not told
+that they ever took.  You remember in Titus's time there  were
+several cities destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius,
+attended with an earthquake.  Well, this was one of them, not
+very considerable, and then called Herculaneum. (195)  Above it
+has since been built Portici, about three miles from
+Naples, where the King has a villa.  This under-ground city is
+perhaps one of the noblest curiosities that ever has been
+discovered.  It was found out by chance, about a year and half
+ago.  They began digging, they found statues; they dug,
+further, they found more.  Since that they have made a
+very considerable progress, and find continually.  You may walk
+the compass of a mile; but by the misfortune of the
+modern town being overhead, they are obliged to proceed with
+great caution, lest they destroy both one and t'other.  By this
+occasion the path is very narrow, just wide enough and high
+enough for one man to walk upright.  They have hollowed, as they
+found it easiest to work, and have carried their
+streets not exactly where were the ancient ones, but sometimes
+before houses, sometimes through them.  You would imagine that
+all the fabrics were crushed together; on the contrary.,
+except some columns, they have found all the edifices standing
+upright in their proper ' situation.  There is one inside of a
+temple quite perfect, with the middle arch, two columns, and two
+pilasters.  It is built of brick plastered over, and
+painted with architecture almost all the insides of the houses
+are in the same manner; and, what is very particular the
+general ground of all the painting is red.  Besides this
+temple, they make out very plainly an amphitheatre: the
+stairs, of white marble and the seats are very perfect; the
+inside was painted in the same colour with the private houses,
+and great part cased with white marble.  They have found among
+other things some fine statues, some human bones, some rice,
+medals, and a few paintings
+extremely fine.  These latter are preferred to all the ancient
+paintings that have ever been discovered.  We have not seen them
+yet, as they are kept in the King's apartment, whither all these
+curiosities are transplanted; and 'tis difficult to see them-but
+we shall.  I forgot to tell you, that in several places the beams
+of the houses remain, but burnt to charcoal; so little damaged
+that they retain visibly the grain of the wood, but upon touching
+crumble to ashes.  What is remarkable, there are no other marks
+or appearance of fire, but what are visible on these beams.
+
+There might certainly be collected great light from this
+reservoir of antiquities, if a man of learning had the
+inspection of it; if he directed the working, and would make a
+journal of the discoveries.  But I believe there is no
+judicious choice made of directors.  There is nothing of the kind
+known in the world; I mean a Roman city entire of that age, and
+that has not been corrupted with modern repairs.
+(196) Besides scrutinising this very carefully, I should be
+inclined to search for the remains of the other towns that were
+partners with this in the general ruin.  'Tis certainly an
+advantage to the learned  world, that this has been laid up so
+long.  Most of the discoveries in Rome were made in a
+barbarous age, where they only ransacked the ruins in quest of
+treasure, and had no regard to the form and being of the
+building; or to any circumstances that might give light to its
+use and history.  I shall finish this long account with a
+passage which Gray has observed in Statius, and which
+correctly pictures out this latent city:-
+
+Haec ego Chalcidicis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam
+Littoribus, fractas ubi Vestius egerit iras,
+Emula Trinacriis volvens incendia flammis.
+Mira fides! credetne viram ventura propago,
+Cum segetes iterum, cum jam haec deserta virebunt,
+Infra urbes populosque premi?
+SyLv. lib. iv. epist. 4.
+
+Adieu, my dear West! and believe me yours ever.
+
+(195) Some excavations were made at Herculaneum in 1709
+by the Prince d'Elbeuf; but, thirty years elapsed after the
+prince had been forbidden to dig further, before any more
+notice was taken of them.  In December 1738 the King of the two
+Sicilies was at Portici, and gave orders for the
+prosecution of these subterranean labours.  There had been an
+excavation in the time of the Romans;
+and another so lately as 1689.  In a letter from Gray
+to his mother, he describes their visits to Herculaneum;
+but, not mentioning it by name, Mason supposed it had not then
+been discovered to be that city.  It is evident, from this
+observation of Walpole, that Mason's opinion was unfounded.-E.
+
+  (196) Pompei a was not then discovered.
+
+
+
+155 Letter 24
+To The Hon.  H. S. Conway.
+R`e di Cofano, vulg.  Radicofani, July 5, 1740, N. S.
+
+You will wonder, my dear Hal, to find me on the road from
+Rome: why, intend I did to stay for a new popedom, but the old
+eminences are cross and obstinate, and will not choose one the
+Holy Ghost does not know when.  There is a horrid thing called
+the mallaria, that comes to Rome, every summer, and kills one,
+and I did not care for being killed so far from Christian burial.
+We have been jolted to death; my servants let us
+come without springs to the chaise, and we are wore
+threadbare: to add to our disasters, I have sprained my ancle,
+and have brought it along, laid upon a little box of baubles that
+I have bought for presents in England.  Perhaps I may pick you
+out some little trifle there, but don't depend upon it; you are a
+disagreeable creature and may be I shall not care for you.
+Though I am so tired in this devil of a place, yet I have taken
+it into my head, that it is like Hamilton's Bawn, (197) and I
+must write to you.  'Tis the top of a black barren mountain, a
+vile little town at the foot of an old citadel: yet this, know
+you, was the residence of one of the three kings that went to
+Christ's birth-day; his name was Alabaster, Abarasser, or some
+such thing; the other two were kings, one of the East, the other
+of Cologn.  'Tis this of Cofano, who was represented in an
+ancient painting found in the Palatine Mount, now in the
+possession of Dr. Mead; he was crowned by Augustus.  Well, but
+about writing-what do you think I write with? Nay, with a pen;
+there was never a one to be found in the whole
+circumference but one, and that was in the possession of the
+governor, and had been used time out of mind to write
+the parole with : I was forced to send to borrow it. It was sent
+me under the conduct of a sergeant and two Swiss, with  desire to
+return it when I should have done with it.  'Tis a curiosity, and
+worthy to be laid up with the relics
+which we have just been seeing- in a small hovel of
+Capucins, on the side of the hill, and which were all brought by
+his Majesty from Jerusalem.  Among other things of great sanctity
+there is a set of gnashing of teeth, the grinders very entire; a
+bit of the worm that never dies, preserved in spirits; a crow of
+St. Peter's cock, very useful against
+Easter; the crisping and curling, frizzling and frowncing of Mary
+Magdalen, which she cut off on growing devout.  The good man that
+showed us all these commodities was got into such a train of
+calling them the blessed this, and blessed that, that at last he
+showed us a bit of the blessed fig-tree that Christ cursed.
+
+Florence, July 9.
+
+My dear Harry,
+We are come hither, and I have received another letter from you
+with Hosier's Ghost.  Your last put me in pain for you, when you
+talked of going to Ireland; but now I find your
+brother and sister go with you, I am not much concerned.
+Should I be?  You have but to say, for my feelings are
+extremely at your service to dispose as you please.  Let us see:
+you are to come back to stand for some
+place; that will be about April.  'Tis a sort of thing I
+should do, too; and then we should see one another, and that
+would be charming; but it is a sort of thing I have no mind to
+do; and then we shall not see one another, unless you
+would come hither-but that you cannot do: nay, I would not have
+you, for then I shall be gone.  So! there are many @
+that just signify nothing at all.  Return I must sooner than I
+shall like.  I am happy here to a degree.  I'll tell you my
+situation.  I am lodged with Mr. Mann, (198) the best of
+creatures.  I have a terreno all to myself, with an open
+gallery on the Arno, where I am now writing to you.  Over
+against me is the famous Gallery; and, on either hand, two fair
+bridges.  Is not this charming and cool?  The air is so serene,
+and so secure, that one sleeps with all the windows and doors
+thrown open to the river, and only covered with a slight gauze to
+keep away the gnats.  Lady Pomfret
+(199) has a charming conversation once a week.  She has
+taken a vast palace and a vast garden, which is vastly
+commode, especially to the cicisbeo-part of mankind, who have
+free indulgence to wander in pairs about the arbours.  You know
+her daughters : Lady Sophia (200) is still, nay she must be, the
+beauty she was: Lady Charlotte, (201) is much improved, and is
+the cleverest girl in the world; speaks the purest Tuscan, like
+any Florentine.  The
+Princess Craon (202) has a constant pharaoh and supper every
+night, where one is quite at one's ease.  I am going into the
+country with her and the prince for a little while, to a villa of
+the Great Duke's.  The people are good-humoured here and easy;
+and what makes me pleased with them, they are pleased with me.
+One loves to find people care for one, when they can have no view
+in it.
+
+You see how glad I am to have reasons for not returning; I wish I
+had no better.
+
+As to Hosier's Ghost, (203) I think it very easy, and
+consequently pretty; but, from the ease, should never have
+guessed it Glover's.  I delight in your, "the patriots cry it up,
+and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and
+down," and your laconic history of the King and Sir
+Robert, on going to Hanover, and turning out the Duke of
+Argyle.  The epigram, too, you sent me
+on the same occasion is charming.
+
+Unless I sent you back news that you and others send me, I can
+send you none.  I have left the conclave, which is the only
+stirring thing in this part of the world, except the child that
+the Queen of Naples is to be delivered of in August.  There is no
+likelihood the conclave will end, unless the messages take effect
+which 'tis said the Imperial and
+French ministers have sent to their respective courts for
+leave to quit the Corsini for the Albani faction: otherwise there
+will never be a pope.  Corsini has
+lost the only one he could have ventured to make pope, and him he
+designed; 'twas Cenci, a relation of the Corsini's
+mistress.  The last morning Corsini made him rise, stuffed a dish
+of chocolate down his throat, and would carry him to
+the scrutiny.  The poor old creature went, came back, and
+died.  I am sorry to have lost the sight of the pope's
+coronation, but I might have stayed for seeing it till I had been
+old enough to be pope myself.
+
+Harry, what luck the chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in
+himself so great a man; but then in accidents: he is
+made chief justice and peer, when Talbot is made chancellor and
+peer: (204) Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves him the
+seals at an age when others are scarce made solicitors:
+(205)-then marries his son into one of the first families of
+Britain, (206) obtains a patent for a marquisate and eight
+thousand pounds a year after the Duke of Kent's death: the duke
+dies in a fortnightt, and leaves them all! People talk of
+Fortune's wheel, that is always rolling: my Lord Hardwicke has
+overtaken her wheel, and rolled with it.  I perceive Miss Jenny
+(207) would not venture to Ireland, nor stray so far from London;
+I am glad I shall always know where to find her within threescore
+miles.  I must say a word to my lord, which, Harry, be sure you
+don't read. ["My dear lord, I don't love troubling you with
+letters, because I know you don't love the trouble of answering
+them; not that I should insist on that ceremony, but I hate to
+burthen any one's conscience.  Your brother tells me he is to
+stand member of parliament: without telling me so, I am sure he
+owes it to you.  I am sure you will not repent setting him up;
+nor will he be ungrateful to a brother who deserves so much, and
+whose least merit is not the knowing how to employ so great a
+fortune."]
+
+There, Harry,-I have done.  Don't suspect me: I have said no ill
+of you behind your back.  Make my
+best compliments to Miss Conway. (208)
+
+I thoght I had done, and lo, I had forgot to tell you, that who
+d'ye think is here?-Even Mr. More! our Rheims Mr.
+More!  the fortification, hornwork, ravelin, bastion Mr.
+More! which is very pleasant sure.  At the end of the eighth
+side, I think I need make no excuse for leaving off; but I am
+going to write to Selwyn, and to the lady of the mountain; from
+whom I have had a very kind letter.  She has at last
+received the Chantilly brass. Good night: write to me from one
+end of the world to t'other.  Yours ever.
+
+(197) A large old house, two miles from the seat of Sir
+Arthur Acheson, near Market-hill, and the scene of Swift's
+humorous poem, "The Grand Question debated, whether
+Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a barrack or a malt-
+house."-E.
+
+(198) Afterwards Sir Horace Mann.  He was at this time
+resident at Florence from George II.
+
+(199) Henrietta Louisa, wife of Thomas Earl of Pomfret. [She was
+the daughter of John Lord Jefferies, Baron of Wem.  Lady Pomfret,
+who was the friend and correspondent of Frances
+Duchess of Somerset, retired from the court upon the death of
+Queen Caroline in 1737.]
+
+(200) Afterwards married to John Lord Carteret, who became Earl
+of Granville on the death of his mother in the year 1744.
+
+(201) Lady Charlotte Fermor married, in August 1746, William
+Finch, brother of Daniel seventh Earl of Winchelsea, by whom she
+had issue a son, George, who, on the death of his uncle, in 1769,
+succeeded to the earldom.  Her ladyship was governess to the
+children of George III., and highly esteemcd by him and his royal
+consort.-E.
+
+(202) The Princess Craon was the favourite mistress of
+Leopold the last Duke of Lorrain, who married her to M. de
+Beauveau, and prevailed on the Emperor to make him a prince of
+the empire.  They at this time resided at Florence, where Prince
+Craon was at the head of the council of regency.
+
+(203) This was a party ballad (written by Glover, though by some
+at the time ascribed to Lord Bath,) on the taking of
+Porto-Bello by Admiral Vernon.  "The case of Hosier," says
+Bishop Percy, in his admirable Reliques, vol. ii. p. 382,
+where the song is preserved, "The case of Hosier, which is here
+so pathetically represented, was briefly this.  In
+April 1726, that commander was sent with a strong fleet into the
+Spanish West Indies to block up the galleons in the port of that
+country, or, should they presume to come out, to
+seize and carry them to England: he accordingly arrived at
+Bastimentos, near Porto-Bello; but, being employed rather to
+overawe than attack the Spaniards, with whom it was probably not
+our interest to go to war, he continued long inactive on this
+station.  He afterwards removed to Carthagena, and
+remained crusing in those seas, till the greater part of his men
+perished deplorably by the diseases of that unhealthy
+Climate.  This brave man, seeing his best officers and men thus
+daily swept away, his ships exposed to inevitable
+destruction, and himself made the sport of the enemy, is
+said to have died of a broken heart.-E.
+
+(204) Philip Yorke Lord Hardwicke was the son of an attorney at
+Dover, and was introduced by the Duke of Newcastle to Sir Robert
+Walpole.  He was attorney-general, and when Talbot, the
+solicitor-general, was preferred to him in the contest for the
+chancellorship, Sir Robert made him chief justice
+for life, with an increased salary.  He was an object of
+aversion to Horace Walpole, who, in his Memoirs, tells us, "in
+the House of Lords, he was laughed at, in the cabinet
+despised." Upon which it is very properly observed by the
+noble editor of those memoirs, Lord Hollan,-"Yet, in the
+course of the work, Walpole laments Lord Hardwicke's
+influence in the cabinet, where he would have us believe
+that he was despised, and acknowledges that he exercised a
+dominion nearly absolute over that house of Parliament
+which, he would persuade his readers, laughed at him.  The truth
+is, that, wherever this great magistrate is mentioned, Lord
+Orford's resentments blind his judgment and disfigure his
+narrative."-E.
+
+
+(205) charles Talbot baron Talbot was, on the 29th Nov.
+1733, made lord high chancellor and created a baron; and,
+dying in Feb. 1737, was succeeded by Lord Hardwicke.  There is a
+story current, that Sir Robert Walpole, finding it
+difficult to prevail on Yorke to quit a place for life, for the
+higher but more precarious dignity of chancellor, worked upon his
+jealousy, and said that if he persisted in refusing the seals, he
+must offer them to Fazakerly. "Fazakerly!"
+exclaimed Yorke, "impossible! he is certainly a Tory,
+perhaps a Jacobite."  "It's all very true," replied Sir
+Robert, taking out his watch; " but if by one o'clock you do not
+accept my offer, Fazakerly by two becomes lord keeper of the
+great seal, and one of the staunchest Whigs in all
+England!" Yorke took the seals and the peerage.-E.
+
+(206) That of Grey, Duke of Kent, see avove.-E.
+
+(207) Miss Jane Conway, half-sister to Henry Seymour Conway.  She
+died unmarried in 1749.
+
+(208) Afterwirds married to John Harris, Esq. of
+Hayne in Devonshire.
+
+
+
+159 Letter 25
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Florence, July 31, 1740, N. S.
+
+Dear West,
+I have advised with the most notable antiquarians of this city on
+the meaning of Thur gut Luetis.  I can get no satisfactory
+interpretation.  In my own opinion 'tis Welsh.  I don't love
+offering conjectures on a language in which I have hitherto made
+little proficiency, but I will trust you with my
+explication.  You know the famous Aglaughlan, mother of
+Cadwalladhor, was renowned for her conjugal virtues, and grief on
+the death of her royal spouse.  I conclude this medal was struck
+in her regency, by her express order, to the memory of her lord,
+and that the inscription Thur gut Luetis means no more than her
+dear Llewis or Llewellin.
+
+In return for your coins I send you two or three of different
+kinds.  The first is a money of one of the kings of Naples; the
+device, a horse; the motto, Equitas regni.  This curious pun is
+on a coin in the Great Duke's collection, and by great chance I
+have met with a second.  Another is, a satirical
+medal struck on Lewis XIV.; 'tis a bomb, covered with
+flower-de-luces, bursting; the motto, Se ipsissimo.  The last,
+and almost the only one I ever saw with a text well applied, is a
+German medal with a Rebellious town besieged and blocked up; the
+inscription, This kind is not expelled but by fasting.
+Now I mention medals, have they yet struck the intended one on
+the taking of Porto-Bello?  Admiral Vernon will shine in our
+medallic history.  We have just received the news of the
+bombarding Carthagena, and the taking Chagre. (209)  We are in
+great expectation of some important victory obtained by the
+squadron under Sir John Norris.  we are told the Duke is to be of
+the expedition; is it true? (210)  All the letters, too, talk of
+France suddenly declaring war; I hope they will defer it for a
+season, or one shall be obliged to return through Germany.
+
+The conclave still subsists, and the divisions still increase; it
+was very near separating last week, but by breaking into two
+popes; they were on the dawn of a schism.  Aldovrandi had
+thirty-three voices for three days, but could not procure the
+requisite two more; the Camerlingo having engaged his faction to
+sign a protestation against him and each party were
+inclined to elect.  I don't know whether one should wish for a
+schism or not; it might probably rekindle the zeal for the church
+in the powers of Europe which has been so far decaying.
+On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor.  Those learned
+luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole are to be joined by the
+Lady Mary Wortley Montague.  You have not been witness to the
+rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones
+debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be
+the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it.  Only
+figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history,
+Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and metaphysics; all, except the
+second, understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all.  You
+shall have the journals of this notable academy.  Adieu, my dear
+West! Yours ever,
+
+Hor. Walpole.
+
+Though far unworthy to enter into so learned and political a
+correspondence, I am employed pour barbouiller une page
+de 7 pounces et demie en hauteur, et `a en largeur; and to inform
+you that we are at Florence, a city of Italy, and the capital of
+Tuscany: the latitude I cannot justly tell, but it is governed by
+a prince called Great Duke; an excellent place to employ all
+one's animal sensations in, but utterly contrary to one's
+rational powers.  I have struck a medal upon myself: the device
+is thus 0, and the motto Nihilissimo, which I take in the most
+concise manner to contain a full account of my person,
+sentiments, occupations, and late glorious successes.  If you
+choose to be annihilated too, you cannot do better than undertake
+this journey.  Here you shall get up at twelve
+o'clock, breakfast till three, dine till five, sleep till six,
+drink cooling liquors till eight, go to the bridge till ten, sup
+till two, and so sleep till twelve again.
+
+Lahore fessi venimus ad larem nostrum,
+Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto;
+Hoc est, quod unum est, pro laborious tantis.
+O quid solutis est beatius curis?
+
+We shall never come home again; a universal war is just upon the
+point of breaking out; all outlets will be
+shut up.  I shall be secure in my nothingness, while you, that
+will be so absurd as to exist, will envy me.  You don't tell me
+what proficiency you make in the noble science of defence.  Don't
+you start still at the sound of a gun? Have you learned to say
+ha! ha! and is your neck clothed with thunder?  Are your whiskers
+of a tolerable length? And have you got drunk yet with brandy and
+gunpowders?  Adieu, noble captain!
+T. GRAY.
+
+(209) On the 24th March, 1740, the Spaniards hung out a white
+flag, and the place was surrendered by capitulation to Admiral
+Vernon.-E.
+
+(210) The Duke of Cumberland had resolved to accompany Sir John
+Norris as a volunteer, and sailed with him from St.
+Helens on the 10th June; but on the 17th a gale arising drove
+them into Torbay, Where Sir John continued until the 29th, when
+he again put to sea; but the wind once more becoming
+contrary, and blowing very hard, he was constrained to return to
+Spithead, and on the following day his royal highness
+returned to London.-E.
+
+
+
+161 Letter 26
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Florence, September 25, 1740, N. S.
+
+My dear Hal,
+I begin to answer your letter the moment I have read it,
+because you bid me; but I grow so unfit for a correspondence with
+any body in England, that I have almost left it off.  'Tis so
+long since I was there, and I am so utterly a stranger to every
+thing that passes there, that I must talk vastly in the dark to
+those I write: and having in a manner settled
+myself here, where there can be no news, I am void of all
+matter for filling up a letter.  As, by the absence of the Great
+Duke, Florence is become in a manner a country town, YOU may
+imagine that we are not without dem`el`es; but for a
+country town I believe there never were a set of people so
+peaceable, and such strangers to scandal.  'Tis the family of
+love, where every body is paired, and go as constantly
+together as paroquets.  Here nobody hangs or drowns
+themselves; they are not ready to cut one another's throats about
+elections or parties; don't think that wit consists in saying
+bold truths, or humour in getting
+drunk.  But I shall give you no more of their characters,
+because I am so unfortunate as to think that their encomium
+consists in being the reverse of the English, who in general are
+either mad, or enough to make other people so.  After
+telling you so fairly my sentiments, you may believe, my dear
+Harry, that I had rather see you here than in England.  'Tis an
+evil wish for you, who should not be lost in so obscure a place
+as this.  I will not make you compliments, or else here is a
+charming opportunity for saying what I think of you.  As I am
+convinced you love me, and as I am conscious you have One strong
+reason for it, I will own to you, that for my own peace you
+should wish me to remain here.  I am so well within and without,
+that you would scarce know me: I am younger than ever, think of
+nothing but diverting myself, and live in a round of pleasures.
+We have operas, concerts, and balls,
+mornings and evenings.  I dare not tell you all One's
+idleness: you would look so grave and senatorial at hearing that
+one rises at eleven in the morning, goes to the opera at nine at
+night, to supper at one, and to bed at three! But
+literally here the evenings and nights are so charming and so
+warm, one can't avoid 'em.
+
+Did I tell you Lady Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my Lady
+Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole
+town. (211)  Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze
+any one that never heard her name.  She wears a foul mob, that
+does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never
+combed or curled; an old mazarine blue
+wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvass petticoat.  Her
+face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a-, partly
+covered with a plaster, and partlv with white paint, which for
+cheapness she has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to
+wash a chimney.-In three words I will give you her picture (212)
+as we drew it in the Sortes Virgilianae-
+Insanam vatem aepicies.
+
+I give you my honour, we did not choose it; but Mr. Gray, Mr.
+Cooke, (213) Sir Francis Dashwood, (214) and I, and several
+others, drew it fairly amongst a thousand for different
+people, most of which did not hit as you may imagine: those that
+did I will tell you.
+
+For our most religious and gracious-
+-Dii, talem terris avertite pestem.
+
+For one that would be our most religious and gracious.
+Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
+Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo
+Demis`ere caput, pluvia cum fort`e gravantur.
+
+For his son.
+Regis Romani: primus qui legibus urbem Fundabit, Curibus
+parvis et paupere terra, Missus in imperium magnum.
+
+For Sir Robert.
+Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri, et late
+fines custode tueri.
+
+I will show you the rest when I see you.
+
+(211) In a letter from Florence, written by Lady Mary to Mr.
+Wortley, on the 11th of August, she says, "Lord and Lady
+Pomfret take pains to make the place agreeable to me, and I have
+been visited by the greatest part of the people of
+quality."  See the edition of her works, edited by Lord
+Wharncliffe, vol. ii. p. 325.-E.
+
+(212) The following favourable picture" of Lady Mary is by
+Spence, who met her at Rome, in the ensuing January:-" She is one
+of the most shining characters in the world, but shines like a
+comet; she is all irregularity, and always wandering; the most
+wise, most imprudent; loveliest, most disagreeable; best-natured,
+cruellest woman in the world; 'all things by turns, and nothing
+long.'"-E.
+
+(213) George Cooke, Esq. afterwards member for Tregony, and chief
+prothonotary in the Court of Common Pleas.  On Mr.
+Pitt's return to office in 1766 he was appointed joint
+paymaster-general, and died in 1768.  See Chatham
+Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 338.-E.
+
+(214) Sir Francis Dashwood, who, on the death of John Earl of
+Westmoreland, succeeded to the barony of Le Despencer, as
+being the only son of Mary, eldest sister of the said Earl, and
+which was confirmed to him 19th April'1763.-E.
+
+
+
+163 Letter 27
+To Sir Richard West, Esq.
+Florence, Oct. 2, 1740, N. S.
+
+Dear West,
+T'other night as we (you know who we are) were walking on
+the charming bridge, just before going to a wedding assembly, we
+said, Lord, I wish, just as we are got into the room, they would
+call us out, and say, West is arrived!  We would make him dress
+instantly, and carry him back to the entertainment.  How he would
+stare and wonder at a thousand things, that no longer strike us
+as odd!" Would not you? One agreed that you should come directly
+by sea from Dover, and be set down at Leghorn, without setting
+foot in any other foreign town, and so land at Us, in all your
+first full amaze; for you are to know, that astonishment rubs off
+violently; we did not cry out Lord! half so much at Rome as at
+Calais, which to this hour I look upon as one of the most
+surprising cities in the
+universe.  My dear child, what if you were to take this little
+sea-jaunt?  One would recommend Sir John Norris's convoy to you,
+but one should be laughed at now for supposing that he is ever to
+sail beyond Torbay.(215)  The Italians take Torbay for an English
+town in the hands of the Spaniards, after the
+fashion of Gibraltar, and imagine 'tis a wonderful strong
+place, by our fleet's having retired from before it so often, and
+so often returned.  We went to this wedding that I told you of;
+'twas a charming feast: a large palace finely
+illuminated; there were all the beauties, all the jewels, and all
+the sugarplums of Florence.  Servants loaded with great chargers
+full of comfits heap the tables with them, the women fall on with
+both hands, and stuff their pockets and every creek and corner
+about them.  You would be as much amazed at us as at any thing
+you saw: instead of being deep in the arts, and being in the
+Gallery every morning, as I thought
+of course to be sure I would be, we are in all the idleness and
+amusements of the town.  For me, I am grown so lazy, and so
+tired-of seeing sights, that, though I have been at
+Florence six months, I have not seen Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, or
+Pistoia; nay, not so much as one of the Great Duke's
+villas.  I have contracted so great an aversion to
+postchaises, and have so absolutely lost all curiosity, that,
+except the towns in the straight road to Great Britain, I
+shall scarce see a jot more of a foreign land; and trust me, when
+I returt), I will not visit the Welsh mountains, like Mr.
+Williams.  After Mount Cenis, the Boccheto, the Giogo,
+Radicofani, and the Appian Way, one has mighty little hunger
+after travelling.  I shall be mighty apt to set up my staff at
+Hyde Park corner: the alehouseman there at Hercules's
+Pillars(216) was certainly returned from his travels into
+foreign parts.
+
+Now I'll answer your questions.
+
+I have made no discoveries in ancient or modern arts.  Mr.
+Addison travelled through the poets, and not through Italy; for
+all his ideas are borrowed from the descriptions, and not from
+the reality.  He saw places as they were, not as they are.  I am
+very well acquainted with Dr. Cocchi; (217) he is a good sort of
+man, rather than a great man; he is a plain
+honest creature, with quiet knowledge, but I dare say all the
+English have told you, he has a very particular understanding: I
+really don't believe they meant to impose on you, for they
+thought so.  As to Bondelmonti, he is much less; he is a low
+mimic; the brightest cast of his parts attains to the
+composition of a sonnet: he talks irreligion with- English boys,
+sentiment with my sister, (218) and bad French with any one that
+will hear him.  I will transcribe you a little song that he made
+t'other day; 'tis pretty enough; Gray turned it into Latin, and I
+into English; you will honour him highly by putting it into
+French, and Asheton into Greek.  Here 'tis.
+Spesso Amor sotto la forma
+D'amista ride, e s'asconde;
+Poi si mischia, e si confonde
+Con lo sdegno e col rancor.
+
+In pietade ei si trasforma,
+Pas trastullo e par dispetto;
+ma nel suo diverso aspetto,
+Sempre egli `a l'istesso Amor.
+
+Risit amicitiae interd`um velatus amictu,
+Et ben`e composit`a veste fefellit Amor:
+Mox irae assumpsit cultus faciemque minantem,
+Inque odium versus, versus et in lacrymas:
+Ludentem fuge, nec lacrymanti aut furenti;
+Idem est dissimili semper in ore Deus.
+
+Love often in the comely mien
+Of friendship fancies to be seen;
+Soon again he shifts his dress,
+And wears disdain and rancour's face.
+
+To gentle pity then he changes-
+Thro' wantonness, thro' piques he ranges;
+
+But in whatever shape he moves,
+He's still himself, and still is Love.
+
+See how we trifle! but one can't pass one's youth too
+amusingly for one must grow old, and that in England; two
+most serious circumstances, either of which makes people
+gray in the twinkling of a bedstaff; for know you there is not a
+country upon earth where there are so many old fools and so few
+young ones.
+
+Now I proceed in my answers.
+
+I made but small collections, and have only bought some
+bronzes and medals, a few busts, and two or three pictures: one
+of my busts is to be mentioned; 'tis the famous
+vespasian in touchstone, reckoned the best in Rome, except the
+Caracalia of the Farnese- I gave but twenty-two POUDds for it at
+Cardinal Ottoboni's sale.  One of my medals is as great a
+curiosity; 'tis of Alexander Severus, with the
+amphitheatre in brass; this reverse is extant on medals of his,
+but mine is a medagliuncino, or small medallion, and
+The Only one with this reverse known in the world: 'twas
+found by a peasant while I was in Rome, and sold by him for
+sixpence to an antiquarian, to whom I paid for it seven
+guineas and a half: but to virtuosi 'tis worth any SUM.
+
+As to Tartini's (219) musical compositions, ask Gray; I know but
+little in music.
+
+But for the Academy, I am not of it, but frequently in
+company with it: 'tis all disjointed.  Madame * * *, who,
+though a learned lady, has not lost her modesty and
+character, is extremely scandalized with the other two
+dames, especially Moll Worthless, who knows no bounds.  She is at
+rivalry with Lady W. for a certain Mr. * * *, whom
+perhaps you knew at Oxford.  If you did not, I'll tell you: he is
+a grave young man by temper, and a rich one by
+constitution; a shallow creature by nature, but a wit by the
+grace of our women here, whom he deals with as of old with the
+Oxford toasts.  He fell into sentiments with my Lady W. and was
+happy to catch her at Platonic love; but as she
+seldom stops there, the poor man will be frightened out of his
+senses when she shall break the matter to him; for he
+never dreamt that her purposes were so naught.  Lady Mary is so
+far gone, that to get him from the mouth of her
+antagonist she literally took him out to dance country
+dances last night at a formal ball, where there was no
+measure kept in laughing at her old, foul, tawdry, painted,
+plastered personage.  She played at pharaoh two or three
+times at Princess Craon's, where she cheats horse and foot.  She
+is really entertaining: I have been reading her works, which she
+lends out in manuscript, but they are too
+womanish: I like few of her performances.  I forgot to tell you a
+good answer of Lady Pomfret to mr. W. *** who asked
+her if she did not approve Platonic love. "Lord, sir," says she,
+, "I am sure any one that knows me never heard that I had any
+love but one, and there sit two proofs of it,"
+pointing to her two daughters.
+
+So I have given you a sketch of our employments, and
+answered your questions, and will with pleasure as many more as
+you have about you.  Adieu! Was ever such a lon@ letter? But 'tis
+nothing to what I shall have to say to you.  I
+shaft scold you for never telling us any news, public or
+private, no deaths, riiarriages, or mishaps; no account of new
+books: Oh, you are abominable! I could find it in my
+heart to hate You if I did not love you so well; but we will
+quarrel now, that we may be the better friends when we meet:
+there is no danger of that, is there? Good night, whether
+friend or foe! I am most sincerely Yours.
+
+(215) Though brave, skilful, and enterprising Sir John
+failed to acquire renown, in consequence of mere
+accidents.  On the breaking out of the Spanish war, he was
+ordered to cruise in the Bay of Biscay; but, owing to
+tempestuous weather, was compelled to put into port for the
+winter.  The following lines were addressed to him upon this
+occasion:
+
+"Homeward, oh! bend thy course; the seas are rough;
+To the Land's End who sails has sailed enough." E.
+
+
+(216) Walpole calls the Hercules' Pillars an
+alehouse.  Whatever it might have been at the period he
+wrote, it is very certain that, after the peace of 1762, it was a
+respectable tavern, where the Marquis of Granby, and other
+persons of rank, particularly military men, had
+frequent dinner parties, which were then fashionable.  It
+was also an inn of great repute among the west-country
+gentlemen, coming to London for a few weeks, who thought
+themselves fortunate if they could secure accommodations for
+their families at the Hercules' Pillars.  The spot where it once
+stood, is now occupied by the noble mansion of the Duke of
+Wellington.-E.
+
+(217) Dr. Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician, resident at
+Florence, who published a collection of Greek writers upon
+medicine.  He figures conspicuously in Spence's
+Anecdotes.-E.
+
+(218) Margaret Rolle, wife of Robert Walpole, eldest son of Sir
+Robert Walpole, created Lord Walpole during the lifetime of his
+father.
+
+(219) Giuseppe Tartini of Padua, whom Viotti pronounced the last
+great improver of the practice of the violin.  Several of
+Tartini's compositions are particularized in that amusing little
+volume, "The Violin and its Professors," by Mr.
+Dubourg, who has recorded in quaint verse the well-known
+story of the "Devil's Sonata," a piece of diablerie, the
+result of which is that to this day, Tartini's
+tale hath made all fiddlers say, A hard sonata is the devil to
+play!-E.
+
+
+
+166 Letter 28
+To Richard West, Esq.
+>From Florence, Nov. 1740.
+
+Child, I am going to let you see your shocking proceedings with
+us. On my conscience, I believe 'tis three months since you wrote
+to either Gray or me.  If you had been ill, Ashton would have
+said so; and if you had been dead the gazettes
+would have said it.  If you had been angry,-but that's
+impossible; how can one quarrel with folks three thousand
+miles off? We are neither divines nor commentators, and
+consequently have not hated you on paper.  'Tis to show that my
+charity for you cannot be interrupted at this distance
+that I write to you, though I have nothing to say, for 'tis a bad
+time for small news; and when emperors and czarinas
+are dying all up and down Europe, one can't pretend to tell you
+of any thing that happens within our sphere.  Not but
+that we have our accidents too. if you have had a great wind in
+England, we have had a great water at Florence.  We have been
+trying to set out every day, and pop upon you (220) * * * * * It
+is fortunate that we stayed, for I don't know what had become of
+us!  Yesterday, with violent rains, there came flouncing down
+from the mountains such a flood that it
+floated the whole city. The jewellers on the Old Bridge
+removed their commodities, -and in two hours after the
+bridge was cracked.  The torrent broke down the quays and
+drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables
+under ground.  We were moated into our house all day, which is
+near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the
+ruins that were washed along with the hurricane.  There was a
+cart with two oxen not quite dead, and four men in it
+drowned: but what was ridiculous, there came tiding along a fat
+haycock, with a hen and her eggs, and a cat.  The
+torrent is considerably abated; but we expect terrible news from
+the country, especially from Pisa, which stands so much lower,
+and nearer the sea.  There is a stone here, which,
+when the water overflows, Pisa is entirely flooded.  The
+water rose two ells yesterday above that stone.  Judge!
+
+For this last month we have passed our time but dully; all
+diversions silenced on the emperor's death, (221) and
+everybody out of town.  I have seen nothing but cards and
+dull pairs of cicisbeos.  I have literally seen so much love and
+pharaoh since being here, that I believe I shall never love
+either again SO long as I live.  Then I am got in a
+horrid lazy way of a morning.  I don't believe I should know
+seven o'clock in the morning again if I was to see it.  But I am
+returning to England, and shall grow very solemn and
+wise! Are you wise'( Dear West, have pity on one who have
+done nothing of gravity for these two years, and do laugh
+sometimes.  We do nothing else, and have contracted such
+formidable ideas of the good people of England that we are
+already nourishing great black eyebrows and great black
+beards, and teasing our countenances into wrinkles.  Then
+for the common talk of the times, we are quite at a loss,
+and for the dress.  You would oblige us exceedingly by
+forwarding to us the votes of the houses, the king's speech, and
+the magazines; or if you had any such thing as a little book
+called the Foreigner's Guide through the city of London and the
+liberties of Westminster; or a letter to a
+Freeholder; or the Political Companion: then 'twoulg be an
+infinite obligation if you would neatly band-box up a baby
+dressed after the newest Temple fashion now in use at both
+play-houses.  Alack-a-day!  We shall just arrive in the
+tempest of elections!
+
+As our departure depends entirely upon the weather, we
+cannot tell you to a day when we shall say Dear
+West, how glad I am to see you! and all the many questions and
+answers that we shall give and take.  Would the day were come! Do
+but figure to yourself the journey we are to pass through first!
+But you can't conceive Alps, Apennines,
+Italian inns, and postchaises.  I tremble at the thoughts.  They
+were just sufferable while new and unknown, and as we met them by
+the way in coming to Florence, Rome, and Naples; but they are
+passed, and the mountains remain! Well, write to one in the
+interim; direct to me addressed to Monsieur
+Selwyn, chez Monsieur.Ilexandre, Rue St. Apolline, a Paris.  If
+Mr. Alexandre is not there, the street is, and I believe that
+will be sufficient.  Adieu, my dear child! Yours ever.
+
+(220) A line of the manuscript is here torn away.
+
+(221) Charles the Sixth, Emperor of Germany, upon whose
+death, on the 9th of October, his eldest daughter,
+Maria-Theresa, in virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction,
+instantly succeeded to the whole Austrian inheritance.-E.
+
+
+
+168 Letter 29
+To The Rev. Joseph Spence. (222)
+Florence, Feb. 21, 1741, N. S.
+
+Sir,
+Not having time last post, I begged Mr. Mann to thank you for the
+obliging paragraph for me in your letter to him.  But as I desire
+a nearer correspondence with you than by third hands, I assure
+you in my own proper person that I shall have great pleasure, on
+our meeting in England, to renew an acquaintance that 'I began
+with so much pleasure in Italy. (223)  I Will not reckon you
+among my modern friends, but in the first article of virtu: you
+have given me so many new lights into a science that but a warmth
+and freedom that will flow from my friendship, and which will not
+be contained within the circle of a severe awe. As I shall always
+be attentive to give you any satisfaction that lies in my power,
+I take the first opportunity of sending you two little poems,
+both by a hand that I know you esteem the most; if you have not
+seen them, you will thank me for lilies of Mr. Pope: if you have,
+why I did not know it.
+
+I don't know whether Lord Lincoln has received any orders to
+return home: I had a letter from one of my brothers last
+post to tell me from Sir Robert that he would have me leave Italy
+as soon as possible, lest I should be shut up unawares by the
+arrival of the Spanish troops; and that I might pass some time in
+France if I had amind.  I own I don't conceive how it is possible
+these troops should arrive without its being known some time
+before.  And as to the Great Duke's dominions, one can always be
+out of them in ten hours or less.  If Lord Lincoln has not
+received the same orders.. I shall believe what I now think, that
+I am wanted for some other reason.  I beg my kind love to Lord
+Lincoln, and that Mr. Spence will believe me, his sincere humble
+servant HOR. WALPOLE.
+
+(222) The well-known friend of Pope and author of the
+Polymetis, who was then travelling on the Continent with
+Henry, Earl of Lincoln, afterwards Duke of Newcastle.  See ante
+p. 140, (Letter 14, and footnote 175).-E.
+
+(223) This acquaintance proved of infinite service to
+Walpole, shortly after the date of this letter, when he was laid
+up with a quinsy at Reggio.  Spence thus describes the
+circumstance: "About three or four in the morning I was
+surprised with a message, saying that Mr. Walpole was very much
+worse, and desired to see me; I went, and found him
+scarce able to speak.  I soon learned from his servants that he
+had been all the while without a physician, and had
+doctored himself; so I immediately sent for the best aid the
+place would afford, and despatched a messenger to the
+minister at Florence, desiring him to send my friend Dr. Cocchi.
+In about twenty-four hours I had the satisfaction to find Mr.
+Walpole better: we left him in a fair way of recovery, and we
+hope to see him next week at Venice.  I had obtained leave of
+Lord Lincoln to stay behind some days if he had been worse.  You
+see what luck one has sometimes in going out of one's way.  If
+Lord Lincoln had not wandered to
+Reggio, Mr. Walpole (who is one of the best-natured and most
+sensible young gentlemen England affords) would have, in all
+probability, fallen a sacrifice to his disorder."-E.
+
+
+
+169 Letter 30
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Florence, March 25th, 1741, N. S.
+
+Dear Hal,
+You must judge by what you feel yourself of what I feel for
+Selwyn's recovery, with the addition of what I have suffered from
+post to post.  But as I find the whole town have had the same
+sentiments about him, (though I am sure few so strong as myself,)
+I will not repeat what you have heard so much.  I shall write to
+him to-night, though he knows without my
+telling him how very much I love him.  To you, my dear Harry, I
+am infinitely obliged for the three successive letters you wrote
+me about him, which gave me double pleasure, as they showed your
+attention for me at a time that you know I must be so unhappy;
+and your friendship for him.  Your account of Sir Robert's
+victory (224) was so extremely well told, that I made Gray
+translate it into French, and have showed it to all that could
+taste It, or were inquisitive on the occasion.  I have received a
+print by this post that diverts me extremely; 'the Motion.' (225)
+Tell me, dear, now, who made the design, and who took the
+likenesses; they are admirable: the lines are as good as one sees
+on such occasions.  I wrote last post to Sir Robert, to wish him
+joy; I hope he received my letter.
+
+I was to have set out last Tuesday, but on Sunday came the news
+of the Queen of Hungary being brought to bed of a son; (226) on
+which occasion here will be great triumphs, operas and
+masquerades, which detain me for a short time.
+
+I won't make you any excuse for sending you the follOWing
+lines; you have prejudice enough for me to read with patience any
+Of My idlenesses. (227)
+
+My dear Harry, you enrage me with talking of another journey to
+Ireland; it will shock me if I don't find you at my return: pray
+take care and be in England.
+
+I wait with some patience to see Dr. Middleton's Tully, as I read
+the greatest part of it in manuscript; though indeed 'tis rather
+a reason for my being impatient to read the rest.  If Tully can
+receive any additional honour, Dr. Middleton is most capable of
+conferring it. (228)
+
+I receivc with great pleasure any remembrances of my lord and
+your sisters; I long to see all of you.  Patapan is so
+handsome that he has been named the silver fleece; and there is a
+new order of knighthood to be erected to his honour, in
+opposition to the golden.  Precedents are searching, and plans
+drawing up for that purpose.  I hear that the natives pretend to
+be companions, upon the authority of their dogskin
+waistcoats; but a council that has been held on purpose has
+declared their pretensions impertinent.  Patapan has lately taken
+wife unto him, as ugly as he is genteel, but of a very great
+family, being the direct heiress of Canis Scaliger, Lord of
+Verona: which principality we design to seize `a la
+Prussienne; that is, as soon as ever we shall have persuaded the
+republic of Venice that we are the best friends they have in the
+world.  Adieu, dear child!
+Yours ever.
+
+P. S. I left my subscriptions for Middleton's Tully with Mr.
+Selwyn; I won't trouble him, but I wish you would take care and
+get the books, if Mr. S. has kept the list.
+
+(224) On the event of Mr. Sandys' motion in the House of
+commons to remove Sir Robert Walpole from the King's presence and
+councils for ever. [The motion was negatived by 290
+against 106: an unusual majority, which proceeded from the schism
+between the Tories and the Whigs, and the secession of Shippen
+and his friends.  The same motion was made by
+Lord-Carteret in the House of Lords, and negatived by 108
+against 59.-E.)
+
+(225) The print alluded to exhibits an interesting view of
+Whitehall, the Treasury, and adjoining buildings, as they
+stood at the time.  The Earl of Chesterfield, as postilion of a
+coach which is going full speed towards the Treasury, drives over
+all in his way.  The Duke of Argyle is coachman,
+flourishing a sword instead of a whip; while Doddington is
+represented as a spaniel, sitting between his legs.  Lord
+Carteret, perceiving the coach about to be overturned, is
+calling to the coachman,"Let me get out!"  Lord Cobbam, as the
+footman, is holding fast on by the straps; while Lord
+Lyttleton is ambling by the side on a rosinante as thin as
+himself. Smallbrook, Bishop of Lichfield, is bowing
+obsequiously as they pass; while Sandys, letting fall the
+place-bill, exclaims, ,I thought what would come of putting him
+on the box." In the foreground is Pulteney, leading
+several figures by strings from their noses, and wheeling a
+barrow filled with the Craftsman's Letters, Champion, State of
+the Nation, and Common Sense, exclaiming, "Zounds, they are
+over!"  This caricature, and another, entitled " The Political
+Libertines, or Motion upon Motion," had been provoked by one put
+forth by Sir Robert Walpole's opponents, entitled "The Grounds
+for the Motion;" and were followed up by another from the
+supporters of Sandys' motion, entitled "The Motive or
+Reason for his Triumph," which the caricaturist attributes
+entirely to bribery.-E.
+
+(226) Afterwards Joseph the Second, emperor of Germany.-E.
+
+(227) Here follows the Inscription for the neglected column in
+the place of St. Mark, at Florence, afterwards printed in the
+Fugitive Pieces.
+
+(228) Dr. Middleton's "History of the Life of Cicero" was
+published in the early part of this year, by subscription, and
+dedicated to Pope's enemy, Lord Hervey.  This laboured
+encomium on his lordship obtained for the doctor a niche in the
+Dunciad:-
+
+Narcissus, praised with all a Parson's power,
+Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower."-E.
+
+
+
+170 Letter 31
+To Richard West, Esq.
+Reggio, May 1 1741, N. S.
+
+Dear West,
+I have received the end of your first act, (229) and now will
+tell you sincerely what I think of it.  If I was not so
+pleased with the beginning as I usually am with your
+compositions, believe me the part of Pausanias has charmed me.
+There is all imaginable art joined with all requisite
+simplicity: and a simplicity, I think, much preferable to that in
+the scenes of Cleodora and Argilius.  Forgive me, if I say they
+do not talk laconic but low English in her, who is
+Persian too, there would admit more heroic.  But for the whole
+part of Pausanias, 'tis great and well worried up, and the art
+that is seen seems to proceed from his head, not from the
+author's.  As I am very desirous you should continue, so I own I
+wish you would improve or change the beginning: those who know
+you not so well as I do, would not wait with so much
+patience for the entrance of Pausanias.  You see I am frank; and
+if I tell you I do not approve of the first part, you may believe
+me as sincere when I tell you I admire the latter
+extremely.
+
+My letter has an odd date.  You would not expect I should be
+writing in such a dirty place as Reggio: but the fair is
+charming; and here come all the nobility of Lombardy, and all the
+broken dialects of Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, etc.  You never
+heard such a ridiculous confusion of tongues.  All the morning
+one goes to the fair undressed, as to the walks of Tunbridge:
+'tis Just in that manner, with lotteries, raffles, etc.  After
+dinner all the company return in their coaches, and make a kind
+of corso, with the ducal family, who go to shops, where you talk
+to 'em, from thence to the opera, in mask if you will, and
+afterwards to the ridotto.  This five nights in the week, Fridays
+there are masquerades, and
+Tuesdays balls at the Rivalta, a villa of the Duke's.  In
+short, one diverts oneself.  I pass most part of the opera in the
+Duchess's box, who is extremely civil to me and extremely
+agreeable.  A daughter of the Regent's, (230) that could
+please him, must be so.  She is not young, though still
+handsome, but fat; but has given up her gallantries
+cheerfully, and in time, and lives easily with a dull husband,
+two dull sisters of his, and a dull court.  These two
+princesses are wofully ugly, old maids and rich.  They might have
+been married often; but the old Duke was whimsical and proud, and
+never would consent to any match for them, but left them much
+money, and pensions of three thousand pounds a year apiece.
+There was a design to have given the eldest to this King of
+Spain, and the Duke was to have had the Parmesan
+princess; so that now he would have had Parma and Placentia,
+Joined to Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, and Massa.  But there being
+a Prince of Asturias, the old Duke Rinaldo broke off the match,
+and said his daughter's children should not be younger brothers:
+and so they mope old virgins.
+
+I am goin@ from hence to Venice, in a fright
+lest there be a war with France, and then I must drag myself
+through Germany.  We have had an imperfect account of a
+sea-fight in America . but we are so out of the way, that one
+can't be sure of it.  Which way soever I return, I shall be soon
+in England, and there you 'will find me again.
+
+As much as ever yours.
+
+(229) of a tragedy called Pausanias, The first act, and
+probably all that was ever written by Mr. West. [In the
+preceding month West had forwarded to Gray the sketch of this
+tragedy, which he appears to have criticised with
+much freedom; but Mr. Mason did not find among Gray's papers
+either the sketch itself, or the free critique upon it.]
+
+(230) Philip Duke of Orleans.
+
+
+
+172 Letter 32
+To Sir Horace Mann. (231)
+Calais, and Friday, and here I have been these two days, 1741.
+
+Is the wind laid? Shall I Dever get aboard? I came here on
+Wednesday night, but found a tempest that has never ceased since.
+At Boulogne I left Lord Shrewsbury and his mother, and brothers
+and sisters, waiting too: Bulstrode (232) passes his winter at
+the court of Boulogne, and then is to travel with two young
+Shrewsburys.  I was overtaken by Amorevoli and Monticelli, (233)
+who are here with me and the Viscontina, and Barberina, and
+Abbate Vanneschi (234)-what
+a coxcomb!  I would have talked to him about the opera, but he
+preferred politics.  I have wearied Amorevoli with
+questions about you.  If he was not just come from you, and could
+talk to me about you, I should hate him; for, to
+flatter me, he told me that I talked Italian better than
+you.  He did not know how little I think it a compliment to have
+any thing preferred to you-besides, you know the
+consistence of my Italian!  They are all frightened out of their
+senses about going on the sea, and are not a little
+afraid of the English.  They went on board the William and Mary
+yacht yesterday, which waits here for Lady Cardigan from Spa.
+The captain clapped the door, and swore in broad English that the
+Viscontina should not stir till she gave him a song, he did not
+care whether it was a catch or a moving ballad; but she would not
+submit.  I wonder he did!  When she came home and told me, I
+begged her not to judge of all the English from this specimen;
+but, by the way, she will find many
+sea-captains that grow on dry land.
+
+Sittinburn, Sept. 13, O. S.
+
+Saturday morning, or yesterday, we did set out, and after a good
+passage of four hours and a half, landed at Dover.  I begin to
+count my comforts, for I find their contraries
+thicken on my apprehension.  I have, at least, done for a
+while with postchaises.  My trunks were a little opened at
+Calais, and they would have stopped my medals, but with much ado
+and much three louis's they let them pass.  At Dover I found the
+benefit of the motions (235) having miscarried last year, for
+they respected Sir Robert's son even in the person of his trunks.
+I came over in a yacht with East India
+captains' widows, a Catholic girl, coming from a convent to be
+married, with an Irish priest to guard her, who says he
+studied medicines for two years, and after that he studied
+learning for two years more.  I have not brought over a word of
+French or Italian for common use; I have so taken pains to avoid
+affectation in this point, that I have failed Only now and then
+in a chi`a l`a! to the servants, who I
+can scarce persuade myself yet are English.  The
+COUntry-town (and you will believe me, who, you know, am not
+prejudiced) delights me; the populousness, the ease, the
+gaiety, and well-dressed every body amaze me.  Canterbury, which
+on my setting out I thought deplorable, is a paradise, (236) to
+Modena, Reggio, Parma, etc.  I had before discovered that there
+was nowhere but in England the distinction of
+middling people; I perceive now, that there is peculiar to us
+middling houses: how snug they are!  I write to-night
+because I have time; to-morrow I get to London just as the post
+goes.  Sir Robert is at Houghton.  Good night till
+another post.  You are quite well I
+trust, but tell me so always.  My loves to the Chutes (237)  and
+all the etc.'s.
+
+Oh! a story of Mr. Pope and the prince:-"Mr. Pope, you don't love
+princes."  "Sir, I beg your pardon."  "Well, you don't love
+kings, then!""Sir, I own I love the lion best
+before his claws are grown."  Was it possible to make a
+better answer to such simple questions?  Adieu! my dearest child!
+Yours, ten thousand times over.
+
+P. S. Patapan does not seem to regret his own country.
+
+(231) This is the first of the series of letters
+addressed by Walpole to Sir Horace Man, British envoy at
+the court of Tuscany.  The following prefatory note,
+entitled "Advertisement by the Author," explains the views which
+led Walpole to preserve them for publication:-
+
+"The following Collection of Letters, written
+very carelessly by a young man, had been preserved by the
+person to whom they were addressed.  The author, some years after
+the date of the first, borrowed them, on account of
+some anecdotes interspersed.  On the perusal, among many
+trifling relations and stories, which were only of
+consequence or amusing to the two persons concerned in the
+correspondence, he found some facts, characters, and news, which,
+though below the dignity of history, might prove
+entertaining to many other people: and knoing how much
+pleasure, not only himself, but many other persons have
+found in a series of private and familiar letters, he
+thought it worth his while to preserve these, as they
+contain something of the customs, fashions, politics,
+diversions, and private history of several
+years; which, if worthy of any existence, can be properly
+transmitted to posterity only in this manner.
+
+"The reader will find a few pieces of intelligence which did not
+prove true; but which are retained here as the author
+heard and related them, lest correction should spoil the
+simple air of the narrative.* When the letters
+were written, they were never intended for public
+inspection; and now they are far from being thought correct,  or
+more authentic than the general turn of epistolary
+correspondence admits.  The author would sooner have burnt them
+than have taken the trouble to correct such errant
+trifles, which are here presented to the reader, with scarce any
+variation or omissions, but what private friendships and private
+history, or the great haste with which the letters were written,
+made indispensably necessary, as will plainly appear, not only by
+the unavoidable chasms, where the
+originals were worn out or torn away,
+but by many idle relations and injudicious remarks and
+prejudices of a young man; for which @the only excuse the
+author can pretend to make, is, that as some future reader may
+possibly be as young as he was when he first wrote, he hopes they
+may be amused with what graver people (if into such hands they
+should fall) will very justly despise.  Who ever has patience to
+peruse the series, will find, perhaps, that as the author grew
+older, some of his faults became less striking."
+* They are marked in the notes.
+
+(232) Tutor to the young Earl of Shrewsbury.  [.Charles
+Talbot, fifteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, born December 1719.  He
+married, in 1753, Elizabeth, daughter of the Hon.  John Dormer,
+afterwards Lord Dormer, and died in
+1787, without issue.]
+
+(233) Italian singers.  [Angelo Maria Monticelli, a celebrated
+singer of the same class as Veluti, was born at Milan in 1715,
+and first attained the celebrity which he enjoyed by singing with
+Mingotti at the Royal Opera at Naples in 1746.  After visiting
+most of the cities of the Continent, he was induced by the favour
+with which he was received at Dresden to make that city his
+residence, until his death in 1764.  Is the name of Amorevoli,
+borne by one of the first singers of that
+day, an assumed one, or an instance of name fatality?
+Certain it is,that Amorevole is a technical term in music
+somewhat analogous in its signification with Amabile and
+Amoroso.]
+
+(234) An Italian abb`e, who directed and wrote the
+operas under the protection of Lord Middlesex.
+
+(235) The motion in both houses of Parliament,
+1740, for removing Sir Robert Walpole from the King's
+councils. [See ante, p. 169 (Letter 30).)
+
+(236) ("On! On! through meadows, managed like a garden,
+A paradise of hops and high production;
+For, after years of travel by a bard in
+Countries of greater heat, but lesser suction,
+A green field is a sight which makes him pardon
+The absence of that more sublime construction,
+Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices,
+Glaciers, volcanos, oranges, and ices."-Byron, 1823.)
+
+(237) John Chute and Francis Whithed, Esqrs.
+two great friendls of Mr. W.'s, whom he had left at Florence,
+where he had been himself thirteen months, in the house of Mr.
+Mann, his relation and particular friend.
+
+
+
+174 Letter 33
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+[The beginning of this letter is lost.)
+
+****I had written and sealed my letter, but have since
+received another from you, dated Sept. 24. I read Sir Robert your
+account of Corsica; he seems to like hearing any account sent
+this way-indeed, they seem to have more superficial
+relations in general than I could have believed! You will
+oblige me, too, with any farther account of Bianca Colonna: (238)
+it is romantic, her history!
+
+I am infinitely obliged to Mr. Chute for his kindness to me, and
+still more for his friendship to you.  You cannot think how happy
+I am to hear that you are to keep him longer.  You do not mention
+his having received my letter from Paris: I directed it to him,
+recommended to you.  I would not have him think me capable of
+neglecting to answer his letter, which obliged me so much.  I
+will deliver Amorevoli his letter the first time I see him.
+
+Lord Islay (239) dined here; I mentioned Stosch's (240)
+Maltese cats.  Lord Islay begged I would write to Florence to
+have the largest male and female that can be got.  If you will
+speak to Stosch, you will oblige me: they may come by sea.
+You cannot imagine my amazement at your not being
+invited to Riccardi's ball; do tell me, when you know, what can
+be the meaning of it; it could not be inadvertence-nay, that were
+as bad! Adieu my dear child, once more!
+
+(238A kind friend of Joan of Are, who headed the
+Corsican rebels against the Genoese.
+
+(239) Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, and, on his
+brother's death in 1743, Duke of Argyle.
+
+(240) Baron Stosch, a Prussian virtuoso, and spy for
+the court of England on the Pretender.  He had been driven from
+Rome, though it was suspected that he was a spy on both sides: he
+was a man of a most infamous character in every
+respect.  according to the Biographic Universelle, the Baron "ne
+put s'acquitter de fonctions aussi d`elicates sans se voir
+expos`e `a des naines violentes, qui le forc`erent `a se
+retirer `a Florence;" where he died in 1757.  He was one of the
+most skilful and industrious antiquaries of his time.  A
+catalogue of his gems was drawn up by Winkelmann.]
+
+
+
+175 Letter 34
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+London, 1741.
+
+My Dearest Harry,
+Before I thank you for myself, I must thank you for that
+excessive good nature you showed in writing to poor Gray. I am
+less impatient to see you, as I find you are not the least
+altered, but have the same tender friendly temper you always had.
+I wanted much to see if you were still the same-but you are.
+
+Don't think of coming before your brother, he is too good to be
+left for any one living: besides, if it is possible, I will see
+you in the country.  Don't reproach me, and think nothing could
+draw me into the country: impatience to see a few
+friends has drawn me out of Italy; and Italy, Harry, is
+pleasanter than London.  As I do not love living en famille so
+much as you (but then indeed my family is not like yours), I am
+hurried about getting myself a house; for I have so long lived
+single, that I do not much take to being confined with my own
+family.
+
+You won't find me much altered, I believe; at least,
+outwardly.  'I am not grown a bit shorter, or a bit fatter, but
+am just the same long lean creature as usual.  Then I talk no
+French., but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself.  What
+inward alterations may have happened to me, you will
+discover best; for you know 'tis said, one never knows that one's
+self.  I will answer, that that part of it that belongs to you,
+has not suffered the least change-I took care of that.
+For virt`u, I have a little to entertain you: it is my sole
+pleasure.-I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.
+
+My dear Harry, will you take care and make my compliments to that
+charming Lady Conway, (241) who I hear is so charming, and to
+Miss Jenny [Conway], who I know is so?  As for Miss Anne, (242)
+and her love as far as it is decent: tell her, decency is out of
+the question between us, that I love her without any restriction.
+I settled it yesterday with Miss Conway, that you three are
+brothers and sister to me, and that if you had been so, I could
+not love you better.  I have so many cousins, and uncles and
+aunts, and bloods that grow in Norfolk, that if I had portioned
+out my affections to them, as they say I should, what a modicum
+would have fallen to
+each!-So, to avoid fractions, I love my family in you three,
+their representatives. (243)
+
+Adieu, my dear Harry! Direct to me at Downing Street.
+Good-bye!  Yours ever.
+
+(241) Isabella Fitzroy, daughter of Charles Duke of
+Grafton.  She had been married in May, to(Walpole's maternal
+cousin), Francis Seymour Conway, afterwards Earl of Hertford.(
+
+242) Miss Anne conway, youngest sister of Henry Seymour
+Conway.
+
+(243) They were first cousins by the mother's side; Francis first
+Lord conway having married Charlotte, eldest daughter of John
+Shorter of Bybrook in Kent, sister to Catherine Shorter Lady
+Walpole.
+
+
+
+176 Letter 35
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, Oct. 8, 1741, O. S.
+
+I have been very near sealing this letter with black wax; Sir
+Robert came from Richmond on Sunday night extremely ill, and on
+Monday was in great danger.  It was an ague and looseness; but
+they have stopped the latter, and converted the other into a
+fever, which they are curing with the bark.  He came out of his
+chamber to-day for the first time, and is quite out of danger.
+One of the newspapers says, Sir R. W. is so bad that there are no
+Hopes of him.
+
+The Pomfrets (244) are arrived; I went this morning to visit my
+lord, but did not find him.  Lady Sophia is ill, and my earl
+(245) still at Paris, not coming. There is no news, nor a soul in
+town.  One talks of nothing but distempers, like Sir Robert's.
+My Lady Townsende (246) was reckoning up the other day the
+several things that have cured them; such a doctor so many, such
+a medicine, so many; but of all, the greatest
+number have found relief from the sudden deaths of their
+husbands.
+
+The opera begins the day after the King's birthday: the
+singers are not permitted to sing till on the stage, so no one
+has heard them, nor have I seen Amorovoli to give him the
+letter.  The opera is to be on the French system of dancers,
+scenes, and dresses.  The directors have already laid out
+great sums.  They talk of a mob to silence the operas, as they
+did the French players; but it will be more difficult, for here
+half the young noblemen in town are engaged, and they will not be
+so easily persuaded to humour the taste of the mobility: in
+short, they have already retained several eminent lawyers from
+the Bear Garden (247) to plead their defence.  I have had a long
+visit this morning from Don Benjamin: (248) he is one of the best
+kind of agreeable men I ever saw-quite fat and easy, with
+universal knowledge: he is in the greatest
+esteem at my court.
+
+I am going to trouble you with some commissions.  Miss Rich,
+(249) who is the finest singer except your sister (250) in the
+world, has begged me to get her some music, particularly "the
+office of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows," by Pergolesi,
+(251) the "Serva Padrona, il Pastor se torna Aprile," and
+"Symplicetta Pastorella."  If you can send these easily, you will
+much oblige me.  Do, too, let me know by your brother, what you
+have already laid out for me, that I may pay him.
+I was mentioning to Sir Robert some pictures in italy, which I
+wished him to buy; two particularly, if they can be got, would
+make him delight in you beyond measure.  They are, a Madonna, and
+Child, by Dominichino, (252) in the palace Zambeccari, at
+Boloana, or Caliambec, (253) as they call it; Mr. Chute knows the
+picture.  The other is by Corregio, in a convent at Parma, and
+reckoned the second best of that hand in the world.  There are
+the Madonna and Child, St. Catherine, St. Matthew, and other
+figures: it is a most known picture, and has been
+engraved by Augustin Caracei.  If you can employ any body
+privately to inquire about these pictures, be so good as to let
+me know; Sir R. would not scruple almost any price, for he has of
+neither hand: the convent is poor: the Zambeccari
+collection is to be sold, though, when I inquired after this
+picture, they would not set a price.
+
+Lord Euston is to be married to Lady Dorothy Boyle (254)
+tomorrow, after so many delays.  I have received your long
+letter, and Mr. Chute's too, which I will answer next post.  I
+wish I had the least politics to tell you; but all is silent.
+The opposition sav not a syllable, because they don't know what
+the Court will think of public 'affairs; and they will not take
+their part till they are sure of contradicting.  The Court will
+not be very ready to declare themselves, as their present
+situation is every way disagreeable.  All they say, is to throw
+the blame entirely on the obstinacy of the Austrian Court, who
+-,vould never stir or soften for themselves, while they thought
+any one obliged to defend them.  All I know of news is, that
+Poland is leaning towards the acquisition side, like her
+neighbours, and proposes to get a lock of the Golden Fleece too.
+Is this any part of Gregory's (255) negotiation?  I delight in
+his Scapatta--"Scappata, no; egli solamente ha preso la posta."
+My service to Seriston; he is charming.
+
+How excessively obliging to go to Madame Grifoni's (256)
+festino!  but believe me, I shall be angry, if for my sake, you
+do things that are out of your character: don't you know that I
+am infinitely fonder of that than of her?
+
+I read your story of the Sposa Panciatici at table, to the great
+entertainment of the company, and Prince Craon's
+epitaph, which Lord Cholmley (257) says he has heard before, and
+does not think it is the prince's own; no more do I, it is too
+good; but make my compliments of thanks to him; he shall have his
+buckles the first opportunity I find of sending them.
+Say a thousand things for me to dear Mr. Chute, till I can say
+them next post for myself: till then, adieu.  Yours ever.
+
+(244) Thomas Earl of Pomfret, and Henrietta Louisa, his
+consort, and his two eldest daughters, Sophia and Charlotte, had
+been in Italy at the same time with Mr. Walpole.  The Earl had
+been master of the horse to Queen Caroline, and the
+countess lady of the bedchamber.
+
+(245) Henry Earl of Lincoln was at that time in love with Lady
+Sophia Fermor.
+
+(246) Ethelreda Harrison, wife of Charles Lord Viscount
+Townsend, but parted from him.
+
+(247) Boxers.
+
+(248) Sir Benjamin Keene, ambassador at Madrid.
+
+(249) Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Rich, since
+married to Sir George Lyttelton.  [Eldest son of sir Thomas
+Lyttelton of hagley; in 1744 appointed one of the lords of the
+treasury, and in 1755, chancellor of the exchequer.  In
+1757,when he retired from public life, he was raised to the
+peerage, by the title of Lord Lyttelton.  He died in 1773.  His
+prose works were printed collectively in 1774; and his poems have
+given him a place among the British poets.]
+
+(250) Mary, daughter of R. Mann, Esq. since married to Mr. Foote.
+
+(251) Better known to all lovers of the works of this great
+composer as his " Stabat mater."-E.
+
+(252) It will be seen by Walpole's letter to Mr. Chute, of the
+20th August 1743, now first published, that he eventually
+succeeded in purchasing this picture.-E.
+
+(253) A corrupted pronunciation of the Bolognese.
+
+(254) This unfortunate marriage is alluded to several times in
+the course of the subsequent letters.  George Earl of Euston was
+the eldest son of Charles the second Duke of Grafton.  He
+married, in 1741, Lady Dorothy Boyle, eldest daughter and
+co-heir of Richard, third and last heir of B(irlington.  She died
+in 1742, from the effects, as it is supposed, of his
+brutal treatment of her.  The details of his cruelty towards her
+are almost too revolting to be believed.  In Sir Charles Hanbury
+Williams's poems are some pretty lines on her death, beginning,
+"Behold one moment Dorothea's fate."-D.
+
+(255) Gregorio ALdollo, an Asiatic, from being a prisoner at
+Leghorn, raised himself to be employed to the Great Duke by the
+King of Poland.
+
+(256) Elisabetta Capponi, wife of signor
+Grifoni, a great beauty.
+
+(257) George third Earl of Cholmondeley, had married Mary
+Walpole, only legitimate daughter of Sir Robert Walpole-D.
+
+
+
+178 Letter 36
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Oct. 13, 1741.
+[The greatest part of this letter is wanting.]
+
+**** The Town will come to town, and then one shall know
+something.  Sir Robert is quite recovered.
+
+Lady Pomfret I saw last night: Lady Sophia has been ill with a
+cold; her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for
+which I am sorry; her figure is so fine in a robe: she is full as
+sorry as I am.  Their trunks are not arrived yet, so they have
+not made their appearance.  My lady told me a little out of
+humour that Uguecioni wrote her word, that you said her things
+could not be sent away yet: I understood from you, that very
+wisely, you would have nothing to do about them, so made no
+answer.
+
+The parliament meets the fifteenth of November.  ****
+Amorevoli has been with me two hours this evening; he is in
+panics about the first night, which is the next after the
+birthday.
+
+I have taken a master, not to forget my Italian-don't it look
+like returning to Florence'!-some time or other.  Good night.
+Yours
+ever and ever, my dear child.
+
+
+
+178 Letter 37
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Oct. 19, 1741, O. S.
+[Great part wanting.]
+
+I write to you up to the head and ears in dirt, straw, and
+unpacking.  I have been opening all my cases from the
+Custom-house the whole morning; and-are not you glad?-every
+individual safe and undamaged.  I am fitting up an apartment in
+Downing Street ***(258) was called in the morning, and was asleep
+as soon as his head touched the pillow, for I have
+frequently known him snore ere they had drawn his curtains, now
+never sleeps above an hour without waking; and he, who at dinner
+always forgot he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless
+than all his company, now sits without speaking, and with his
+eyes fixed for an hour together.  Judge if this is the Sir Robert
+you knew.
+
+The politics of the age are entirely suspended; nothing is
+mentioned; but this bottling them up, will make them fly out with
+the greater violence the moment the parliament meets; till *** a
+word to you about this affair.
+
+I am sorry to hear the Venetian journey of the Suares family; it
+does not look as if the Teresina was to marry PandOlfini; do you
+know, I have set my heart upon that match.
+
+You are very good to the Pucci, to give her that advice,
+though I don't suppose she will follow it.  The Bolognese
+scheme ***  In return for Amorevoli's letter, he has given me
+two.  I fancy it will be troublesome to you; so put his wife into
+some other method of correspondence with him.
+
+Do you love puns? A pretty man of the age came into the
+playhouse the other night, booted and spurred: says he, "I am
+come to see Orpheus"-"And Euridice- You rid I see," replied
+another gentleman.
+
+(258) The omissions in these letters marked with stars occur in
+the original MS.-D.
+
+
+
+179 Letter 38
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Oct. 22, 1741, O. S.
+
+Your brother has been with me this morning, and we have talked
+over your whole affair.  He thinks it will be impossible to find
+any servant of the capacities you require, that will live with
+you under twenty, if not thirty pounds a-year, especially as he
+is not to have your clothes: then the expense of the journey to
+Florence, and of back again, in case you should not like him,
+will be considerable.  He is for your taking one from Leghorn;
+but I, who know a little more of Leghorn than he does, should be
+apprehensive of any person from thence being in the interest of
+Goldsworthy, (259) or too attached to the merchants: in short, I
+mean, he would be liable to prove a spy upon you.  We have agreed
+that I shall endeavour to find out a proper man, if such a one
+will go to you for twenty pounds a-year, and then you shall ficar
+from me.  I am very sensible that Palombo (260) is not fit for
+you, and shall be extremely diligent in equipping you with such a
+one as you want.  You know how much I want to be of service to
+you even in trifles.
+I have been much diverted privately, for it is a secret that not
+a hundred persons know yet, and is not to be spoken of.  Do but
+think on a duel between Winnington (261) and Augustus Townshend;
+(262) the latter a pert boy, captain of an
+Indiaman; the former declared cicisbeo to my Lady Townshend.  The
+quarrel was something that Augustus had said of them; for since
+she was parted from her husband, she has broke with all his
+family.  Winnington challenged; they walked into Hyde Park last
+Sunday morning, scratched one another's fingers, tumbled into two
+ditches-that is Augustus did,-kissed, and walked home together.
+The other night at Mrs. Boothby's-
+
+Well, I did believe I should never find time to write to you
+again; I was interrupted in my letter last post, and could not
+finish it; to-day I came home from the King's levee, where I
+Kissed his hand, without going to the drawing-room, on purpose to
+finish my letter, and the moment I sat down they let
+somebody in.  That somebody is gone, and I go on-At Mrs.
+Boothby's Lady Townshend was coquetting with Lord Baltimore:
+(263) he told her, if she meant any thing with him he was not for
+her purpose; if only to make any one jealous, he would throw away
+an hour with her with all his heart.
+
+The whole town is to be to-morrow night at Sir Thomas
+Robinson's (264) ball, which he gives to a little girl of the
+Duke of Richmond's.  There are already two hundred invited, from
+miss in bib and apron, to my lord chancellor (265) in bib and
+mace.  You shall hear about it next post.
+
+I wrote you word that Lord Euston is married: in a week more I
+believe that I shall write you word that he is divorced.  He is
+brutal enough; and has forbid Lady Burlington (266) his house,
+and that in very ungentle terms.  The whole family is in
+confusion: the Duke of Grafton half dead. and Lord
+Burlington half mad.  The latter has challenged Lord Euston, who
+accepted the challenge, but they were prevented.  There are
+different stories: some say that the duel would have been no
+breach of consanguinity; others, that there's a contract of
+marriage come out in another place, which has had more
+consanguinity than ceremony in it: in short, one cannot go into a
+room but you hear something of it.  Do you not pity the poor
+girl? of the softest temper, vast beauty, birth, and
+fortune, to be so sacrificed!
+
+The letters from the West Indies are not the most agreeable.  You
+have heard of the fine river and little town which Vernon took,
+and named, the former dugusta, the latter Cumberland.  Since
+that, they have found out that it is impracticable to take St.
+Jago by sea - on which Admiral Vernon and Ogle
+insisted that Wentworth, with the land forces, should march to it
+by land, which he, by advice of all the land-officers, has
+refused; for their march would have been of eighty miles, through
+a mountainous, unknown country, full of defiles, where not two
+men could march abreast; and they have but four
+thousand five hundred men, and twenty-four horses.  Quires of
+paper from both sides are come over to the council, who are to
+determine from hence what is to be done.  They have taken a
+Spanish man-of-war and a register ship, going to Spain,
+immensely valuable.
+
+The parliament does not meet till the first of December, which
+relieves me into a little happiness, and gives me a little time
+to settle myself.  I have unpacked all my things, and have not
+had the least thing suffer.  I am now only in a
+fright about my birthday clothes, which I bespoke at Paris:
+Friday is the day, and this is Monday, without any news of them!
+
+I have been two or three times at the play, very unwillingly; for
+nothing was ever so bad as the actors, except the company.  There
+is much in vogue a Mrs. Woffington, (267) a bad actress; but she
+has life.
+
+Lord Hartington (268) dines here: it is said (and from his
+father's partiality to another person's father, I don't think it
+impossible) that he is to marry a certain miss:(269) Lord
+Fitzwilliam is supposed another candidate.
+
+Here is a new thing which has been much about town, and liked;
+your brother Gale (270) gave me the copy of it:
+
+                          "Les cours de l'Europe
+
+L'Allemagne craint tout;
+L'Autriche risque tout;
+La Bavi`ere esp`ere touut;
+La Prusse entreprend tout;
+La Mayence vend tout;
+Le Portugal regarde tout;
+L'Angleterre veut faire tout;
+L'Espagne embrouille tout;
+La Savoye se d`efie de tout;
+Le Mercure se m`ele de tout;
+La France sch`ete tout;
+Les Jesuites se trouvent par tout;
+Rome b`enit tout'
+Si dieu ne pourvoye `a tout,
+Le diable emportera tout."
+
+Good night, my dear child: you never say a word of your own
+health; are not you quite recovered? a thousand services to Mr.
+Chute and Mr. Whithed, and to all my friends: do they
+begin to forget me? I don't them.  Yours, ever.
+
+(259) Consul at Leghorn, who was endeavouring to supplant Mr.
+Mann.
+
+(260)An Italian, secretary to Mr. Mann.
+
+(261"Winnington," says Walpole, (Memoirs, i. P. 151), "had been
+bred a Tory, but had left them in the height of Sir
+Robert Walpole's power -.  when that minister sunk.  he had
+injudiciously, and, to please my Lady Townshend, who had then the
+greatest influence over him, declined visiting him, in a manner
+to offend the steady old Whigs; and his jolly way of laughing.at
+his own want of principles had revolted all the graver sort, who
+thought deficiency of honesty too sacred and profitable a
+commodity to be profaned and turned into
+ridicule.  He had infinitely more wit than any man I ever
+knew, and it was as ready and quick as it was constant and
+Unmeditated.  His style was a little brutal, his courage not at
+all so; his good-humour inexhaustible; it was impossible to hate
+or to trust him." Winnington was first Ynade lord of the
+admiralty, then of the treasury, then cofferer, and lastly
+paymaster of the forces: to which office, on his death in
+1746, Mr. Pitt succeeded.-E.
+
+(262) The Hon. Augustus Townshend was second son of the
+minister, Lord Townshend, by his second wife, the sister of Sir
+Robert Walpole.  He was consequently half-brother to
+Charles, the third viscount, husband to Ethelreda, Lady
+Townshend.-D.
+
+(263) Charles Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore in Ireland.  He was
+at this time member of parliament for the borough of St.
+Germains, and a lord of the admiralty.-D.
+
+(264) Sir Thomas Robinson, of Rokeby Park, in Yorkshire,
+commonly called "Long Sir Thomas," on account of his stature, and
+in order to distinguish him from the diplomatist, Sir
+Thomas Robinson, afterwards created Lord Grantham. [He has
+elsewhere been styled the new Robinson Crusoe by Walpole, who
+says, when speaking of him, " He was a tall, uncouth man; and his
+stature was often rendered still more remarkable by his
+hunting-dress, a postilion's cap, a tight green jacket, and
+buckskin breeches.  He was liable to sudden whims, and once set
+off on a sudden in his hunting suit to visit his sister, who was
+married and settled at Paris.  He arrived while there was a large
+company at dinner.  The servant announced M.
+Robinson, and he came in to the great amazement of the hosts.
+Among others, -a French abb`e thrice lifted his fork to his mouth
+and thrice laid it down, with an eager stare of
+surprise.  Unable to restrain his curiosity any longer, he burst
+out with I Excuse me, sir, are you the famous Robinson Crusoe so
+remarkable in history?'"]
+
+(265) Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke.-D.
+
+(266) Lady Dorothy Savile, eldest daughter and co-heiress of
+William second Marquis of Halifax, the mother of the unhappy Lady
+Euston.-D.
+
+(267) Margaret Woffington, the celebrated beauty.-D.
+
+(268) William, Marquis of Hartington, afterwards fourth Duke of
+Devonshire.  He married Lady Charlotte Boyle, second
+daughter of Richard, third Earl of Burlington.-D.
+
+(269) Miss Mary Walpole, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole by his
+second wife, Maria Skerrett, but born before their marriage.
+When her father was made an earl, she had the rank of an
+earl's daughter given to her.-D.
+
+(270) Galfridus Mann.
+
+
+
+182 Letter 39
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Nov. 2, 1741.
+
+You shall not hear a word but of balls and public places: this
+one week has seen Sir T. Robinson's ball, my lord mayor's, the
+birthday, and the opera.  There were an hundred and
+ninety-seven persons at Sir Thomas's, and yet was it so well
+conducted that nobody felt a crowd.  He had taken off all his
+doors, and so separated the old and the young, that neither were
+inconvenienced with the other.  The ball began at eight; each man
+danced one minuet with his partner, and then began country
+dances.  There were four-and-twenty couple, divided into twelve
+a@d twelve: each set danced two dances, and then retired into
+another room, while the other set took their two; and so
+alternately.  Except Lady Ancram, (271) no married
+woman danced; so you see, in England, we do not foot it till
+five-and-fifty.  The beauties were the Duke of Richmond's two
+daughters (272) and their mother, still handsomer than they: the
+duke (273) sat by his wife all night, kissing her hand: how this
+must sound in the ears of Florentine cicisbeos, cock or hen! Then
+there was Lady Euston, Lady Caroline Fitzroy, (274) Lady Lucy
+Manners, (275) Lady Camilla Bennett, (276) and Lady Sophia, (277)
+handsomer than all, but a little out of humour at the scarcity of
+minuets; however, as usual, she
+danced more than any body, and, as usual too, took out what men
+she liked or thought the best dancers. Lord Holderness (278) is a
+little what Lord Lincoln (279) will be to-morrow; for he is
+expected.  There was Churchill's daughter (280) who is prettyish,
+and dances well; and the Parsons (281) family from Paris, who are
+admired too; but indeed it is `a force des muscles.  Two other
+pretty women were Mrs. Colebroke (did you know the he-Colebroke
+in Italy?) and a Lady Schaub, a
+foreigner, who, as Sir Luke says, would have him.  Sir R. was
+afraid of the heat, and did not go.  The supper was served at
+twelve; a large table of hot for the lady-dancers; their
+partners and other tables stood round.  We danced (for I
+country-danced) till four, then had tea and coffee, and came
+home.-Finis Balli.
+
+* * Friday was the birthday; it was vastly full, the ball
+immoderately so, for there came all the second edition of my lord
+mayor's, but not much finery: Lord Fitzwilliam (282) and myself
+were far the most superb.  I did not get mine till nine that
+morning.
+
+The opera will not tell as well as the other two shows, for they
+were obliged to omit the part of Amorevoli, who has a fever.  The
+audience was excessive, without the least
+disturbance, and almost as little applause; I cannot conceive
+why, for Monticelli ***** be able to sing to-morrow.
+
+At court I met the Shadwells; (283) Mademoiselle Misse Molli,
+etc.  I love them, for they asked vastly after you, and
+kindly.  Do you know, I have had a mind to visit Pucci, the
+Florentine minister, but he is so black, and looks so like a
+murderer in a play, that I have never brought it about yet?  I
+know none of the foreign ministers, but Ossorio, (284) a
+little; he is still vastly in fashion, though extremely
+altered.  Scandal, who, I believe, is not mistaken, lays a Miss
+Macartney to his charge; she is a companion to the
+Duchess of Richmond, as Madame Goldsworthy was; but Ossorio will
+rather be Wachtendonck (285) than Goldsworthy: what a lamentable
+story is that of the hundred sequins per month!  I have mentioned
+Mr. Jackson, as you desired, to Sir R., who says, he has a very
+good opinion of him.  In case of any
+change at Leghorn, you will let me know.  He will not lose his
+patron, Lord Hervey, (286) so soon as I imagined; he begins to
+recover.
+
+I believe the Euston embroil is adjusted; I was with Lady
+Caroline Fitzroy on Friday evening; there were her brother and
+the bride, and quite bridal together, quite honeymoonish.
+
+I forgot to tell you that the prince was not at the opera; I
+believe it has been settled that he should go thither on
+Tuesdays, and Majesty on Saturdays, that they may not meet.
+The Neutrality (287) begins to break out, and threatens to be an
+excise or convention.  The newspapers are full of it, and the
+press teems.  It has already produced three pieces: "The Groans
+of Germany," which I will send you by the first
+opportunity: "Bedlam, a poem on His Maj'esty's happy escape from
+his German dominions, and all the wisdom of his conduct there."
+The title of this is all that is remarkable in it.  The third
+piece is a ballad, which, not for the goodness, but for the
+excessive abuse of it, I shall transcribe:
+
+         THE LATE GALLANT EXPLOITS OF A FAMOUS BALANCING CAPTAIN.
+           A NEW SONG.  TO THE TUNE OF THE KING AND THE MILLER.
+
+                 Mene tekel.  The handwriting on the wall.
+
+1. I'll tell you a story as strange as 'tis new,
+Which all, who're concerned, will allow to be true,
+Of a Balancing Captain, well-known herabouts,
+Returned home, God save him as a mere King of Clouts.
+
+2. This Captain he takes, in a gold-ballast'd ship,
+Each summer to Terra damnosa a trip,
+For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get,
+And runs his poor Owners most vilely in debt.
+
+3. The last time he set out for this blessed place,
+He met them, and told them a most piteous case,
+Of a Sister of his, who, though bred up at court,
+Was ready to perish for want of support.
+
+4. This Hungry Sister, he then did pretend,
+Would be to his Owners a notable friend,
+If they would at that critical junction supply her-
+ They did-but alas! all the fat's in the fire!
+
+5. This our Captain no sooner had finger'd the cole,
+But he hies him abroad with his good Madam Vole-
+Where, like a true tinker, he managed this metal,
+And while he stopp'd one hole, made ten in the kettle.
+
+6. His Sister, whom he to his Owners had,,;worn,
+To see duly settled before his return,
+He gulls with bad messages sent to and fro,
+Whilst he underhand claps up a peace with her foe.
+
+7. on He then turns this Sister adrift, and declares
+Her most mortal foes were her Father's right heirs-
+"G-d z-ds!" cries the world, "such a step was ne'er taken!"
+"O, ho!" says Nol Bluff, "I have saved my own bacon."
+
+8. Let France damn the Germans, and undam the Dutch,
+And Spain on Old England pish ever so much,
+Let Russia bang Sweden, or Sweden bang that,
+I care not, by Robert! one kick of my hat.
+
+9. So I by myself can noun substantive stand,
+Impose on my Owners, and save my own land;
+You call me masculine, feminine, neuter, or block,
+Be what will the gender, sirs, hic, haec, or hoc.
+
+10. Or should my choused Owners begin to look sour,
+I'll trust to Mate Bob to exert his old power,
+Regit animos dictis, or nummis, with ease,
+So, spite of your growling, I'll act as I please."
+
+11. Yet worse in this treacherous contract, 'tis said,
+Such terms are agreed to, such promises made,
+That his Owners must soon feeble beggars become-
+"Hold!" cries the crown office, "'twere scandal-so, mum!"
+
+12. This secret, however, must out on the day
+When he meets his poor Owners to ask for more pay;
+And I fear when they come to adjust the account,
+zero for balance will prove their amount.
+
+One or two of the stanzas are tolerable; some, especially the
+ninth, most nonsensically bad.  However, this is a specimen of
+what we shall have amply commented upon in parliament.
+
+I have already found out a person, who, I believe, will please
+you, in Palombo's place: I am to see your brother about it
+to-morrow, and next post you shall hear more particularly.
+I am quite in concern for the poor prinCess,(289) and her
+conjugal and amorous distresses: I really pity them; were they in
+England, we should have all the old prudes dealing out
+judgments on her, and mumbling toothless ditties to the tune of
+Pride will have a fall.  I am bringing some fans and
+trifles for her, si mignons! Good night.
+Yours ever.
+
+
+(271) Lady Caroline D'Arcy, daughter of Robert third Earl of
+Holdernesse, and wife of William Henry fourth Marquis of
+Lothian, at this time, during his father's lifetime, called Earl
+of Ancram.-D
+
+(272) Lady Caroline and Lady Emily Lenox. [The former was
+married, in 1744, to Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland; the
+latter in 1746-7, to James, twentieth Earl of Kildare, in 1766
+created Duke of Leinster.]
+
+(273) Charles, second Duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah
+Cadogan, his duchess, eldest daughter of William Earl
+Cadogan.-D.
+
+(274) Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Grafton.-[In 1746
+married to Lord Petersham, afterwards Earl of Harrington.]
+
+(275) Sister to John Duke of'Rutland; married in 1742, to the
+Duke of Montrose.
+
+(276) Only daughter of Charles second Earl of Tankerville.  She
+married, first, Gilbert Fane Fleming, Esq. and secondly, Mr.
+Wake, of Bath.-D.
+
+(277) Lady Sophia Fermor.-D.
+
+(278) Robert D'Arcy, fourth and last Earl of Holdernesse.-E.
+
+(279) Lord Lincoln was at this time an admirer of Lady Sophia
+Fermor,-D.
+
+(280) Harriet, natural daughter of General Churchill;
+afterwards married to Sir Everard Fawkener.
+
+(281) The son and daughters of Alderman Parsons, a Jacobite
+brewer, who lived much in France, and had, somehow or other, been
+taken notice of by the king.
+
+(282) William third Earl Fitzwilliam, in Ireland; created an
+English peer in 1742; and in 1746 an English earl.-D.
+
+(283) Sir John Shadwell, a physician, his wife and daughters, the
+youngest of whom was pretty, and by the foreigners
+generally called Mademoiselle Misse Molli, had been in Italy,
+when Mr. W. was there.
+
+(284) The Chevalier Ossorio, minister from the King of
+Sardinia.
+
+(285) General Wachtendonck, commander of the great dukes
+troops at Leghorn, was cicisbeo to the conslil's wife there.
+
+(286) John Lord Hervey, lord privy seal, and eldest son of John
+first Earl Of Bristol.  He was a man of considerable
+celebrity in his day; but is now principally known from his
+unfortunate rivalry with Pope, for the good graces of Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu.  He died August 5, 1743, at the age of
+forty-seven.-D.
+
+(287) The Neutrality for the electorate of Hanover.(
+
+(288) This song is a satire upon George II., ,the balancing
+Captain," and upon that in his vacillating and doubtful
+conduct, which his fears for the electorate of Hanover made him
+pursue, whenever Germany was the seat of war.  His Sister, whom
+he is accused of deserting, was Maria Theresa, Queen of
+Hungary.-E.
+
+(289) The Prince de Craon, and the princess his wife, who had
+been favourite mistress to Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain,
+resided at this time at Florence, where the prince was head of
+the council of regency; but they were extremely ill-treited and
+mortified by the Count de Richcourt, a low Lorrainer, who, being
+a creature of the great duke's favourite minister, had the chief
+ascendant and power there.
+
+
+
+186 Letter 40
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, Nov. 5, 1741, O. S.
+
+I just mentioned to you in my letter on Monday, that I had found
+such a person as you wanted; I have since seen your
+brother, who is so satisfied with him, that he was for sending
+him directly away to you, without staying six weeks for an answer
+from you, but I chose to have your consent.  He is the son of a
+tradesman in this city, so not yet a fine gentleman.  He is
+between fifteen and sixteen, but very tall of his age: he was
+disappointed in not going to a merchant at Genoa, as was
+intended; but was so far provided for it as to have
+learned Italian three months: he speaks French very well,
+writes a good hand, and casts accounts; so, you see there will
+not be much trouble in forming him to your purpose.  He will go
+to you for twenty pounds a-year and his lodging.  If you like
+this, Nvrite me word by the first post, and he shall set out
+directly.
+
+We hear to-day that the Toulon squadron is airived at
+Barcelona; I don't like it of' all things, for it has a look
+towards Tuscany.  If it is suffered to go thither quietly, it
+will be no small addition to the present discontents.
+
+Here is another letter, which I am entreated to send you, from
+poor Amorevoli; he has a continued fever, though not a high one.
+Yesterday, Monticelli was taken ill, so there will be no opera on
+Saturday; nor was on Tuesday.  MOnticelli is
+infinitely admired; next to Farinelli.  The Viscontina is
+admired more than liked.  The music displeases every body, and
+the dances.  I am quite uneasy about the opera, for Mr. Conway is
+one of' the directors, and I fear they will lose
+considerably, which he cannot afford.  There are eight; Lord
+Middlesex, (290) Lord Holderness, Mr. Frederick, (291) Lord
+Conway, (292) Mr. Conway, (293) Mr. Damer, (294) Lord Brook,
+(295) and Mr. Brand. (296) The five last are directed by the
+three first; they by the first, and he by the Abb`e Vanneschi,
+(297) who will make a pretty sum.  I Will give YOU Some
+instances; not to mention the improbability of eight young
+thoughtless men of fashion understanding economy -. it is
+usual to give the poet fifty guineas for composing the
+books-Vanneschi and Rolli are allowed three hundred.  Three
+hundred more VannesChi had for his journey to Italy to pick up
+dancers and performers, which was always as well transacted by
+bankers there.  Be has additionally brought over an Italian
+tailor-because there are none here!  They have already given this
+Taylorini four hundred pounds, and he has already taken a house
+of thirty pounds a-year.  Monticelli and the Visconti are to have
+a thousand guineas apiece; Amorevoli eight hundred and fifty:
+this at the rate of the great singers, is not so extravagant; but
+to the Muscovita (though the second woman never had above four
+hundred,) they give six; that is for
+secret services. (298) By this you may judge of their
+frugality! I am quite uneasy for poor Harry, who will thus be to
+pay for Lord Middlesex's pleasures! Good night; I have not time
+now to write more.
+Yours, ever.
+
+(290) Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex, and subsequently
+second Duke of Dorset, eldest son of Lionel, first Duke of
+Dorset.  He was made a lord of the treasury in 1743, and
+master of the horse to Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1747-D.
+
+(291) John Frederick, Esq. afterwards Sir John Frederick,
+Bart. by the death of his cousin, Sir Thomas.  He was a
+commissioner of customs, and member of parliament for West
+Looe.-D.
+
+(292) Francis Seymour Conway, first Earl and Marquis of
+Hertford, ambassador at Paris, lord chamberlain of the
+household, etc.-D.
+
+(293) Henry Seymour Conway, afterwards secretary of state, and a
+field marshal in the army.-D.
+
+(294) Joseph Damer, Esq. created in 1753 Baron Milton, in
+Ireland, and by George III. an English peer, by the same
+title, and eventually Earl of Dorchester.-D.
+
+(295) Francis Greville, eighth Lord Brooke; created in 1746 Earl
+Brooke, and in 1759 Earl of Warwick.-D.
+
+(296) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, one of the
+original members of the society of Dilettanti.--D.
+
+(297) If this anticipation of Walpole's was ever realized, "the
+pretty sum" was eventually lost on the spot where it had been
+gained.  Vanneschi, having in 1753 undertaken the
+management of the opera-house on his own account, continued it
+until 1756, when his differences with Mingotti, which excited
+almost as much of the public attention as the rivalries of Handel
+and Bononcini or of Faustina and Cuzzoni, completely prejudiced
+the public against him, and eventually ended in making him a
+bankrupt, a prisoner in the Fleet, and at last a fugitive.-E.
+
+(298) She was kept by Lord Middlesex.
+
+
+
+187 Letter 41
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, Nov. 12, 1741.
+
+Nothing is equal to my uneasiness about you.  I hear or think of
+nothing but Spanish embarkations for Tuscany: before you receive
+this, perhaps, they will be at Leghorn.  Then, your brother tells
+me you have received none of my letters.  He knows I have never
+failed writing once a week, if not twice.  We have had no letters
+from You this post.  I shall not have the least respite from
+anxiety, till I hear about you, and what you design to do. it is
+immpossible but the great duke must lose Tuscany; and I suppose
+it is as certain, (I speak on probabilities, for, upon honour, I
+know nothing of the
+matter,) that as soon as there is a peace, we shall
+acknowledge Don Philip, and then you may return to Florence
+again.  In the mean while I will ask Sir R. if it is possible to
+get your appointments continued, while you stay in
+readiness at Bologna, Rome, Lucca, or where you choose.  I talk
+at random; but as I think so much of you, I am trying to find out
+something that may be of service to you.  I write in infinite
+hurry, and am called away, so scarce know what I say.  Lord
+Conway and his family are this instant come to town, and have
+sent for me.
+
+It is Admiral Vernon's birthday, (299) and the city-shops are
+full of favours, the streets of marrowbones and cleavers, and the
+night will be full of mobbing, bonfires, and lights.
+
+The opera does not succeed; Amorevoli has not sung yet; here is a
+letter to his wife; mind, while he is ill, he sends to the
+Chiaretta!  The dances are infamous and ordinary.  Lord
+Chesterfield was told that the Viscontina said she was but
+four-and-twenty: he answered, "I suppose she means
+four-and-twenty stone!"
+
+There is a mad parson goes about; he called to a sentinel the
+other day in the Park; "Did you ever see the Leviathan?"
+"No." "Well, he is as like Sir.  R. W. as ever two devils were
+like one another."
+
+Never was such unwholesome weather! I have a great cold, and have
+not been well this fortnight: even immortal majesty has had a
+looseness.
+
+The Duke of Ancaster (300) and Lord James Cavendish (301) are
+dead.
+
+This is all the news I know: I would I had time to write more;
+but I know you will excuse me now.  If I wrote more, it would be
+still about the Italian expedition, I am so disturbed about it.
+Yours, ever.
+
+(299) Admiral Vernon was now in the height of his popularity, in
+consequence of his successful attack upon Porto-Bello, in
+November, 1739, and the great gallantry he had shown upon that
+occasion.  His determined and violen't opposition, as a member of
+parliament, to the measures of the government, assisted in
+rendering him the idol of the mob, which he continued for many
+years.-D.  [The admiral was actually elected for Rochester,
+Ipswich, and Penryn: he'was also set up for the City of
+London, where he was beaten by two thousand votes; and in
+Westminster, where he was beaten by four hundred.  After the
+affair of Porto-Bello, he took Chagre, and continued in the
+service till 1748; when several matters which had passed
+between him and the lords of the admiralty being laid before the
+king, be was struck off the list of flag officers. He died in
+1757.  A handsome monument was erected to his memory in
+Westminster Abbey.]
+
+(300) Peregrine Bertie, second Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven,
+great chamberlain of England, and chief justice in Eyre, north of
+Trent.  The report of his death was premature.  His grace
+survived till the 1st of January.-E.
+
+(301) The second son of William, second Duke of Devonshire.  He
+was colonel of a regiment of foot-guards, and member for
+Malton.-E.
+
+
+
+189 Letter 42
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, Nov. 23, 1741.
+
+Your letter has comforted me much, if it can be called comfort to
+have one's uncertainty fluctuate to the better side.  You make me
+hope that the Spaniards design on Lombardy ; my
+passion for Tuscany, and anxiety for you, make me eager to
+believe it; but alas!  while I am in the belief of this, they may
+be in the act of conquest in Florence, and poor you
+retiring politically!  How delightful is Mr. Chute for
+cleaving unto you like Ruth!  "Whither thou goest, I will go; and
+where thou lodgest, I will lodge!" As to the merchants of Leghorn
+and their concerns, Sir R. thinks you are mistaken, and that if
+the Spaniards come thither, they will by no means be safe.  I own
+I write to you under a great dilemma; I
+flatter myself, all is well with you; but if not, how
+disagreeable to have one's letters fall into strange hands.  I
+write, however.
+
+A brother Of Mine, (302) Edward by name, has lately had a call to
+matrimony: the virgins name was Howe. (303) He had agreed to take
+her with no fortune, she him with his four children.  The father
+of him, to get rid of his importunities, at last acquiesced.  The
+very moment he had obtained this consent, he repented; and,
+instead of flying on the wings of love to
+notify it, he went to his fair One, owned his father had
+mollified, but hoped she would be so good as to excuse him.
+You cannot imagine what an entertaining fourth act of the
+opera we had the other night.  Lord Vane, (304) in the middle of
+the pit, making love to my lady.  The Duke of Newcastle (305) has
+lately given him three-score thousand pounds, to consent to cut
+off the entail of the Newcastle estate.  The fool immediately
+wrote to his wife, to beg she would return to him from Lord
+Berkeley; that he had got so much money, and now they might live
+comfortably: but she will not live
+comfortably: she is at Lord Berkeley's house, whither go
+divers after her.  Lady Townshend told me an admirable
+history; it is of our friend Lady Pomfret.  Somebody that
+belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were going to
+Court; it was objected that they ought to say, going to
+Carlton House; that the only Court is where the king resides.
+Lady P. with her paltry air of significant learning and
+absurdity, said, "Oh Lord! is there no Court in England, but the
+king's? sure, there are many more! There is the Court of
+Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of King's Bench,
+etc." Don't you love her?  Lord Lincoln does her dauhter: he is
+come over, and met her the other night: he turned pale, spoke to
+her several times in the evening, but not long, and sighed to me
+at going away.  He came over all alive; and not only his
+uncle-duke, but even majesty is fallen in love with him.  He
+talked to the king at his levee, without being spoken to.  That
+was always thought high treason; but I don't know how the gruff
+gentleman liked it; and then he had been told that Lord Lincoln
+designed to have made the campaicn, if we had gone to war; in
+short, he says, Lord Lincoln (306) is the handsomest man in
+England
+
+I believe I told you that Vernon's birthday passed quietly, but
+it was not designed to be pacific; for at twelve at night, eight
+gentlemen, dressed like sailors, and masked, went round Covent
+Garden with a drum, beating up for a volunteer mob, but it did
+not take; and they retired to a great supper that was prepared
+for them at the Bedford Head, and ordered by
+Whitehead (307) the author of Manners.  It has been written into
+the country that Sir R. has had two fits of an apoplexy, and
+cannot live till Christmas; but I think he is recovered to be as
+well as ever.  To-morrow se'nnight is the Day! (308)  It is
+critical.  You shall hear faithfully.
+
+The opera takes: Monticelli (309) pleases almost equal to
+Farinelli: Amorevoli is much liked; but the poor, fine
+Viscontina scarce at all. (310)I carry the two former to-night to
+my Lady Townshend's.
+
+Lord Coventry (311) has had his son thrown out by the party: he
+went to Carlton House; the prince asked him about the
+election.  "Sir," said he, "the Tories have betrayed me, as they
+will you, the first time you have occasion for them."  The
+merchants have petitioned the King for more guardships.  My lord
+president, (312) referred them to the Admiralty; but they bluntly
+refused to go, and said they would have redress from the King
+himself.
+
+I am called down to dinner, and cannot write more now.  I will
+thank dear Mr. Chute and the Grifona next post.  I hope she and
+you liked your things.  Good night, my dearest child! Your
+brother and I sit upon your affairs every morning.
+Yours ever.
+
+(302) Second son of Sir Robert Walpole.  He was clerk of the
+pells, and afterwards knight of the Bath. [Sir Edward died
+unmarried, in 1784, leaving three natural daughters; Laura,
+married to the Hon. and
+Rev.  Frederick Keppel, afterwards Bishop of Exeter; maria,
+married, first to the Earl of Waldegrave, and, secondly to the
+Duke of Gloucester; and Charlotte, married to the
+Earl of Dysart.]
+
+(303) Eldest sister of the Lord Viscount Howe.  She was soon
+after this married to a relation of her own name. [John
+Howe, Esq. of Hanslop, Bucks.]
+
+(304) William, second Viscount Vane, in Ireland.  His "lady" was
+the too-celebrated Lady Vane, first married to
+Lord William Hamilton, and secondly to Lord Vane; who has
+given her own extraordinary and disreputable adventures to the
+world, in Smollett's novel of "Peregrine Pickle," under the title
+of "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality." She is also
+immortalized in different ways, by Johnson, in his ,Vanity of
+Human Wishes," and by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in one of his
+Odes.-D. [She was the daughter of Mr. Hawes, a South Sea
+director, and died in 1788.  Lord Vane died in 1789.  Boswell
+distinctly states, that the lady mnentioned in Johnson's
+couplet "was not the celebrated Lady Vane, whose Memoirs were
+given to the public by Dr. Smollett, but Ann Vane, who was
+mistress to Frederick Prince of Wales, and died in 1736, not long
+before Johnson settled in London."  See Boswell's
+Johnson, vol. i. p. 226, ed. 1835.]
+
+(305) Uncle of Lord Vane, whose father, Lord Barnard, had
+married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Gilbert Holles, Earl of
+Clare, and sister and coheir of John Duke of Newcastle.
+
+(306) Henry Clinton, ninth Earl of Lincoln, succeeded as
+Duke of Newcastle in 1768, on the death of his uncle, the
+minister.
+
+(307) Paul Whitehead, a satirical poet of bad character, was the
+son of a tailor, who lived in Castle-yard, Holborn.  He wrote
+several abusive poems, now forgotten, entitled "The
+State Dances," "Manners," "The Gymnasiad," etc.  In "Manners,"
+having attacked some members of the House of Lords, that assembly
+summoned Dodsley, the publisher, before them, (Whitehead having
+absconded,) and subsequently imprisoned him.  In politics,
+Whitehead was a follower of Bubb Dodington; in private life be
+was the friend and companion of the profligate Sir Francis
+Dashwood, Wilkes, Churchill, etc. and, like them, was a member of
+the Hell-fire Club, which held its orgies at Mednam Abbey, in
+Bucks.  The estimation in which he was held even by his friends
+may be judged of by the lines in which Churchill has damned him
+to everlasting fame:
+
+"May I (can worse disgrace on mankind fall?)
+Be born a Whitehead and baptized a Paul."
+
+Paul Whitehead died in 1774.-D.  [The proceedings in the
+House of Lords against the author of "Manners" which took
+place in February, 1739, was, in the opinion of Dr. Johnson,
+"intended rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish
+Whitehead."]
+
+(308) The day the parliament was to meet.
+
+(309) His voice was clear, sweet, and free from defects of every
+kind.  He was a chaste performer, and never hazarded any
+difficulty which he was not certain of executing with the utmost
+precision.  He was, moreover, an excellent actor, so that nothing
+but the recent remembrance of the gigantic
+talents of Farinelli, and the grand and majestic style of
+Senesino, could have lefl an English audience any thing to
+wish.-E.
+
+(310) Amorevoli was an admirable tenor.  "I have heard,"
+says Dr. Burney, "better voices of his pitch, but
+never, on the stage, more taste and expression.  The
+Visconti had a shrill flexible voice, and pleased more in
+rapid songs than those that required high colouring and
+pathos."-E.
+
+(311) William, fifth Earl of Coventry.  He died in 1751.-D.
+
+(312) Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, a man of moderate
+abilities, but who had filled many great offices.  He died in
+1743, when his titles extinguished.-D.
+
+
+
+191 Letter 43
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Nov. 26, 1741.
+
+I don't write you a very long letter, because you will see the
+inclosed to Mr. Chute.  I forgot to thank you last post for the
+songs, and your design on the Maltese cats.
+
+It is terrible to be in this uncertainty about you! We have not
+the least news about the Spaniards, more than what you told us,
+of a few vessels being seen off Leghorn.  I send
+about the post, and ask Sir R. a thousand times a-day.
+
+I beg to know if you have never heard any thing from Parker about
+my statue: (313) it was to have been finished last june.  What is
+the meaning he does not mention it? If it is done, I beg it may
+not stir from Rome till there is no more danger of Spaniards.
+
+If you get out of your hurry, I will trouble you with a new
+commission: I find I cannot live without Stosch's (314)
+intaglio of the Gladiator, with the vase, upon a granite.  You
+know I offered him fifty pounds: I think, rather than not have
+it, I would give a hundred.  What will he do if the Spaniards
+should come to Florence? Should he be driven to straits,
+perhaps he would part with his Meleager too.  You see I am as
+eager about baubles as if I were going to Louis at the Palazzo
+Vecchio! You can't think what a closet I have fitted up; such a
+mixture of French gaiety and Roman virtu! you would be in love
+with it: I have not rested till it was finished: I long to have
+you see it. Now I am angry that I did not buy the
+Hermaphrodite; the man would have sold it for twenty-five
+sequins: do buy it for me; it was a friend of Bianchi.  Can you
+forgive me'! I write all this upon the hope and
+presumption that the Spaniards go to Lombardy.  Good night.
+Yours, ever.
+
+(313) A copy of the Livia Mattei, which Mr. W. designed for a
+tomb of his mother: it was erected in Henry VII.'s Chapel, in
+Westminster Abbey, in 1754.
+
+(314) He gave it afterwards to Lord Duncannon, for procuring him
+the arrears of his pension.
+
+
+
+192 Letter 44
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, Dec. 3, 1741, O. S.
+
+
+Here I have two letters from you to answer.  You cannot
+conceive my joy on the prospect of the Spaniards going to
+Lombardy: all advices seem to confirm it.  There is no telling
+you what I have felt, and shall feel, till I am certain you are
+secure.  You ask me about Admiral Haddock; you must not wonder
+that I have told you nothing of him: they know nothing of him
+here.  He had discretionary powers to act as he should judge
+proper from his notices.  He has been keeping in the Spanish
+fleet at Cales. (315)  Sir R. says, if he had let that go out, to
+prevent the embarkation, the Tories would have
+complained, and said he had favoured the Spanish trade, under pre
+tence of hindering an expedition which was never designed.  It
+was strongly reported last week that Haddock had shot
+himself; a satire on his having been neutral, as they call it.
+The parliament met the day before yesterday, and there were four
+hundred and eighty-seven members present.  They did no business,
+only proceeded to choose a speaker, which was,
+unanimously, Mr. Onslow, moved for by Mr. Pelham, (316) and
+seconded by Mr. Clutterbuck.  But the Opposition, to flatter his
+pretence to popularity and impartiality, call him their own
+speaker.  They intend to oppose Mr. Earle's being chairman of the
+committee, and to set up a Dr. Lee, a civilian.  To- morrow the
+King makes his speech.  Well, I won't keep you any longer in
+suspense.  The Court will have a majority of forty-a vast number
+for the outset: a good majority, like a good sum of money, soon
+makes itself bigger.  The first great point will be the
+Westminster election; another, Mr. Pultney's (317) election at
+Heydon; Mr. Chute's brother is one of the
+petitioners.  It will be an ugly affair for the Court, for
+Pultney has asked votes of the courtiers, and said Sir R. was
+indifferent about it; but he is warmer than I almost ever saw
+him, and declared to Churchill, (318) of whom Pultney claims a
+promise, that he must take Walpole or Pultney.  The Sackville
+finally were engaged too, by means of George Berkeley, brother to
+Lady Betty Germain, (319) whose influence with the Dorset I
+suppose you know; but the King was so hot with his grace about
+his sons, that I believe they will not venture to follow their
+inclinations **** to vote (320) for Pultney, though he has
+expressed great concern about it to Sir R.
+
+So much for politics! for I suppose you know that Prague is taken
+by storm, in a night's time.  I forgot to tell you that Commodore
+Lestock, with twelve ships, has been waiting for a wind this
+fortnight, to join Haddock. (321)
+
+I write to you in defiance of a violent headache, which I got
+last night at another of Sir T. Robinson's balls.  There were six
+hundred invited, and I believe above two hundred there.  Lord
+Lincoln, out of prudence, danced with Lady Caroline
+Fitzroy, and Mr. Conway, with Lady Sophia; the two couple were
+just mismatched, as every body soon perceived, by the
+attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and
+the emulation of either lady: it was an admirable scene.  The
+ball broke up at three; but Lincoln, Lord Holderness, Lord Robert
+Sutton, (322) Young Churchill (323) and a dozen more grew 'oily,'
+stayed till seven in the morning, and drank
+thirty-two bottles.
+
+
+I will take great care to send the knee-buckles and
+pocket-book; I have got them, and Madame Pucci's silks, and only
+wait to hear that Tuscany is quiet, and then I will
+convey them by the first ship.  I would write to them
+to-night, but have not time now; old Cibber, (324) plays
+to-night, and all the world will be there.
+
+Here is another letter from Amorevoli, who is out of his wits at
+not hearing from his wife.  Adieu! my dearest child.  How happy
+shall I be when I know you are in peace;
+Yours, ever.
+
+(315) Cadiz.
+
+(316) The Right Hon. Henry Pelham, so long in conjunction with
+his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, one of the principal
+rulers of this country.  He was a man of some ability, and a
+tolerable speaker.  The vacillations, the absurdity, the
+foolish jealousy of the duke, greatly injured the stability and
+respectability of Mr. Pelham's administration.  Mr. Pelham was
+born in 1696, and died in 1754.-D.
+
+
+(317) William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, whose
+character and history are too well known to require to be here
+enlarged upon.-D.
+
+(318) General Charles Churchill, groom of the bedchamber to the
+King.
+
+(319) Lady Betty Berkeley, married to the notorious adventurer
+and gambler, Sir John Germain, who had previously married the
+divorced Duchess of Norfolk, (Lady Mary Mordaunt,) by whose
+bequest he became possessed of the estate of Drayton, in
+Northamptonshire, which he left on his own death to Lady
+Betty, his second @wife.  Lady Betty left it to Lord George
+Sackville, third son of Lionel first Duke of Dorset.  Sir John
+Germain was so ignorant, that he is said to have left a legacy to
+Fair Matthew Decker, as the author of St. Matthew's
+Gospel.-D.
+
+(320) sic, in the manuscript.-D.
+
+(321) But for this circumstance, and the junction of the
+French squadron, Haddock would certainly have destroyed the
+Spanish fleet, and thereby escaped the imputation which was
+circulated with much industry, that his hands had been tied up by
+a neutrality entered into for Hanover; than which nothing could
+be more false.  These reports, though ostensibly
+directed against Haddock, were, in reality, aimed at Sir
+Robert Walpole, a general election being at hand, and his
+opponents wishing to render him as unpopular with the people as
+possible.-E.
+
+(322) Second son of John, third Duke of Rutland.  He took the
+name of Sutton, on inheriting the estate of his maternal
+grandfather, Robert Sutton, Lord Lexington.-D.
+
+(323) Natural son of General Charles Churchill, afterwards
+married to Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.-D.
+
+(324) Colley Cibber, the celebrated dramatic author and actor.
+He had left the stage in 1731; but still occasionally acted, in
+spite of his age, for he was now seventy.-D. [For those
+occasional performances he is said to have had fifty guineas per
+night.  So late as 1745, he appeared in the character of
+Pandulph, the pope's legate, in his own tragedy, called "Papal
+Tyranny."  He died in 1757.]
+
+
+
+194 letter 45
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Somerset House, (for I write to you wherever I find myself,) Dec.
+10, 1741.
+
+I have got no letter from you yet, the post should have
+brought it yesterday.  The Gazette says, that the cardinal (325)
+has declared that they will suffer no expedition against Tuscany.
+I wish he had told me so! if they preserve this
+guarantee, personally, I can forgive their breaking the rest.
+But I long for your letter; every letter now from each of us is
+material.  You will be almost as impatient to hear of the
+parliament, as I of Florence.  The lords on Friday went upon the
+King's speech; Lord Chesterfield made a very fine speech against
+the address, all levelled at the House of Hanover.  Lord
+Cholmley, they say, answered him well.  Lord Halifax
+(326) spoke Very ill, and was answered by little Lord Raymond,
+(327) who always will answer him.  Your friend Lord Sandwich
+(328) affronted his grace of Grafton, (329) extremely, who was
+ill, and sat out of his place, by calling him to order; it was
+indecent in such a boy to a man of his age and rank: the
+blood of Fitzroy will not easily pardon it.  The court had a
+majority of forty-one, with some converts.
+
+On Tuesday we had the Speech; there were great differences among
+the party; the Jacobites, with Shippen (330) and Lord Noel
+Somerset at their head, were for a division, Pultney and the
+Patriots against one; (332) the ill success in the House of lords
+had frightened them; we had no division, but a very warm battle
+between Sir.  R.  and Poltney.  The latter made a fine speech,
+very personal, on the state of affairs.  Sir R. with as much
+health, as much spirits, as much force and
+command as ever, answered him for an hour; said, He hadbeen taxed
+with all our misfortunes; but did he raise the war in Germany? or
+advise the war with Spain? did he kill the late Emperor or King
+of Prussia?' did he counsel this King? or was he first minister
+to the King of Poland?  did he kindle the war betwixt Muscovy and
+Sweden?" For our troubles at home, he said, "all the grievances
+of this nation were owing to the Patriots." They laughed much at
+this; but does he want proofs of it?  he said, They talked much
+of an equilibrium in this parliament, (333) and of what they
+designed against him; if it was so, the sooner he knew it the
+better; and there-fore if any man would move for a day to examine
+the state of the
+nation, he would second it." Mr. Pultney did move for it; Sir R.
+did second it, and it is fixed for the twenty-first of
+January.  Sir R. repeated some words of Lord Chesterfield's in
+the House of Lords, that this was a time for truth, for plain
+truth for English truth, and hinted at the reception (334) his
+lordship had met in France.  After these speeches of such
+consequence, and from such men, Mr. Lyttelton (335) got up to
+justify, or rather to flatter Lord Chesterfield, though every
+body then had forgot that he had been mentioned.  Danvers
+(336) who is a rough, rude beast, but now and then mouths out
+some humour, said, "that Mr. P. and Sir R. were like two old
+bawds, debauching young members."
+
+That day was a day of triumph, but yesterday (Wednesday) the
+streamers of victory did not fly so gallantly.  It was the day of
+receiving petitions; Mr. Pultney presented an immense
+piece of parchment, which he said he could but just lift; it was
+the Westminster petition, and is to be heard next Tuesday, when
+we shall all have our brains knocked out by the mob; so if you
+don't hear from me next post, you will conclude my head was a
+little out of order.  After this we went upon a cornish petition,
+presented by Sir William Yonge, (337) which drew on a debate and
+a division, when lo! we were but 222 to 215-how do you like a
+majority of seven? The Opposition triumphs
+highly, and with reason; one or two such victories, as
+Pyrrhus, the member for Macedon, said, will be the ruin of us.  I
+look upon it now, that the question is, Downing Street or the
+Tower; will you come and see a body, if one should happen to
+lodge at the latter?  There are a thousand pretty things to amuse
+you; the lions, the Armoury, the crown, and the axe that beheaded
+Anna Bullon.  I design to make interest for the room where the
+two princes were smothered; in long winter evenings, when one
+wants company, (for I don't suppose that many people will
+frequent me then,) one may sit and scribble verses
+against Crouch-back'd Richard, and dirges on the sweet babes.  If
+I die there, and have my body thrown into a wood, I am too old to
+be buried by robin redbreasts, am not I?
+
+Bootle, (338) the prince's chancellor, made a most long and
+stupid speech; afterwards, Sir R. called to him, "Brother
+Bootle, take care you don't get my old name."  "What's that?"
+"Blunderer."
+
+You can't conceive how I was pleased with the vast and
+deserved applause that Mr. Chute's (339) brother, the lawyer,
+got: I never heard a clearer or a finer speech.  When I went
+home, "Dear Sir," said I to Sir R. "I hope Mr. Chute will
+carry his election for Heydon; he would be a great loss to you."
+He replied. "We will not lose him."  I, who meddle with nothing,
+especially elections, and go to no committees,
+interest myself extremely for Mr. Chute.
+
+Old Marlborough (340) is dying-but who can tell! last year she
+had lain a great while ill, without speaking; her physicians
+said, "She must be blistered, or she will die." She called out,
+"I won't be blistered, and I won't die." If she takes the same
+resolution now, I don't believe she will. (341)
+
+Adieu! my dear child: I have but room to say, yours, ever.
+
+(325) Cardinal Fleury, first minister of France.
+
+(326) George Montague Dunk, second Earl of Halifax, of the last
+creation.  Under the reign of George III., he became
+secretary of state, and was so unfortunate in that capacity as to
+be the opponent of Wilkes, on the subject of General
+Warrants, by which he is now principally remembered.-D.
+
+(327) Robert, second Lord Raymond, only son of the chief
+justice of that name and title.-D.
+
+(328) John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, passed through a
+long life of office, and left behind him n indifferent
+character, both in public and private He was, however, a man of
+some ability.-D.
+
+(329) Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Grafton, and grandson of
+Charles II., was a person of considerable weight and influence at
+the court of George II., where he long held the post of
+chamberlain of the household.
+
+(330) "Honest Will Shippen," as he was called, or ,Downright
+Shippen," as Pope terms him, was a zealous Jacobite member of
+parliament, possessed of considerable talents, and a vehement
+opposer of Sir Robert Walpole's government.  He, however, did
+justice to that able minister, for he was accustomed to say,
+"Robin and I are honest men; but as for those fellows in long
+perriwigs" (meaning the Tories of the day,) " they only want to
+get into office themselves." He was the author of a
+satirical poem, entitled, "Faction Displayed," which possesses
+considerable merit.-D. [Shippen was born in 1672, and died in
+1743.  Sir Robert Walpole repeatedly declared, that he would not
+say who was corrupted, but he would say who was not
+corruptible-that man was Shippen.  His speeches generally
+contained some pointed period, which he uttered with great
+animation.  He usually spoke in a low tone of voice, with too
+great rapidity, and held his glove before his mouth.]
+
+(331) Lord Charles Noel Somerset, second son of Henry, second
+Duke of Beaufort.  He succeeded to the family honours in 1746,
+when his elder brother, Henry, the third duke, died without
+children.-D. [After the death of Sir William Wyndham, which
+happened in 1740, Lord Noel Somerset was considered as the rising
+head of the Tory interest.  "He was," says Tindal, "a man of
+sense, spirit, and activity, unblameable in his morals, but
+questionable in his political capacity." He died in 1756.)
+
+(332) Mr. Pulteney declared against dividing; observing, with a
+witticism, that "dividing was not the way to multiply."
+
+(333) In speaking of the balance of power, Mr. Pulteney had said,
+,He did not know how it was abroad, not being in
+secrets, but congratulated the House, that he had not, for these
+many years, known it so near an equilibrium as it now was
+there."-E.
+
+(334) Lord Chesterfield had been sent by the party, in the
+preceding September, to France, to request the Duke of Ormond (at
+Avignon,) to obtain the Pretender's order to the
+Jacobites, to vote against Sir R. W. upon any question
+whatever; many of them having either voted for him, or
+retired, on the famous motion the last year for removing him from
+the, King's councils. [Lord Chesterfield's biographer, Dr. Maty
+states that the object of his lordship's visit to France was the
+restoration of his health, which required the assistance of a
+warmer climate.  The reception he met with during his short stay
+at Paris, is thus noticed in a letter from Mr. Pitt, of the 10th
+of September:-" I hope you liked the court of France as well as
+it liked you.  The uncommon distinctions I hear the Cardinal
+(Fleury) showed you, are the best proof that, old as he is, his
+judgment is as good as
+ever.  As this great minister has taken so much of his idea, of
+the men in power here, from the person of a great
+negotiator who has left the stage, (Lord Waldegrave,) I am very
+glad he has, had an opportunity, once before he dies, of forming
+an idea of those out of power from my Lord
+Chesterfield." See Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 3.]
+
+(335) George Lyttelton, afterwards created Lord lyttelton.-D.
+
+(336) Joseph Danvers, Esq. of Swithland, in the county of
+Leicester, at this time member for Totness.  In 1746 he was
+created a baronet.  He married Frances, the daughter of thomas
+babington, Esq. of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire.-E.
+
+(337) the Right Hon. Sir William Yonge, Bart., secretary at war,
+to which office he had succeeded in May, 1735.  Walpole, who
+tells us (Memoires, i. p. 20,) that " he was vain,
+extravagant, and trifling; simple out of the House, and too ready
+at assertions in it," adds, "that his vivacity and
+parts, whatever the cause was, made him shine, and he was
+always content with the lustre that accompanied fame, without
+thinking of what was reflected from rewarded fame-a convenient
+ambition to ministers, who had few such disinterested
+combatants.  Sir Robert Walpole always said of him 'that
+nothing but Yonge's character could keep down his parts, and
+nothing but his parts support his character.'"  That these parts
+were very great is shown by the fact, that Sir Robert Walpole
+often, when he did not care to enter early into the debate
+himself, gave Yonge his notes, as the latter came late into the
+House, from which be could speak admirably and
+fluently, though he had missed the preceding discussion.  Sir
+William, who had a proneness to poetry, wrote the epilogue to
+Johnson's tragedy of "Irene."  'When I published the plan for my
+Dictionary," says the Doctor, "Lord'Chesterfield told me that the
+word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir
+William Yonge sent me word, that it should be pronounced so as to
+rhyme to seat, and that none but an
+Irishman would pronounce it great.  Now, here were two men of the
+highest rank, the one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the
+other the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing
+entirely." See Boswell's Johnson,vol.iii.p.191.
+
+
+(338) Sir Thomas Bootle, chancellor to the Prince of Wales; a
+dull, heavy man, and who is, therefore, ironically called, by Sir
+C. H. Williams, "Bright Bootle,"-D.
+
+(339) Francis Chute, an eminent lawyer, second brother of
+Anthony Chute, of the Vine, in Hampshire, had, in concert with
+Luke Robinson, another lawyer, disputed Mr. Pultney's borough of
+Heydon with him at the general elections and been returned but on
+a petition, and the removal of Sir R. W. they were
+voted out of their seats, and Mr. Chute died soon after.-E.
+
+(340) Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough.
+
+(341) Nor did she, Her grace survived the date of this letter
+nearly three years.  She died on the 18th of October 1744, being
+then eighty-four years of age.-E.
+
+
+
+197 Letter 46
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Wednesday night, eleven o'clock, Dec. 16, 1741.
+
+Remember this day.
+
+Nous voil`a de la Minorit`e! entens-tu cela! h`e! My dear child,
+since you will have these ugly words explained, they just mean
+that we ar-- metamorphosed into the minority.  This was the night
+of choosing a chairman of the committee of elections.  Gyles
+Earle, (342) (as in the two last parliaments) was named by the
+Court; Dr. Lee, (343) a civilian, by the Opposition, a man of a
+fair character. (344)  Earle was formerly a dependent on the Duke
+of Argyle,(345) is of remarkable covetousness and wit, which he
+has dealt out largely against the Scotch and the Patriots.  It
+was a day of much expectation, and both sides had raked together
+all probabilities: I except near twenty who are in town, but stay
+to vote on a second question, when the majority may be decided to
+either party.  have you not read of such in story?
+Men, who would not care to find themselves on the weaker side,
+contrary to their intent.  In short, the determined sick were
+dragged out of their beds; zeal came in a great coat.  There were
+two vast dinners at two taverns, for either-party; at six we met
+in the House.  Sir William Yonge, seconded by my uncle Horace,
+(346) moved for Mr. Earle: Sir Paul Methuen (347) and Sir Watkyn
+Williams (348) proposed Dr. Lee-and carried him, by a majority of
+four: 242 against 238-the greatest number, I believe, that ever
+lost a question.  You have no idea of their huzza! unless you can
+conceive how people must triumph after defeats of twenty years
+together.  We had one vote shut out, by coming a moment too late;
+one that quitted us, for having been ill used by the Duke of
+Newcastle but yesterday-for which in all probability, he will use
+him well to-morrow-I mean, for quitting us. Sir Thomas
+Lowther,(349) Lord Hartington's (350) uncle, was fetched down by
+him and voted against us.  Young Ross,(351) son to a commissioner
+of the customs, and saved from the dishonour of not liking to go
+to the West Indies when it was his turn, by Sir R.s giving him a
+lieutenancy, voted against us; and Tom Hervey,(352) who is always
+with us, but is quite mad; and being asked why he left us,
+replied, "Jesus knows my thoughts; one day I blaspheme, and pray
+the next."  so, you see what accidents were against us, or we had
+carried our point.  They cry, Sir R. miscalculated: how should he
+calculate, when there are men like Ross, and fifty others he
+could name! It was not very pleasant to be stared in the face to
+see how one bore it-you can guess at my bearing it, who interest
+myself so little about any thing.  I have had a taste of what I
+am to meet from all sorts of people.  The moment we had lost the
+question, I went from the heat of the house into the Speaker's
+chamber, and there were some fifteen others of us-an under
+door-keeper thought a question was new put, when it was not, and,
+withou@ giving us notice, clapped the door to.  I asked him how
+he dared lock us out without calling us: he replied insolently,
+"It was his duty, and he would do it again:" one of
+the party went to him, commended him, and told him he should be
+punished if he acted otherwise.  Sir R. is in great spirits, and
+still sanguine.  I have so little experience, that I shall not be
+amazed at whatever scenes follow.  My dear child, we have
+triumphed twenty years; is it strange that fortune should at last
+forsake us; or ought we not always to expect it, especially in
+this kingdom?  They talk loudly of the year forty-one, and
+promise themselves all the confusions that began a hundred years
+ago from the same date.  I hope they prognosticate wrong; but
+should it be so, I can be happy in other places.  One reflection
+I shall have, very sweet, though very melancholy; that if our
+family is to be the sacrifice that shall first pamper discord, at
+least the one,' the part of it that interested all my concerns,
+and must have suffered from our ruin, is safe, secure, and above
+the rage of confusion: nothing in this world can touch her peace
+now!
+
+To-morrow and Friday we go upon the Westminster election-you will
+not wonder, shall you, if you hear the next post that we have
+lost that too?  Good night.
+Yours, ever.
+
+
+(342) Giles Earle, Esq. one of the lords of the treasury and who
+had been chairman of the committees of the House of Commons from
+1727 to the date of this letter.  He had been successively groom
+of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales in 1718, clerk
+comptroller of the King"s household in 1720, commissioner of the
+Irish revenue in 1728, and a lord of the treasury in 1738.  Mr.
+Earle was a man of broad coarse wit, and a lively image of his
+style and sentiments has been preserved by Sir C. H. Williams, in
+his "Dialogue between Giles Earle and Bubb Dodington."-E.
+
+(343) George Lee, brother to the lord-chief justice; he was
+appointed one of the lords of the admiralty on the following
+change, which post he resigned on the disgrace of his patron,
+Lord Granville.  He was designed by the Prince of Wales for his
+first minister, and, immediately on the prince's death, was
+appointed treasurer to the princess dowager, and soon after made
+dean of the arches, a knight, and privy counsellor.  He died in
+1758.
+
+(344) In a letter to Dodington, written from Spa, on the 8th of
+September, Lord Chesterfield says:-"I am for acting at the very
+beginning of the session.  The court generally proposes some
+servile and shameless tool of theirs to be chairman of the
+committee of privileges.  Why should not we, therefore, pick up
+some Whig of a fair character, and with personal connexions, to
+set up in opposition? I think we should be pretty strong upon
+this point."-E.
+
+(345) John, the great Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.-D.
+
+(346) Horace Walpole, younger brother of Sir Robert, created. in
+his old age, Lord Walpole of Wolterton.  He was commonly called
+"Old Horace," to distinguish him from his nephew, the writer of
+these letters.-D.
+
+(347) The son of John Methuen, Esq. the diplomatist, and author
+of the celebrated Methuen treaty with Portugal.  Sir Paul was a
+knight of the Bath, and died in 1757.-D.
+
+(348) Sir Watkyn Williams Wynn, Bart. the third baronet of the
+family, was long one of the leaders in the House of Commons.-D.
+(349) Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart.  of Holker, in Lancashire.  He
+had married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the second Duke
+of Devonshire.-D.
+
+(350) Afterwards the fourth Duke of Devonshire.
+
+(351) Charles Ross, killed in flannders, at the battle of
+Fontenoy, 1745.
+
+(352) Thomas Hervey, second son of John, first Earl of Bristol,
+'and Surveyor of the royal gardens.  He was at this time writing
+his famous letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer. [With whose wife he had
+eloped.  In the letter alluded to, he expresses his conviction
+that his conduct was natural and delicate, and that, finally, in
+heaven, Lady Hanmer, in the distribution of wives, would be
+considered to be his.  Dr. Johnson (to whom he had left a legacy
+of fifty pounds, but -,afterwards gave it him in his life-time)
+characterises him as "very vicious."  " Alas!" observes Mr.
+Croker, "it is but too probable that he was disordered in mind,
+and that what was called vice was. in truth, disease, and
+required a madhouse rather than a prison." He died in 1775.  See
+Boswell's Johnson, Vol. iii.  P. 18, ed. 1835.)
+
+(353) His mother, Catherine Lady Walpole, who died August 20,
+1737.
+
+
+
+199 Letter 47
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Thursday, six o'clock. [Dec. 17, 1741.
+
+You will hardly divine where I am writing to you-in the
+Speaker's chamber.  The House is examining witnesses on the
+Westminster election, which will not be determined to-day; I am
+not in haste it should, for I believe we shall lose it.  A great
+fat fellow, a constable, on their side, has just
+deposed, that Lord Sundon,(355) and the high constable, took him
+by the collar at the election, and threw him down stairs.  Do you
+know the figure of Lord Sundon? If you do, only think of that
+little old creature throwing any man down stairs!
+
+As I was coming down this morning, your brother brought me a long
+letter from you, in answer to mine of the 12th of
+November.  You try to make me mistrust the designs of Spain
+against Tuscany, but I will hope yet: hopes are all I have for
+any thing I know!
+
+As to the young man, I will see his mother the first moment I
+can; and by next post, hope to give you a definite answer,
+whether he will submit to be a servant or not; in every other
+respect, I am sure he will please you.
+
+Your friend, Mr. Fane,(356) would not come for us last night, nor
+will vote till after the Westminster election: be is
+brought into parliament by the Duke of Bedford,(357) and is
+unwilling to disoblige him in this.  We flattered ourselves with
+better success; for last Friday, after sitting till two in the
+morning we carried a Cornish election in four
+divisions-the first by a majority of six, then of twelve, then of
+fourteen, and lastly by thirty-six.  You can't imagine the zeal
+of the young men on both sides: Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord
+Hartington, and my friend Coke (358) on ours, are warm as
+possible; Lord Quarendon (359) and Sir Francis Dashwood (360) are
+as violent on theirs: the former speaks often and well.  But I am
+talking to you of nothing but parliament; why,
+really, all one's ideas are stuffed with it, and you yourself
+will not dislike to hear things so material.  The Opposition who
+invent every method of killing Sir R., intend to make us sit on
+Saturdays; but how mean and dirty is it, how
+scandalous! when they can't ruin him by the least plausible
+means, to murder him by denying him air and exercise.(361)
+There was a strange affair happened on Saturday; it was
+strange, yet very English.  One Nourse, an old gamester, said, in
+the coffee-house, that Mr. Shuttleworth, a member, only pretended
+to be ill.  This was told to Lord Windsor,(362) his friend, who
+quarrelled with Nourse, and the latter challenged him.  My lord
+replied, he would not fight him, he was too old.  The other
+replied, he was not too old to fight with pistols.  Lord Windsor
+still refused: Nourse, in a rage, went home and cut his own
+throat.  This was one of the odd ways in which men are made.
+
+I have scarce seen Lady Pomfret lately, but I am sure Lord
+Lincoln is not going to marry her daughter.  I am not
+surprised at her sister being shy of receiving civilities from
+you-that was English too!
+
+Say a great deal for me to the Chutes.  How I envy your snug
+suppers! I never have such suppers! Trust me, if we fall, all the
+grandeur, all the envied grandeur of our house, will not cost me
+a sigh: it has given me no pleasure while we have it, and will
+give me no pain when I part with it.  My liberty, my ease, and
+choice of my own friends and company, will
+sufficiently counterbalance the crowds of Downing-street. I am so
+sick of it all, that if we are victorious or not, I propose
+leaving England in the spring,.  Adieu!
+Yours, ever and ever.
+
+(355) William clayton, Lord Sundon, in Ireland, so created in
+1735.  His wife was a favourite of Queen Caroline, to whom she
+was mistress of the robes.
+
+(356) Charles Fane, Only son of Lord Viscount Fane, whom he
+succeeded, had been minister at Florence.
+
+(357) John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford.-D.
+
+(358) Edward, Lord Viscount Coke, only son of the Earl of
+Leicester.  He died in 1753.
+
+(359) George Henry Lee, Lord Viscount Quarendon, eldest son of
+the Earl of Lichfield, whom he succeeded in that title.
+
+(360) Sir Francis Dashwood, Bart., afterwards Lord Le
+Despencer.  Under the administration of Lord Bute he was, for a
+short time, chancellor of the exchequer.-D.
+
+(361) Sir Robert always went every Saturday to Newpark,
+Richmond, to hunt.  (From his early youth, Sir Robert was fond of
+the diversions of the field.  He was accustomed to hunt in
+Richmond Park with a pack of beagles.  On receiving a packet of
+letters, he usually opened that from his gamekeeper first.]
+(362) Herbert Windsor Hickman, second Viscount Windsor in
+Ireland, and Baron Montjoy of the Isle of Wight. [His lordship
+died in 1758, when all his honours, in default of male issue,
+became extinct.]
+
+
+
+201 Letter 48
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Christmas eve, 1741.
+
+My dearest child, if I had not heard regularly from you, what a
+shock it would have given me! The other night at the opera, Mr.
+Worseley, with his peevish face, half smiling through
+ill-nature, told me (only mind!) by way of news, "that he
+heard Mr. Mann was dead at Florence!"' How kind! To entertain one
+with the chitchat of the town, a man comes and tells one that
+one's dearest friend is dead! I am sure he would have lost his
+speech if he had had any thing pleasurable to tell.  If ever
+there is a metempsychosis, his soul will pass into a vulture and
+prey upon carcases after a battle, and then go and bode at the
+windows of their relations.  But I will say no more of him; I
+will punish him sufficiently, if sufficiently there be, by
+telling him you are perfectly well: you are, are you not? Send me
+certificate signed by Dr. Cocchi,(363) and I will choke him with
+it: another's health must be venomous to him.
+
+Sir Francis Dashwood too,-as you know all ill-natured people hear
+all ill news,-told me he heard you was ill: I vowed you was grown
+as strong as the Farnese Hercules.  Then he desires you will send
+him four of the Volterra urns, of the
+chimney-piece size; send them with any of my things; do, or he
+will think I neglected it because he is our enemy; and I would
+not be peevish, not to be like them.  He is one of the most
+inveterate; they list under Sandys,(364) a parcel of them with no
+more brains than their general; but being malicious they pass for
+ingenious, as in these countries fogs are reckoned warm weather.
+Did you ever hear what Earle said of Sandys?  "that he never
+laughed but once, and that was when his best friend broke his
+thigh."
+
+Last Thursday I wrote you word of our losing the chairman of the
+committee.  This winter is to be all ups and downs.  The next day
+(Friday) we had a most complete victory.  Mr. Pultney moved for
+all papers and letters, etc. between the King and the Queen of
+Hungary and their ministers.  Sir R. agreed to give them all the
+papers relative to those transactions, only desiring to except
+the letters written by the two sovereigns themselves.  They
+divided, and we carried it, 237 against 227.  They moved to have
+those relations to France, Prussia, and Holland.  Sir R. begged
+they would defer asking for those of Prussia till the end of
+January, at which time a negotiation would be at an end with that
+King, which now he might break off, if he knew it was to be made
+public.  Mr. Pultney
+persisted; but his obstinacy, which might be so prejudicial to
+the public, revolted even his own partisans, and seven of them
+spoke against him.  We carried that question by
+twenty-four; and another by twenty-one, against sitting on the
+next day (Saturday).  Monday and Tuesday we went on the
+Westminster election.  Murray (365) spoke divinely; he Was their
+counsel.  Lloyd (366) answered him extremely well: but on summing
+up the evidence on both sides, and in his reply, Murray was in
+short, beyond what was ever heard at the
+bar.That day (Tuesday) we went on the merits of the cause, and at
+ten at night divided, and lost it.  They had 220, we 216; so that
+the election was declared void.  You see four is a fortunate
+number to them.  We had forty-one more members in town, who would
+not, or could not come down.  The time. is a touchstone for
+wavering consciences.  All the arts, money, promises, threats,,
+all the arts of the. former year 41, are applied; and
+self-interest, in the shape of Scotch
+members-nay, and of English ones, operates to the aid of their
+party, and to the defeat of ours.  Lord Doneraile,(367) a
+young Irishman, brought in by the court, was petitioned
+against, though his competitor had but one vote.  This young man
+spoke as well as ever any one spoke in his own defence insisted
+on the petition being heard, and concluded with
+declaring, that, "his cause was his Defence, and Impartiality
+must be his support." Do you know that, after this, he went and
+engaged if they would withdraw the petition, to vote with them in
+the Westminster affair!  His friends reproached him so strongly
+with his meanness, that he was shocked, and went to Mr. Pultney
+to get off; Mr. P. told him he had given him his honour, and he
+would not release him, though Lord Doneraile declared it was
+against his conscience: but he voted with
+them, and lost us the next question which they put (for
+censuring the High Bailiff) by his single vote; for in that the
+numbers were 217 against 215: the alteration of his vote would
+have made it even; and then the Speaker, I suppose,
+would have chosen the merciful side, and decided for us.
+After this, Mr. Pultney, with an affected humanity, agreed to
+commit the High Bailiff only to the serjeant-at-arms.  Then, by a
+majority of six, they voted that the soldiers, who had been sent
+for after the poll was closed, to save Lord Sundon's (368) life,
+had come in a military and illegal manner, and influenced the
+election.  In short, they determined, as Mr. Murray had dictated
+to them, that no civil magistrate, on any pretence whatsoever,
+though he may not be able to suppress even a riot by the
+assistance of the militia and constables, may call in the aid of
+the army.  Is not this doing the work of the Jacobites?  have
+they any other view than to render the riot act useless? and then
+they may rise for the Pretender whenever they please.  Then they
+moved to punish Justice
+Blackerby for calling in the soldiers; and when it was desired
+that he might be heard in his own defence, they said he had
+already confessed his crime.  Do but think on it! without
+being accused, without knowing, or being told it was a crime, a
+man gives evidence in another cause, not his own, and then they
+call it his-own accusation of himself, and would condemn him for
+it. You see what justice we may expect if they
+actually get the majority.  But this was too strong a pill for
+one of their own leaders to swallow: Sir John Barnard(369 did
+propose and persuade them to give him a day to be heard.  In
+short we sat till half an hour after four in the morning; the
+longest day that ever was known.  I say nothing of myself, for I
+could but just speak when I came away; but Sir Robert was as well
+as ever, and spoke with as much spirit as ever, at four o'clock.
+This way they will not kill him; I Will not answer for any other.
+As he came out, Whitehead,(370) the author of Manners, and agent
+with one Carey, a surgeon, for the
+Opposition, said "D-n him, how well he looks!"  Immediately after
+their success, Lord Gage (371) went forth, and begged there might
+be no mobbing; but last night we had bonfires all over the town,
+and I suppose shall have notable mobbing at the new election;
+though I do not believe there will be any
+opposition to their Mr. Edwin and Lord Perceval.(372)  Thank God!
+we are now adjourned for three weeks.  I shall go to
+Swallowfield (373) for a few days: so for one week you will miss
+hearing from me.  We have escaped the Prince'S (374)
+affair hitherto, but we shall have it after the holidays.  All
+depends upon the practices of both sides in securing or
+getting new votes during the recess.  Sir Robert is very
+sanguine: I hope, for his sake and for his honour, and for the
+nation's peace, that he will get the better: but the moment he
+has the majority secure, I shall be very earnest with him to
+resign.  He has a constitution to last some years, and enjoy some
+repose; and for my own part (and both my brothers agree with me
+in it), we wish most heartily to see an end of his ministry.  If
+I can judge of them by myself, those who want to be in our
+situation, do not wish to see it brought about more than we do.
+It is fatiguing to bear so much envy and ill-will
+undeservedly.-Otium Divos rogo; but adieu, politics, for three
+weeks!
+
+The Duchess of Buckingham, (375) who is more mad with pride than
+any merchant's wife in Bedlam, came the other night to the opera
+en princesse, literally in robes, red velvet and ermine. I must
+tell you a story of her: last week she sent for Cori,(376) to pay
+him for her opera-ticket; he was not at
+home, but went in an hour afterwards.  She said, "Did he treat
+her like a tradeswoman? She would teach him to respect women of
+her birth; said he was in league with Mr. Sheffield (377) to
+abuse her, and bade him come the next morning at nine."  He came,
+and she made him wait till eight at night, only sending him an
+omlet and a bottle of wine, "as it was Friday, and he a Catholic,
+she supposed he did not eat meat." At last she
+received him in all the form of a princess giving audience to an
+ambassador. "Now," she said, "she had punished him."
+
+In this age we have some who pretend to impartiality: you will
+scarce guess how Lord Brook (378) shows his: he gives one vote on
+one side, one on the other, and the third time does not vote at
+all, and so on, regularly.
+
+My sister is ,up to the elbows in joy and flowers that she has
+received from you this morning and begs I will thank you for her.
+
+You know, or have heard of, Mrs. Nugent, Newsham's mother; she
+went the other morning to Lord Chesterfield to beg "he would
+encourage Mr. Nugent (379) to speak in the house; for that really
+he was so bashful, she was afraid his abilities would be lost on
+the world." I don't know who has encouraged him; but so it is,
+that this modest Irish converted Catholic does talk a prodigious
+deal of nonsense in behalf of English
+liberty.
+
+Lord Gage (380) is another; no man would trust him in a wager,
+unless he stakes, and yet he is trusted by a whole borough with
+their privileges and liberties! He told Mr. Winnington the other
+day, that he would bring his son into parliament, that he would
+not influence him, but leave him entirely to himself.  "D-n it,"
+said Winnington, "so you have all his
+lifetime."
+
+Your brother says you accuse him of not writing to you, and that
+his reasons are, he has not time, and next, that I tell you all
+that can be said.  So I do, I think: tell me when I begin to tire
+you, or if I am too circumstantial; but I don't believe you will
+think so, for I remember how we used to want such a correspondent
+when I was with you.
+
+I have spoke about the young man who is well content to live with
+you as a servant out of livery.  I am to settle the
+affair finally with his father on Monday, and then he shall set
+out as soon as possible.  I will send the things for
+Prince Craon etc. by him.  I will write to Madame Grifoni the
+moment I hear she is returned from the country.
+
+The Princess Hesse (381) is brought to bed of a son.  We are
+going into mourning for the Queen of Sweden;(382) she had
+always been apprehensive of the small-pox, which has been very
+fatal in her family.
+
+You have heard, I suppose, of the new revolution (383) in
+Muscovy.  The letters from Holland to-day say, that they have put
+to death the young Czar and his mother, and his father too:
+which, if true,(384) is going very far, for he was of a sovereign
+house in another country, no subject of Russia, and after the
+death of his wife and son, could have no pretence or interest to
+raise more commotions there.
+
+We have got a new opera, not so good as the former; and we have
+got the famous Bettina to dance, but she is a most
+indifferent performer.  The house is excessively full every
+Saturday, never on Tuesday: here, you know, we make every
+thing a fashion.
+
+I am happy that my fears for Tuscany vanish every letter.  There!
+there is a letter of twelve sides! I am forced to page it, it is
+SO long, and I have not time to read it over and look for the
+mistakes.
+Yours, ever.
+
+(363) Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician and author, at
+Florence; a particular friend of Mr. Mann.  [The following
+favourable character of Dr. Cocchi is contained in a letter from
+the Earl of Cork to Mr. Duncombe, dated Florence,
+November 29, 1754. "Mr Mann's fortunate in the friendship, skill,
+and care of his physician, Dr. Cocchi.  He is a man of most
+extensive learning; understands, reads, and speaks all the
+European languages; studious, polite, modest, humane, and
+instructive.  He is always to be admired and beloved by all who
+know him.  Could I live with these two gentlemen only, and
+converse with few or none others, I should scarce desire to
+return to England for many years."]
+
+(364) Samuel Sandys, a republican, raised on the fall of Sir
+R.'W. to be chancellor of the exchequer, then degraded to a peer
+and cofferer, and soon afterwards laid aside. [In 1743, he was
+raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Sandys,
+Baron of Omberley in the county of Worcester, and died in
+1770.  Dr. Nash, in his history of that county, states him to
+have been "a very useful, diligent senator-a warm, steady
+friend-a good neighbor, and a most hospitable country
+gentleman and provincial magistrate."]
+
+(365) William Murray, brother of Lord- Stormont, and of Lord
+Dunbar, the Pretender's first minister.  He is known by his
+eloquence and the friendship of Mr. Pope.  He was soon
+afterwards promoted to be solicitor-general. (Afterwards the
+celebrated chief-justice of the King's Bench, and Earl of
+Man's'field.-D.)
+
+(366) Sir Richard Lloyd, advanced in 1754 to be
+solicitor-general, in the room of Mr. Murray, appointed
+attorney-general. [And in 1759, appointed one of the Barons of
+the exchequer.]
+
+(367) Arthur St. Leger, Lord Doneraile, died in 1750, being lord
+of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales.
+
+(368) Lord Sundon and Sir Charles Wager had been the Court
+candidates for Westminster at the late election against
+Admiral Vernon and Charles Edwin, Esq.-D.
+
+(369) A great London merchant, and one of the members for the
+City.  His reputation for integrity and ability gave him much
+weight in the House of Commons.-D. (Lord Chatham, when mr. Pitt,
+frequently calls him the Great Commoner.  In 1749, he became
+father of the City; when, much against his will, the merchants
+erected a statue of him in the Royal Exchange.  He died in 1764.]
+
+(370) Paul Whitehead, an infamous but not despicable poet. [See
+ante, p. 190, Letter 42.]
+
+(371) Thomas Lord Viscount Gage had been a Roman Catholic, and
+was master of the household to the Prince. [Lord Gage, in
+1721, was elected for the borough of Tewksbury; which he
+represented till within a few months of his death, in 1754.  He
+was a zealous politician, and distinguished himself, in 1732, by
+detecting the fraudulent sale of the Derwentwater estates.]
+
+(372) John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont, in Ireland,
+created, in 176@, Lord Lovel and Rolland in the peerage of Great
+Britain.  He became, in 1747, a lord of the bedchamber to
+Frederick Prince of Wales, and in the early part of the reign of
+George III. held successively the offices of
+postmaster-general and first lord of the admiralty.  He was a man
+of some ability and a frequent and fluent speaker, and was the
+author of a celebrated party pamphlet of' the day,
+entitled "Faction Detected."  His excessive love of ancestry led
+him, in Conjunction with his father, and assisted by
+Anderson, the genealogist, to print two thick octavo volumes
+respecting his family, entitled "History of the House of
+Ivery;" a most remarkable monument of human vanity.-D.
+[Boswell was not of this opinion.  "Some have affected to
+laugh," he says, "at the History of the House of Ivery: it would
+be well if many others would transmit their pedigrees to
+posterity, with the same accuracy and generous zeal with which
+the noble lord who compiled that work has honoured and
+perpetuated his ancestry.  Family histories, like the imagines
+majorum of the ancients, excite to virtue." See "Life of
+Johnson," vol viii. p. 188.]
+
+(373) Swallowfield, in Berkshire, the seat of John Dodd, Esq.
+
+(374) A scheme for obtaining a larger allowance for the Prince of
+Wales.
+
+(375) Catherine, Duchess Dowager of Buckingham, natural
+daughter of King James II.  (Supposed to be really the
+daughter of Colonel Graham, a man of Gallantry of the time, and a
+lover of her mother, Lady Dorchester.-D.)  [This
+remarkable woman was extravagantly proud of her descent from
+James the Second, and affected to be the head of the Jacobite
+party in England.  She maintained a kind of royal state, and
+affected great devotion to the memory of her father and
+grandfather.  On the death of her son, the second Duke of
+Buckingham of the Sheffield family (whose funeral was
+celebrated in a most extraordinary manner), she applied to the
+old Duchess of Marlborough, who was as high spirited as
+herself, for the loan of the richly-ornamented hearse which had
+conveyed the great duke to his grave. "Tell her," said Sarah, "it
+carried the Duke of Marlborough, and shall never carry any one
+else."  "My upholsterer," rejoined Catherine of Buckingham in a
+fury, "tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds."-"  This
+last stroke," says the editor of the Suffolk Correspondence, "
+was aimed at the parsimony of their Graces of Marlborough, which
+was supposed to have been visible even in the funeral; but the
+sarcasm was as unjust as the original request of borrowing the
+hearse was mean and unfeeling."-E.]
+
+(376) Angelo Maria Cori, prompter to the Opera.
+
+(377) Mr. Sheffield, natural son of the late Duke of
+Buckingham, with whom she was at law.
+
+
+(378) Francis, Baron, and afterwards created Earl Brooke.
+
+(379) Robert Nugent, a poet, a patriot, an author, a lord of the
+treasury, (and finally an Irish peer by the titles of Lord Clare
+and Earl Nugent.  He seems to have passed his long life in
+seeking lucrative places and courting rich widows, in both of
+which pursuits be was eminently successful.-D.) [He married the
+sister and heiress of Secretary Craggs, and his only
+daughter married the first Marquis of Buckingham.  A volume of
+his ,Odes and Epistles" were published anonymously in 1733.  He
+died in 1788.)
+
+(380) Lord Gage was one of those persons to whom the
+privileges of parliament were of extreme consequence, as their
+own liberties were inseparable from them.
+
+(381) Mary, fourth daughter of King George II.
+
+(382) Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, sister of Charles XII.
+
+(383) This relates to the revolution by which the young Czar John
+was deposed, and the Princess Elizabeth raised to the throne.
+
+(384) This was not true.  The Princess Anne of Mecklenburgh died
+in prison at Riga, a few years afterwards.  Her son, the young
+Czar, and her husband, Prince Antony of Brunswick
+Wolfenbuttle, were confined for many years.
+
+
+
+206 Letter 49
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Dec. 29, 1741.
+
+I write to YOU two days before the post goes out, because
+to-morrow I am to go out of town; but I would answer your
+letter by way of Holland, to tell you how much you have
+obliged both Sir Robert and me about the Dominichini;(385) and to
+beg you to thank Mr. Chute and Mr. Whithed-but I cannot leave it
+to you.
+
+"My dear Mr. Chute, was ever any thing so kind!  I crossed the
+Giogo (386) with Mr. Coke,(387) but it was in August, and I
+thought it then the greatest compliment that ever was paid to
+mortal; and I went with him too!  but you to go only for a
+picture, and in the month of December: What can I say to you? You
+do more to oblige your friend, than I can find terms to thank you
+for.  If I was to tell-it here, it would be believed as little as
+the rape of poor Tory (388) by a wolf.  I can only say that I
+know the Giogo, its snows and its inns, and consequently know the
+extent of the obligation that I have to you and Mr. Whithed."
+
+Now I return to you, my dear child: I am really so much
+obliged to you and to them, that I know not what to say.  I read
+Pennee's letter to Sir.  R., who was much pleased with his
+discretion; he will be quite a favourite of mine.  And now we are
+longing for the picture; you know, of old, my
+impatience.
+
+Your young secretary-servant is looking out for a ship, and will
+set out in the first that goes: I envy him.
+
+The Court has been trying but can get nobody to stand for
+Westminster.  You know Mr. Doddington has lost himself
+extremely by his new turn, after so often changing sides: he is
+grown very fat and lethargic; my brother Ned says, "he is grown
+of less consequence, but more weight."(389)
+
+One hears of nothing but follies said by the Opposition, who grow
+mad on having the least prospect.  Lady Carteret,(390) who, you
+know, did not want any new fuel to her absurdity, says, "they
+talk every day of making her lord first minister, but he is not
+so easily persuaded as they think for."  Good night.
+Yours, ever.
+
+(385) A celebrated picture of a Madonna and Child by
+Dominichino, in the palace Zembeccari, at Bologna, now in the
+collection of the Earl of Orford, at Houghton, in Norfolk.
+(Since sent to Russia with the rest of the collection.-D.)
+
+(386) The Giogo is the highest part of the Apennine between
+Florence and Bologna.
+
+(387) Son of Lord Lovel, since Earl of Leicester. [In 1744, Lord
+Lovel was created Viscount Coke of Holkham and Earl of Leicester.
+His only son Edward died before him, in 1753,
+without issue; having married Lady Mary, one of the co-heirs of
+John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.]
+
+(388) A black spaniel of Mr. Walpole's was seized by a wolf on
+the Alps, as it was running at the head of the chaise-horses, at
+noonday. [See ante, p. 139 letter 14.]
+
+(389) George Bubb Dodington had lately resigned his post of one
+of the lords of the treasury, and gone again into
+opposition.  [In Walpole's copy of the celebrated Diary of this
+versatile politician, he had written a "Brief account of George
+Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe," which the noble editor of the
+"Memoires" has inserted.  It describes him, "as his Diary shows,
+vain, fickle, ambitious, and corrupt,' and very lethargic; but
+gives him credit for great wit and readiness."  Cumberland, in
+his Memoirs, thus paints him:-"Dodington,
+lolling in his chair, in perfect apathy and self-command,
+dozing, and even snoring, at intervals, in his lethargic way,
+broke out every now and then into gleams and flashes of wit and
+humour."  In 1761, he was created Lord Melcombe, and died in the
+following year.]
+
+
+(390) Frances, daughter of Sir Robert Worseley, and first wife of
+John Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville.
+
+
+
+207 Letter 50
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Jan. 7, 1741-2, O. S.
+
+I must answer for your brother a paragraph that he showed me in
+one of your letters: "Mr. W.'s letters are full of wit; don't
+they adore him in England?"  Not at all-and I don't
+wonder at them: for if I have any wit in my letters, which I do
+not at all take for granted, it is ten to one that I have none
+out of my letters.  A thousand people can write, that cannot
+talk; and besides, you know, (or I conclude so, from the little
+one hears stirring,) that numbers of the English have wit, who
+don't care to produce it.  Then, as to adoring; YOU now See Only
+my letters, and you may be sure I take care not to write you word
+of any of my bad qualities, which other people must see in the
+gross; and that may be a great
+hindrance to their adoration.  Oh! there are a thousand other
+reasons I could give you, why I am not the least in fashion.  I
+came over in an ill season: it is a million to one that
+nobody thinks a declining old minister's son has wit.  At any
+time, men in opposition have always most; but now, it would be
+absurd for a courtier to have even common sense.  There is not a
+Mr. Stuart, or a Mr. Stewart, whose names begin but with the
+first letters of Stanhope,(391) that has not a better chance than
+I, for being liked.  I can assure you, even those of the same
+party would be fools, not to pretend to think me one.  Sir Robert
+has showed no partiality for me;(392) and do you think they would
+commend where he does not?  even supposing they had no envy,
+which by the way, I am far from saying they have not.  Then. my
+dear child, I am the coolest man of my party, and if I am ever
+warm, it is by contagion; and where violence passes for parts,
+what will indifference be called? But how could you think of such
+a question '! I don't want money, consequently Do old women pay
+me for my wit; I have a very flimsy constitution, consequently
+the young women won't taste my wit, and it is a long while before
+wit makes its own way in the world; especially, as I never prove
+it, by assuring people that I have it by me.  Indeed, if I were
+disposed to brag, I could quote two or three half-pay officers,
+and an old aunt or two, who laugh prodigiously at every thing I
+say; but till they are allowed judges, I will not brag of such
+authorities.
+
+If you have a mind to know who is adored and has wit, there is
+old Churchill has as much God-d-n-ye wit as ever-except that he
+has lost two teeth.  There are half a dozen Scotchmen who vote
+against the Court, and are cried up by the Opposition for wit, to
+keep them steady.  They are forced to cry up their parts, for it
+would be too barefaced to commend their honesty.  Then Mr. Nugent
+has had a great deal of wit till within this week; but he is so
+busy and so witty, that even his own party grow tired of him.
+His plump wife, who talks of nothing else, says he entertained
+her all the way on the road with repeating his speeches.
+
+I did not go into the country, last week, as I intended, the
+weather was so bad; but I shall go on Sunday for three or four
+days, and perhaps shall not be able to write to you that week.
+You are in an agitation, I suppose, about politics: both sides
+are trafficking deeply for votes during the holidays.  It is
+allowed, I think, that we shall have a majority of twenty-six:
+Sir R. says more; but now, upon a pinch, he brags like any
+bridegroom.
+
+The Westminster election passed without any disturbance, in
+favour of Lord Perceive-all (394) and Mr. Perceive-nothing, as my
+uncle calls them.  Lord Chesterfield was vaunting to Lord Lovel,
+that they should have carried it, if they had set up two
+broomsticks. "So I see," replied Lovel.  But it seems we have not
+done with it yet: if we get the majority, this will be declared a
+void election too, for my Lord Chancellor (395) has found out,
+that the person who made the return, had no right to make it: it
+was the High Bailiff's clerk, the High Bailiff himself being in
+custody of the sergeant-at-arms.  it makes a great noise, and
+they talk of making subscriptions for a Petition.
+
+Lord Stafford (396) is come over.  He told me some good
+stories of the Primate.(397)
+
+Last night I had a good deal of company to hear Monticelli and
+Amorevoli, particularly the three beauty-Fitzroys, Lady
+Euston, Lady Conway, and Lady Caroline.(398)  Sir R. liked the
+singers extremely: he had not heard them before, I forgot to tell
+you all our beauties there was Miss Hervey,(399) my
+lord's daughter, a fine, black girl, but as masculine as her
+father should be;(400) and jenny Conway, handsomer Still,(401)
+though changed with illness, than even the Fitzroys.  I made the
+music for my Lord Hervey, who is too ill to go to operas: yet,
+with a coffin-face, is as full of his little dirty
+politics as ever.  He will not be well enough to go to the House
+till the majority is certain somewhere, but lives shut up with my
+Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pultney-a triumvirate, who hate one
+another more than any body they could proscribe, had they the
+power.  I dropped in at my Lord Hervey's, the other night,
+knowing my lady had company: it was soon after our defeats. My
+lord, who has always professed particularly to me, turned his
+back on me, and retired for an hour into a
+whisper with young Hammond,(402) at the end of the room.  Not
+being at all amazed at one whose heart I knew so well, I
+stayed on, to see more of this behaviour; indeed, to rise
+myself to it.  At last he came up to me, and begged this
+music. which I gave him, and would often again, to see how many
+times I shall be ill and well with him within this month.
+Yesterday came news that his brother, Captain William Hervey, has
+taken a Caracca ship, worth full two hundred thousand
+pounds.  He was afterwards separated from it by a storm, for two
+or three days, and was afraid of losing it, having but
+five-and-twenty men to thirty-six Spaniards; but he has
+brought it home safe.  I forgot to tell you, that upon losing the
+first question, Lord Hervey kept away for a week; on our carrying
+the next great one, he wrote to Sir Robert, how much he desired
+to see him, "not upon any business, but Lord Hervey longs to see
+Sir Robert Walpole."
+
+Lady Sundon(402)  is dead, and Lady M- disappointed: she, who is
+full as politic as my Lord Hervey, had made herself an
+absolute servant to Lady Sundon, but I don't hear that she has
+left her even her old clothes.  Lord Sundon is in great grief: I
+am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her
+ambition met such a check by the death of the Queen.(404)  She
+had great power with her, though the Queen pretended to
+despise her; but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power
+by some secret.(405)  I was saying to Lady Pomfret, to be sure
+she is dead very rich!" She replied, with some warmth, She never
+took money."  When I came home, I mentioned this to Sir R.  "No,"
+said he, "but she took jewels; Lord Pomfret's place of master of
+the horse to the Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond
+earrings, of fourteen hundred pounds value."  One day that she
+wore them at a visit at old
+Marlboro's, as soon as she was gone, the Duchess said to Lady
+Mary Wortley,(406) "How can that woman have the impudence to go
+about in that bribe?"-,, Madam," said Lady Mary, "how would you
+have people know where wine is to be sold, unless there is a sign
+hung out!" Sir R. told me, that in the enthusiasm of her vanity,
+Lady Sundon had proposed to him to unite with her, and govern the
+kingdom together: he bowed, begged her
+patronage, but said he thought nobody fit to govern the
+kingdom, but the King and Queen.-Another day.
+
+Friday morning.  I was forced to leave off last night, as I found
+it would be impossible to send away this letter finished in any
+time.  It will be enormously long, but I have prepared you for
+it.  When I consider the beginning of my letter, it looks as if I
+were entirely of your opinion about the
+agreeableness of them.  I believe you will never commend them
+again, when you see how they increase upon your hands.  I have
+seen letters of two or three sheets, written from merchants at
+Bengal and Canton to their wives: but then they contain the
+history of a twelvemonth: I grow voluminous from week to week.  I
+can plead in excuse nothing but the true reason; you desired it;
+and I remember how I used to wish for such letters, when I was in
+Italy.  My Lady Pomfret carries this humanity still farther, and
+because people were civil to her in Italy, she makes it a rule to
+visit all strangers in general.  She has been to visit a Spanish
+Count (407) and his wife, though she cannot open her lips in
+their language.  They fled from Spain, he and his brother having
+offended the Queen, (408) by their attachments to the Prince of
+Asturias; his brother ventured back to bring off this woman, who
+was engaged to him.  Lord Harrington (409) has procured them a
+pension of six hundred a-year.  They live chiefly with Lord
+Carteret and his
+daughter,(410) who speak Spanish.  But to proceed from where I
+left off last night, like the Princess Dinarzade in the
+Arabian Nights, for you will want to know what happened one day.
+Sir Robert was at dinner with Lady Sundon, who hated the Bishop
+of London, as much as she loved the Church.  "Well," said she to
+Sir R., "how does your pope do!"-"Madam," replied he, "he is my
+pope, and shall be my Pope; every body has some pope or other;
+don't you know that you are one!  They call you Pope Joan."  She
+flew into a passion, and desired he would not fix any names on
+her; that they were not so easily got rid of.
+
+We had a little ball the other night at Mrs. Boothby's, and by
+ dancing, did not perceive an earthquake, which frightened all
+the undancing part of the town.
+
+We had a civility from his Royal Highness,(411) who sent for
+Monticelli the night he was engaged here, but, on hearing it,
+said he would send for him some other night.  If I did not live
+so near St. James's, I would find out some politics in
+this-should not one?
+
+Sir William Stanhope (412) has had a hint from the same
+Highness, that his company is not quite agreeable: whenever he
+met any body at Carlton House whom he did not know, he said,
+"Your humble servant, Mr. or Mrs. Hamilton."
+
+I have this morning sent aboard the St. Quintin a box for you,
+with your secretary-not in it.
+
+Old Weston of Exeter is dead.  Dr. Clarke, the Dean, Dr.
+Willes, the decipherer, and Dr. Gilbert of Llandaff, are
+candidates to succeed him.(413)  Sir R. is for Willes, who, he
+says, knows so many secrets, that he might insist upon being
+archbishop.
+
+My dear Mr. Chute! how concerned I am that he took all that
+trouble to no purpose.  I will not write to him this post, for as
+you show him my letters, this here will sufficiently employ any
+one's patience-but I have done.  I long to hear that the
+Dominichini is safe.  Good night.
+Yours, ever.
+
+(391) The name of Lord Chesterfield.
+
+(392) On the subject of Sir Robert's alleged want of
+partiality for his son, the following passage occurs in the
+anecdotes prefixed to Lord Wharncliffe's edition of the works of
+Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:-"Those ironical lines, where Pope says
+that Sir Robert Had never made a friend in private life, And was,
+besides, a tyrant to his wife,' are well
+understood, as conveying a sly allusion to his good-humoured
+unconcern about some things which more strait-laced husbands do
+not take so coolly.  In a word, Horace Walpole was
+generally supposed to be the son of Carr Lord Hervey, and Sir
+Robert not to be ignorant of it.  One striking circumstance was
+visible to the naked eye; no beings in human shape could resemble
+each other less than the two passing for father and son; and
+while their reverse of personal likeness provoked a malicious
+whisper, Sir Robert's marked neglect of Horace in his infancy
+tended to confirm it.  Sir Robert took scarcely any notice of him
+till his proficiency in Eton school, when a lad of some standing,
+drew his attention, and proved that, whether he had or had not a
+right to the name he went by, he was likely to do it Honour."
+Vol. i. 1). 33.-E.
+
+(393) General Charles Churchill. (Whose character has been so
+inimitably sketched, at about the same period when this letter
+was written, by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in his poem of',
+Isabella, or the Morning:"-
+
+"The General, one of those brave old commanders,
+Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders.
+Frank and good-natur'd, of an honest heart,
+Loving to act the steady friendly part;
+None led through youth a gayer life than he,
+Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee;
+But with old age, its Vices Come along,
+And in narration he's extremely long;
+Exact in circumstance, and nice in dates,
+He each minute particular relates.
+If you name one of marlbro's ten campaigns,
+         He gives you its whole history for your pains,
+And Blenheim's field becomes by his reciting,
+As long in telling as it was in fighting.
+His old desire to please is still express'd,
+His hat's well cock'd, his periwig's well dress'd.
+He rolls his stockings still, white gloves he wears,
+And in the boxes with the beaux appears.
+His eyes through wrinkled corners cast their rays,
+Still he looks cheerful, still soft things he says,
+And still remembering that he once was young,
+He strains his crippled knees, and struts along."-D.)
+
+(394) Vide an account of the erection of Lord Perceval and one
+Edwin, in that Lord's History of the House of Ivery.
+
+(395) Philip Yorke, Lord, and afterwards Earl of Hardwicke, for
+twenty years Lord Chancellor of England.-D.
+
+(396) William mathias Howard, Earl of Stafford.
+
+(397) The Primate of Lorrain, eldest son of Prince Craon, was
+famous for his wit and vices of all kinds.
+
+(398) Lady Dorothy Boyle, eldest daughter of Lord Burlington;
+Isabella, wife of Francis Lord Conway, and Caroline,
+afterwards married to Lord Petersham, were the daughter-in-law
+and daughters of Charles Fitzroy, Duke of grafton, lord
+chamberlain.
+
+(399) Lepel, eldest daughter of John Lord Hervey, afterwards
+married to Mr. Phipps.  (Constantine Phipps, in 1767 created Lord
+Mulgrave.]
+
+(400) The effeminacy of Lord Hervey formed a continual subject
+for the satire of his opponents.  Pope's bitter lines on him- are
+well remembered.  The old Duchess of Marlborough, too, in her
+"Opinions," describes him as having "certainly parts and wit; but
+he is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born,
+besides ridiculous; a painted face, and not a tooth in his head."
+on which the editor of that curious little book, Lord Hailes,
+remarks, "Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of the epilepsy,
+entered upon and persisted in a very strict regimen, and thus
+stopped the progress and prevented the
+effects of that dreadful disease.  His daily food was a small
+quantity of asses' milk and a flour biscuit.  Once a week he
+indulged himself with eating an apple; he used emetics daily.
+Mr. Pope and he were once friends; but they quarrelled, and
+persecuted each other with virulent satire.  Pope, knowing the
+abstemious regimen which Lord Hervey observed, was so
+ungenerous as to call him "mere cheese-curd of asses' milk!" Lord
+Hervey used paint to soften his ghastly appearance.  Mr. Pope
+must have known this also; and therefore it was
+unpardonable in him to introduce it into his "celebrated
+portrait." It ought to be remembered, that Lord Hervey is very
+differently described by Dr. Middleton; who, in his dedication to
+him of "The History of the Life of Tully," praises him for his
+strong good sense, patriotism, temperance, and
+information.-E.
+
+(401) Jane, only daughter of Francis, the first Lord Conway, by
+his second wife, Mrs. Bodens.  (She died unmarried, May 5,
+1749.-D.)
+
+(402) Author of some Love Elegies, and a favourite of Lord
+Chesterfield.  He died this year. [Hammond was equerry to the
+Prince of Wales, and member for Truro.  He died in June, 1742, at
+Stowe, the seat of Lord Cobham, in his thirty.second year.  Miss
+Dashwood long survived him, and died unmarried in 1779.  "  The
+character," says Johnson, "which her lover gave her was, indeed,
+not likely to attract courtship."]
+
+(402) Wife of William Clayton, Lord Sundon, woman of the
+bedchamber and mistress of the robes to Queen Caroline. [She had
+been the friend and correspondent of Sarah Duchess of'
+Marlborough; who, on the accession of George I , through Baron
+Bothmar's influence, procured for her friend the place of lady of
+the bedchamber to the Princess with whom she grew as great a
+favourite as her colleague, Mrs. Howard, with the Prince; and
+eventually, on the Princess becoming Queen, exercised an
+influence over her, of which even sir Robert Walpole was
+jealous.]
+
+(404) Queen Caroline, died November 1737.-D.
+
+(405) This is now known to have been a rupture, with which the
+Queen was afflicted, and which she had the weakness to wish, and
+the courage to be able, to conceal.-E.
+
+(406) The celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, oldest
+daughter of Evelyn, first Duke of Kingston, and wife of
+Wortley Montagu, Esq.-D.
+
+(407) Marquis de Sabernego: he returned to Spain after the death
+of Philip V.
+
+(408) The Princess of Parma, second wife of Philip V. King of
+Spain, and consequently  stepmother to the Prince of Asturias,
+son of that King, by his first wife, a princess of Savoy.-D.
+
+(409) William Stanhope, created Lord Harrington in 1729, and Earl
+of the same in 1741.  He held various high offices, and was, at
+the time this was written, secretary of
+state.-D.
+
+(410) Frances, youngest daughter of Lord Carteret, afterwards
+married to the Marquis of Tweedale. (in 1748.  The marquis was an
+extraordinary lord of session, and the last person who held a
+similar appointment.]
+
+
+(411) Frederick Prince of Wales.-D.
+
+(412) Brother to Lord Chesterfield.  This bon mot was
+occasioned by the numbers of Hamiltons which Lady Archibald
+Hamilton, the Prince's mistress, had placed at that court.
+
+(413) Nicholas Clagget, Bishop of St. David's, succeeded, on
+Weston's death, to the see of Exeter.-Dr. Clagget was,
+however, succeeded in the see of St. David's by Dr. Edward
+Willes, Dean of Lincoln and decipherer to the King; and, in the
+following year, translated to the bishopric of Bath and Wells.
+The art of deciphering, for which Dr. Willes was so celebrated,
+has been the subject of many learned and curious works by
+Trithemius, Baptista Porta, the Duke Augustus of
+Brunswick, and other more recent writers.  The Gentleman's
+Magazine for 1742, contains a very ingenious system of
+deciphering: but the old modes of secret writing having been, for
+the most part, superseded by the modern system of
+cryptography, in which, according to a simple rule which may be
+communicated verbally, and easily retained in the memory, the
+signs for the letters can be changed continually; it is the
+chiffre quarr`e or chiffre ind`echiffrable, used, if not
+universally, yet by most courts.  None of the old systems of
+deciphering are any longer available.]
+
+
+
+212 Letter 51
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Friday, Jan. 22, 1742.
+
+Don't wonder that I missed writing to you yesterday, my
+constant day: you will pity me when you hear that I was shut up
+in the House of Commons till one in the morning.  I came away
+more dead than alive, and was forced to leave Sir R. at supper
+with my brothers: he was all alive and in spirits.(414) He says
+he is younger than me, and indeed I think so, in spite of his
+forty years more.  My head aches to-night, but we rose early; and
+if I don't write to-night when shall I find a
+moment to spare?  Now you want to know what we did last night;
+stay, I will tell you presently in its place: it was well, and of
+infinite consequence-so far I tell you now.  Our recess finished
+last Monday, and never at school did I enjoy holidays so
+much-but, les voil`a finis jusqu'au printefps! Tuesday (for you
+see I write you an absolute journal) we sat on a Scotch election,
+a double return; their man was Hume Campbell,(415) Lord
+Marchmont's brother, lately made solicitor to the Prince, for
+being as troublesome, as violent, and almost as able as his
+brother.  They made a great point of it, and gained so many of
+our votes, that at ten at night we were forced to give it up
+without dividing.  Sandys, who loves persecution, even unto the
+death, moved to punish the sheriff; and as we dared not divide,
+they ordered him into custody, where by this time, I suppose,
+Sandys has eaten him.
+
+On Wednesday, Sir Robert Godschall, the Lord Mayor, presented the
+Merchant's petition, signed by three hundred of them, and drawn
+up by Leonidas Glover.(416)  This is to be heard next Wednesday.
+This gold-chain came into parliament, cried up for his parts, but
+proves so dull, one would think he chewed
+opium.  Earle says, "I have heard an oyster speak as well
+twenty times."
+
+Well, now I come to yesterday: we met, not expecting much
+business.  Five of our members were gone to the York election,
+and the three Lord Beauclercs (417) to their mother's funeral at
+Windsor; for that old beauty St. Albans (418) is dead at last.
+On this they depended for getting the majority, and towards three
+o'clock, when we thought of breaking up, poured in their most
+violent questions: one was a motion for leave to bring in the
+Place Bill to limit the number of placemen in the House.  This
+was not opposed, because, out of decency, it is generally
+suffered to pass the Commons, and is thrown out by the Lords;
+only Colonel Cholmondeley (419) desired to know if they designed
+to limit the number of those that have promises of places, as
+well as of those that have places now.  I must tell you that we
+are a very conclave; they buy votes with
+reversions of places on the change of the ministry.  Lord Gage
+was giving an account in Tom's coffeehouse of the intended
+alterations: that Mr. Pultney is to be chancellor of the
+exchequer, and Chesterfield and Carteret secretaries of state.
+Somebody asked who was to be paymaster?  Numps Edwin,(420) who
+stood by, replied, "We have not thought so low as that yet."
+Lord Gage harangues every day at Tom's, and has read there a very
+false account of the King'S message to the Prince.(421)  The
+Court, to show their contempt of Gage, have given their copy to
+be read by Swinny.(422)  This is the authentic copy, which they
+have made the bishop write from the message which he carried, and
+as he and Lord Cholmondeley agree it was
+given.
+
+On this Thursday, of which I was telling you, at three
+o'clock, Mr. Pultney rose up, and moved for a secret committee of
+twenty-one.  This inquisition, this council of ten, was to sit
+and examine whatever persons and papers they should
+please, and to meet when and where they pleased.  He protested
+much on its not being intended against any person, but merely to
+give the King advice, and on this foot they fought it till ten at
+night, when Lord Perceval blundered out what they had been
+cloaking with so @much art, and declared that he should vote for
+it as a committee of accusation.  Sir Robert
+immediately rose, and protested that he should not have
+spoken, but for what he had heard last; but that now, he must
+take it to himself.  He portrayed the malice of the
+Opposition, who, for twenty years, had not been able to touch
+him, and were now reduced to this infamous shift.  He defied them
+to accuse him, and only desired that if they should,
+might be in an open and fair manner: desired no favour, but to be
+acquainted with his accusation.  He spoke of Mr.
+Doddington, who had called his administration infamous, as of a
+person of great self-mortification, who, for sixteen years, had
+condescended to bear part of the odium.  For Mr. Pultney, who had
+just spoken a second time, Sir R. said, he had begun the debate
+with great calmness, but give him his due, he had made amends for
+it in the end.  In short, never was innocence so triumphant.
+
+There were several glorious speeches on both sides: Mr.
+Pultney's two, W. Pitt's (423) and George Grenville's,(424) Sir
+Robert's, Sir W. Yonge's, Harry Fox's, (425) Mr. Chute's, and the
+Attorney-General's.(426)  My friend Coke, for the
+first time, spoke vastly well, and mentioned how great Sir
+Robert's character is abroad.  ' Sir Francis Dashwood replied,
+that he had found quite the reverse from Mr. Coke, and that
+foreigners always spoke with contempt of the Chevalier de
+Walpole.  That was going too far, and he was called to order, but
+got off well enough, by saying, that he knew it was
+contrary to rule to name any member, but that he only
+mentioned it as spoken by an impertinent Frenchman.
+
+But of all speeches, none ever was so full of wit as Mr.
+Pultney's last.  He said, "I have heard this committee
+represented as a most dreadful spectre; it has been likened to
+all terrible things; it has been likened to the King; to the
+inquisition; it will be a committee of safety; it is a
+committee of danger; I don't know what it is to be!  One
+gentleman, I think, called it a cloud! (this was the Attorney) a
+cloud!  I remember Hamlet takes Lord Polonius by the hand and
+shows him a cloud, and then asks him if he does not think it is
+like a whale." Well, in short, at eleven at night we divided, and
+threw                         out this famous committee by 253 to
+250, the greatest number that                         ever was in
+the house, and the greatest number that ever lost a question.
+
+It was a most shocking sight to see the sick and dead brought in
+                      on both sides! Men on crutches, and Sir
+William Gordon (427) from his                         bed, with a
+blister on his head, and flannel hanging out from under
+             his wig.  I could scarce pity him for his
+ingratitude.  The day before the Westminster petition, Sir
+Charles Wager (428) gave his son a ship, and the next day the
+father came down and voted against him.  The son has since been
+east away; but they concealed it from the father, that he might
+not absent himself.  However, as we have our
+good-natured men too on our side, one of his own countrymen went
+and told him of it in the House.  The old man, who looked like
+Lazarus at his resuscitation, bore it with great
+resolution, and said, he knew why he was told of it, but when he
+thought his country in danger, he would not go away.  As he is so
+near death, that it is indifferent to him whether he died two
+thousand years ago or to-morrow, it is unlucky for him not to
+have lived when such insensibility would have been a Roman
+virtue. (429)
+
+There are no arts, no menaces, which the Opposition do not
+practise.  They have threatened one gentleman to have a
+reversion cut off from his son, unless he will vote with them.
+To Totness there came a letter to the mayor from the Prince, and
+signed by two of his lords, to recommend a candidate in
+opposition to the solicitor-general.  The mayor sent the
+letter to Sir Robert.                       They have turned the
+Scotch to the best account.  There is a young Oswald
+(430) who had engaged to Sir R. but has voted against us.  Sir R.
+sent a friend to reproach him: the moment the gentleman who had
+engaged for him came into the room, Oswald said, "You had liked
+to have led me into a fine error! did you not tell me that Sir R.
+would have the majority?"
+
+When the debate was over, Mr. Pultney owned that he had never
+heard so fine a debate on our side; and said to Sir Robert,
+"Well, nobody can do what you can!" "Yes," replied Sir R., "Yonge
+did better." Mr. P. answered, "It was fine, but not of that
+weight with what you said." They all allow it- and now their plan
+is to persuade Sir Robert to retire with honour.  All that
+evening there was a report about the town, that he and my uncle
+were to be sent to the Tower, and people hired windows in the
+city to see them pass by-but for this time I believe we shall not
+exhibit so historical a parade.
+
+The night of the committee, my brother Walpole
+ (431) had got two or three invalids at his house,
+designing to carry them into the House by his door, as they were
+too ill to go round by Westminster hall: the patriots, who have
+rather more contrivances than their predecessors of Grecian and
+Roman memory, had taken the precaution of stopping the keyhole
+with sand.  How Livy's eloquence would have been hampered, if
+there had been back-doors and keyholes to the Temple of Concord!
+
+A few days ago there were lists of the officers at Port Mahon
+laid before the House of Lords -. unfortunately, it appeared that
+two-thirds of the regiment had been absent.  The Duke of Argyll
+said, "Such a list was a libel on the government;" and of all
+men, the Duke of Newcastle was the man who rose up and agreed
+with him: remember what I have told you once before of his union
+with Carteret.  We have
+                  carried the York election by a majority of 956.
+
+The other night the Bishop of Canterbury(432) was with Sir
+'Robert, and on going away, said, "Sir, I have been lately
+reading Thaunus; he mentions a minister, who having long been
+persecuted by his enemies, at length vanquished them: the
+reason he gives, quia se non
+                  deseruit."
+
+Sir Thomas Robinson is at last named to the government of
+Barbadoes; he has long prevented its being asked for, by
+declaring that he had the promise of it.  Luckily for him, Lord
+Lincoln liked his house, and procured him this government on
+condition of                   hiring it.
+
+I have mentioned Lord Perceval's speeches; he has a set who have
+a rostrum at his house, and harangue there.  A gentleman who came
+thither one evening was refused, but insisting that he was
+engaged to come, "Oh, Sir," said the porter, "what, are you one
+of those who play at members of Parliament?"
+
+I must tell you something, though Mr. Chute will see my
+letter.  Sir Robert brought home yesterday to dinner, a fat
+comely gentleman, who came up to me, and said he believed I knew
+his brother abroad.  I asked his name; he replied, He is with Mr.
+Whithed."  I thought he said,   It is Whithed." After I had
+talked to him of Mr. Whithed, I said,     There is a very
+sensible man with Mr. Whithed,
+                  one Mr. Chute." "Sir," said he, "my name is
+Chute." "My dear
+                  Mr. Chute, now I know both your brothers.  You
+will forgive my mistake."
+
+With what little conscience I begin a third sheet! but it
+shall be but half a one.  I have received your vast packet of
+music by the messenger, for which I thank you a thousand
+times; and the political
+                  sonnet, which is far from bad.  Who
+translated it? I like the translation.
+
+I am obliged to you about the gladiator, etc.: the temptation of
+having them at all is great, but too enormous.  If I could have
+the gladiator for about an hundred pounds, I would give it.
+
+I enclose one of the bills of lading of the things that I sent
+you by your secretary: he sets out tomorrow.  By Oswald's
+(433) folly, to whom I entrusted the putting them on board, they
+are consigned to Goldsworthy, (434) but pray take care that he
+does not open them.  The captain mortifies me by
+proposing to stay three weeks at Genoa.  I have sent away
+to-night a small additional box of steel wares, which I
+received but to-day from Woodstock.  As they are better than the
+first, you will choose out some of them for Prince Craon, and
+give away the rest as you please.
+
+We have a new opera by Pescetti, but a very bad one; however, all
+the town runs after it, for it ends with a charming
+dance.(435)  They have flung open the stage to a great length,
+and made                 a perfect view of Venice, with the
+Rialto, and numbers of gondolas that row about full of masks, who
+land and dance.  You would like it.
+
+Well, I have done.  Excuse me if I don't take the trouble to read
+it all over again, for it is immense, as you will find.  Good
+night!
+
+(414) Sir Robert Wilmot also, in a letter to the Duke of
+Devonshire, written on the 12th,
+ Sir Robert was today observed to be more naturally gay and full
+of spirits than                                    he has been
+for some time past."-E.
+
+(415) HUme Campbell was twin brother of Hugh, third Earl of
+Marchmont.  They were                              sons of
+Alexander, the second earl, who had quarrelled with Sir Robert
+Walpole at the                              time of the excise
+scheme in 1733.  Sir Robert, in consequence, prevented him from
+being                              reelected one of the sixteen
+representative Scotch peers in 1734; in requital for which,
+                      the old earl's two sons became the
+bitterest opponents of the Minister.  They were both
+               men of considerable talents; extremely similar in
+their characters and dispositions, and
+ so much so in their outward
+appearance that it was very difficult to know them apart.-D.  The
+estimation in which Lord Marchmont was held by his
+contemporaries, maybe                              judged of by
+the fact, that Lord Cobham gave his bust a place in the Temple of
+Worthies,                              at Stowe, and the mention
+of him in Pope's inscription in his grotto at
+Twickenham;-
+
+"Where British siglis from dying Wyndham stole,
+And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont's soul."
+
+We are told by Coxe, that Sir Robert Walpole "used frequently to
+rally his sons, who                              were
+praising the speeches of Pultney, Pitt, Lyttelton, and others, by
+saying, "You may cry up their speeches if you please, but when I
+have answered Sir John Barnard and
+Lord Polwarth, I think I have concluded the debate."]
+
+(416) Glover, a merchant, author of "Leonidas," a poem,
+"Boadicea," a tragedy, etc.
+[Glover's talent for public speaking, and information
+concerning trade and Commerce,
+naturally pointed him out to the merchants of London to
+conduct their application to parliament on the neglect of
+their trade.]
+
+(417) Lord Vere, Lord Henry, and Lord Sidney Beauclerc, sons of
+the Duchess Dowager of St. Albans, who is painted among the
+beauties at Hampton Court.
+
+(418) Lady Diana Vere, daughter, and at length sole heir, of
+Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last Earl of Oxford.  She
+married, in 1694, Charles, first Duke of St. Albans, natural son
+of Charles II. by Nell Gwin.  She died Jan. 15, 1742.
+
+(419) Colonel James Cholmondeley, only brother of the Earl.
+Afterwards distinguished himself at the battles of Fontenoy and
+Falkirk, and died in 1775.-E.
+
+(420) Charles Edwin, Admiral Vernon's unsuccessful colleague at
+Westminster.-E.
+
+(421) During the holidays, Sir R. W. had prevailed on the King to
+send to the Prince of Wales, to offer to pay his debts and double
+his allowance.  This negotiation was intrusted to Lord
+Cholmondeley on the King's, and to Secker, Bishop of Oxford, on
+the Prince's side, but came to nothing, [The Prince, in his
+answer, stated, that "he could not come to court while Sir Robert
+Walpole presided in His Majesty's councils; that he looked on him
+as the sole author of our grievances at home, and of our ill
+success in the West Indies; and that the
+disadvantageous figure we at present made in all the courts of
+Europe was to be attributed alone to him."]
+
+(422) Owen MacSwinny, a buffoon; formerly director of the
+playhouse. [He had been a manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and was
+the author of several dramatic pieces.  He resided in
+Italy for several years, and, on his return, was appointed keeper
+of the King's Mews.  He died in 1754, leaving his
+fortune to the celebrated Mrs. Woffington.](
+
+423) Afterwards the great Lord Chatham.-D.
+
+(424) First minister in the early part of the reign of George
+III.-D.
+
+(425) Afterwards the first Lord Holland.-D.
+
+(426) Sir Dudley Ryder.-D.
+
+(427) Sir Robert Wilmot, in a letter to the Duke of
+Devonshire, says:-,,Sir William Gordon was brought in like a
+corpse.  Some thought it had been an old woman in disguise,
+having a white cloth round his head:
+others,, who found him out, expected him to expire every moment.
+Other incurables were introduced on their side.  Mr. Hopton, for
+Hereford, w, is carried in with crutches.  Sir Robert Walpole
+exceeded himself; Mr. Pelham, with the greatest decency, cut
+Pultney into a thousand pieces.  Sir Robert actually dissected
+him, and laid his heart open to the view of the House."-E.
+
+(428) Admiral Sir Charles Wager. He had been knighted by Queen
+Anne, for his Gallantry in taking and destroying some rich
+Spanish galleons.  He was at this time first lord of the
+Admiralty.  He died in 1743.-D.
+
+(429) Sir William died in the May following.
+
+(430) James Oswald, afterwards one of the commissioners of trade
+and plantations.
+
+(431) Robert, Lord Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford.  He was
+auditor of the Exchequer, and his house joined to the House of
+commons, to which he had a door: but it was soon afterwards
+locked up, by an order of the House.
+
+(432) John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, translated, in 1737,
+from the see of Oxford.  He died in 1747.-D.
+
+)433) George Oswald, steward to Sir  R. W.
+
+(434) Mr. Goldsworthy, consul at Leghorn, had married Sir
+Charles Wager's niece, and was endeavouring to supplant Mr. Mann
+at Florence.
+
+(435) Vestris, the celebrated dancer, would have been
+delighted with it; for it is related of him, that when Gluck had
+finished his noble opera, "Iphigenia," Vestris was sadly
+disappointed on finding that it did not end with a
+"chaconne," and worried the composer to induce him to
+introduce one.  At length Gluck, losing all patience,
+exclaimed, "Chaconne! chaconne!  Had, then, the Greeks, whose
+manners we are to represent, chaconnes?"  "Certainly not,"
+replied Vestris, "certainly not; but so much the worse for the
+Greeks."-D.
+
+
+
+218 Letter 52
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Feb. 1741-2.
+
+I am miserable that I have not more time to write to you,
+especially as you will want to know so much of what I have to
+tell you; but for a week or fortnight I shall be so hurried, that
+I shall scarce know what I say.  I sit here writing to you, and
+receiving all the town, who flock to this house; Sir Robert has
+already had three levees this morning, and the
+rooms still overflowing-they overflow up to me. You will think
+this the prelude to some victory! On the contrary, when you
+receive this, there will be no longer a Sir Robert Walpole: you
+must know him for the future by the title of Earl of
+Orford.  That other envied name expires next week with his
+ministry! Preparatory to this change.  I should tell you, that
+last week we heard in the House of Commons the Chippenham
+election, when Jack Frederick and his brother-in-law, Mr. Hume,
+on our side, petitioned against Sir Edmund Thomas and Mr. Baynton
+Holt.  Both sides made it the decisive question-but our people
+were not all equally true: and upon the previous question we had
+but 235 against 236, so lost it by one.  From that time my
+brothers, my uncle, I, and some of his particular friends,
+persuaded Sir R. to resign.  He was undetermined till Sunday
+night.  Tuesday we were to finish the election, when we lost it
+by 16; upon which Sir Robert declared to some particular persons
+in the House his resolution to retire,(436) and had that morning
+sent the Prince of Wales notice of' it.  It is understood from
+the heads of the party, that nothing more is to be pursued
+against him.  Yesterday (Wednesday) the King adjourned both
+Houses for a fortnight, for time to settle
+things.  Next week Sir Robert resigns and goes into the House of
+Lords.  The only change yet fixed, is, that Lord Wilmington (437)
+is to be at the head of the Treasury-but numberless
+other alterations and confusions must follow.  The Prince will be
+reconciled, and the Whig-patriots will come in.  There were a few
+bonfires last night, but they are very unfashionable, for never
+was fallen minister so followed.  When he kissed the King's hand
+to take his first leave, the King fell on his
+neck, wept and kissed him, and begged to see him frequently.  He
+will continue in town, and assist the ministry in the
+Lords.  Mr. Pelham has declared that he will accept nothing, that
+was Sir Robert's; and this moment the Duke of Richmond has been
+here from court to tell Sir R. that he had resigned the
+mastership of the horse, having received it from him,
+unasked, and that he would not keep it beyond his ministry.  This
+is the greater honour, as it was so unexpected, and as he had no
+personal friendship with the duke.
+
+For myself, I am quite happy to be free from all the fatigue,
+envy, and uncertainty of our late situation.  I go every
+where; indeed, to have the stare over, and to use myself to
+neglect, but I meet nothing but civilities.  Here have been Lord
+Hartington, Coke, and poor Fitzwilliam,(438) and others crying:
+here has been Lord Deskford (439) and numbers to wish me joy; in
+short, it is a most extraordinary and various
+scene.(440)
+
+There are three people whom I pity much; the King, Lord
+Wilmington, and my own sister; the first, for the affront, to be
+forced to part with his minister, and to be forced to
+forgive his son; the second, as he is too old, and (even when he
+was young,) unfit for the burthen: and the poor girl,(441) who
+must be created an earl's daughter, as her birth would deprive
+her of the rank.  She must kiss hands, and bear the flirts of
+impertinent real quality
+
+I am invited to dinner to-day by Lord Strafford (442) Argyll's
+son-in-law.  You see we shall grow the fashion.
+
+My dear child, these are the most material points: I am
+sensible how much you must want particulars; but you must be
+sensible, too, that just yet, I have not time.
+
+Don't be uneasy; your brother Ned has been here to wish me joy:
+your brother Gal. has been here and cried; your tender nature
+will at first make you like the latter; but afterwards you will
+rejoice with the elder and me.  Adieu! Yours, ever, and the same.
+
+(436) "Sir Robert," says Coxe, "seemed to have anticipated this
+event, and met it with his usual fortitude and
+cheerfulness.  While the tellers were performing their office, he
+beckoned Sir Edward Baynton, the member whose return was
+supported by the Opposition, to sit near him., spoke to him with
+great complacency, animadverted on the ingratitude of several
+individuals who were voting against him, on whom he had conferred
+great favour, and declared he would never again sit in that
+House."-E.
+
+(437) Sir Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, knight of the
+garter, and at this time lord president of the council.
+
+(438) william, Baron, and afterwards Earl Fitzwilliam; a young
+lord, much attached to Sir R. W.
+
+(439) James Ogilvy, Lord Deskford succeeded his father, in 1764,
+as sixth Earl of Findlater, and third Earl of Seafield.  He held
+some inconsiderable offices in Scotland, and died in 1770.-D.
+
+(440) the peculiar antipathy to Lord Hardwicke manifested by
+Horace Walpole on all occasions is founded, no doubt, upon the
+opinion which he had taken up, that the resignation of Sir Robert
+Walpole at this moment had been rendered necessary by the
+treachery and intrigues of that nobleman and the Duke of
+Newcastle.  In his "Memoires" he repeatedly charges him with such
+treachery; and the Edinburgh reviewer of that work
+(xxxvi. 1). 29) favours this view, observing, "It appears
+that, unless there was a secret understanding of Newcastle and
+Hardwicke with Pulteney and Carteret, before Sir Robert's
+determination to resign, the coalition was effected between the
+31st of January and 2d of February; for on the 2d of
+February it was already settled that Lord Wilmington should be at
+the head of the Treasury in the new administration.  So speedy an
+adjustment of a point of such consequence looks
+somewhat like previous concert."  However much appearances might
+favour this opinion, another writer has shown most
+satisfactorily that no such previous concert existed.  The
+reviewer of the "Memoires" in the Quarterly Review (xxvii. p.
+191) proves, in the first place, that it was Sir Robert
+himself who determined the course of events, and, as he
+emphatically said, turned the key of the closet on Mr.
+Pulteney; so that, if he was betrayed, it must have been by
+himself; and secondly, that we have the evidence of his family
+and friends, that he was lost by his own inactivity and
+timidity; in other words, the great minister was worn out with
+age and business." And these views are confirmed by extracts from
+the "Walpoliana," written, be it remembered, by Philip, second
+Earl -of Hardwicke, son of the chancellor, from the information
+of the Walpole family, and even of Sir Robert
+himself; who, after his retirement, admitted his young friend
+into his conversation and confidence-a fact totally
+inconsistent with a belief in his father's treachery;-by Sir
+Robert's own authority, who, in a private and confidential letter
+to the Duke of Devonshire, dated 2d of February, 1742, giving an
+account of his resignation, and the efforts of his triumphant
+antagonists to form a new ministry, distinctly
+states "that he himself prevented the Duke of Newcastle's
+dismissal;" and lastly, by Horace Walpole's own pamphlet, "A
+Detection of a late Forgery," etc., in which he speaks of "the
+breach between the King and the Prince, as open, the known,
+avowed cause of the resignation, and which Sir Robert never
+disguised;"-and again, among the errors of the writer he
+notices, Sir Robert Walpole is made to complain of being
+abandoned by his friends.  This is for once an undeserved
+satire on mankind: no fallen minister ever experienced such
+attachment from his friends as he did."-E.
+
+(441) Maria, natural daughter of Sir R. W. by Maria Skerret, his
+mistress, whom he afterwards married.  She had a patent to take
+place as an earl's daughter.
+
+(442) William Wentworth, second Earl of Strafford, of the
+second creation. He married Anne Campbell, second daughter of
+John, Duke of Argyle.-D.
+
+
+
+220 Letter 53
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Feb. 9, 1741-2.
+
+You will have had my letter that told you of the great change.
+The scene is not quite so pleasant as it was, nor the
+tranquility arrived that we expected.  All is in confusion; no
+overtures from the Prince, who, it must seem, proposes to be
+King.  His party have persuaded him not to make up, but on much
+greater conditions than he first demanded: in short,
+notwithstanding his professions to the Bishop,(443)-he is to
+insist on the impeachment of Sir R., saying now, that his
+terms not being accepted at first, he is not bound to stick to
+them.  He is pushed on to this violence by Argyll,
+Chesterfield, Cobham,(444) Sir John Hind Cotton,(445) and Lord
+Marchmont.  The first says, "What impudence it is in Sir R. to be
+driving about the streets!" and all cry out, that he is still
+minister behind the curtain.  They will none of them come into
+the ministry, till several are displaced  but have summoned a
+great meeting of the faction for Friday, at the Fountain Tavern,
+to consult measures against Sir R., and
+to-morrow the Common Council meet, to draw up instructions for
+their members.  They have sent into Scotland and into the
+counties for the same purpose.  Carteret ind Pulteney@ pretend to
+be against this violence, but own that if their party
+insist upon it, they cannot desert them.  The cry against Sir R.
+has been greater this week than ever; first, against a
+grant of four thousand pounds a-year, which the King gave him on
+his resignation, but which, to quiet them, he has given Up.(446)
+Then, upon making his daughter a lady; their wives and daughters
+declare against giving her place.  He and she both kissed hands
+yesterday, and on Friday go to Richmond for a week.  He seems
+quite secure in his innocence-but what
+protection is that, against the power and malice of' party!
+Indeed, his friends seem as firm is ever, and frequent him as
+much; but they are not now the strongest.  As to an
+impeachment, I think they will not be so mad as to proceed to it:
+it is too solemn and too public to be attempted, without proof of
+crimes, of which he certainly is not guilty.  For a bill of'
+pains and penalties, they may, if they will, I
+believe, pass it through the Commons, but will scarce get the
+assent of the King and Lords.  In a week more I shall be able to
+write with less uncertainty.
+
+I hate sending you false news, as that was, of the Duke of
+Richmond's resignation.  It arose from his being two hours below
+with Sir R., and from some very warm discourse of his in the
+House of Lords, against the present violences; but went no
+further.  Zeal magnified this, as she came up stairs to me, and I
+wrote to you before I had seen Sir Robert.
+
+At a time when we ought to be most united, we are in the
+greatest confusion; such is the virtue of the patriots, though
+they have obtained what they professed alone to seek.  They will
+not stir one step in foreign affairs, though Sir R. has offered
+to unite with them, with all his friends, for the
+common cause.  It will now be seen whether he or they are most
+patriot.  You see I call him Sir Robert still! after one has
+known him by that name for these threescore years, it is
+difficult to accustom one's mouth to another title.
+
+In the midst of all this, we are diverting ourselves as
+cordially as if Righteousness and Peace had just been kissing one
+another.  Balls, operas, and masquerades! The Duchess of Norfolk
+(447) makes a grand masquing next week; and to-morrow there is
+one at the Opera-house.
+
+Here is a Saxe-Gothic prince, brother to her Royal
+Highness:(448) he sent her word from Dover that he was driven in
+there, in his way to Italy.  The man of the inn, Whom he
+consulted about lodgings in town, recommended him to one of very
+ill-fame in Suffolk-street.  He has got a neutrality for himself,
+and goes to both courts.
+
+Churchill (449) asked Pultney the other day, "Well, Mr.
+Pultney, will you break me too?"-"No, Charles," replied he, "you
+break fast enough of yourself!"  Don't you think it hurt him more
+than the other breaking would? Good night!
+Yours, ever.
+
+Thursday, Feb. 11, 1741-2.
+
+P. S. I had finished my letter, and unwillingly resolved to send
+you all that bad news, rather than leave you ignorant of our
+doings; but I have the pleasure of mending your prospect a
+little.  Yesterday the Common Council met, and resolved upon
+instructions to their members, which, except one not very
+descriptive paragraph, contains nothing personal -,against our
+new earl; and ends with resolutions "to stand by our present
+constitution." Mind what followed! One of them proposed to insert
+"the King and Royal Family" before the words, "our
+present constitution;" but, on a division, it was rejected by
+three to one.
+
+But to-day, for good news! Sir Robert has resigned; Lord
+Wilmington is first lord of the treasury, and Sandys has
+accepted the seals as chancellor of the exchequer, with Gibbon
+(450) and Sir John Rushout,(451) joined to him as other lords of
+the treasury.  Waller was to have been the other, but has
+formally refused.  So, Lord Sundon, Earle, Treby,(452) and
+Clutterbuck (453) are the first discarded, unless the latter
+saves himself by Waller's refusal.  Lord Harrington, who is
+created an earl, is made president of the council, and Lord
+Carteret has consented to be secretary of state in his
+room-but mind; not one of them has promised to be against the
+prosecution of Sir Robert, though I don't believe now that it
+will go on.  You see Pultney is not come in, except in his friend
+Sir John Rushout, but is to hold the balance between liberty and
+prerogative; at least, in this, he acts with
+honour.  They say Sir John Hind Cotton and the Jacobites will be
+left out,,unless they bring in Dr. Lee and Sir John Barnard to
+the admiralty, as they propose; for I do not think it is decided
+what are their principles.  Sir Charles Wager has
+resigned this morning:(454) he says, "We shall not die, but be
+all changed!"  though he says, a parson lately reading this text
+in an old Bible, where the c was rubbed out, read it, not die,
+but be all hanged!
+
+To-morrow our earl goes to Richmond Park, en retir`e; comes on
+Thursday to take his seat in the Lords, and returns thither
+again.  Sandys is very angry at his taking the title of
+Orford, which belonged to his wife's (455) great uncle.  You know
+a step of that nature cost the great Lord Strafford (456) his
+head, at the prosecution of a less bloody-minded man than Sandys.
+
+I remain in town, and have not taken at all to withdrawing, which
+I hear has given offence,(457) as well as my gay face in public;
+but as I had so little joy in the grandeur, I am
+determined to take as little part in the disgrace.  I am
+looking about for a new house.
+
+I have received two vast packets from you to-day, I believe from
+the bottom of the sea, for they have been so washed that I could
+scarce read them.  I could read the terrible history of the
+earthquakes at Leghorn: how infinitely good you was to poor Mrs.
+Goldsworthy!  How could you think I should not
+approve such vast humanity? but you are all humanity and
+forgiveness.  I am only concerned that they will be present when
+you receive all these disagreeable accounts of your
+friends.  Their support" is removed as well as yours.  I only
+fear the interest of the Richmonds (458) with the Duke of
+Newcastle; but I will try to put you well with Lord Lincoln.  We
+must write circumspectly, for our letters now are no longer safe.
+
+I shall see Amorevoli to-night to give him the letter.  Ah!
+Monticelli and the Visconti are to sing to-night at a great
+assembly at Lady Conway's.  I have not time to write more: so,
+good night, my dearest child! be in good spirits.
+Yours, most faithfully.
+
+P. S. We have at last got Cr`ebillon's "Sofa:" Lord
+Chesterfield received three hundred, and gave them to be sold at
+White's.  It is admirable! except the beginning of the
+first volume, and the last story, it is equal to any thing he has
+written.  How he has painted the most refined nature in Mazulhim!
+the most retired nature in Mocles! the man of
+fashion, that sets himself above natural sensations, and the man
+of sense and devotion, that would skirmish himself from their
+influence, are equally justly reduced to the standard of their
+own weakness.(459)
+
+(443) Secker, Bishop of Oxford.
+
+(444) Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, so created in 1717, with
+remainder to the issue male of his sister, Hester
+Grenville.  He had served in Flanders under the Duke of
+Marlborough, and was upon the overthrow of Sir Robert
+Walpole's administration promoted to the military rank of
+field marshal.  He is now best remembered as the friend of pope
+and the creator of the gardens at Stowe.-D.
+
+(445) Sir John Hinde Cotton, Bart. of Landwade, in
+Cambridgeshire; long a member of parliament, and one of the
+leaders of the Jacobite party.  He died in 1752, and Horace
+Walpole, in his Memoires, in noticing this event, says, "Died Sir
+John Cotton, the last Jacobite of any sensible
+activity."-D.
+
+Lord Carteret and Mr. Pulteney had really betrayed their party,
+and so injudiciously, that they lost their old friends and gained
+no new ones.
+
+(446) Sir Robert, at the persuasion of his brother, Mr.
+Selwyn, and others, desisted from this grant.  Three years
+afterwards, when the clamour was at an end, and his affairs
+extremely involved, he sued for it; which Mr. Pelham, his
+friend and `el`eve, was brought with the worst grace in the world
+to ask, and his old obliged master the King prevailed upon, with
+as ill grace, to grant. ["February 6. Sir R.
+Walpole was presented at Court as Earl of Orford.  He was
+persuaded to refuse a grant of four thousand pounds a-year during
+the King's life and his own, but could not be dissuaded from
+accepting a letter of honour from the King, to grant his natural
+daughter Maria, precedence as an earl's daughter; who was also
+presented this day.  The same thing had been done for Scrope,
+Earl of Sunderland, who left no lawful issue, and from one of
+whom Lord Howe is descended."-Secker MS.]
+
+(447) Mary, daughter of Edward Blount, Esq. and wife of
+Edward, ninth Duke of Norfolk.-D.
+
+(448) The Princess of Wales.-D.
+
+(449)General Charles Churchill.-D.
+
+(450) Philip Gibbons, Esq.-D.
+
+(451) Sir John Rushout, the fourth baronet of the family, had
+particularly distinguished himself as an opponent of Sir R.
+Walpole's excise scheme.  He was made treasurer of the navy in
+1743, and died in 1775, at the advanced age of ninety-one.  His
+son was created Lord Northwick, in 1797.-D.
+
+(452) George Treby, Esq.-D.
+
+(453) Thomas Clutterbuck, Esq.  He left the Treasury in
+February 1742, and was made treasurer of the navy.-D.
+
+(454) "February II.  Lord Orford and Sir Charles Wager
+resigned.  Mr. Sandys kissed hands as chancellor of the
+exchequer: Lord Wilmington declared first commissioner of the
+Treasury: offers made to the Duke of Argyle, but refused: none to
+Lord Chesterfield."-Secker MS.-E.
+
+(455) Lady Sandys was daughter of Lady Tipping, niece of
+Russel, Earl of Orford.
+
+(456) Sir Thomas Wentworth, the great Earl of Strafford, took the
+title of Raby from a castle of that name, which belonged to Sir
+Henry Vane, who, from that time, became his mortal foe.
+
+(457) Sir Charles Wager. [In the following December Sir
+Charles was appointed treasurer of the navy, which office he held
+till his death, in May 1743.)
+
+(458) Mrs. Goldsworthy had been a companion of the Duchess of
+Richmond.
+
+(459) Posterity has not confirmed the eulogium here given to the
+indecent trash of the younger Cr`ebillon: but in the age of
+George II. coarseness passed for humour, and obscenity was
+wit."-D
+
+
+
+224 Letter 54
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Feb. 18, 1741-2.
+
+I write to you more tired, and with more headache, than any one
+but you could conceive! I came home at five this morning from the
+Duchess of Norfolk's masquerade, and was forced to rise before
+eleven, for my father, who came from Richmond to take his seat in
+the Lords, for the Houses met to-day.  He is gone back to his
+retirement.  Things wear a better aspect: at the great meeting
+(460) on Friday, at the Fountain, Lord
+Carteret and Lord Winchilsea (461) refused to go, only saying,
+that they never dined at a tavern.  Pultney and the new
+chancellor of the exchequer went, and were abused by his Grace of
+Argyll.  The former said he was content with what was
+already done, and would not be active in any further
+proceedings, though he would not desert the party.  Sandys said
+the King had done him the honour to offer him that place; why
+should he not accept it? if he had not, another would: if nobody
+would, the King would be obliged to employ his old
+minister again, which he imagined the gentlemen present would not
+wish to see; and protested against screening, with the same
+conclusion as Pultney.  The Duke of Bedford was very warm against
+Sir William Yonge; Lord Talbot (462) was so in
+general.(463)
+
+During the recess, they have employed Fazakerley to draw up four
+impeachments; against Sir Robert, my uncle, Mr. Keene, and
+Colonel Bladen, who was only commissioner for the tariff at
+Antwerp.  One of the articles against Sir R. is, his having at
+this conjuncture trusted Lord Waldegrave as ambassador, who is so
+near a relation (464) of the Pretender-. but these
+impeachments are likely to grow obsolete manuscripts.  The minds
+of the people grow more candid: at first, they made one of the
+actors at Drury Lane repeat some applicable lines at the end of
+Harry the Fourth; but last Monday, when his Royal Highness-, had
+purposely bespoken "The Unhappy Favourite" (465) for Mrs.
+Porter's benefit, they never once applied the most glaring
+passages; as where they read the indictment against Robert Earl
+of Essex, etc.  The Tories declare against further prosecution-if
+Tories there are, for now one hears of nothing but the Broad
+Bottom: it is the reigning cant word, and means, the taking all
+parties and people, indifferently into the
+ministry.  The Whigs are the dupes of this; And those in the
+Opposition affirm that Tories no longer exist.
+Notwithstanding this, they will not come into the new
+ministry, unless what were always reckoned Tories are
+admitted.  The Treasury has gone a-begging: I mean one of the
+lordships, which is at last filled up with Major Compton, a
+relation of Lord Wilmington; but now we shall see a new scene.
+On Tuesday night Mr. Pultney went to the Prince, and, without the
+knowledge of Argyll, etc., prevailed on him to write to the King:
+he was so long determining, that it was eleven at night before
+the King received his letter.  Yesterday morning the prince,
+attended by two of his lords, two grooms of the Bedchamber, and
+Lord Scarborough,(466) his treasurer went to the King's
+levee.(467) The King said, "How does the Princess do?  I hope she
+is well."  The Prince kissed his hand, and this was all!  The
+Prince returned to Carlton House, whither crowds went to him.  He
+spoke to the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pelham; but would not to
+the three dukes, Richmond, Grafton, and Marlborough.(468)  At
+night the Royal Family were all at the Duchess of Norfolk'@' and
+the streets were illuminated and bonfired.  To-day, the Duke of
+Bedford, Lord Halifax, and some others, were at St. James's: the
+King spoke to all the Lords.  In a day or two, I shall go with my
+uncle and brothers to the Prince's levee.
+
+Yesterday there was a meeting of all the Scotch of our side, who,
+to a man, determined to defend Sir Robert
+
+Lyttelton (469) is going to marry Miss Fortescue, Lord
+Clinton's sister.
+
+When our earl went to the House of lords to-day, he
+apprehended some incivilities from his Grace of Argyll, but he
+was not there.  Bedford, Halifax, Berkshire,(470) and some more,
+were close by him, but would not bow to him.  Lord
+Chesterfield wished him joy.  This is all I know for certain; for
+I will not send you the thousand lies of every new day.
+
+I must tell you how fine the masquerade of last night was.  There
+were five hundred persons, in the greatest variety of handsome
+and rich dresses I ever saw, and all the jewels of London-and
+London has some! There were dozens of ugly Queens of Scots, of
+which I will only name to you the eldest Miss Shadwell!  The
+Princess of Wales was one, covered with
+diamonds, but did not take off her mask: none of the Royalties
+did, but every body else.  Lady Conway (471) was a charming Mary
+Stuart: Lord and Lady Euston, man and woman huzzars.  But the two
+finest and most charming masks were their Graces of
+Richmond,(472) like Harry the Eighth and Jane Seymour:
+excessively rich, and both so handsome @ Here is a nephew of the
+King of Denmark, who was in armour, and his governor, a most
+admirable Quixote.  there were quantities of Vandykes, and all
+kinds of old pictures walked out of the frames.  It was an
+assemblage of all ages and nations, and would look like the day
+of judgment, if tradition did not persuade us that we are all to
+meet naked, and if something else did not tell us that we shall
+not meet with quite so much indifference, nor thinking quite so
+much of the becoming.  My dress was an
+Aurungzebe: but of all extravagant figures commend me to our
+friend the Countess!(473)  She and my lord trudged in like
+pilgrims with vast staffs in their hands; and she was so
+heated, that you would have thought her pilgrimage had been, like
+Pantagruel's voyage, to the Oracle of the Bottle! Lady Sophia was
+in a Spanish dress-so was Lord Lincoln; not, to be sure, by
+design, but so it happened.  When the King came in, the Faussans
+(474) were there, and danced an entr`ee.  At the masquerade the
+King sat by Mrs. Selwyn, and with tears told her, that "the Whigs
+should find he loved them, as he had the poor man that was gone!"
+He had sworn that he would not speak to the Prince at their
+meeting, but was prevailed on.
+
+I received your letter by Holland, and the paper about the
+Spaniards.  By this time you will conceive that I can speak of
+nothing to any purpose, for Sir R. does not meddle in the
+least with business.
+
+As to the Sibyl, I have not mentioned it to him; I still am for
+the other.  Except that, he will not care, I believe, to buy more
+pictures, having now so many more than he has room for at
+Houghton; and he will have but a small house in town when we
+leave this.  But you must thank the dear Chutes for their new
+offers; the obligations are too great, but I am most sensible to
+their goodness, and, were I not so excessively tired now, would
+write to them.  I cannot add a word more, but to think of the
+Princess:(475) "Comment! vous avez donc des enfans!" You see how
+nature sometimes breaks out in spite of religion and prudery,
+grandeur and pride, delicacy and
+`epuisements!  Good night!
+Yours ever.
+
+(460) See an account of this meeting in Lord Egmonfs "Faction
+Detected." [To this meeting at the Fountain tavern Sir Charles
+Hanbury Williams alludes in his Ode against the Earl of Bath,
+called the Statesman-
+
+"Then enlarge on his cunning and wit:
+Say, how he harangued at the Fountain;
+Say, how the old patriots were bit,
+And a mouse was produced by a mountain."]
+
+(461) Daniel Finch, seventh Earl of Winchilsea and third Earl of
+Nottingham.  He was made first lord of the admiralty upon the
+breaking up of Sir R. Walpole's government.-D.
+
+(462) William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of the lord
+chancellor of that name and title.-D.
+
+(463) The following is from the Secker MS.-"Feb. 12.  Meeting at
+the Fountain tavern of above two hundred commoners and
+thirty-five Lords.  Duke of Argyle spoke warmly for
+prosecuting Lord Orford, with hints of reflection on those who
+had accepted.  Mr. Pulteney replied warmly.  Lord Talbot drank to
+cleansing the Augean stable of the dung and grooms.  Mr. Sandys
+and Mr. Gibbon there.  Lord Carteret and Lord
+Winchilsea not.  Lord Chancellor, in the evening, in private
+discourse to me, strong against taking in any Tories: owning no
+more than that some of them, perhaps, were not for the
+Pretender, or, at least, did not know they were for him;
+though, when I gave him the account first of my discourse with
+the Prince, he said, the main body of them were of the same
+principles with the Tories."-E.
+
+(464) His mother was natural daughter of King James II.
+(James, first Earl Waldegrave, appointed ambassador to the court
+of France in 1730: died in 1741.-D.)
+
+(465) banks's tragedy of "The Unhappy Favourite; or, the Earl of
+Essex," was first acted in 1682.  The prologue and epilogue were
+written by Dryden.  Speaking of this play, in the Tatler, Sir
+Richard Steele says, "there is in it not one good line, and yet
+it is a play which was never seen without drawing
+tears from some part of the audience; a remarkable instance, that
+the soul is not to be moved by words, but things; for the
+incidents in the drama are laid together so happily that the
+spectator makes the play for himself, by the force with which the
+circumstance has upon his imagination."-E.
+
+(466) Thomas Lumley, third Earl of Scarborough.-D.
+
+(467) "February 17.  Prince of Wales went to St. James's.  The
+agreement made at eleven the night before, and principally by Mr.
+Pultney; as Lord Wilmington told me.  The King received him in
+the drawing-room: the Prince kissed his hand: he asked him how
+the Princess did: showed no other mark of regard.  All the
+courtiers went the same day to Carlton House.  The Bishop of
+Gloucester (Dr. Benson) and I went thither.  The Prince and
+princess civil to us both." Secker MS.-E.
+
+(468) Charles Spencer, second duke of Marlborough succeeded to
+that title on the death of his aunt Henrietta, Duchess of
+Marlborough, in 1733.-D.
+
+(469) Sir George Lyttelton, afterwards created Lord Lyttelton.
+Miss Fortescue was his first wife, and mother of Thomas,
+called the wicked Lord Lyttelton.  She died in childbed and Lord
+Lyttelton honoured her Memory with the well-known Monody which
+was so unfeelingly parodied by Smollett.-D. [ Under the title of
+an "Ode on the Death of My Grandmother.")
+
+(470 Henry Bowes Howard, fourth Earl of Berkshire.  He
+succeeded, in 1745, as eleventh Earl of Suffolk, on the death,
+without issue, of henry, tenth earl.  He died in 1757.-D.
+
+(471) Lady Isabella Fitzroy, Youngest daughter of the Duke of
+grafton, and wife of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway of Hertford.
+
+(472) Charles Lennox, master of the horse, and Sarah Cadogan, his
+duchess.  He died in the year following.
+
+(473) The Countess of Pomfret.
+
+(474) Two celebrated comic dancers.
+
+(475) Princess Craon, so often mentioned in these letters.-D.
+
+
+
+227 Letter 55
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Feb. 25, 1742.
+
+I am impatient to hear that you have received my first account of
+the change; as to be sure you are now for every post.  This last
+week has not produced many new events.  The Prince of Wales has
+got the measles,(476) so there has been but little incense
+offered up to him: his brother of Saxe-Gotha has got them too.
+When the Princess went to St. James's, she fell at the King's
+feet and struggled to kiss his hand, and burst into tears.  At
+the Norfolk masquerade she was vastly bejewelled; Frankz had lent
+her forty thousand pounds worth, and refused to be paid for the
+hire, only desiring that she would tell whose they were.  All
+this is nothing, but to introduce one of Madame de Pomfret's
+ingenuities, who. being dressed like a pilgrim, told the
+Princess, that she had taken her for the Lady of Loreto.
+
+But you will wish for politics now, more than for histories of
+masquerades, though this last has taken up people's thoughts full
+as much.  The House met last Thursday and voted the army without
+a division: Shippen (477 alone, unchanged, Opposed it.  They have
+since been busied on elections, turning out our
+friends and voting in their own.. almost without opposition.  The
+chief affair has been the Denbighshire election, on the petition
+of Sir Watkyn William . 'They have voted him into parliament and
+the high-sheriff into Newgate.  Murray (478) was most eloquent:
+Lloyd,(479) the counsel on the other side, and no bad one, (for I
+go constantly, though I do not stay long, but "leave the dead to
+bury their dead," said that it was objected to the sheriff, that
+he was related to the
+sitting member; but, indeed, in that country (Wales) it would be
+difficult not to be related.  Yesterday we had another
+hearing of the petition of the Merchants, when Sir Robert
+Godschall shone brighter than even his usual.  There was a copy
+of a letter produced, the original having been lost: he asked
+whether the copy had been taken before the original was lost, or
+after!
+
+Next week they commence their prosecutions, which they will
+introduce by voting a committee to inquire into all the
+offices: Sir William Yonge is to be added to the impeachments,
+but the chief whom they wish to punish is my uncle.(480) He is
+the more to be pitied, because nobody will pity him.  They are
+not fond of a formal message which the States General have sent
+to Sir Robert, "to compliment him on his new honour, and to
+condole with him on being out of the ministry, which will be so
+detrimental to Europe!
+
+The third augmentation in Holland is confirmed, and that the
+Prince of Hesse is chosen generallissimo, which makes it
+believed that his Grace of Argyll will not go over, but that we
+shall certainly have a war with France in the spring.
+Argyll has got the Ordnance restored to him, and they wanted to
+give him his regiment; to which Lord Hertford (481) was desired
+to resign it, with the offer of his old troop again.  He said he
+had received the regiment from the King; if his Majesty pleased
+to take it back, he might, but he did not know why he should
+resign it.  Since that, he wrote a letter to the King, and sent
+it by his son, Lord Beauchamp, resigning his regiment, his
+government, and his wife's pension, as lady of the bedchamber to
+the late Queen.
+
+No more changes are made yet.  They have offered the Admiralty to
+Sir Charles Wager again, but he refused it: he said, he heard
+that he was an old woman, and that he did not know what good old
+women could do any where.
+
+A comet has appeared here for two nights, which, you know, is
+lucky enough at this time and a pretty ingredient for making
+prophecies.
+
+These are all the news.  I receive your letters regularly, and
+hope you receive mine so: I never miss one week.  Adieu! my
+dearest child! I am perfectly well; tell me always that you are.
+Are the good Chutes still at Florence? My best love to them, and
+services to all.
+
+Here are some new Lines much in vogue:(482)
+
+                                   1741.
+
+Unhappy England, still in forty-one (483)
+By Scotland art thou doom'd to be undone!
+But Scotland now, to strike alone afraid,
+Calls in her worthy sister Cornwall's (484) aid;
+And these two common Strumpets, hand in hand,
+Walk forth, and preach up virtue through the land;
+Start at corruption, at a bribe turn pale,
+Shudder at pensions, and at placemen rail.
+Peace, peace! ye wretched hypocrites; or rather
+With Job, say to Corruption, " Thou'rt our Father."
+
+But how will Walpole justify his fate?
+He trusted Islay (485) till it was too late.
+Where were those parts! where was that piercing mind!
+That judgment, and that knowledge of mankind!
+To trust a Traitor that he knew so well!
+(Strange truth! I)ctray'd, but not deceived, he fell!)
+He knew his heart was, like his aspect, vile;
+Knew him the tool, and Brother of Argyll!
+Yet to his hands his power and hopes gave up;
+And though he saw 'twas poison, drank the cup!
+Trusted to one he never could think true,
+And perish'd by a villain that he knew.
+
+(476) "February 21.  Prince taken ill of the measles.  The King
+sent no message to him in his illnesses Secker MS.-E.
+
+(477) William Shippen, a celebrated Jacobite.  Sir R. Walpole
+said that he was the Only man whose price he did not know. [See
+ante, p. 194, Letter 45.]
+
+             (478)  William Murray, Mr. Pope's friend,
+afterwards Solicitor, and then Attorney-general.
+
+(479) Sir Richard Lloyd, who succeeded Mr. Murray, in 1754, as
+Solicitor-general.
+
+(480) Horace Walpole, brother of Sir Robert.
+
+(481) Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, eldest son of
+Charles, called the proud Duke of Somerset, whom he succeeded in
+that Title, and was the last Duke of Somerset of that
+branch; his son, who is here mentioned, having died before
+him.-D.
+
+(482) These Lines were written by Sir Charles Hanbury
+Williams. [And are published in the edition of his works, in
+three volumes, 12 no.1.
+
+(483) Alluding to the Grand Rebellion against Charles the
+First.
+
+(484) The Parliament which overthrew Sir R. W. was carried
+against him by his losing the majority of the Scotch and
+Cornish boroughs; the latter managed by Lord Falmouth
+                           and Thomas Pitt.
+
+(485) Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, brother of John, Duke of
+Argyll, in conjunction with whom (though then openly at variance)
+he was supposed to have betrayed Sir R.
+                           W. and to have let the Opposition
+succeed in the Scotch elections, which were trusted to
+                           his management.  It must be
+observed, that Sir R. W. would never allow that he believed
+                    himself betrayed by Lord Islay.
+
+
+
+229 Letter 56
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, March 3d, 1742.
+
+I am Obliged to write to you to-day, for I am sure I shall not
+have a moment to-morrow; they are to make their motion for a
+secret committee to examine into the late administration.  We are
+to oppose it strongly, but to no purpose; for since the change,
+they have beat us on no division under a majority of forty.  This
+last week has produced no new novelties; his
+Royal Highness has been shut up with the measles, of which he was
+near dying, by eating China oranges.
+
+We are to send sixteen thousand men into Flanders in the
+spring, under his Grace of Argyll; they talk of the Duke of
+Marlborough and Lord Albemarle to command under him.  Lord
+Cadogan (486) is just dead, so there is another regiment
+vacant: they design Lord Delawar's for Westmoreland;(487) so now
+Sir Francis Dashwood (488) will grow as fond of the King again as
+he used to be-or as he has hated him since.
+
+We have at last finished the Merchants' petition, under the
+conduct of the Lord Mayor and Mr. Leonidas;(489) the greatest
+coxcomb and the greatest oaf that ever met in blank verse or
+prose.  I told you the former's question about the copy of a
+letter taken after the original was lost.  They have got a new
+story of him; that hearing of a gentleman who had had the
+small-pox twice and died of it, he asked, if he died the first
+time or the second-if this is made for him, it is at least quite
+in his style.  After summing up the evidence (in doing which, Mr.
+Glover literally drank several times to the Lord Mayor in a glass
+of water that stood by him,) Sir John Barnard moved to vote, that
+there had been great neglect in the
+protection of the trade, to the great advantage of' the enemy,
+and the dishonour of the nation.  He said he did not mean to
+charge the Admiralty particularly, for then particular persons
+must have had particular days assigned to be heard in their own
+defence, which would take up too much time, as we are now going
+to make inquiries of a much higher nature.  Mr. Pelham was for
+leaving out the last words.  Mr. Doddington rose, and in a set
+speech declared that the motion was levelled at a particular
+person, who had so usurped all authority, that all inferior
+offices were obliged to submit to his will, and so either bend
+and bow, or be broken: but that he hoped the steps we were now
+going to take, would make the office of first
+minister so dangerous a post, that nobody would care to accept it
+for the future.  Do but think of this fellow, who has so lost all
+character, and made himself so odious to both King, and Prince,
+by his alternate flatteries, changes, oppositions, and changes of
+flatteries and oppositions, that he can never expect what he has
+so much courted by all methods,-think of his talking of making it
+dangerous for any one else to accept the first ministership!
+Should such a period ever arrive, he would accept it with joy-the
+only chance he can ever have for it! But sure, never was
+impudence more put to shame! The whole debate turned upon him.
+Lord Doneraile (490) (who, by the way, has produced blossoms of
+Doddington like fruit, and
+consequently is the fitter scourge for him) stood up and said, he
+did not know what that gentleman meant; that he himself was as
+willing to bring all offenders to justice as any man; but that he
+did not intend to confine punishment to those who had been
+employed only at the end of the last ministry, but
+proposed to extend it to all who had been engaged in it, and
+wished that that gentleman would speak with more lenity of an
+administration, in which he himself had been concerned for so
+many years.  Winnington said, he did not know what Mr.
+Doddington had meant, by either bending or being broken; that he
+knew some who had been broken, though they had bowed an bended.
+Waller defended Doddington, and said, if he was
+gilty, at least Mr. Winnington was so too; on which Fox rose up,
+and, laying his hand on his breast, said, he never wished to have
+such a friend, as could only excuse him by bringing in another
+for equal share of his guilt.  Sir John Cotton
+replied; he did not wonder that Mr. Fox (who had spoken with
+great warmth) was angry at hearing his friend in place,
+compared to one out of place.  Do but figure how Doddington must
+have looked and felt during such dialogues!  In short, it ended
+in Mr. Pultney's rising, and saying, he could not be against the
+latter words, as he thought the former part of the motion had
+been proved . and wished both parties would join in carrying on
+the war vigorously, or in procuring a good peace, rather than in
+ripping open old sores, and continuing the
+heats and violences of parties.  We came to no division-for we
+should have lost it by too many.
+
+Thursday evening.
+
+I had written all the former part of my letter, only reserving
+room to tell you, that they had carried the secret
+committee-but it is put off till next Tuesday.  To-day we had
+nothing but the giving up the Heydon election, when Mr.
+Ppultney had an opportunity (as Mr. Chute and Mr. Robinson would
+not take the trouble to defend a cause which they could not
+carry) to declaim upon corruption: had it come to a trial, there
+were eighteen witnesses ready to swear positive bribery against
+Mr. Pultney.  I would write to Mr. Chute, and thank him for his
+letter which you sent me, but I am so out of
+humour at his brother's losing his seat, that I cannot speak
+civilly even to him to-day.
+
+It is said, that my Lord's Grace of Argyll has carried his great
+point of the Broad Bottom-as I suppose you will hear by
+rejoicings from Rome.  The new Admiralty is named; at the head is
+to be Lord Winchilsea, with Lord Granard,(491) Mr.
+Cockburn, his Grace's friend, Dr. Lee, the chairman, Lord Vere
+Beauclerc;(492) one of the old set, by the interest of the Duke
+of Dorset, and the connexion of Lady Betty Germain, whose niece
+Lord Vere married; and two Tories, Sir John Hind Cotton and Will.
+Chetwynd,(493) an agent of Bolingbroke's-all this is not declared
+yet, but is believed.
+
+This great Duke has named his four aid-de-camps-Lord Charles Hay;
+George Stanhope, brother of Earl Stanhope; Dick
+Lyttelton, who Was page; and a Campbell.  Lord Cadogan is not
+dead, but has been given over.
+
+We are rejoicing over the great success of the Queen of
+Hungary's arms, and the number of blows and thwarts which the
+French have received.  It is a prosperous season for our new
+popular generals to grow glorious!
+
+But, to have done with politics.  Old Marlborough has at last
+published her Memoirs; they are digested by one Hooke, (494) who
+wrote a Roman history; but from her materials which are so
+womanish, that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown
+and petticoat with them.  There are some choice letters from
+Queen Anne, little inferior in the fulsome to those from King
+James to the Duke of Buckingham.
+
+Lord Oxford's (495) famous sale begins next Monday, where
+there is as much rubbish of another kind as in her grace's
+history.  Feather bonnets presented by the Americans to Queen
+Elizabeth; elks'-horns -cups; true copies converted into
+candle of original pictures that never existed; presents to
+himself from the Royal Society, etc. particularly forty
+volumes of prints of illustrious English personages; which
+collection is collected from frontispieces to godly books, bibles
+and head-pieces and tail-pieces to Waller's works;
+views of King Charles's sufferings; tops of ballads;
+particularly earthly crowns for heavenly ones, and streams of
+glory.  There are few good pictures.  for the miniatures are not
+to be sold, nor the manuscripts , the books not till next year.
+There are a few fine bronzes, and a very fine
+collection of English coins.
+
+We have got another opera,(496) which is liked.  There was to
+have been a vast elephant, but the just directors, designing to
+give the audience the full weight of one for their money, made it
+so heavy that at the prova it broke through the stage.  It was to
+have carried twenty soldiers, with Monticelli on a throne in the
+middle.  There is a new subscription begun for next year, thirty
+subscribers at two hundred pounds each.  Would you believe that I
+am one? You need not believe it
+quite, for I am but half an one; Mr. Conway and I take a share
+between us.  We keep Monticelli and Amorevoli, and to please Lord
+Middlesex, that odious Muscovita; but shall discard Mr. Vaneschi.
+We are to have the Barberina and the two Faussans; so, at least,
+the singers and dancers will be equal to any thing in Europe.
+
+Our earl is still at Richmond: I have not been there yet; I shall
+go once or twice; for however little inclination I have to it, I
+would not be thought to grow cool just now.  You know I am above
+such dirtiness, and you are sensible that my
+coolness is of much longer standing.  Your sister is with mine at
+the Park; they came to town last Tuesday for the
+opera, and returned next day.  After supper, I prevailed on your
+sister (497) to sing, and though I had heard her before, I
+thought I never heard any thing beyond it; there is a
+sweetness in her voice equal to Cuzzoni's, with a better
+manner.                                '
+
+I was last week at the masquerade, dressed like an old woman, and
+passed for a good mask.  I took the English liberty of teasing
+whomever I pleased, particularly old Churchill.  I told him I was
+quite ashamed. of being there till I met him, but was quite
+comforted with finding one person in the room older than myself.
+The Duke,(498) who had been told who I was, came up and said, "Je
+connois cette poitrine." I took him for some Templar, and
+replied, "Vous! vous ne connoissez que des poitrines qui sont
+bien plus us`ees." It was unluckily pat.  The next night, at the
+drawing-room, he asked me, very good-humouredly, if I knew who
+was the old woman that had
+teased every body at the masquerade.  We were laughing so much at
+this, that the King crossed the room to Lady Hervey, who was with
+us, and said, "What are those boys laughing at set" She told him,
+and that I had said I was so awkward at
+undressing myself, that I had stood for an hour in my stays and
+under-petticoat before my footman.  My thanks to Madame Grifoni.
+I cannot write more now, as I must not make my
+letter too big, when it appears at the secretary's office
+nouc.  As to my sister, I am sure Sir Robert would never have
+accepted Prince Craon's offer, who now, I suppose, would not be
+eager to repeat it.
+
+(486) Charles, Lord Cadogan, of Oakley, to which title he
+succeeded on the death of his elder brother, William, Earl
+Cadogan, who was one of the most distinguished "of
+Marlborough's captains." Charles, Lord Cadogan, did not die at
+the period when this letter was written.  On the contrary, he
+lived, till the year 1776.-D.
+
+(487) John, seventh Earl of Westmoreland.  He built the
+Palladian Villa of Mereworth, in Kent, which is a nearly   exact
+copy of the celebrated Villa Capra, near Vicenza.  He died in
+1762.  Sir Francis Dashwood succeeded, on his decease, to the
+barony in fee of Le Despencer.-D.
+
+(488) Sir Francis Dashwood, nephew to the Earl of
+Westmoreland, had gone violently into Opposition, on that
+lord's losing his regiment.
+
+(489) Mr. Glover. (Walpole always depreciates Glover; but his
+conduct, upon the occasion referred to in the text, displayed
+considerable ability.-D.) [His speech upon this occasion was
+afterwards published in a pamphlet, entitled, ,A short Account of
+the late Application to Parliament, made by the Merchants of
+London, upon the Neglect of their Trade; with the Substance
+thereof, as summed up by Mr. Glover.,,]
+
+(490) Arthur Mohun St. Leger, third Viscount Doneraile, in
+Ireland, of the first creation.
+                 He was at this time member for Winchilsea, was
+appointed a lord of the bedchamber to Frederick Prince of Wales
+in 1747, and died at Lisbon in 1749.-D.
+
+(491) George Forbes, third Earl of Granard in Ireland; an
+admiral, and a member of the House of Commons.-D.
+
+(492) Third son of the first Duke of St. Albans, created in 1750
+Lord Vere of Hanworth in Middlesex.  He was the direct ancestor
+of the present line of the St. Albans family.  His wife was Mary,
+daughter and heiress of Thomas Chambers, Esq. of Hanworth, by
+Lady Mary Berkeley, the sister of lady Betty Germain.-D.
+
+(493) William Richard Chetwynd    'second brother of the first
+viscount of that name; member of parliament successively for
+Stafford and Plymouth.  He had been envoy at Genoa, and a lord of
+the Admiralty; and he finally succeeded his two elder
+brothers as third Viscount Chetwynd, in 1767.-D. [He was
+familiarly called "Black Will," and sometimes "Oroonoka
+Chetwynd," from his dark complexion.  He died in 1770.]
+
+(494) Nathaniel Hooke, a laborious compiler, but a very bad
+writer.  It is said, that the Duchess of Marlborough gave him
+5000 pounds for the services he rendered her, in the
+composition and publication of her apology.  She, however,
+afterwards quarrelled with him, because she said he tried to
+convert her to Popery.  Hooke was himself of that religion, and
+was also a Quietist, and an enthusiastic follower of
+Fenelon.  It was Hooke who brought a Catholic priest to attend
+the deathbed of Pope; a proceeding which excited such bitter
+inclination in the infidel Bolingbroke.  Hooke died July 19,
+1763. [When Hooke asked Pope, "whether he should not send for a
+priest, the dying    poet replied, "I do not suppose that is
+essential, but it will look right."-Spence, p. 322.)
+
+(495) Edward second Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, only son of
+the minister, he was a great and liberal patron of
+literature and learned men, and completed the valuable
+collection of manuscripts commenced by his father, which is now
+in the British Museum. He married the great Cavendish
+heiress, Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter of Holles,
+Duke of Newcastle, and died June 16, 1741.-D.
+
+(496) By Buranello, and called "Scipione in Cartagine."-E.
+(497) Mary Mann, afterwards married to Mr. Foote.
+
+
+(498) Of Cumberland.  [William Augustus, third son of George II.)
+
+
+
+234 Letter 57
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+March 10, 1742.
+
+I will not work you up into a fright only to have the pleasure of
+putting you out of it, but will tell you at once that we have
+gained the greatest victory! I don't mean in the person of
+Admiral Vernon, nor of Admiral Haddock; no. nor in that of his
+Grace of Argyll.  By we, I don't mean we; England, but we,
+literally we; not you and I, but we, the House of Orford.  The
+certainty that the Opposition (or rather the Coalition, for that
+is the new name they have taken) had of carrying every point they
+wished, made them, in the pride of their hearts, declare that
+they would move for the Secret Committee
+yesterday (Tuesday), and next Friday would name the list, by
+which day they should have Mr. Sandys from his reelection.  It
+was, however, expected to be put off, as Mr. Pultney could not
+attend the House, his only daughter was dying-they say she is
+dead.(499) But an affair of consequence to them, and indeed to
+the nation in general, roused all their rage, and drove them to
+determine on the last violences.  I told you in my last, that the
+new Admiralty was named, with a mixture of Tories; that is, it
+was named by my Lord of Argyll; but the King
+flatly put his negative on Sir John Cotton.  They said he was no
+Tory now, (and, in truth, he yesterday in the House
+professed himself a Whig,) and that there were no Tories left in
+the nation.  The King replied, "that might be; but he was
+determined to stand by those who had set him and his family upon
+the throne." This refusal enraged them so much, that they
+declared they would force him, not only to turn out all the old
+ministry, but the new too, if he wished to save Sir R. and others
+of his friends; and that, as they supposed he designed to get the
+great bills passed, and then prorogue the
+Parliament, they were determined to keep back some of the
+chief bills, and sit all the summer, examining into the late
+administration.  Accordingly, yesterday, in a most full house,
+Lord Limerick (500) (who, last year, seconded the famous
+motion )501)) moved for a committee to examine into the
+conduct of the last twenty years, and was seconded by Sir John
+St. Aubin.(502)  In short, (for I have not time to tell you the
+debate at length,) we divided, between eight and nine, when there
+was not a man of our party that did not expect to lose it by at
+least fifteen or twenty, but, to our great
+amazement, and their as great confusion, we threw out the
+motion, by a majority of 244 against 242.(503) Was there ever a
+more surprising event! a disgraced minister, by his personal
+interest, to have a majority to defend him even from inquiry!
+What was ridiculous, the very man who seconded the motion
+happened to be shut out at the division; but there was one on our
+side shut out too.
+
+I don't know what violent step they will take next; it must be by
+surprise, for when they could not carry this, it will be
+impossible for them to carry any thing more personal.  We
+trust that the danger is now past, though they had a great
+meeting to-day at Doddington 'S,(504) and threaten still.  He was
+to have made the motion, but was deterred by the treatment he met
+last week.  Sir John Norris was not present; he has resigned all
+his employments, in a pique for not being named of the new
+Admiralty.  His old Grace of Somerset (505) is
+reconciled to his son, Lord Hertford, on his late affair of
+having the regiment taken from him: he sent for him, and told him
+he had behaved like his son.
+
+My dearest child, I have this moment received a most
+unexpected and most melancholy letter from you, with an
+account of your fever and new operation.  I did not in the least
+dream of your having any more trouble from that
+disorder! are YOU never to be delivered from it? Your letter has
+shocked me extremely; and then I am terrified at the
+Spaniards passing so near Florence.  If they should, as I fear
+they will, stay there, how inconvenient and terrible it would be
+for you, now you are ill! You tell me, and my good Mr.
+Chute tells me, that you are out of all danger, and much
+better; but to what can I trust, when you have these continual
+relapses? The vast time that passes between your writing and my
+receiving your letters, makes me flatter myself, that by now you
+are out of all pain: but I am miserable, with finding that you
+may be still subject to new torture!  not all your courage, which
+is amazing can give me any about you.  But how can you write to
+me? I will not suffer it-and now, good Mr. Chute will write for
+you.  I am so angry at your writing
+immediately after that dreadful operation, though I see your
+goodness in it, that I will not say a word more to you.  All the
+rest is to Mr. Chute.
+
+What shall I say to you, my dearest Sir, for all your
+tenderness to poor Mr. Mann and me? as you have so much
+friendship for him, you may conceive how much I am obliged to
+you.  How much do I regret not having had more opportunities of
+showing you my esteem and love, before this new attention, to Mr.
+Mann.  You do flatter me, and tell me he is
+recovering--nay I trust you? and don't you say it, only to
+comfort me?-Say a great deal for me to Mr. Whithed; he is
+excessively good to me; I don't know how to thank him.  I am
+happy that you are so well yourself, and so constant to your
+fasting.  To reward your virtues, I will tell you the news I
+know; not much, but very extraordinary.  What would be the most
+extraordinary event that you think could happen? Would not-next
+to his becoming a real patriot-the Duke of Argyll's resigning be
+the most unexpected?  would any thing be more surprising than his
+immediately resigning power at having felt the want of them? Be
+that as it will, he literally, actually, resigned all his new
+commissions yesterday, because the King refused to employ the
+Tories.(506)  What part he will act next is yet to come.  Mrs.
+Boothby said, upon the occasion, "that in one month's time he had
+contrived to please the whole
+nation-the Tories, by going to court; the Whigs, by leaving it."
+
+They talk much of impeaching my father, since they could not
+committee him; but as they could not, I think they will scarce be
+able to carry a more violent step.  However, to show how little
+Tory resentments are feared, the King has named a new Admiralty;
+Lord Winchilsea, Admiral Cavendish, Mr. Cockburn, Dr. Lee, Lord
+Baltimore, young Trevor,(507) (which is much disliked, for he is
+of no consequence for estate, and less for parts, but is a
+relation of the Pelhams,) and Lord Archibald Hamilton,(508)-to
+please his Royal Highness.  Some of his
+people (not the Lytteltons and Pitts) stayed away the other night
+upon the Secret Committee, and they think he will at last rather
+take his father's part, than Argyll's.
+
+Poor Mr. PUltney has lost his girl: she was an only daughter, and
+sensible and handsome.  He has only a son left, and, they say, is
+afflicted to the greatest degree.
+
+I will say nothing about old Sarah's Memoirs; for, with some
+spirit they are nothing but remnants of old women's frippery.
+Good night!  I recommend my poor Mr. Mann to you, and am
+yours, most faithfully.
+
+P. S. My dearest child, how unhappy I shall be, till I hear you
+are quite recovered
+
+(499) The young lady died on the preceding evening.  She was in
+her fourteenth year.-E.
+
+(500) William Hamilton, Lord Viscount Limerick. (According to the
+peerages, Lord Limerick's Christian name was James, and not
+William.-D.)
+
+(501) For removing Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+(502) Sir John St. Aubyn, of Clowance in Cornwall, third
+baronet of that family.-D.  [He died in 1744.
+
+(503) March 9. Motion in the House of Commons for a secret
+committee to inquire into our affairs for twenty or twenty-one
+years.  The Speaker said Ayes had it: one that was for it
+divided the House.  The Noes carried it by 244 against 242.  Mr.
+Sandys at Worcester, Mr. Pulteny at home-his daughter
+dying.  The Prince at New.  Several of his servants, and
+several Scotch members, not at the House; nor Lord
+Winchelsea's brothers.  Gibbon, Rushout, Barnard voted for the
+committee, but did not speak.  It is said that the Prince had
+before this written to Lord Carteret, to desire that Lord
+Archibald Hamilton and Lord Baltimore might be lords of the
+Admiralty, and that this had been promised."-Secker, MS.-E.
+
+(504) "Never was there," writes Mr. Orlebar to the Rev.  Mr.
+Elough, "a greater disappointment.  Those who proved the
+minority, were so sure of being the majority, that the great Mr.
+Dodington harangued in the lobby those who went out at the
+division to desire them not to go away, because there were
+several other motions to be made in consequence of that: and
+likewise to bespeak their attendance at the Fountain, in order to
+settle the committee.  Upon which Sir George Oxenden, after they
+found it was lost, whispered -@t friend thus: I Suppose we were
+to desire Mr. D. to print the speeches he has just now made in
+the lobby."
+
+(505) Charles, commonly called "the proud Duke of Somerset."  An
+absurd, vain, pompous man, who appears to have been also most
+harsh and unfeeling to those who depended on him.-D.
+
+(506) March 10.  Duke of argyle resigned his places to the
+King.  He gave for a reason, that a proposal had been made to him
+for going ambassador to Holland, which he understood to be
+sending him out of the way." Secker MS.-E.
+
+(507) The Hun. John Trevor, second son of Thomas, first Lord
+Trevor.  He succeeded his elder brother Thomas, as third Lord
+Trevor, in 1744.-D.
+
+(508) Lord Archibald Hamilton was the seventh and youngest son of
+Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, in her own right, and of
+William, Earl of Selkirk, her husband, created by Charles II.
+Duke of Hamilton, for life b.  Lord Archibald married Lady Jane
+Hamilton, daughter of James, Earl of Abercorn, and by her had
+three sons; of whom the youngest was Sir William
+Hamilton, so long the British envoy at the court of Naples.-D.
+
+
+
+
+237 Letter 58
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Monday, March 22, 1742.
+[Great part of this letter is lost.]
+
+*** I have at last received a letter from you in answer to the
+first I wrote you upon the change in the ministry.  I hope you
+have received mine regularly since, that you may know all the
+consequent steps.  I like the Pasquinades you sent me, and think
+the Emperor's(509) letter as mean as you do.  I hope his state
+will grow more abject every day.  It is amazing, the progress and
+success of the Queen of Hungary's arms! It is said to-day, that
+she has defeated a great body of the
+Prussians in Moravia.  We are going to extend a helping hand to
+her at last.  Lord Stair (510) has accepted what my Lord Argyll
+resigned, and sets out ambassador to Holland in two days; and
+afterwards will have the command of' the troops that are to be
+sent into Flanders.  I am sorry I must send away this to-night,
+without being able to tell you the event of to-morrow; but I will
+let you know it on Thursday, if I write but two lines.  You have
+no notion how I laughed at Mrs.
+Goldsworthy's "talking from hand to mouth."(511)  How happy I am
+that you have Mr. Chute still with you; you would have been
+distracted else with that simple woman; for fools prey upon one
+when one has no companion to laugh Them off.
+
+I shall say every thing that is proper for you to the earl, and
+shall take care about expressing you to him, as I know you have
+your gratitude far more at heart, than what I am thinking of for
+you, I mean your stay at Florence.  I have spoken very warmly to
+Lord Lincoln about you, who, I am sure, will serve you to his
+power.  Indeed, as all changes are at a stop, I am convinced
+there will be no thought of removing you.  However, till I see
+the situation of next winter, I cannot be easy on your account.
+
+I have made a few purchases at Lord Oxford's sale; a small
+Vandyke, in imitation of Teniers; an old picture of the
+Duchess of Suffolk, mother of Lady Jane Grey, and her young
+husband; a sweet bronze vase by Flamingo, and two or three other
+trifles.  The things sold dear; the antiquities and
+pictures for about five thousand pounds, which yet, no doubt,
+cost him much more, for he gave the most extravagant prices.  His
+coins and medals are now selling, and go still dearer.  Good
+night!  How I wish for every letter to hear how you mend!
+
+(509) Charles VII. the Emperor of the Bavarian family.-D.
+
+(510) John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, a man much
+distinguished both as a general and a diplomatist. [He served
+with credit at Dettingen; but, after that battle, resigned his
+military rank, indignant at the King's unjust partiality to the
+Hanoverians.  However, on the rebellion of 1745, he was made
+commander-in-chief, and materially assisted the Duke of
+Cumberland in the campaign which ended at Culloden.  He died in
+1747.]
+
+(511) An expression of Mr. Chute.
+
+
+
+238 Letter 59
+To sir Horace Mann.
+March 24, 1742.
+
+I promised you in my last letter to send you the event of
+yesterday.(512)  It was not such as you would wish, for on the
+division, at nine o'clock at night, we lost it by 242 against
+245.  We had three people shut out, so that a majority of
+three (513) is so small that it is scarce doubted, but that, on
+Friday, when we ballot for the twenty-one to form the
+committee, we shall carry a list composed of our people, so that
+then it will be better that we lost it yesterday, as they never
+can trouble my Lord Orford more, when the Secret
+Committee consists of his own friends.  The motion was made and
+seconded by the same people as before: Mr. Pultney had been
+desired, but refused, yet spoke very warmly for it.  He declared,
+"that if they found any proofs against the earl, he would not
+engage in the prosecution;" and especially protested against
+resumptions of grants to his family, of which. he
+said, "there had been much talk, but they were what he would
+never come into, as being very illegal and unjust." The motion
+was quite personal against lord Orford, singly and by name, for
+his last ten years-the former question had been for twenty years,
+but as the rules of Parliament do not allow of
+repeating any individual motion in the same session of its
+rejection, and as 'every' evasion is allowed in this country,
+half the term was voted by the same House of Commons that had
+refused an inquiry into the whole; a sort of proof that every
+omne majus does not continere in se minus-but Houses of
+Commons can find out evasions to logical axioms, as well as to
+their own orders.  If they carry their list, my lord will be
+obliged to return from Houghton.
+
+After the division.  Mr. Pultney(514) moved for an address to the
+King; to declare their resolution of standing by him,
+especially in assisting the Queen of Hungary-but I believe, after
+the loss of the question, he will not be in very good humour with
+this address.
+
+I am now going to tell you what you, will not have
+expected-that a particular friend of yours opposed the motion,
+and it was the first time he ever spoke.  To keep you not in
+suspense, though you must have guessed, it was 220.(515)  As the
+speech was very favourably heard, and has done him
+service, I prevailed with him to give me a copy-here it is:-
+
+Mr. Speaker,(516)-I have always thought, Sir, that incapacity and
+inexperience must prejudice the cause they undertake to defend;
+and it has been diffidence of myself, not distrust of the cause,
+that has hitherto made me so silent upon a point on which I ought
+to have appeared so zealous.
+
+"While the attempts for this inquiry were made in general
+terms, I should have thought it presumption in me to stand up and
+defend measures in which so many abler men have been
+engaged, and which, consequently, they could so much better
+support; but when the attack grows more personal, it grows my
+duty to oppose it more particularly, lest I be suspected of an
+ingratitude which my heart disdains.  But I think, Sir, I
+cannot be suspected of that, unless my not having abilities to
+defend my father can be construed into a desire not to defend
+him.
+
+"My experience, Sir, is very small; I have never been
+conversant in business and politics, and have sat a very short
+time in this house -with so slight a fund, I must much
+mistrust my power to serve him-especially as in the short time I
+have sat here, I have seen that not his own knowledge,
+innocence, and eloquence, have been able to protect him
+against a powerful and determined party.  I have seen, since his
+retirement, that he has many great and noble friends, who have
+been able to protect him from farther violence.  But, Sir, when
+no repulses can calm the clamour against him, no motives should
+sway his friends from openly undertaking his defence.  When the
+King has conferred rewards on his services; when the Parliament
+has refused its assent to any inquiries of complaint against him;
+it is but maintaining the King's and our own honour, to reject
+this motion-for the repeating which, however, I cannot think the
+authors to blame, as I suppose now they have turned him out, they
+are willing to inquire whether they had any reason to do so.
+
+"I shall say no more, Sir, but leave the material part of this
+defence to the impartiality, candour, and credit of men who are
+no ways dependent on him.  He has already found that
+defence, Sir, and I hope he always will! It is to their
+authority I trust-and to me, it is the strongest proof of
+innocence, that for twenty years together, no crime could be
+solemnly alleged against him; and since his dismission, he has
+seen a majority rise up to defend his character in that very
+House of Commons in which a majority had overturned his power.
+As, therefore, Sir, I must think him innocent, I stand up to
+protect him from injustice-had he been accused, I should not have
+given the House this trouble: but I think, Sir, that the
+precedent of what was done upon this question a few days ago, is
+a sufficient reason, if I had no other, for me to give my
+negative now."
+
+William Pitt, some time after, in the debate, said, how very
+commendable it was in him to have made the above speech, which
+must have made an impression upon the House; but if It was
+becoming in him to remember that he was the child of the
+accused, that the House ought to remember too that they are the
+children of their country.  It was a great compliment from him,
+and very artful too.
+
+I forgot to tell you in my last, that one of our men-of-war,
+commanded by Lord Bamffe,(518) a Scotchman, has taken another
+register ship, of immense value.
+
+You will laugh at a comical thing that happened the other day to
+Lord Lincoln.  He sent the Duke of Richmond word that he would
+dine with him in the country, and if he would give him leave,
+would bring lord Bury with him.  It happens that Lord Bury is
+nothing less than the Duke of Richmond's nephew.(519) The Duke,
+very properly, sent him word back, that Lord Bury might bring
+him, if he pleased.
+
+
+I have been plagued all this morning with that oaf of unlicked
+antiquity, Prideaux,(520) and his deaf boy.  He talked through
+all Italy, and every thing in all Italy.  Upon mentioning
+Stosch, I asked if he had seen his collection.  He replied, very
+few of his things, for he did not like his company; that he never
+heard so much heathenish talk in his days.  I
+inquired what it was, and found that Stosch had one day said
+before him, "that the soul was only a little glue." I laughed so
+much that he walked off; I suppose, thinking, that I
+believed so too.  By the way, tell Stosch that a gold Alectus
+sold at Lord Oxford's sale for above threescore pounds.  Good
+night, my dear child!  I am just going to the ridotto; one hates
+those places, comes away out of humour, and yet one goes again!
+How are you! I long for your next letter to answer me.
+
+(512) The debate in the House of Commons on Lord Limerick's
+motion for a Secret Committee to inquire into the conduct of the
+Earl of Orford during the last ten years of his
+administration.-E.
+
+(513) The motion was carried by a majority of seven, the
+numbers being 252 against 245.-E.
+
+(514) This was much mentioned in the pamphlets written against
+the war, which was said to have been determined "by a
+gentleman's fumbling in his pocket for a piece of paper at ten
+o'clock at night," and the House's agreeing to the motion
+without any consideration.
+
+(515) The author of these letters.
+
+(516) There is a fictitious speech printed for this in several
+Magazines of that time, but which does not contain one
+sentence of the true one.
+
+(517) The following note of this debate is from the Bishop of
+Oxford's diary.-,, March 23.  Motion by Lord Limerick, and
+seconded by Sir J. St. Aubin, on the 9th instant, for a Secret
+Committee of twenty-one, to examine into the Earl of Orford's
+conduct for the last ten years of his being chancellor of the
+exchequer and lord of the treasury.  Mr. Pultney said,
+ministers should always remember the account they must make; that
+he was against rancour in the inquiry, desired not to be named
+for the committee, particularly because of a rash word he had
+used, that he would pursue Sir Robert Walpole to his destruction;
+that now the minister was destroyed, he had no ill-will to the
+man; that from his own knowledge and
+experience of many of the Tories, he believed them to be as
+sincerely for the King and this family as himself; that he was
+sensible of the disagreeable situation he was in, and would get
+out of it as soon as he could.  Mr. Sandys spoke for the motion,
+and said, he desired his own conduct might always be strictly
+inquired into.  Lord Orford's son, and Mr. Ellis
+spoke well against the motion.  It was carried by 252 against
+245.  Three or four were shut out, who would have been against
+it.  Mr. William -Finch against it. The Prince's servants for it.
+Then Mr. Pultney moved for an address of duty to the King &e.
+which he begged might pass without opposition; and
+accordingly it did so.  But Mr. W. W. wynne and several
+others, went out of the House; which was by some understood to be
+disapprobation, by others accident or weariness," Secker MS.-E.
+
+(518) alexander Ogilvy, sixth Lord Banff, commanded the
+Hastings man-of war in 1742 and 1743, and captured, during that
+time, a valuable outward-bound Spanish register-ship, a Spanish
+privateer of twenty guns, a French polacca with a rich cargo, and
+other vessels.  He died at Lisbon in November 1746, at the early
+age of twenty-eight.-D.
+
+(519) George Lord Bury, afterwards third Earl of Albemarle.  His
+mother was Lady Anne Lennox, sister of the Duke of
+Richmond.-D.  His lordship served as aide-de-camp) to the Duke of
+Cumberland at the battle of Fontenoy and at Culloden, and
+commanded in chief at the reduction of the Havannah.  He died in
+1772.)
+
+(520 Grandson of Dean Prideaux; he was just returned out of
+Italy, with his son.
+
+
+
+241 Letter 60
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, April 1, 1742.
+
+I received your letter of March 18th, and would be as
+particular in the other dates which you have sent me in the end
+of your letter, but our affairs having been in such
+confusion, I have removed all my papers In general from hence,
+and cannot now examine them.  I have, I think, received all
+yours: but lately I received them two days at least after
+their arrival, and evidently opened; so we must be cautious now
+what we write.  Remember this, for of your last the seal had been
+quite taken off and set on again.
+
+Last Friday we balloted for the Secret Committee.  Except the
+vacancies, there were but thirty-one members absent: five
+hundred and eighteen gave in lists.  At six that evening they
+named a committee of which Lord Hartington was chairman, (as
+having moved for it,) to examine the lists.  This lasted from
+that time, all that night, till four in the afternoon of the next
+day; twenty-two hours without remission.  There were
+sixteen people, of which were Lord Hartington and Coke, who sat
+up the whole time, and one of theirs, Velters
+Cornwall,(521) fainted with the fatigue and heat, for people of
+all sorts were admitted into the room, to see the lists drawn; it
+was in the Speaker's chambers.  On the conclusion, they found the
+majority was for a mixed list, but of which the Opposition had
+the greater number.  Here are the two lists, which were given out
+by each side, but of which people altered several in their
+private lists.
+
+THE COURT LIST.
+
+William Bowles.
+*Lord Cornbury.(522)
+*William Finch.(523)
+Lord Fitzwilliam.
+Sir Charles Gilmour.
+*Charles Gore.
+H. Arthur Herbert.(524)
+Sir Henry Liddel.(525)
+John Plumptree (526)
+Sir John Ramsden.
+Strange, Solicitor-General.
+Cholmley Turnor.
+John Talbot.(527)
+General Wade.(528)
+James West.(529)
+
+THE OPPOSITION LIST.
+
+Sir John Barnard.
+Alexander Hume Campbell.(530)
+Sir John Cotton.
+George Bubb Doddington.(531)
+Nicholas Fazakerley.
+Henry Furnese.
+ Earl of Granird.
+Mr. Hooper.(532)
+Lord Limerick.(533)
+George Lyttelton.(534)
+John Philips-(535)
+William Pitt.(536)
+Mr. Prouse.
+Edmund Waller.(537)
+Sir Watkyn Williams Wynn.
+
+Besides the following six which were in both lists-
+
+These Six, On casting up the numbers, had those marked against
+their names, and were consequently chosen.  Those with this mark
+(*) were reckoned of the Opposition.
+
+*George Compton 515
+*William Noell 512 (538)
+*Lord Quarendon 512 (539)
+*Sir John Rushout 516 (540)
+*Samuel Sandys 516 (541)
+Sir John St. Aubin 518
+
+On casting up the numbers, the lists proved thus:-
+
+*Sir John Barnard 268
+*Nicholas Fazakerley 262 (542)
+*Henry Furnese 282
+*Earl of Granard 258
+*Mr.  Hooper 265
+*William Pitt 259
+*Mr. Prouse 259
+*Edmund Waller 259
+William Bowles 259
+*Lord Cornbury 262
+Solicitor-General 259
+Cholmley Turnor 259
+
+This made eighteen: Mr. Finch, Sir Harry Liddel, and Mr.
+Talbot, had 258 each, and Hume Campbell 257, besides one in which
+his name was mis-written, but allowed; out of these
+four, two were to be chosen: it was agreed that the Speaker was
+to choose them; he, with a resolution not supposed to be in him,
+as he has been the most notorious affecter of
+popularity, named Sir Harry Liddel and Mr. 'albot; so that, on
+the whole, we have just five that we can call our own.(543)
+These will not be sufficient to stop their proceedings, but by
+being privy, may stop any iniquitous proceedings.  They have
+chosen Lord Limerick chairman.  Lord Orford returns tomorrow from
+Houghton to Chelsea, from whence my uncle went in great fright to
+fetch him.
+
+I was yesterday presented to the Prince and Princess; but had not
+the honour of a word from either: he did vouchsafe to talk to
+Lord Walpole the day before.
+
+Yesterday the Lord Mayor brought in their favourite bill for
+repealing the Septennial Act, but we rejected it by 284 to
+204.(544)
+
+You shall have particular accounts of the Secret Committee and
+their proceedings: but It will be at least a month before they
+can make any progress.  You did not say any thing about
+yourself in your last; never omit it, my dear child.
+
+(521) Velters Cornwall, Esq., of Meccas Court, in
+Herefordshire, and member for that county.-D.
+
+(522) Son of the Earl of Clarendon.
+
+(523) Afterwards vice-chamberlain.
+
+(524) Afterwards Earl of Powis.
+
+(525) Afterwards Lord Ravensworth.
+
+(526) He had a place in the Ordnance.
+
+(527) Son of the late lord chancellor, and afterwards a judge.
+
+(528) Afterwards field.marshal.
+
+(529) Afterwards secretary of the treasury.
+
+(530) Afterwards solicitor to the Prince.
+
+(531) Had been a lord of the treasury.
+
+(532) Had a place on a change of the ministry. (He was a
+Hampshire gentleman, and member for Christchurch.-D.)
+
+(533) Afterwards King's remembrancer.
+
+(534) Afterwards cofferer.
+
+(535) Afterwards a lord of trade and baronet.
+
+(536) Afterwards paymaster.
+
+(537) Afterwards cofferer.
+
+(538) Afterwards a judge.
+
+(539) Afterwards Earl of Lichfield.
+
+(540) Afterwards treasurer of the navy.
+
+(541) Afterwards chancellor of the exchequer, then cofferer, and
+then a baron.
+
+(542) Nicholas Fazakerley, Esq.  Walpole calls him "a tiresome
+Jacobite lawyer." He, however, appears to have been a speaker of
+some weight in the House of Commons, and distinguished
+himself by his opposition to Lord Hardwicke's mischievous
+marriage bill in the year 1753.-D.  (He died in 1767.)
+
+(543) "March 26, 27. The House of commons balloted for their
+committee, being called over, and each opening his list at the
+table, and putting it into a vessel which stood there.  This was
+ended by five.  Then a committee began to examine the
+lists, and sat from that time till four the next afternoon: for,
+though two lists were given out, many delivered in
+consisted partly of one, and partly of the other; and many were
+put in different order.  Sir Thomas Drury, a friend of Lord
+Orford's, put down four of the opposite side in his list.  Lord
+Orford's friends hoped it would bring moderate persons over to
+them, if they put some on their list who were not
+partial to him."-" March 29.  The decision between Sir H.
+Lyddel, Mr. J. Talbot. and Mr. W. Finch, was left to the
+Speaker, who chose the two former." Secker MS.-E.
+
+(544) This is not correct.  It appears, by the Journals, that the
+motion passed in the negative by 204 against 184.  The debate is
+thus noticed by the Bishop of Oxford:-"March 31. Sir Robert
+Cotschall, Lord Mayor, moved for the repeal of the
+Septennial Bill.  Mr. Pultney said, he thought annual
+parliaments would be best, but preferred septennial to
+triennial and voted against the motion.  In all, 204 against it,
+and 184 for it."  Secker MS.-E.
+
+
+
+243 Letter 61
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, April 8, 1742.
+
+You have no notion how astonished I was, at reading your
+account of Sir Francis Dashwood!-that it should be possible for
+private and personal pique so to sour any man's temper and
+honour, and so utterly to change their principles!  I own I am
+for your mentioning him in your next despatch: they may at least
+intercept his letters, and prevent his dirty
+intelligence.  As to Lady Walpole,(545) her schemes are so wild
+and so ill-founded, that I don't think it worth while to take
+notice of them.  I possibly may mention this new one of changing
+her name, to her husband, and of her coming-over
+design, but I am sure he will only laugh at it.
+
+The ill-situation of the King, which you say is so much talked of
+at the Petraia,(546) Is not true; indeed he and the Prince are
+not at all more reconciled for being reconciled; but I think his
+resolution has borne him out.  All the public
+questions are easily carried, even with the concurrence of the
+Tories.  Mr. Pultney proposed to grant a large sum for
+assisting the Queen of Hungary, and got Sir John Barnard to move
+it.  They have given the King five hundred thousand
+pounds for that purpose.(547)  The land-tax of four shillings in
+the pound is continued.  Lord Stair is gone to Holland, and
+orders are given to the regiments and guards to have their camp
+equipages ready.  As to the Spanish war and Vernon, there is no
+more talk of them; one would think they had both been taken by a
+privateer.
+
+We talk of adjourning, soon for a month or six weeks, to give the
+Secret Committee time to proceed, which yet they have not done.
+Their object is returned from Houghton in great health and
+greater spirits.  They are extremely angry with him for laughing
+at their power.  The concourse to him is as great as ever; so is
+the rage against him.  All this week the mob has been carrying
+about his effigies in procession, and to the Tower.  The chiefs
+of the Opposition have been so mean as to give these mobs money
+for bonfires, particularly the Earls of Lichfield, Westmoreland,
+Denbigh, (548) and Stanhope:(549) the servants of these last got
+one of these figures, chalked out a place for the heart and shot
+at it.  You will laugh at me, who, the other day, meeting one of
+these mobs, drove up to it to see what was the matter: the first
+thing I beheld was a maulkin, in a chair, with three footmen, and
+a label on the breast, inscribed "Lady mary." (550)
+
+The Speaker, who has been much abused for naming two of our
+friends to the Secret Committee, to show his
+disinterestedness, has resigned his place of treasurer of the
+navy.  Mr. Clutterbuck,(551) one of the late treasury is to have
+it; so there seems a stop put to any new persons from the
+Opposition.
+
+His Royal Highness is gone to Kew his drawing-rooms Will not be
+so crowded at his return, as he has disobliged so many
+considerable people, particularly the Dukes of Montagu (552) and
+Richmond, Lord Albemarle,(553) etc.  The Richmond went twice, and
+yet was not spoken to; nor the others; nay, he has vented his
+princely resentment even upon the women, for to Lady Hervey, not
+a word.
+
+This is all the news except that little Brook (554) is on the
+point of matrimony with Miss Hamilton, Lady Archibald's
+daughter.  She is excessively pretty and sensible, but as
+diminutive as he.
+
+
+I forgot to tell you that the Place Bill has met with the same
+fate from the Lords as the Pension Bill (555) and the
+Triennial Act; so that, after all their clamour and changing of
+measures, they have not been able to get one of their
+popular bills passed, though the newspapers, for these three
+months, have swarmed with instructions for these purposes, from
+the constituents of all parts of Great Britain to their
+representatives.
+
+We go into mourning on Sunday for the old Empress Amelia.(556)
+Lord Chedworth, (557) one of three new Peers, is dead.  We hear
+the King of Sardinia is at Piacenza, to open the
+campaign.  I shall be in continual fears lest they disturb you at
+Florence.  All love to the Chutes, and my compliments to all my
+old acquaintance. I don't think I have forgot one of Them.
+Pataman is entirely yours, and entirely handsome. Good night!
+
+(545) Margaret Rolle, a great Devonshire heiress, the wife of
+Robert, Lord Walpole, afterwards second Earl of Orford, the
+eldest son of the minister.  She was separated from her
+husband, and had quarrelled violently with his whole family.  She
+resided principally at Florence, where she died in 1781; having
+married secondly, after the death of Lord Orford, the Hon.
+Sewallis Shirley.  She was a woman of bad character, as well as
+Half mad: which last quality she to communicated to her
+unfortunate son George, third Earl of Orford.  She
+succeeded, in her own right, to the baronies of Clinton and Say,
+upon the death, in 1751, of Hugh, Earl and Baron
+Clinton.-D.  (This lady was married to Lord Walpole in 1724.  In
+a letter to the Countess of mar, written in that year, Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu says:- "I have so good an opinion of your taste,
+to believe harlequin in person will not make you laugh so much as
+the Earl of Stair's furious passion for Lady
+Walpole, aged fourteen and some months.  Mrs. Murray undertook to
+bring the business to bear, and provided the opportunity, a great
+ingredient You'll Say but the young lady proved
+skittish.  She did not only turn his heroic flame into present
+ridicule, but exposed all his generous sentiments, to divert her
+Husband and father-in-law."  Works, vol. ii. p. 188.]
+
+(546) A villa belonging to the Great Duke, where Prince Craon
+resided in summer.
+
+(547) "April 2.  In the Commons, 500,000 pounds voted for the
+Queen of Hungary; I believe nem. con. Sir John Barnard moved it;
+which, Mr. Sandys told me, was that day making himself the
+chancellor of the exchequer.  He told me, also, the King was
+unwilling to grant the Prince 50,000 pounds a-year; and I am told
+from other hands, that he saith he never promised it.  The Bishop
+of Sarum (Sherlock) says, Sir Robert Walpole told him, the King
+would give 30,000 pounds, but no more.  Mr.
+Sandys appeared determined against admitting Tories, and said it
+was wonderful their union had held so long, and could not be
+expected to hold longer; that he could not imagine why
+every body spoke against Lord Carteret, but that he had better
+abilities than any body; that as soon as foreign affairs could be
+settled, they would endeavour to reduce the expenses of the crown
+and interest of the debts."  Secker MS.
+
+(548) William Fielding, fifth Earl of Denbigh, died 1755.-D.
+
+(549) Philip, second Earl Stanhope, eldest son of the general and
+statesman, who founded this branch of the Stanhope family.  Earl
+Philip was a man of retired habits, and much devoted to
+scientific pursuits.  He died in 1786.-D.
+
+(550) Lady Mary Walpole, daughter of Sir R. W.
+
+(551) This Mr. Clutterbuck had been raised by Lord Carteret, when
+Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whom he betrayed to Sir R. Walpole;
+the latter employed him, but never would trust him.  He then
+ingratiated himself with Mr. Pelham, under a pretence of candour
+and integrity, and was continually infusing
+scruples into him on political questions, to distress Sir R. On
+the latter's quitting the ministry, he appointed a board of
+treasury at his own house, in order to sign some grants; Mr.
+Clutterbuck made a pretence to slip away, and never returned.  He
+was a friend, too, of the Speaker's: when Sir R. W. was told that
+Mr. Onslow had resigned his place, and that Mr.
+Clutterbuck was to succeed him, said, "I remember that the Duke
+of Roxburgh, who was a great pretender to conscience, persuaded
+the Duke of Montrose to resign the seals of'
+Secretary of state, on some scruple, and begged them himself the
+next day."  Mr. Clutterbuck died very soon after this
+transaction. [Mr. Clutterbuck was appointed treasurer of the navy
+in May, and died in November following.]
+
+(552) John, second and last Duke of Montagu, of the first
+creation. He was a man of Some talent, and great eccentricity.
+Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, his mother-in-law, Used to say of
+him, "My son-in-law Montagu is fifty, and he is still as mere a
+boy as if he was only fifteen.".-D.  On his death, in 1749),the
+title became extinct.)
+
+(553) William-Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albemarle.  An
+amiable prodigal who filled various great offices, through the
+favour of Lady Yarmouth, who died insolvent.-D.  [He married. in
+1723, Lady Anne Lennox, daughter of Charles, first Duke of
+Richmond, and, whilst ambassador to the French court, died
+suddenly at Paris, in 1755.]
+
+(554) Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, created an earl in 1746.
+[And, in 1759, raised to the dignity of Earl of Warwick.  He died
+in 1773.]
+
+(555) "March 26.  The Pension Bill read a second time in the
+Lords.  Duke of Devonshire said a few words against it.  Lord
+Sandwich pleaded for it, that some persons now in the ministry
+had patronized it, and for their sakes it should be committed;
+Lord Romney, that some objections against it had been obviated by
+alterations.  These three speeches lasted scarce half a quarter
+of an hour.  The question being put for committing, not-content,
+76; content, 46. I was one of five bishops for it; Lord Carteret
+and Lord Berkeley against it." Secker
+318.-E.
+
+(556) Widow of the Emperor Joseph.  She was of the house of
+Wolfenbuttle.
+
+(557) John Bowe, Esq. of Stowell, created a baron in May 1741.
+
+
+
+246 Letter 62
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+April 15, 1742.
+
+The great pleasure I receive from your letters is a little abated
+by my continually finding that they have been opened.  It is a
+mortification as it must restrain the freedom of our
+correspondence, and at a time when more than ever I must want to
+talk to you.  Your brother showed me a letter, which I
+approve extremely, yet do not think this a proper time for it;
+for there IS not only no present prospect of any further
+alterations, but, if there were, none that will give that
+person any interest.  He really has lost himself so much, that it
+will be long before he can recover credit enough to do any body
+any service.  His childish and troublesome behaviour,
+particularly lately (,but I Will not mention instances,
+because I would not have it known whom I mean), has set him in
+the lowest light imaginable.  I have desired your brother to keep
+your letter, and when we see a necessary or convenient
+opportunity, which I hope will not arrive, it shall be
+delivered.  However, if you are still of that opinion, say so,
+and your brother shall carry it.  At present, my dear child, I am
+much more at repose about you, as I trust no more will
+happen to endanger your situation.  I shall not only give you the
+first notice, but employ all the means in my power to
+prevent your removal.
+
+The Secret Committee, it seems, are almost aground, and, it is
+thought, will soon finish.  They are now reduced, as I hear, to
+inquire into the last month, not having met with any
+foundation for proceeding in the rest of the time.  However, they
+have this week given a strong instance of' their
+arbitrariness and private resentments.  They sent for
+Paxton,(558) the solicitor of the treasury, and examined him
+about five hundred pounds which he had given seven years ago at
+Lord Limerick's election.  The man, as it directly tended to
+accuse himself, refused to answer.  They complained to the House,
+and after a long debate he was committed to the
+sergeant-at-arms -, and to-day, I hear, for still refusing, will
+be sent to Newgate.(559)  We adjourn to-day for ten days, but the
+committee has leave to continue sitting. . But, my dear child,
+you may be quite at ease, for they themselves seem to despair of
+being able to effect any thing.
+
+The Duke (560) is of age to-day, and I hear by the guns, is just
+gone with the King, to take his seat in the Lords.
+
+I have this morning received the jar of cedrati safe, for
+which I give you a million of thanks.  I am impatient to hear of
+the arrival of your secretary and the things at Florence; it is
+time for you to have received them.
+
+Here! Amorevoli has sent me another letter.  Would you believe
+that our wise directors for next year will not keep the
+Visconti, and have sent for the Fumagalli?  She will not be heard
+to the first row of the pit.
+
+I am growing miserable, for it is growing fine weather-that is,
+every body is going out of town.  I have but just begun to like
+London, and to be settled in an agreeable set of' people, and now
+they are going to wander all over the kingdom.
+Because they have some chance of having a month of good
+weather they will bury themselves three more in bad.
+
+The Duchess of Cleveland (561) died last night of what they call
+a miliary fever, which is much about: she had not been ill two
+days.  So the poor creature, her duke, is again to be let; she
+paid dear for the hopes of being duchess dowager.  Lady Catherine
+Pelham,(562) has miscarried of twins; but they are so miserable
+with the loss of their former two boys, that they seem glad now
+of not having any more to tremble for.
+
+There is a man who has by degrees bred himself up to walk upon
+stilts so high, that he now stalks about and peeps into one pair
+of stairs windows.  If this practice should spread,
+dining-rooms will be as innocent as chapels.  Good night! I never
+forget my best loves to the Chutes.
+
+P. S. I this moment hear that Edgecombe (563) and Lord
+Fitzwilliam are created English peers: I am sure the first is,
+and I believe the second.
+
+(558) Commemorated in a line of Pope-"'Tis all a libel,
+Paxton, Sir, will say."-D.
+
+(559) On a division of 180 against 128, Paxton was this day
+committed to Newgate where he remained till the end of the
+session, July 15.  He died in April 1744.-E.
+
+(560) The Duke of Cumberland, third Son of George the
+Second.-E.
+
+(561) Lady Henrietta Finch, sister of the Earl of Winchilsea,
+wife of William, Duke of Cleveland. [On whose death, in 1774, the
+title became extinct.]
+
+(562) Catherine, sister of John Manners, Duke of Rutland, and
+ wife of Henry Pelham.  They lost their two sons by an epidemic
+sore-throat, after which she would never go to Esher, or any
+house where she had seen them.
+
+(563) Richard Edgecombe, a great friend of Sir R. Walpole, was
+Created a baron to prevent his being examined by the Secret
+Committee concerning the management of the Cornish boroughs.  (He
+was created Lord Edgecumbe on the 20th of April, and in December
+appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.  He died in
+1758.]
+
+
+
+247 Letter 63
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, April 22, 1742.
+
+You perceive, by the size of my paper, how little I have to say.
+The whole town is out of town for Easter, and nothing left but
+dust, old women, and the Secret Committee.  They go on warmly,
+and have turned their whole thoughts to the
+secret-service money, after which they are inquiring by all
+methods.  Sir John Rawdon (564) (you remember that genius in
+Italy) voluntarily swore before them that, at the late
+election at Wallingforrd, he spent two thousand pounds, and that
+one Morley promised him fifteen hundred more, if he would lay it
+out. "Whence was Morley to have it?"-"I don't know; I believe
+from the first minister." This makes an evidence.  It is thought
+that they will ask leave to examine members, which was the reason
+of Edgecumbe's going into the peerage, as they supposed he had
+been the principal agent for the Cornish
+boroughs.  Sir John Cotton said, upon the occasion, "Between
+Newgate (565 and the House of Lords the committee will not get
+information."
+
+The troops for Flanders go on board Saturday se'nnight, the first
+embarkation of five thousand men: the whole number is to be
+sixteen thousand.  It is not yet known what success Earl Stair
+has had at the Hague.  We are in great joy upon the news of the
+King of Prussia's running away from the Austrians:
+(566) though his cowardice is well established, it is yet
+believed that the flight in question was determined by his head,
+not his heart; in short, that it was treachery to his allies.
+
+I forgot to tell you, that of the Secret Committee Sir John
+Rushout and Cholmley TurnOr never go to it, nor, which is more
+extraordinary, Sir John Barnard.  He says he thought their views
+were more general, but finding them so particular
+against one man, he Will not engage with them.
+
+I have been breakfasting this morning at Ranelagh-garden:
+(567) they have built an immense amphitheatre, with balconies
+full of little ale-houses; it is in rivalry to Vauxhall, and
+costs above twelve thousand pounds.  The building is not
+finished, but, they get great sums by people going to see it and
+breakfasting in the house: there were yesterday no less than
+three hundred and eighty persons, at eighteen pence
+a-piece.  You see how poor we are, when, with a tax of four
+shillings in the pound, we are laying out such sums for cakes and
+ale.
+
+We have a new opera, with your favourite song, se cerca, se dice:
+(568) Monticelli sings it beyond what you can conceive.  Your
+last was of April 8th.  I like the medal of the Caesars and
+Nihils (569) extremely; but don't at all like the cracking of
+your house, (570) except that it drives away your
+Pettegola. (571) What I like much worse is your recovering your
+strength so slowly; but I trust to the warm weather.
+
+Miss Granville, daughter of the late Lord Lansdown, (572) is
+named maid of honour, in the room of Miss Hamilton, who I told
+you is to be Lady Brook-they are both so small! what little eggs
+they will lay!
+
+How does my Princess?(573)  does not she deign to visit you too?
+Is Sade (574) there still?  Is Madame Suares quite gone into
+devotion yet?  Tell me any thing-I love any thing that you write
+to me.  Good night!
+
+(564) He was afterwards made an Irish lord. (Lord Rawdon in 1750,
+and Earl of Moira in 1761.  His first two wives were the
+daughters of the Earl of Egmont and Viscount Hillsborough.  His
+third wife, by whom he was the father of the late Lord Hastings,
+was the daughter, and eventually the heiress, of Theophilus,
+ninth Earl of Huntingdon.-D.)
+
+(565) Alluding to Paxton, who was sent thither for refusing to
+ give evidence.
+
+(566) this must allude to the King of Prussia's abandonment of
+his design to penetrate through Austria to Vienna, which he gave
+of) in consequence of the lukewarmness of his Saxon and the
+absence of his French allies.  It is curious now, when the mist
+of contemporary prejudices has passed away, to hear
+Frederick the Great accused of cowardice.-D.
+
+(567) the once celebrated place of amusement was so called from
+its site being that of a villa of' Viscount Ranelagh, near
+Chelsea. The last entertainment given in it was the
+installation ball of the Knights of the Bath, in 1802.  It has
+since been razed to the ground.-E.
+
+(568) In the Olimpiade.
+
+(569) A satirical medal: on one side was the head of Francis,
+Duke of Lorrain (afterwards emperor) with this motto, aut
+Caesar aut nihil: on the reverse, that of the Emperor Charles
+Vii. Elector of Bavaria, who had been driven out of his
+dominions, et Caesar et nihil.
+
+(570) Sir H. Mann had mentioned, in one of his letters, the
+appearance of several cracks in the walls of his house at
+Florence.  Mrs. Goldsworthy, the wife of the English consul,
+               had taken refuge in it when driven from Leghorn by
+an earthquake.-D.
+
+(571) Mrs. ('Goldsworthy.
+
+(572) George Granville, Lord Lansdown, Pope's "Granville the
+polite," one of Queen
+                     Anne's twelve peers, and one of the minor
+poets of that time. He died in 1734, without
+                     male issue, and his honours
+extinguished.-D.
+
+(573) Princess Craon.
+
+(574) The Chevalier de Sade.
+
+
+
+249 Letter 64
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, April 29, 1742.
+
+By yours of April 17, N. S. and some of your last letters, I find
+my Lady Walpole is more mad than ever-why, there never was so
+wild a scheme as this, of setting up an interest
+through Lord Chesterfield!  one who has no power; and, if he had,
+would think of, or serve her, one of the last persons upon earth.
+What connexion has he with what interest could he have in
+obliging her? and, but from views, what has he ever done, or will
+he ever do? But is Richcourt (575) so shallow, and so ambitious,
+as to put any trust in there projects?  My dear child, believe
+me, if I was to mention them here, they would sound so
+chimerical, so womanish, that I should be
+laughed at for repeating them.  For yourself, be quite at
+rest, and laugh, as I do, at feeble, visionary malice, and assure
+yourself, whoever mentions such politics to you, that my Lady
+Walpole must have very frippery intelligence from
+hence, if she can raise no better views and on no better
+foundations.  For the poem you mention, I never read it: upon
+inquiry, I find there was such a thing though now quite
+obsolete: undoubtedly not Pope's, and only proves what I said
+before, how low, how paltry, how uninformed her ladyship's
+correspondents must be.
+
+We are now all military! all preparations for Flanders! no
+parties but reviews; no officers, but "hope" they are to go
+abroad-at least, it is the fashion to say so.  I am studying
+lists of regiments and Dames of colonels-not that "I hope I am to
+go abroad," but to talk of those who do.  Three thousand men
+embarked yesterday and the day before, and the thirteen thousand
+others sail as soon as the transports can return.  Messieurs
+d'Allemagne (576) roll their red eyes, stroke up their great
+beards, and look fierce-you know one loves a
+review and a tattoo.
+
+We had a debate yesterday in the House on a proposal for
+replacing four thousand men of some that are to be sent
+abroad, that, in short, we might have fifteen thousand men to
+guard the kingdom.  This was strongly opposed by the Tories, but
+we carried it in the committee, 214 against 123, and
+to-day, in the House, 280 against 169.  Sir John Barnard,
+Pultney, the new ministry, all the Prince's people, except the
+Cobham cousins,(577) the Lord Mayor, several of the
+Opposition, voted with us; so you must interpret Tories in the
+strongest sense of the word.
+
+The Secret Committee has desired leave to-day to examine three
+members, Burrel, Bristow, and Hanbury Williams: (578) the two
+first are directors of the bank; and it is upon an agreement made
+with them, and at which Williams was present, about
+remitting some money to Jamaica, and in which they pretend Sir
+Robert made a bad bargain, to oblige them as members of
+Parliament.  they all three stood up, and voluntarily offered to
+be examined; so no vote passed upon it.
+
+These are all the political news: there is little of any other
+sort; so little gallantry is stirring, that I do not hear of so
+much as one maid of honour who has declared herself with child by
+any officer, to engage him not to go abroad.  I told you once or
+twice that Miss Hamilton is going to be married to Lord Brook:
+somebody wished Lord Archibald joy.  He replied, "Providence has
+been very good to my family."
+
+We had a great scuffle the other night at the Opera, which
+interrupted it.  Lord Lincoln was abused in the most shocking
+manner by a drunken officer, upon which he kicked him, and was
+drawing his sword, but was prevented.  were they were put
+under arrest, and the next morning, the man begged his pardon
+before the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Albemarle, and other
+officers, in the most submissive terms.  I saw the quarrel from
+the other side of the house, and rushing to get to Lord Lincoln,
+could not for the crowd.  I climbed into the front boxes, and
+stepping over the shoulders of three ladies, before I knew where
+I was, found I had lighted in Lord Rockingham's (579) lap.  It
+was ridiculous! Good night!
+
+(575) Count Richcourt was a Lorrainer, and chief minister of
+Florence; there was a great connexion between him and Lady
+Walpole.
+
+(576)The royal family.
+
+(577) Pitts, Grenvilles, Lytteltons, all related by marriage, or
+female descent, to Lord Cobham.-D.
+
+(578) Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a devoted follower of Sir
+Robert Walpole.  His various satirical poems against the
+enemies and successors of that minister are well known, and must
+ever be admired for their ease, their spirit, and the wit and
+humour of their sarcasm.  It was said at the time that Sir
+Charles's poetry had done more in three months to lower and
+discredit those it was written against, than the Craftsman and
+other abusive papers had been able to effect against Sir
+Robert in a long series of years.-D.
+
+(579) Lewis Watson, second Earl of Rockingham.  He married
+Catharine, second daughter and coheir of George Sondes, Earl of
+Feversham, and died in 1745.-D.
+
+
+
+251 Letter 65
+To Richard West, Esq.
+London, May 4, 1742.
+
+Dear West,
+Your letter made me quite melancholy, till I came to the
+postscript of fine weather.  Your so suddenly finding the
+benefit of it makes me trust you will entirely recover your
+health and spirits with the warm season: nobody wishes it more
+than I: nobody has more reason, as few have known you so long.
+Don't be afraid of your letters being dull.  I don't deserve to
+be called your friend, if I were impatient at hearing your
+complaints.  I do not desire you to suppress them till the causes
+cease; nor should I expect you to write cheerfully
+while you are Ill.  I never desire to write any man's life as a
+stoic, and consequently should not desire him to furnish me with
+opportunities of assuring posterity what pains he took not to
+show any pain.
+
+If you did amuse yourself with writing any thing in poetry, you
+know how pleased I should be to see it; but for
+encouraging you to it, d'ye see, 'tis an age most unpoetical!
+'Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry; and though Pope has
+half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of
+last century, yet, I assure you, the generality of readers are
+more diverted with any paltry prose answer to old
+Marlborough's secret history of Queen Mary's robes.  I do not
+think an author would be universally commended for any
+production in verse, unless it were an ode to the Secret
+Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property, nation and
+administration.
+
+Wit itself is monopolized by politics; no laugh would be
+ridiculous if it were not on one side or t'other.  Thus,
+Sandys thinks he has spoken an epigram, when he crincles up his
+nose and lays a smart accent on ways and means.
+
+We may, indeed. hope a little better now to the declining
+arts.  The reconciliation between the royalties is finished, and
+fifty thousand pounds a-year more added to the heir
+apparent's revenue.  He will have money now to tune up Glover,
+and Thomson, and Dodsley again: Et spes
+et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantUM.
+
+Asheton is much yours.  He has preached twice at Somerset
+Chapel with the greatest applause.  I do not mind his pleasing
+the generality, for you know they ran as much after Whitfield as
+they could after Tillotson; and I do not doubt but St. Jude
+converted as many Honourable women as St. Paul.  But I am sure
+you would approve his compositions, and admire them still more
+when you heard him deliver them.  He will write to you himself
+next post, but is not mad enough with his fame to write you a
+sermon.  Adieu, dear child!  Write me the progress of your
+recovery,(580) and believe it will give me a sincere pleasure;
+for I am, yours ever.
+
+(580) Mr. West died in less than a month from the date of this
+letter, in the twenty-sixth year of his age.  (see ant`e, p. 121,
+Letter 1.)  In his last letter to Grey, written a few days before
+his death, he says, "I will take my leave of you for the present,
+with a vale et vive paulisper cum vivis:" so little was he aware
+of the short time that he himself would be
+numbered among the living.  But this is almost constantly the
+case with those who die of that most flattering of all
+diseases, a consumption.  "Shall humanity," says Mason, "be
+thankful or sorry that it is so?  Thankful, surely! for as this
+malady generally attacks the young and the innocent, it seems the
+merciful intention of Heaven, that to these death should come
+unperceived, and, as it were, by stealth; divested of one of its
+sharpest stings, the lingering expectation of their
+dissolution."-E.
+
+
+
+
+252 Letter 66
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, May 6, 1742.
+
+I have received a long letter from you of the 22d of April.  It
+amazes me! that our friends of Florence should not prove our
+friends.(581)  Is it possible?  I have always talked of their
+cordiality, because I was convinced they could have no shadow of
+interest in their professions:--of that, indeed, I am convinced
+still-but how could they fancy they had?  There is the wonder!
+If they wanted common honesty, they seem to have wanted common
+sense more.  What hope of connexion could there ever be between
+the British ministry and the Florentine nobility!  The latter
+have no views for being, or knowledge for being envoys, etc.
+They are too poor and proud to think of trading with us; too
+abject to hope for the restoration of their liberty from us-and,
+indeed, however we may affection our own, we have showed no
+regard for their liberty-they have had no reason ever to expect
+that from us!  In short, to me it is mystery! But how could you
+not tell me some particulars?  Have I so little interested myself
+with Florence, that you should think I can be satisfied without
+knowing the least particulars? I must know names.  Who are these
+wretches that I am to scratch out of my list?  I shall give them
+a black blot the moment I know who have behaved ill to you.  Is
+Casa Ferroni of the number?  I suspect it:-that was of your first
+attachments.  Are the prince and princess dirty?-the Suares?-tell
+me, tell me!  Indeed, my dear Mr. Chute, I am not of your
+opinion, that he should shut himself up and despise them; let him
+go abroad and despise them.  Must he mope because the Florentines
+are like the rest of the world? But that is not true, for the
+world in England have not declared themselves so suddenly.  It
+has not been the fashion to desert the earl and his friends: he
+has had more concourse, more professions, and has still, than in
+the height of his power.  So your neighbours have been too hasty:
+they are new style, at least, eleven days before us.  Tell them,
+tell Richcourt, tell his Cleopatra,(582) that all their hopes are
+vanished, all their faith in Secret Committees-the reconciliation
+is made, and whatever reports their secretships may produce,
+there will be at least above a hundred votes added to our party.
+Their triumph has been but in hope, and their hope has failed in
+two months.
+
+As to your embroil with Richcourt, I condemn you excessively: not
+that you was originally in fault, but by seeming to own yourself
+so. He is an impertinent fellow, and will be so if you'll let
+him.  My dear child, act with the spirit of your friends here;
+show we have lost no credit by losing power, and that a little
+Italian minister must not dare to insult you.  Publish the
+accounts I send you; which I give you my honour are authentic.
+If they are not, let Cytheris, your Antony's travelling
+concubine, contradict them.
+
+You tell me the St. Quintin is arrived at Genoa: I see by the
+prints of to-day that it is got to leghorn: I am extremely glad,
+for I feared for it, for the poor boy, and for the things.  Tell
+me how you like your secretary.  I shall be quite happy, if I
+have placed one with you that you like.
+
+I laughed much at the family of cats I am to receive.  I believe
+they will be extremely welcome to Lord Islay now: for he appears
+little, lives more darkly and more like a wizard than ever.
+These huge cats will figure prodigiously in his cell: he is of'
+the mysterious, dingy nature of Stosch.
+
+As words is what I have not rhetoric to
+find out to thank you, for sending me this paragraph of Madame
+Goldsworthy, I can only tell you that I have laughed for an hour
+at it.  This was one of my Lady Pomfret's correspondents.
+
+There seems to be a little stop in our embarkations: since the
+first, they have discovered that the horse must not go till all
+the hay is provided.  Three thousand men will make a fine figure
+towards supporting the balance of power! Our whole number was to
+be but sixteen; and if all these cannot be assembled before the
+end of July, what will be said of it?
+
+The Secret Committee go on very pitifully: they are now inquiring
+about some customhouse officers that were turned out at Weymouth
+for voting wrong at elections.  Don't you think these articles
+will prove to the world what they have been saying of Sir Robert
+for these twenty years?  The House still sits in observance to
+them; which is pleasant to me, for it keeps people in town.  We
+have operas too; but they are almost over, and if it were not for
+a daily east wind, they would give way to Vauxhall and Chelsea.
+The new directors have agreed with the Fumagalli for next year,
+but she is to be second woman: they keep the Visconti. Did I
+never mention the Bettina, the first dancer.  It seems she was
+kept by a Neapolitan prince, who is extremely jealous of her
+thither.  About a fortnight ago, she fell ill, upon which her
+Neapolitan footman made off immediately.  She dances again, but
+is very weak, and thinks herself poisoned.
+
+Adieu! my dear child; tell me you are well, easy, and in
+spirits: kiss the Chutes for me, and believe me, etc
+
+(581) This alludes to an account given by Sir Horace Mann, in one
+of his letters, of the change he had observed in the manner of
+many of the Florentines towards himself since Sir Robert
+Walpole's retirement from office, upon the supposition
+entertained by them that he was intimately connected with the
+fallen minister@D.
+
+(582) Lady Walpole.
+
+
+
+254 Letter 67
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, May 13, 1742.
+
+As I am obliged to put my letter into the secretary's office by
+nine o'clock, and it now don't want a quarter of it, I can say
+but three words, and must defer till next post answering Your
+long letter by the courier.  I am this moment come from the
+House, where we have had the first part of the Report from the
+Secret Committee. It is pretty long; but, unfortunately for them,
+there is not once to be found in it the name of the Earl of
+Orford: there is a good deal about Mr. Paxton and the borough of
+Wendover; and it appears that in eleven years Mr. Paxton has
+received ninety-four thousand pounds unaccounted for: now, if
+Lady Richcourt can make any thing of all this, you have freely my
+leave to communicate it to her.  Pursuant to this report, and Mr.
+Paxton's contumacy, they moved for leave to bring in a bill to
+indemnify all persons who should accuse themselves of any crime,
+provided they do but accuse Lord Orford, and they have carried it
+by 251 to 228! but it is so absurd a bill, that there is not the
+least likelihood of its passing the Lords.  By this bill, whoever
+are guilty of murder, treason, forgery, etc. have nothing to do
+but to add perjury, and swear Lord Orford knew of it, and they
+may plead their pardon.  Tell Lady Richcourt this.  Lord Orford
+knew of her gallantries: she may plead her pardon.  Good night! I
+have not a moment to lose.
+
+
+
+
+254 Letter 68
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+May 20, 1742.
+
+I sent you a sketch last post of the division on the Indemnity
+Bill.  As they carried the question for its being brought in,
+they brought it in on Saturday; but were prevailed on to defer
+the second reading till Tuesday.  Then we had a long debate till
+eight at night, when they carried it, 228 against 217, only
+eleven majority: before, they had had twenty-three.  They
+immediately went into the committee on it,-and reported it that
+night.  Yesterday it came to the last reading; but the House,
+having sat so late the night before, was not so full, and they
+carried it, 216 to 184.  But to-day it comes into the
+Lords,-where they do not in the least expect to succeed; yet, to
+show their spirit, they have appointed a great dinner at the
+Fountain to-morrow to consider on methods for supporting the
+honour of the Commons, as they call it, against the Lords, So now
+all prospect of quiet seems to vanish!  The noise this bill makes
+is incredible; it is so unprecedented, so violent a step! Every
+thing is inflamed by Pultney, who governs both parties only, I
+think, to exasperate both more.  Three of our own people of the
+committee, the Solicitor,(582) Talbot, and Bowles, vote against
+us in the Indemnity Bill, the two latter have even spoke against
+us.  Sir Robert said, at the
+beginning, when he was congratulated on having some of his own
+friends in the committee, "The moment they are appointed, they
+will grow so jealous of the honour of their committee, that they
+will prefer that to every other consideration."(583)
+
+Our foreign news are as bad as our domestic: there seem little
+hopes of the Dutch coming into our measures; there are even
+letters, that mention strongly their resolution of not
+stirring-so we have Quixoted away sixteen thousand men! On
+Saturday we had accounts of the Austrians having cut off two
+thousand Prussians, in a retreat; but on Sunday came news of the
+great victory,(584) which the latter have gained, killing six,
+and taking two thousand Austrians prisoners, and that Prince
+Charles is retired to Vienna wounded.  This will but too much
+confirm the Dutch in their apprehensions of Prussia.
+As to the long letter you wrote me, in answer to a very
+particular one of mine, I cannot explain myself, till I find a
+safer conveyance than the post, by which, I perceive all our
+letters are opened.  I can only tell you, that in most things you
+guessed right; and that as to myself (585) all is quiet.
+I am in great concern, for you seem not satisfied with the boy we
+sent you.  Your brother entirely agreed with me that he was what
+you seem to describe; and as to his being on the foot of a
+servant, I give you my honour I repeated it over and over to his
+mother.  I suppose her folly was afraid of shocking him.  As to
+Italian, she assured me he had been learning it some time.  If he
+does not answer your purpose, let me know if you can dispose of
+him any other way, and I will try to
+accommodate you better.  Your brother has this moment been here,
+but there was no letter for me; at least, none that they will
+deliver yet.
+
+I know not in the least how to advise Mr. Jackson.(586)  I do not
+think Mr. Pelham the proper person to apply to; for the Duke of
+Newcastle is as jealous of him as of any body.(587)  Don't say
+this to him.  For Lord Hervey, though Mr. Jackson has interest
+there, I would not advise him to try it, for both hate him.  The
+application to the Duke of Newcastle by the Most direct means, I
+should think the best, or by any one that can be serviceable to
+the government.
+
+You will laugh at an odd accident that happened the other day to
+my uncle:(588) they put him into the papers for Earl of
+Sheffield.  There have been little disputes between the two
+Houses about coming into each other's House; when a lord comes
+into the Commons, they call out, withdraw: that day, the
+moment my uncle came in, they all roared out, Withdraw!
+withdraw!
+
+The great Mr. Nugent has been unfortunate, too, in parliament;
+besides being very ill heard, from being a very indifferent
+speaker, the other day on the Place Bill, (which, by the way, we
+have new modelled and softened, and to which the Lords have
+submitted to agree to humour Pultney,) he rose, and said, "He
+would not vote, as he was not determined in his opinion; but he
+would offer his sentiments; which were, particularly, that the
+bishops had been the cause of this bill being thrown out before."
+Winnington called him to order, desiring he would be tender of
+the Church of England.  You know he was a papist.  In answer to
+the beginning of his speech, Velters Cornwall, who is of the same
+side, said, "He wondered that when that gentleman could not
+convince himself by his eloquence, he
+should expect to convince the majority."
+
+Did I tell you that Lord Rochford,(589) has at last married Miss
+Young?(590)  I say, at last, for they don't pretend to have been
+married this twelvemonth; but they were publicly married last
+week.  Adieu!
+
+(582) John Strange, Esq. made Solicitor-general in 1736, and
+Master of the Rolls in 1750, he died in 1754.-E.
+
+(583) Voltaire has since made the same kind of observation in his
+"Life of Louis XlV." Art of Calvinism;-"Les hommes se
+piquent toujours de remplir un devoir qui les distingue."
+
+(584) The battle of Chotusitz, or Czaslau, gained by the King of
+Prussia over the very superior forces of the Austrians.  This
+victory occasioned the peace between the contending
+powers, and the cession of Silesia to the Prussian monarchy.- D.
+
+(585) This relates to some differences between Mr. Walpole and
+his father, to which the former had alluded in one of his
+letters.  They never suited one another either in habits,
+tastes, or opinions; in addition to which, Sir Robert appears to
+have been rather a harsh father to his youngest son.  If such was
+the case, the latter nobly revenged himself, by his earnest
+solicitude through life for the Honour of his parent's memory.-D.
+[See ant`e,
+p. 207, Letter 50.)
+
+(586) He had been consul at Genoa.
+
+(587) Sir Robert Walpole used to say of the Duke of Newcastle,
+"He has a foolish head and a perfidious heart.  His name is
+perfidy."-E.
+
+(588) Horace Walpole the elder@D.
+
+(589) William Henry Zulestein Nassau, fourth Earl of Rochford.
+He filled many diplomatic situations, and was also at
+different times, groom of the stole and secretary of state.
+He died in 1781.-D.
+
+(590) Daughter of Edward Young, Esq.  She had been maid of honour
+to the Princess of Wales.
+
+
+
+256 Letter 69
+To Sir Horace Mann
+Downing Street, May 26, 1742.
+
+To-day calls itself May the 26th, as you perceive by the date;
+but I am writing to you by the fireside, instead of going to
+Vauxhall.  if we have one warm day in seven, "we bless our stars,
+and think it luxury."  And yet we have as much
+waterworks and fresco diversions, as if we lay ten degrees nearer
+warmth.  Two nights ago Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea;
+the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides,
+were there.  There is a vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted,
+and illuminated, into which every body that loves eating,
+drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence.  The
+building and disposition of the gardens cost sixteen thousand
+pounds.  Twice a-week there are to be
+ridottos, at guinea tickets, for which you are to have a
+supper and music.  I was there last night, but did not find the
+joy of it.  Vauxhall is a little better; for the garden is
+pleasanter, and one goes by water.  Our operas are almost
+over; there were but three-and-forty people last night in the pit
+and boxes.  There is a little simple farce at Drury Lane, called
+"Miss Lucy in Town,"(591) in which Mrs. Clive (592) mimes the
+Muscovita admirably, and Beard, Amorevoli tolerably.  But all the
+run is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, who is turned player,
+at Goodman's-fields.  He plays all parts, and is a very good
+mimic.  His acting I have seen, and may say to you, who will not
+tell it again here, I see nothing wonderful in it.(593)  but it
+is heresy to say so: the Duke of Argyll says, he is superior to
+Betterton.  Now I talk of players, tell Mr. Chute that his friend
+Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning.  As she went out,
+and wanted her clogs, she
+turned to me, and said, "I remember at the playhouse, they used
+to call Mrs.  Oldfield's chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs.
+Bracegirdle's pattens!"
+
+I did, indeed, design the letter of this post for Mr. Chute; but
+I have received two such charming long ones from you of the 15th
+and 20th of May (N.  S.), that I must answer them, and beg him to
+excuse me till another post; so must the
+Prince,(594) Princess, the Grifona, and Countess Galli.  For the
+Princess's letter, I am not sure I shall answer it so
+soon, for hitherto I have not been able to read above every third
+word; however, you may thank her as much as if I
+understood it all.  I am very happy that mes bagatelles (for I
+still insist they were so) pleased.  You, my dear child, are very
+good to be pleased with the snuff-box.. I am much obliged to the
+superior lumi`eres of old Sarasin (595) about the
+Indian ink: if' she meant the black, I am sorry to say I had it
+into the bargain with the rest of the Japan: for the
+coloured, it is only a curiosity, because it has seldom been
+brought over.  I remember Sir Hans Sloane was the first who ever
+had any of it, and would on no account give my mother the least
+morsel of it.  since that, She afterwards got a good deal of it
+from China; and more has come over; but it is even less valuable
+than the other, for we never could tell how to use it; however,
+let it make its figure.
+
+I am sure you blame me all this time, for chatting about so many
+trifles, and telling you no politics.  I own to you, I am so
+wearied, so worn with them, that I scarce know how to turn my
+hand to them; but you shall know all I know.  I told you of the
+meeting at the Fountain tavern: Pultney had promised to be there,
+but was-not; nor Carteret.  As the Lords had put off the debate
+on the Indemnity Bill, nothing material passed; but the meeting
+was very Jacobite.  Yesterday the bill came on, and Lord Carteret
+took the lead against it, and about seven in the evening it was
+flung out by almost two to one, 92 to 47, and 17 proxies to 10.
+To-day we had a motion by the new Lord
+Hillsborough,(596) (for the father is Just dead,) and seconded by
+Lord Barrington,(597) to examine the Lords' votes, to see what
+has become of the bill: this is the form.  The chancellor of the
+exchequer, and all the new ministry, were with us
+against it; but they carried it, 164 to 159.  It is to be
+reported to-morrow, and as we have notice, we may possibly throw
+it out; else they will hurry on to a breach with the Lords.
+Pultney was not in the House: he was riding the other day, and
+met the King's coach; endeavouring to turn out of the way, his
+horse started, flung him, and fell upon him: he is much bruised
+but not at all dangerously.  On this occasion, there was an
+epigram fixed to a list, which I will explain to you afterwards
+it is not known who wrote it, but it was
+addressed to him:
+
+"Thy horse does things by halves, like thee:
+Thou, with irresolution,
+Hurt'st friend and foe, thyself and me,
+The King and Constitution."
+
+The list I meant: you must know, some time ago, before the
+change, they had moved for a committee to examine, and state the
+public accounts: It was passed.  Finding how little
+success they had with their Secret Committee, they have set this
+on foot, and we were to ballot for seven commissioners, who are
+to have a thousand a-year; We balloted yesterday: on our lists
+were Sir Richard Corbet,(598) Charles Hamilton (599) Lady
+Archibald's brother,) Sir William Middleton,(600) Mr. West, Mr.
+Fonnereau, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Ellis.(601)  On theirs
+ Mr. Bance, George Grenville, Mr. Hooper, Sir Charles
+Mordaunt,(602) Mr, Phillips, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Stuart.  On
+casting up the numbers, the four first on ours, and the three
+first on their list, appeared to have the majority,: so no great
+harm will come from this, should it pass the Lords;
+which it is not likely to do.  I have now told you, I think, all
+the political news, except that the troops continue going to
+Flanders, though we hear no good news yet from Holland.
+If we can prevent any dispute between the two Houses, it is
+believed and much hoped by the Court, that the Secret
+Committee will desire to be dissolved: if it does, there is an
+end of all this tempest!
+
+I must tell you an ingenuity of Lord Raymond,(603) an epitaph on
+the Indemnifying Bill-I believe you would guess the
+author:-
+
+"Interr'd beneath this marble stone doth lie
+The Bill of Indemnity;
+To show the good for which it was designed,
+It died itself to save mankind."
+
+My Lady Townshend made me laugh the other night about your old
+acquaintance, Miss Edwin; who, by the way, is grown almost a
+Methodist.  My lady says she was forced to have an issue made on
+one side of her head, for her eyes, and that Kent(604)
+advised her to have another on the other side for symmetry.
+There has lately been published one of the most impudent
+things that ever was printed; it is called "The Irish
+Recister," and is a list of all the unmarried women of any
+fashion in England, ranked in order, duchesses-dowager,
+ladies, widows, misses, etc. with their names at length, for the
+benefit of Irish fortune-hunters, or as it is said, for the
+incorporating and manufacturing of British commodities.  Miss
+Edwards(605) is the only one printed with a dash, because they
+have placed her among the widows.  I will send you this, "Miss
+Lucy in Town," and the magazines, by the first
+opportunity, as I should the other things, but your brother tells
+me you have had then) by another hand.  I received the cedarati,
+for which I have already thanked you: but I have been so much
+thanked by several people to whom I gave some, that I can very
+well afford to thank you again.
+
+As to Stosch expecting any present from me, he was so
+extremely well paid for all I had of' him, that I do not think
+myself at all in his debt: however, you was very good to offer to
+pay him.
+
+As to my Lady Walpole, I shall say nothing now, as I have not
+seen either of the two persons since I received your letter to
+whom I design to mention her; only that I am extremely sorry to
+find you still disturbed at any of the little nonsense of' that
+cibal.  I hoped that the accounts which I have sent you, and
+which, except in my last letter, must have been very
+satisfactory, would have served you as an antidote to their
+legends; and I think the great victory in the House of Lords, and
+which, I assure you, is here reckoned prodigious, Will raise your
+spirits against them.  I am happy you have taken that step about
+Sir Francis Dashwood; the credit it must have given you with the
+King will more than counterbalance any
+little hurt you might apprehend from the cabal.
+
+I am in no hurry for any of my things; as we shall be moving from
+hence as soon as Sir Robert has taken another house, I shall not
+want them till I am more settled.
+
+Adieu! I hope to tell you soon that we are all at peace, and then
+I trust you will be so.  A thousand loves to the Chutes.  How I
+long to see you all!
+
+P. S. I unseal my letter to tell you what a vast and,
+probably, final victory we have gained to-day.  They moved, that
+the lords flinging out the Bill of Indemnity was an
+obstruction of justice, and might prove fatal to the liberties
+of' this country.  We have sat till this moment, seven
+o'clock, and have rejected this motion by 245 to 193.  The call
+of the House, which they have kept off from fortnight to
+fortnight, to keep people in town, was appointed for to-day.  The
+moment the division was over, Sir John Cotton rose and said, "As
+I think the inquiry is at an end, you may do what you will with
+the call." We have put it off for two months.  There's a noble
+postscript!
+
+(591) This farce, the production of Fielding, was acted
+several nights with success; but it being hinted, that one of the
+characters was written in ridicule of a man of quality, the Lord
+Chamberlain sent an order to forbid its being
+performed any more.-E.
+
+(592) catherine Clive, an excellent actress in low comedy.
+Churchill says of her, in the Rosciad,
+
+In spite of outward blemishes she shone,
+For humour famed, and humour all her own.
+Easy, as if at home, the stage she trod,
+Nor sought the critic's praise, nor fear'd his rod
+Original in spirit and in ease,
+She pleased by hiding all attempts to please.
+No comic actress ever yet could raise
+On humour's base, more merit or more praise."
+
+In after life she lived at Twickenham, in the house now called
+Little Strawberry Hill, and
+became an intimate friend of Horace Walpole@D.
+
+(593) Garrick made his first appearance, October 19, 1741, in the
+character of Richard the Third.  Walpole does not appear to have
+been singular in the opinion here given.  Gray in a letter to
+Chute, says, "Did I tell you about Mr. Garrick, that the town are
+horn-mad after: there are a dozen dukes of a
+night at Goodman-fields sometimes; and vet I am stiff in the
+opposition."-E.
+
+(594) prince Craon.
+
+(595) Madame Sarasin, a Lorrain lady, companion to Princess
+Craon.
+
+(596) Wills Hill, the second Lord Hillsborough, afterwards
+created an Irish earl and made cofferer of the household. (In the
+reign of George III. he was created Earl of Hillsborough, in
+England, and finally Marquis of Downshire, in Ireland; and held
+the office of secretary of state for the colonies.-D.)
+
+(597) William Wildman, Viscount Barrington, made a lord of the
+admiralty on the coalition, and master of the great wardrobe, in
+1754.  He afterwards held the offices of chancellor of the
+exchequer, secretary at war, and treasurer of the navy, and died
+February 1st, 1793.-D.)
+
+(598) Sir Richard Corbett, of Leighton, in Montgomeryshire, the
+fourth baronet of that family. He was member for
+Shrewsbury, and died in 1774.-D.
+
+(599) The Hon. Charles Hamilton, sixth son of James, sixth Earl
+of Abercorn.  Member for Truro, comptroller of the green cloth to
+the Prince of Wales, and subsequently receiver-general of the
+Island of Minorca.  He died in 1787.-D.
+
+(600) Sir William Middleton, Bart. of Belsay Castle,
+Northumberland, the third baronet of the family.  He was
+member for Northumberland, and died in 1767.-D.''
+
+(601) Welbore Ellis, member of parliament for above half a
+century; during which period he held the different offices of a
+lord of the admiralty, secretary at war, treasurer of the navy,
+vice-treasurer of Ireland, and secretary of state. He was created
+Lord Mendip in 1794, with remainder to his nephew, Viscount
+Clifden, and died February 2, 1802, at the age of
+eighty-eight.-D.
+
+(602) Sir Charles Mordaunt, of Massingham, in Norfolk, the sixth
+baronet of the family.  He was member for the county of Warwick,
+and died in 1778.-D.
+
+(603) Robert, the second Lord Raymond, son of the lord chief
+justice.  [On whose death, in 1753, without issue, the title
+expired.]
+
+(604) William Kent, of whom Walpole himself drew the following
+just character:-"He was a painter, an architect, and the
+father of modern gardening.  In the first character he was below
+mediocrity; in the second, he was a restorer of the
+science; in the last, an original, and the inventor of an art
+that realizes painting and improves nature.  Mahomet imagined an
+elysium, Kent created many."-The misfortune of Kent was, that his
+fame and popularity in his own age were so great, that he was
+employed to give designs for all things, even for those which he
+could know nothing about-such as ladies'
+birthday dresses, which he decorated with the five orders of
+architecture.  These absurdities drew upon him the satire of
+Hogarth.-D.  [Walpole further states of Kent, that Pope
+undoubtedly contributed to form his taste.]
+
+(605) Miss Edwards, an unmarried lady of great fortune, who
+openly kept Lord Anne Hamilton.
+
+
+
+
+260 Letter 70
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, June 3, 1742.
+
+I have sent Mr. Chute all the news; I shall only say to you that
+I have read your last letter about Lady W. to Sir R.  He was not
+at all surprised at her thoughts of England, but told me that
+last week my Lord Carteret had sent him a letter which she had
+written to him, to demand his protection.  This you may tell
+publicly; it will show her ladyship's credit.
+
+Here is an epigram, which I believe will divert you: it is on
+Lord Islay's garden upon Hounslow Heath.
+
+"Old Islay, to show his fine delicate taste,(606)
+In improving his gardens purloined from the waste,
+Bade his gard'ner one day to open his views,
+By cutting a couple of grand avenues:
+No particular prospect his lordship intended,
+But left it to chance how his walks should be ended.
+
+With transport and joy he beheld his first view end
+In a favourite prospects church that was ruin'd-
+But alas! what a sight did the next cut exhibit!
+At the end of the walk hung a rogue on a gibbet!
+He beheld it and wept, for it caused him to muse on
+Full many a Campbell that died with his shoes on.
+All amazed and aghast at the ominous scene,
+He order'd it quick to be closed up again
+With a clump of Scotch firs that served for a Screen."
+
+Sir Robert asked me yesterday about the Dominichini, but I did
+not know what to answer: I said I would write to you about it.
+Have you bought it? or did you quite put it off? I had forgot to
+mention it again to you.  If you have not, I am still of opinion
+that you should buy it for him.  Adieu!
+
+(606) These lines were written by Bramston, author of
+"The Art of Politics," and "The Man of Taste." [The Reverend
+James Bramston, vicar of Starling, Sussex.  Pope took the line in
+the Dunciad, "Shine in the dignity of F. R. S." from his Man of
+Taste;-"A satire," says Warton, "in which the author has been
+guilty of the absurdity of making his hero laugh at himself and
+his own follies."  He died in 1744.]
+
+
+
+261 Letter 71
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+June 10, the Pretender's birthday, which, by the way, I believe
+he did not expect to keep at Rome this year, 1742.
+
+Since I wrote you my last letter, I have received two from you of
+the 27th May and 3d of June, N. S. I hope you will get my two
+packets; that is, one of them was addressed to Mr. Chute, and in
+them was all my fagot of compliments.
+
+Is not poor SCUlly (607) vastly disappointed that we are not
+arrived? But really, will that mad woman never have done! does
+she still find credit for her extravagant histories.  I
+carried her son with me to Vauxhall last night: he is a most
+charming boy,(608) but grows excessively like her in the face.
+I don't at all foresee how I shall make out this letter: every
+body is gone out of town during the Whitsuntide, and many will
+not return, at least not these six weeks; for so long they say it
+will be before the Secret Committee make their Report, with which
+they intend to finish.  We are, however, entertained with
+pageants every day-reviews to gladden the heart of
+David,(609) (609) and triumphs to Absalom! He,(610) and his wife
+went in great parade yesterday through the city and the dust to
+dine at Greenwich; they took water at the Tower, and trumpeting
+away to Grace Tosier's,
+
+"Like Cimon, triumph'd over land and wave"
+
+I don't know whether it was my Lord of Bristol (611) or some of
+the SaddlerS,((612) Company who had told him that this was the
+way "to steal the hearts of the people." He is in a
+quarrel with Lord Falmouth.(613)  There is just dead one
+Hammond,(614) a disciple of Lord Chesterfield,
+and equerry to his royal highness: he had parts, and was Just
+come into parliament, strong of the Cobham faction, or
+nepotism, as Sir Robert calls it.  The White Prince desired Lord
+Falmouth to choose Dr. Lee, who, you know, has disobliged the
+party by accepting a lordship of the admiralty.  Lord
+Falmouth has absolutely refused, and insists upon choosing one of
+his own brothers: his highness talks loudly of opposing him.  The
+borough is a Cornish one.
+
+There is arrived a courier from Lord Stair, with news of
+Prince Lobkowitz having cut off five thousand French.  We are
+hurrying away the rest of our troops to Flanders, and say that we
+are in great spirits, and intend to be in greater when we have
+defeated the French too.
+
+For my own particular, I cannot say I am well; I am afraid I have
+a little fever upon my spirits, or at least have nerves, which,
+you know, every body has in England.  I begin the
+cold-bath to-morrow, and talk of going to Tunbridge, if the
+parliament rises soon.
+
+Sir R. who begins to talk seriously of Houghton, has desired me
+to go -with him thither;' but that is not all settled.  Now I
+mention Houghton, you was in the right to miss a gallery there;
+but there is one actually fitting up, where the
+green-house was, and to be furnished with the spoils of
+Downing-street.
+
+I am quite sorry you have [)ad so much trouble with those
+odious cats of Malta: dear child, fling them into the Arno, if
+there is water enough at this season to drown them; or, I'll tell
+you, give them to Stosch, to pay the postage he talked of.  I
+have no ambition to make my court with them to the old wizard.
+
+I think I have not said any thing lately to you from Patapan; he
+is handsomer than ever, and crows fat: his eyes are
+charming; they have that agreeable lustre which the vulgar
+moderns call sore eyes, but the judicious ancients golden
+eyes, ocellos Patapanicos.
+
+The process is begun against her Grace of Beaufort,(615) and
+articles exhibited in Doctors' Commons.  Lady Townshend has had
+them copied, and lent them to me.  There is every thing proved to
+your heart's content, to the birth of the child, and much
+delectable reading.
+
+Adieu! my dear child; you see I have eked out a letter: I hate
+missing a post, and yet at this dead time I have almost been
+tempted to invent a murder or a robbery.  But you are good, and
+will be persuaded that I have used my eyes and ears for your
+service; when, if it were not for you, I should let them lie by
+in a drawer from week's end to week's end.  Good night!
+
+(607) An Irish tailor at Florence, who let out ready-furnished
+apartments to travelling English.  Lady W. had reported that Lord
+Orford was flying from England and would come thither.
+(608) George Walpole, afterwards the third Earl of Orford.  He
+succeeded to the earldom in 1751, and was appointed
+lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Norfolk Mr,
+Pitt, in a letter, written in 1759, says, "Nothing could make a
+better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions: Lord Orford,
+with the port of Mars himself, and really the
+genteelest figure under arms I ever saw, was the theme of
+every tongue." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 4.-E.
+
+(609) George the Second.
+
+(610) Frederic, Prince of Wales.
+
+(611) Dr. Secker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. (And eventually
+Archbishop of Canterbury.  According to Walpole, he was bred a
+man-midwife.-D.)  [Secker had committed in Walpole's eyes, the
+unpardonable offence of having "procured a marriage between the
+heiress of the Duke of Kent and the chancellor's
+(Hardwicke's) son;" he, therefore, readily propagated the
+charges of his being "a Presbyterian, a man-midwife, and
+president of a very freethinking club," (Memoires, i. p. 56,)
+when the fact is, the parents of Secker were Dissenters, and he
+for a time pursued the study, though not the practice of medicine
+and surgery.  The third charge is a mere falsehood.  See also
+Quarterly Review, xxv'i. p. 187.]
+
+(612) The Prince was a member of the Saddlers' company.
+
+(613) Hugh Boscawen, second Viscount Falmouth, a great dealer in
+boroughs.  It is of him that Lord Dodington tells the
+story, that he went to the minister to ask a favour, which the
+minister seemed unwilling to grant; upon which Lord Falmouth
+said, "Remember, Sir, we are seven."-D.
+
+(614) Author of Love Elegies. [See ant`e, p. 210.)
+
+(615) Frances, daughter and heir of the last Lord Scudamore, wife
+of Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort; from whom she was divorced
+for adultery with Lord Talbot.  She was afterwards married to
+Colonel Fitzroy, natural son of the Duke of
+Grafton. [The duke Having clearly proved the incontinence of his
+wife, obtained a divorce in March 1743-4.)
+
+
+
+263 Letter 72
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, June 14, 1742.
+
+We were surprised last Tuesday with the great good news of the
+peace between the Queen and the King of Prussia.  it was so
+unexpected and so welcome, that I believe he might get an act of
+parliament to forbid any one thinking that he ever made a slip in
+integrity.  Then, the reported accounts of the
+successes of Prince Charles and Lobkowitz over the French have
+put us into the greatest spirits.  Prince charles is extremely
+commended for courage and conduct, and makes up a little for
+other flaws in the family.
+
+it is at last settled that Lords gower,(616) Cobham, and
+Bathurst (617) are to come in.  The first is to be privy-seal,
+and was to have kissed hands last Friday, but Lord Hervey had
+carried the seal with him to Ickworth; but he must bring it back.
+Lord Cobham is to be field-marshal, and to command all the forces
+in England.  Bathurst was to have the
+Gentleman-pensioners, but Lord Essex,(618) who is now the
+Captain, and was to have had the Beef-eaters, will not change.
+Bathurst is to have the Beef-eaters; the Duke of Bolton (619) who
+has them, is to have the Isle of Wight, and Lord
+lymington,(620) who has that, is to have--nothing!
+
+The Secret Committee are in great perplexities about
+Scrope:(621) he would not take the oath, but threatened the
+Middlesex justices who tendered it to him "Gentlemen," said he,
+"have you any complaint against Me?  if you have not,
+don't you fear that I will prosecute you for enforcing oaths?"
+However, one of them began to read the oath--"I, John
+Scrope,"--"I John Scrope:"said he; "I did not say any such thing;
+but come, however, let's hear the oath;"--"do promise that I will
+faithfully and truly answer all such questions as shall be asked
+me by the Committee of Secrecy, and--" they were going on, but
+Scrope cried out, "Hold, hold! there is more than I can digest
+already."  He then went before the
+committee, and desired time to consider.  Pitt asked him
+abruptly, if he wanted a quarter of an hour: he replied, "he did
+not want to inform either his head or his heart, for both were
+satisfied what to do; but that he would ask the King's leave."
+He wants to fight Pitt.  He is a most testy little old gentleman,
+and about eight years ago would have fought Alderman Perry.  It
+was in the House, at the time of the
+excise: he said we should carry it: Perry said he hoped to see
+him hanged first. "You see me hanged, you dog, you!" said
+Scrope, and pulled him by the nose.  The committee have tried all
+ways to soften him, and have offered to let him swear to only
+what part he pleased, or only with regard to money given to
+members of parliament.  Pultney himself has tried to work on him;
+but the old gentleman is inflexible, and answered, "that he was
+fourscore years old, and did not care whether he spent the few
+months he had to live (622) in the Tower or not; that the last
+thing he would do should be to betray the King and next to him
+the Earl of Orford." It remains in suspense.
+The troops continue going to Flanders, but slowly enough.  Lady
+Vane has taken a trip thither after a cousin (623) of Lord
+Berkeley, who is as simple about her as her own husband is, and
+has written to Mr. Knight at Paris to furnish her with what money
+she wants.  He says she is vastly to blame; for he was trying to
+get her a divorce from Lord Vane, and then would have married her
+himself.  Her adventures(624 arc worthy to be bound up with those
+of my good sister-in-law,
+ as the German Princess, and Moll Flanders.
+
+Whom should I meet in the Park last night but Ceretesi!  He told
+me he was at a Bagne.  I will find out his bagnio; for though I
+was not much acquainted with him, yet the obligations I had to
+Florence make me eager to show any Florentine all the civilities
+in my power; though I do not love them near so
+well, since what you have told me of their late behaviour;
+notwithstanding your letter of June 20th, which I have just
+received.  I perceive that simple-hearted, good, unmeaning
+Ituccilai is of the number of the false, though you do not
+directly say so.
+
+I was excessively diverted with your pompous account of the siege
+of Lucca by a single Englishman.  I do believe that you and the
+Chutes might put a certain city into as great a panic.  Adieu!
+
+(616) John Leveson Gower, second Lord Gower; in 1746 created an
+earl.  He died in 1754.-E.
+
+(617) Allan, first Lord Bathurst, one of the twelve Tory peers
+created by Queen Anne, in 1711.  He was the friend of Pope,
+Congreve, Swift, Prior, and other men of letters.  He lived to
+see his eldest son chancellor of England, and died at the
+advanced age of ninety, in 1775; having been created an earl in
+1772.-D.
+
+(618) William Capel, third Earl of Essex; ambassador at the court
+of Turin. he died in January 1743.  The Beef-eaters are otherwise
+called the Yeomen of the Guard.-D.
+
+(619) Charles Powlett, third Duke of Bolton.  His second wife was
+Miss Lavinia Fenton, otherwise Mrs. Beswick, the actress; who
+became celebrated in the character of Polly Peacham in the
+Beggar's Opera.  By her the duke had three sons, born before
+marriage.  With his first wife, the daughter and sole heiress of
+John Vaughan, Earl of Carberry in Ireland, he never
+cohabited.  He died in 1754.-D.
+
+(620) John Wallop, first Viscount Lymington; in the following
+April created Earl of Portsmouth.  He died in 1762.-E.
+
+(621) John Scrope, secretary of the treasury.  He had been in
+Monmouth's rebellion, when very young, and carried
+intelligence to Holland in woman's clothes.
+
+(622) He did not die till 1753.  Tindal states that, upon
+giving this answer he was no further pressed.-E.
+
+(623) Henry Berkeley; killed the next year at the battle of
+Dettingen.
+
+(624) Lady Vane's Memoirs, dictated by herself, were actually
+published afterward,,; in a book, called "The Adventures of
+Peregrine Pickle;" and she makes mention of Lady Orford. [See
+ant`e, p. 189, Letter 42.  Sir Walter Scott says, that "she not
+only furnished Smollett with the materials for recording her own
+infamy, but rewarded him handsomely for the insertion of her
+story."]
+
+
+
+
+265 Letter 73
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Midsummer Day, 1742.
+
+One begins every letter with an Io Paean! indeed our hymns are
+not so tumultuous as they were some time ago, to the tune of
+Admiral Vernon.  They say there came an express last night, of
+the taking of Prague and the destruction of some thousand
+French.  It is really amazing the fortune of the Queen! We expect
+every day the news of the king of Poland having made his peace;
+for it is affirmed that the Prussians left him but sixteen days
+to think of it.  There is nothing could stop the King of Prussia,
+if he should march to Dresden: how long his being at peace with
+that king will stop him I look upon as very uncertain.
+
+They say we expect the Report from the Secret Committee next
+Tuesday, and then finish.  I preface all my news with "they say;"
+for I am not at all in the secret, and I had rather that "they
+say" should tell you a lie than myself.  They have sunk the
+affair of Scrope: the Chancellor (625) and Sir John
+Rushout spoke in the committee against persecuting him, for he is
+secretary to the treasury.  I don't think there is so easy a
+language as the ministerial in the world-one learns it in a week!
+There are few members in town, and most of them no
+friends to the committee; so that there is not the least
+apprehension of any violence following the Report.  I dare say
+there is not; for my uncle, who is my political weather-glass,
+and whose quicksilver rises and falls with the least variation of
+parliamentary weather, is in great spirits, and has spoken three
+times in the House within this week; he had not opened his lips
+before since the change.  Mr. Pultney has his warrant in his
+pocket for Earl of Bath, and kisses hands as soon as the
+parliament rises.  The promotions I mentioned to you are not yet
+come to pass; but a
+fortnight will settle things wonderfully.
+
+The Italian, (626) who I told you is here, has let me into a
+piece of secret history, which you never mentioned: perhaps it is
+not true; but he says the mighty mystery of the
+Count's (627) elopement from Florence, was occasioned by a letter
+from Wachtendonck,(628) which was so impertinent as to talk of
+satisfaction for some affront.  The great Count very wisely never
+answered it-his life, to be sure, is of too great consequence to
+be trusted at the end of a rash German's sword! however, the
+General wrote again, and hinted at coming himself for an answer.
+So it happened that when he arrived, the Count was gone to the
+baths of Lucca-those waters
+were reckoned better for his health, than steel in the
+abstract-How oddly it happened!  He Just returned to Florence as
+the General was dead!  Now was not this heroic lover worth
+running after? I wonder, as the Count must have known my
+lady's courage and genius for adventures, that he never
+thought of putting her in men's clothes, and sending her to
+answer the challenge. How pretty it would have been to have
+fought for one's lover! and how great the obligation,
+when he durst not fight for himself!
+
+I heard the other day, that the Primate of Lorrain was dead of
+the smallpox.  Will you make my compliments of condolence?
+though I dare say they are little afflicted: he -was a 'most
+worthless creature, and all his wit and parts, I believe little
+comforted them for his brutality and other vices.
+
+The fine Mr. Pit (629) is arrived: I dine with him
+to-day at Lord Lincoln's, with the Pomfrets.  So now the old
+partie quarr`ee is complete again.  The earl is not quite
+cured,(630) and a partner in sentiments may help to open the
+wound again.  My Lady Townshend dines with us too.  She flung the
+broadest Wortley-eye (631) on Mr. Pitt, the other night, in the
+park!
+
+Adieu! my dear child; are you quite well? I trust the summer will
+perfectly re-establish you.
+
+(625) Mr. Sandys, chancellor of the exchequer.
+
+(626) Ceretesi.
+
+(627) Count Richcourt.
+
+(628) General Wachtendonck, commander of the Queen
+of Hungary's troops at Leghorn.
+
+(629) George Pitt, of Strathfieldsea: he had
+been in love with Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Lord
+Pomfret, who was afterwards married to William Finch,
+vice-chamberlain.  (Mr.  Pitt was created Lord Rivers in 1776.
+In 1761 he was British envoy at Turin in 1770, ambassador
+extraordinary to Spain.  He died in 1803.-D.)
+
+(630) Of his love for lady Sophia Fermor.-D.
+
+(631) Mr. Pitt was very handsome, and Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu had liked him extremely, when he was in Italy.
+
+
+
+267 Letter 74
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, June 30, 1742.
+
+It is about six o'clock, and I am come from the House, where, at
+last, we have had another Report from the
+Secret Committee.  They have been disputing this week among
+themselves, whether this should be final or not.  The new
+ministry, thanked them! were for finishing; but their arguments
+were not so persuasive as dutiful, and we are to have yet
+another.  This lasted two hours and a half in reading, though
+confined to the affair of Burrel and Bristow, the Weymouth
+election, and secret-service money.  They moved to print it; but
+though they had fetched most of their members from Ale and the
+country, they were not strong enough to divide.  Velters
+Cornwall, whom I have mentioned to you, I believe, for odd
+humour, said, "ie believed the somethingness of this report would
+make amends for the nothingness of the last, and that he was for
+printing it, if it was only from believing that the King would
+not see it, unless it is printed." Perhaps it may be printed at
+the conclusion; at least it will without authority-and so you
+will see it.
+
+I received yours of June 24, N. S. with
+one from Mr. Chute, this morning, and I will now go answer it and
+Your last.  You seem still to be uneasy about my letters, and
+their being retarded.  I have not observed, lately, the same
+signs of yours being opened; and for my own, I think it may very
+often depend upon the packet-boat and winds.
+
+You ask me if Pultney has lately received any new
+disgusts.-How can one answer for a temper so hasty,
+so unsettled!-not that I know, unless that he finds, what he has
+been twenty years undoing, is not yet undone.
+
+I must interrupt the thread of my answer, to tell you that I hear
+news came last night that the States of Holland have voted
+forty@seven thousand men for the Assistance of the Queen,(632)
+and that it was not doubted but the
+States--General would imitate this resolution.  This seems to be
+the consequence of the King of Prussia's proceedings-but how can
+they trust him so easily?
+
+I am amazed that your leghorn ministry are so wavering; they are
+very old style, above eleven days out of fashion, if they any
+longer fear the French: my only apprehension is, lest
+these successes should make Richcourt more impertinent.
+
+You have no notion how I laughed at the man that "takes
+nothing but Madeira."(633)  I told it to my Lady
+Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too; and forgetting that
+she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be
+diverted.  She asked gravely what language that was That Madeira
+being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talk some
+European dialect!" The grave personage!  It was a piece with her
+saying, "that Swift would have written better, if he had never
+written ludicrously."
+
+I met a friend of yours the other day at an auction, and
+though I knew him not the least, yet being your friend,
+and so like you (for, do you know, he is excessively,) I had a
+great need to speak to him-and did.  He says, "he has left off
+writing to you, for he never could get an answer." I said, you
+had never received 'but one from him in all the time I was with
+you, and that I was witness to your having Answered it.  He was
+with his mother, Lady Abercorn,(634) a most frightful
+gentlewoman: Mr. Winnington
+says, he one day overheard her and the Duchess of Devonshire
+(635) talking of "hideous ugly women!"  By the way, I find I have
+never told you that it was Lord Paisley;(636) but that you will
+have perceived.
+
+Amorevoli is gone to Dresden for the
+summer; our directors are in great fear that he will serve them
+like Farinelli, and not return for the winter.
+
+I am writing to you in one of the charming rooms towards the
+park: it is a delightful evening, and I am willing to enjoy this
+sweet corner while I may, for we are soon to quit it.  Mrs.
+Sandys came yesterday to give us warning; Lord Wilmington has
+lent it to them.  Sir Robert might have had it for his own at
+first, but would only take it as first lord of the
+treasury.(637)  He goes into a small house of his own in
+Arlington Street, opposite to where we formerly lived.
+Whither I shall travel is yet uncertain: he is for my
+living with him; but then I shall be cooped-and besides, I never
+found that people loved one another the less for living asunder.
+
+The drowsy Lord Mayor (638) is dead-so the
+newspapers say.  I think he is not dead, but sleepeth.  Lord
+Gower is laid up with the gout: this, they say, is the reason of
+his not having the privy seal yet.  The town has talked of
+nothing lately but a plot: I will tell you the circumstances.
+last week the Scotch hero (639) sent his brother (640) two
+papers, which he said had been left at his house by an Unknown
+hand; that he believed it was by Colonel Cecil, agent for the
+Pretender--though how could that be, for he had had no
+conversation with Colonel Cecil for these two years!  He
+desired Lord Islay to lay them before the ministry.  One of the
+papers seemed a letter, though with no address or
+subscription, written in true genuine Stuart characters.  It was
+to thank Mr. Burnus (D. of A.) for his services, and that he
+hoped he would answer the assurances given of him.  The other was
+to command the Jacobites, and to exhort the patriots to continue
+what they had mutually so well begun, and to say how pleased he
+was with their having removed mr. Tench.  Lord Islay showed these
+letters to Lord Orford, and then to the King, and told him he had
+showed them to my father. "You did well."-Lord Islay, "Lord
+Orford says one is of the Pretender's hand."-King, "He
+(641) knows it: whenever any thing of this sort comes to your
+hand, carry it to Walpole."  This private conversation you must
+not repeat.  A few days afterwards, the Duke wrote to his
+brother, "That upon recollection he thought it right to say, that
+he had received those letters from Lord Barrimore"(642) who is as
+well known for General to the Chevalier, as Montemar is to the
+Queen of Spain-or as the Duke of A. would be to either of them.
+Lord Islay asked Sir R. if he was against publishing this story,
+which he thought was a justification both of his brother and Sir
+R. The latter replied, he could certainly have no objection to
+its being public-but pray, will his grace's sending these letters
+to the secretaries of state Justify him from the assurances that
+had been given of' him?(643)  However, the Pretender's being of
+opinion that the dismission of Mr. Tench was for his service,
+will scarce be an argument to the new ministry for making more
+noise about these papers.
+
+I am sorry the boy is so uneasy at being on the foot of a
+servant.  I will send for his mother, and ask her why she did not
+tell him the conditions to which we had agreed; at the same time,
+I will tell her that she may send any letters for him to me.
+Adieu! my dear child: I am going to write to Mr. Chute,
+that is, to-morrow.  I never was more diverted than with his
+letter.
+
+(632) The Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa.-D.
+
+(633) The only daughter and heiress of the
+Marquis Accianoli at Florence, was married to one of the same
+name, who was born at Madeira.
+'
+(634) Anne Plummer, Countess of Abercorn, wife of
+James, the seventh earl.  She died in 1756.-E.
+
+(635) Catherine, daughter of John Hoskins, Esq.  She was
+married to the third Duke of Devonshire in 171@, and died in
+1777.-E.
+
+(636) James Hamilton succeeded as eighth Earl of Abercorn, on the
+death of his father in 1743.  He was created Viscount
+Hamilton in England in 1786, and died unmarried in 1789.-D.
+
+(637) This is the house, in Downing Street, which is still the
+residence of the first lord of the treasury.  George the First
+gave it to Baron Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister-, for life.  On
+his death, George the Second offered to give it to Sir
+Robert Walpole; who, however, refused it, and begged of the King
+that it might be attached to the office of first lord of the
+treasury.-D.
+
+(638) Sir Robert Godschall.
+
+(639) The Duke of Argyll.
+
+(640) Earl of Islay.
+
+(641) Besides intercepted letters, Sir R. Walpole had more than
+once received letters from the Pretender, making him the greatest
+offers, which Sir R. always carried to the King, and got him to
+endorse, when he
+returned them to Sir R.
+
+(642) James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, succeeded his
+half-brother Lawrence in the family titles in 1699, and died in
+1747, at the age of eighty.  James, Lord Barrymore, was an
+adherent of the Pretender, whereas Lawrence had been so great a
+supporter of the revolution, that he was attainted, and his
+estates sequestered by James the Second's Irish parliament, in
+1689.-D.
+
+(643) The Duke of Argyll, in the latter part of his life, was
+often melancholy and disordered in his understanding.
+After this transaction, and it is supposed he had gone still
+farther, he could with difficulty be brought even to write his
+name.  The marriage of his eldest daughter with the Earl of
+Dalkeith was deferred for some time, because the duke could not
+be prevailed upon to sign the writings.
+
+
+
+
+269 Letter 75
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+
+On the Death of Richard West, Esq.(644)
+
+While surfeited with life, each hoary knave
+Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave,
+Thy virtues immaturely met their fate,
+Cramp'd in the limit of too short a date!
+
+
+Thy mind, not exercised so oft in vain,
+In health was gentle, and composed in pain:
+successive trials still refined thy soul,
+And plastic Patience perfected the whole.
+
+A friendly aspect, not suborn'd by art;
+An eye, which look'd the meaning of thy heart;
+A tongue, With simple truth and freedom fraught,
+The faithful index of thy honest thought.
+
+Thy pen disdain'd to seek the servile ways
+Of partial censure, and more partial praise;
+Through every tongue it flowed in nervous ease,
+With sense to Polish , and With wit to please.
+
+No lurking venom from thy pencil fell;
+Thine was the kindest satire, living well:
+The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see
+In what thou wert, what they themselves should be,
+
+Let me not charge on Providence a crime,
+Who snatch'd thee, blooming, to a better clime,
+To raise those virtues to a higher sphere:
+Virtues! which only could have starved thee here;
+
+
+                         A Receipt To Make A Lord.
+             Occasioned by a late report of a promotion.(645)
+
+Take a man, who by nature's a true son of earth,'
+By rapine enriched, though a beggar by birth;
+In genius the lowest, ill-bred and obscene;
+In morals most Wicked, most nasty in mien;
+By none ever trusted, yet ever employed;
+In blunders quite fertile, in merit quite void;
+A scold in the Senate, abroad a buffoon,
+The scorn and the jest of all courts but his own:
+A slave to that wealth that ne'er made him a friend,
+And proud of that cunning that ne'er gain'd an end;
+A dupe in each treaty, a Swiss in each vote;
+In manners and form, a complete Hottentot.
+Such an one could you find, of all men you'd commend him;  But be
+sure let the curse of each Briton attend him.
+thus fully prepared, add the grace of the throne,
+The folly of monarchs, and screen of a crown--
+Take a prince for his purpose, without ears or eyes,
+And a long parchment roll stuff'd brimful of lies:
+These mingled together, a fiat shall pass,
+and the thing be a Peer, that before was an ass.
+
+The former copy I think you will like: it was written by one Mr.
+Ashton (646) on Mr. West, two friends of mine, whom you have
+heard me often mention.  The other copy was printed in the Common
+Sense, I don't know by whom composed: the end of it is very bad,
+and there are great falsities in it, but some strokes are
+terribly like!
+
+I have not a moment to thank the Grifona, nor to answer yours of
+June 17, N. S. which I have this instant read.  Yours, in great
+haste.
+
+(644) See ante, pp. 121, (Letter 1), 251, (Letter 65).
+
+(645) The report, mentioned in a preceding letter, that Horace
+Walpole, brother to Sir Robert, was created a peer.
+
+(646)Thomas Ashton, afterwards fellow of Eton College. [See
+ant`e, p. 128, Letter 6, footnote 153.)
+
+271 Letter 76
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, July 7, 1742.
+
+Well! you may bid the Secret Committee good night.  The House
+adjourns to-day till Tuesday, and on Thursday is to be
+prorogued.  Yesterday we had a bill
+of Pultney's, about returning officers and regulating
+elections: the House was thin, and he carried it by 93 to 92.
+Mr. Pelham was not there, and Winnington did not vote, for the
+gentleman is testy still; when he saw how near he had been to
+losing it, he said loud enough to be heard, "I will make the
+gentlemen of that side feel me!" and, rising up, he said, "He
+was astonished, that a bill so calculated for the freedom of
+elections was so near being thrown out; that there was a
+report on the table, which showed how necessary such a bill
+was, and that though we had not time this year to consider
+what was proper to be done in consequence of it, he hoped we
+should next,"-with much to the same purpose; but all the
+effect this notable speech had, was to
+frighten my uncle, and make him give two or three shrugs
+extraordinary to his breeches.  They now say,(647) that
+Pultney will not take out the patent for his earldom, but
+remain in the House of Commons in terrorem; however, all his
+friends are to have places immediately, or, as the fashion of
+expressing it is, they are to go to Court in
+the Bath coach!"(648)
+
+Your relation Guise (649) is arrived from Carthagena, madder
+than ever.  As he was marching up to one of the forts, all his
+men deserted him; his lieutenant advised him to
+retire; he replied, "He never had turned his back yet, and
+would not now," and stood all the fire.  When the pelicans
+were flying over his head, he cried out, "What would Chloe
+(650) give for some of these to make a
+pelican pie!" When he is brave enough to perform such actions
+as are really almost incredible, what pity it is that he
+should for ever persist In saving things that are totally so!
+
+Lord Annandale (651) is at last mad in all the forms: he has
+long been an out-pensioner of Bedlam College.  Lord and Lady
+Talbot,(652) are parted; he gives her three thousand pounds
+a-year.  Is it not amazing, that in England people will not
+find out that they can live separate without parting?  The
+Duke of Beaufort says, "He pities Lord Talbot to have met with
+two such tempers as their two wives!"
+
+Sir Robert Rich (653) is going to Flanders, to try
+to make up an affair for his son; who, having quarrelled with
+a Captain Vane, as the commanding officer was trying to make
+it up at the head of the regiment, Rich came behind Vane, "And
+to show you," said he, "that I will not make it up, take
+that," and gave him a box on the ear.  They were immediately
+put in arrest; but the learned in the laws of honour say, they
+must fight, for no German officer will serve with Vane, till
+he has had satisfaction.
+
+Mr. Harris,(654) who married Lady Walpole's mother, is to be
+one of the peace-offerings on the new altar.  Bootle is
+to be chief-justice; but the Lord Chancellor would not consent
+to it, unless Lord Glenorchy,(655) whose daughter is married
+to Mr. Yorke, had a place in lieu of the Admiralty, which he
+has lost-he is to have Harris's.  Lord Edgecumbe's, in
+Ireland, they say, is destined to Harry Vane,(656) Pultney's
+toad-eater.
+
+Monticelli lives in a manner at our house.  I tell my sister
+that she is in love with him, and that I am glad it was not
+Amorevoli.  Monticelli dines frequently with Sir Robert, which
+diverts me extremely; you know how low his ideas are of music
+and the virtuosi; he calls them all fiddlers.
+
+I have not time now to write more, for I am going to a
+masquerade at the Ranelagh amphitheatre: the King is fond of
+it, and has pressed people to go; but I don't find that it
+will be full.  Good night! All love to the Pope for his good
+thing.
+
+
+(647) Sir R. W. to defeat Pultney's ambition persuaded the
+++King to insist on his going into the House of Lords: the
+day he carried his patent thither, he flung it upon the floor
+in a passion, and could scarce be prevailed on to have it
+passed. ["I remember," says Horace Walpole, (Reminiscences),
+"my father's action and words when he returned from court, and
+told me what he had done - 'I have turned the key of the
+closet on him!' making that motion with his
+hand."]
+
+(648) His title was to be Earl of Bath.
+
+(649) General Guise, a, very brave officer, but apt to
+romance; and a great connoisseur in pictures.  (He bequested
+his collection of pictures, which is a very indifferent one,
+to christ church College, Oxford.-D.)
+
+(650) the duke of Newcastle's French cook.
+
+(651) George Johnstone, third Marquis of
+Annandale, in Scotland.  He was not declared a lunatic till
+the year 1748.  Upon his death, in
+1792, his titles became either extinct or dormant.-D.
+
+(652) Mary, daughter of Adam de Cardonel,
+secretary to John the great Duke of Marlborough, married to
+William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of Lord Chancellor
+Talbot.-D.
+
+(653) Sir Robert Rich, Bart., of Rose Hall, Suffolk.  At his
+death, in 1768, he was colonel of the fourth regiment of
+dragoons, governor of Chelsea Hospital, and field-marshal of
+the forces.-E.
+
+(654) This article did not prove true.  Mr. Harris was not
+removed, nor Bootle made chief-justice.
+
+(655) John Campbell, Lord Glenorchy, and, on his
+father's death, in 1752, third Earl of Breadalbane.  His first
+wife was Lady Amiable Grey, eldest daughter and coheir of the
+Duke of Kent.  By her he had an only daughter,
+Jemima, who, upon the death of her grandfather, became
+Baroness Lucas of Crudwell, and Marchioness de Grey.  She
+married Philip Yorke, eldest son of the Chancellor
+Hardwicke, and eventually himself the second duke of that
+title.-D.
+
+(656) Henry Vane, eldest son of Gilbert, second
+Lord Barnard, and one of the tribe who came into office upon
+the breaking up of Sir Robert Walpole's administration.  He
+was created Earl of Darlington in 1753, and died in
+1758.-D.
+
+
+
+
+273 Letter 77
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Downing Street, July 14, 1742.
+
+Sir Robert Brown(657) is displaced from being paymaster of
+something, I forget what, for Sir Charles Gilmour, a friend of
+Lord Tweedale.(658)  Nee Finch (659) is made groom
+of the bedchamber, which was vacant; and Will Finch (660) vice
+chamberlain, which was not vacant; but they have emptied it of
+Lord Sidney Beauclerc.(661)  Boone is made commissary-general,
+in Hurley's room, and JefFries(662) in Will Stuart's.  All
+these have been kissing hands to-day, headed by the Earl of
+Bath.  He went into the King the other day ",it this'long
+list, but was told shortly, that unless he would take up his
+patent and quit the House of Commons,
+nothing should be done-he has consented.  I made some of them
+very angry; for when they told me who had kissed hands, I
+asked, if the Pretender had kissed hands too, for being King?  I
+forgot to tell you, that Murray is to be solicitor-general,
+in Sir John Strange's place, who is made chief justice, or
+some such thing.(663)
+
+I don't know who it was that said it, but it was a very good
+answer to one who asked why Lord Gower had not kissed hands
+sooner--"the Dispensation was not come
+from Rome."(664)
+
+I am writing to you up to the ears in packing: Lord Wilmington
+has lent this house to Sandys, and he has given us instant
+warning; we are moving as fast as possible to Siberia,-Sir
+Robert has a house there, within a few mile,, of the Duke of
+Courland; in short, child, we are all going to Norfolk,
+till we can get a house ready in town: all the furniture is
+taken down, and lying about in confusion.  I look like St.
+John in the Isle of Patmos, writing revelations, and
+prophesying "Woe! woe! woe! the kingdom of desolation is at
+hand!" -indeed, I have prettier animals about me, than he ever
+dreamed of: here is the dear Patapan, and a little Vandyke
+cat, with black whiskers -ind boots; you would swear it was of
+a very ancient family, in the West of England,
+famous for their loyalty.
+
+I told you I was going to the masquerade at Ranelagh gardens,
+last week: it was miserable; there were but an hundred men,
+six women, and two shepherdesses.  The King liked it,--and
+that he might not be known, they had dressed him a box with
+red damask!  Lady Pomfret and her three daughters were there,
+all dressed alike, that they might not be known.  My Lady
+said to Lady Bel Finch,(665) who was dressed like a nun, and
+for coolness had cut off the nose of her mask, "Madam, you are
+the first nun that ever I saw without a nose!"
+
+As I came home last night, they told me there was a fire in
+Downing Street; when I came to Whitehall, I could not get to
+the end of the street in my chariot, for the crowd; when I got
+out, the first thing I heard was a man enjoying himself:
+"Well! if it lasts two hours longer, Sir Robert Walpole's
+house will be burnt to the ground!"  it was a very comfortable
+hearing! but I found the fire was on the opposite side of the
+way, and at a good distance.  I stood in the crowd an hour to
+hear their discourse: one man was relating at how many fires
+he had happened to be present, and did not think himself at
+all unlucky in passing by, just at this.  What diverted me
+most, was a servant-maid, who was working, and carrying pails
+of water, with the strength of half-a-dozen troopers, and
+swearing the mob out of her way-the soft creature's name was
+Phillis! When I arrived at our door, I found the house
+full of goods, beds, women, and children, and three Scotch
+members of parliament, who lodge in the row, and who had sent
+in a saddle, a flitch of bacon, and a bottle of ink.  There
+was no wind, and the house was saved, with the loss of only
+its garret, and the furniture.
+
+I forgot to mention the Dominichin last post, as I suppose I
+had before, for I always was for buying it; it is one of the
+most engaging pictures I ever saw.  I have no qualms about its
+originality; and even if Sir Robert should not like
+it when it comes, which is impossible, I think I would live
+upon a flitch of bacon and a bottle of ink, rather than not
+spare the money to buy it myself: so my dear Sir, buy it.
+
+Your brother has this moment brought me a letter: I find by
+it, that you are very old style with relation to the Prussian
+peace.  Why, we have sent Robinson (666) and Lord Hyndford
+(667) a green ribbon, for it, above a fortnight ago.  Muley,
+(as Lord Lovel calls him,) Duke of Bedford, (668) is, they
+say, to have a blue one, for making his own peace: you know we
+always mind home-peaces more than foreign ones.
+
+I am quite sorry for all the trouble you have had about the
+Maltese cats; but you know they were for Lord Islay, not for
+myself.  Adieu!  I have no more time.
+
+(657) Sir Robert Brown had been a merchant at Venice, and
+British resident there, for which he was created a baronet in
+1732.  He held the place at this time of" "paymaster of his
+Majesty's works, concerning the repairs, new buildings, and
+well-keeping of any of his Majesty's houses of access, and
+others, in time of progress."-D
+
+(658) John Hay, fourth Marquis of Tweedale.  In 1748, he
+married Frances, daughter of John Earl Granville, and died in
+1762.-E.
+
+(659) The Hon.  Edward Finch, fifth son of Daniel, sixth Earl
+of Winchilsea and second Earl of Nottingham, and the direct
+ancestor of the present Lord Winchilsea.  He assumed the name
+of Hatton, in 1764, in consequence of inheriting the fortune
+of William Viscount Hatton, his mother's brother.  He was
+employed in diplomacy, and was made master of the robes in
+1757.  He died in 1771.-D.
+
+(660) The Hon. William Finch, second son of Daniel, sixth Earl of
+Winchilsea, had been envoy in Sweden and in Holland.  He
+continued to hold the office of vice-chamberlain of the
+household till his death in 1766.  These two brothers, and
+their elder brother Daniel, seventh Earl of Winchilsea, are
+the persons whom Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, calls, on
+account of the blackness of their complexions, "the dark,
+funereal
+Finches."  [His widow, Charlotte, daughter of the Earl of
+Pomfret,
+was appointed governess to the young princes and princesses.]
+
+(661) Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of
+St. Albans; a man of bad character.  Sir Charles Hanbury
+Williams calls him "Worthless Sidney." He was notorious for
+hunting after the fortunes of the old and childless.  Being
+very handsome, he had almost persuaded Lady Betty Germain, in
+her old age, to marry him; but she was dissuaded from it by
+the Duke of Dorset and her relations.  He failed also in
+obtaining
+the fortune of Sir' Thomas Reeve, Chief Justice of the (common
+Pleas, whom he used to attend on the circuit, with a view of
+ingratiating himself with him.  At length he induced Mr.
+Topham, of Windsor, to leave his estate to him.  He died in
+1744, leaving one son, Topham Beauclerk,
+Esq.-D. [This son, so celebrated for his conversational,
+talents, and described by Dr. Jonson as uniting the eloquent
+manners of a gentleman with the mental acccomplishments of a
+scholar, married, in 1768, Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the
+Duke of Marlborough, and died in 1780.]
+
+(662) John JefFries, secretary of the treasury.-D.
+
+
+(663) Sir John Strange was made master of the rolls, but not
+till some years afterwards; he died in 1754.
+
+(664) From the Pretender.  Lord Gower had been, until he was
+made privy-seal, one of the leading Jacobites; and was even
+supposed to lean to that party, after he had accepted the
+appointment.
+
+(665) Lady Isabella Finch, third daughter of the sixth Earl of
+Winchilsea, first lady of the bedchamber to the Princess
+Amelia.  It was for her that Kent built the pretty and
+singular house on the western side of Berkeley Square, with a
+fine room in it, of which the ceiling is painted in arabesque
+compartments, by Zucchi;-now the residence of C. B. Wall,
+Esq.-D. [In this house her ladyship died unmarried, in 1771.)
+
+(666) Sir Thomas Robinson, minister at Vienna; be was made
+secretary of state in 1754.  (And a peer, by the title of Lord
+Grantham, in 1761.-D.)
+
+(667) John Carmichael, third Earl of Hyndford.  He had been
+sent as envoy to the King of Prussia, during the first war of
+Silesia.  He was afterwards sent ambassador to St. Petersburgh
+and Vienna, and died in 1767.-D.
+
+(668) The Duke of Bedford had not the
+Garter till some years after this.
+
+
+
+275 Letter 78
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+
+You scolded me so much about my little paper, that I dare not
+venture upon it even now, when I have very little to say to
+you.  The long session is over, and the Secret Committee
+already forgotten.  Nobody remembers it but poor Paxton, who
+has lost his place(669)  by it.  saw him the day after he came
+out of Newgate: he came to Chelsea:(670) Lord Fitzwilliam was
+there, and in the height of zeal, took him about the neck and
+kissed him.  Lord Orford had been at Court that morning, and
+with his usual spirits, said to the new ministers, "So! the
+parliament is up, and Paxton, Bell, and I have got our
+liberty!"  The King spoke in the kindest manner to him at his
+levee, but did not call him into the closet, as the new
+ministry feared he would, and as perhaps, the old ministry
+expected he would.  The day before, when the King went to put
+an end to the session, Lord Quarendon asked Winnington
+"whether Bell would be let out time enough to hire a mob to
+huzza him as he went to the House of Lords."
+
+The few people that are left in town have been much diverted
+with an adventure that has befallen the new ministers.  Last
+Sunday the Duke of Newcastle gave them a dinner at Claremont,
+where their servants got so drunk, that when they came to the
+inn over against the gate of Newpark,(671) the coachman, who
+was the only remaining fragment of their suite, tumbled off
+the box, and there they were planted.  There were Lord Bath,
+Lord Carteret, Lord Limerick, and Harry Furnese (672) in the
+coach: they asked the innkeeper if he could contrive no way to
+convey them to town. , No," he said, "not unless it was to get
+Lord Orford's coachman to drive them." They demurred; but Lord
+Carteret said "Oh, I dare say, Lord Orford will willingly let
+us have him."  So they sent and he drove them home.(673)
+
+Ceretesi had a mind to see this wonderful Lord Orford, of whom
+he had heard so much; I carried him to dine at Chelsea.  You
+know the earl don't speak a word of any language but English
+and Latin,(674) and Ceretesi not a word of either; yet he
+assured me that he was very happy to have made cosi bella
+conascenza!  He whips out his pocket-book every moment, and
+writes descriptions in issimo of every thing he sees: the
+grotto alone took up three pages.  What volumes he will
+publish at his return, in usum Serenissimi Pannom!(675)
+
+There has lately been the most shocking scene of murder
+imaginable; a parcel of drunken constables took it into their
+heads to put the laws in execution against disorderly persons,
+and so took up every woman they met, till they had collected
+five and six or twenty, all of whom they thrust into St.
+Martin's roundhouse, where they kept them all night, with
+doors and windows closed.  The poor creatures, who could not
+stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left,
+begging at least for water: one poor wretch said she was worth
+eighteen-pence, and would gladly give it for a draught of
+water, but in vain! So well did they keep them there, that in
+the morning four were found stifled to death, two died soon
+after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way.  In short, it
+is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered: several
+of them were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were
+necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring
+women.  One of the dead was a poor washerwoman, big with
+child, who was returning home late from washing.  One of the
+constables is taken, and others absconded; but I question(676)
+if any of them will suffer death, though the greatest
+criminals in this town are the officers of justice; there is
+no tyranny they do not exercise, no villainy of which they do
+not partake.  These same men, the same night, broke into a
+bagnio in Covent-Garden, and took up Jack Spencer,(677) Mr.
+Stewart, and Lord George Graham,(678) and would have thrust
+them into the round-house with the poor women, if they had not
+been worth more than eighteen-pence!
+
+I have just now received yours of the 15th of July, with a
+married letter from both Prince and Princess:(679) but sure
+nothing ever equalled the setting out of it! She says, "The
+generosity of your friendship for me, Sir, leaves me nothing
+to desire of all that is precious in England, China, and the
+Indies!" Do you know, after such a testimony under the hand of
+a princess, that I am determined, after the laudable example
+of the house of Medici, to take the title of Horace the
+Magnificent! I am only afraid it should be a dangerous example
+for my posterity, who may ruin themselves in emulating the
+magnificence of their ancestor.  It happens comically, for the
+other day, in removing from Downing-street, Sir Robert found
+an old account-book of his father, wherein he set down all
+his, expenses.  In three months and ten days that he was in
+London one winter as member of parliament, he spent-what do
+you think?-sixty-four pounds seven shillings and five-pence!
+There are many articles for Nottingham ale, eighteen-pences
+for dinners, five shillings to Bob (now Earl of Orford), and
+one memorandum of six shillings given in exchange to Mr.
+Wilkins for his wig-and yet this old man, my grandfather, had
+two thousand pounds a-year, Norfolk sterling!  He little
+thought that what maintained him for a whole session, would
+scarce serve one of his younger grandsons to buy japan and
+fans for princesses at Florence!
+
+Lord Orford has been at court again to-day: Lord Carteret came
+up to thank him for his coachman; the Duke of Newcastle
+standing by. My father said, "My lord, whenever the duke is
+near overturning you, you have nothing to do but to send to
+me, and I will save you." The duke said to Lord Carteret, "Do
+you know, my lord, that the Venison you eat that day came out
+of Newpark?"  Lord Orford laughed, and said, "So, you see I am
+made to kill the fatted calf for the return of the prodigals!"
+The King passed by all the new ministry to speak to him, and
+afterwards only spoke to my Lord Carteret.
+
+Should I answer the letters from the court of Petraria again?
+there will be no end of our magnificent correspondence!-but
+would it not be too haughty to let a princess write last?
+
+Oh, the cats! I can never keep them, and yet It is barbarous
+to send them all to Lord Islay: he will shut them up and
+starve them, and then bury them under the stairs with his
+wife.  Adieu!
+
+(669) Solicitor to the treasury.  See ante, p. 246.
+
+(670) Sir R. Walpole's house at Chelsea.-D.
+
+(671) Lord Walpole was ranger of Newpark.  (Now called
+Richmond Park.-D.)
+
+(672) One of the band of incapables who obtained power and
+place on the fall of Walpole.  Horace Walpole, in his
+Memoires, calls him "that old rag of Lord Bath's quota to an
+administration, the mute Harry Furnese."-D.
+
+(673) This occurrence was celebrated in a ballad which is
+inserted in C. Hanbury Williams's works, and begins thus.
+
+"As Caleb and Carteret, two birds of a feather,
+Went down to a feast at Newcastle's together."
+
+Lord Bath is called "Caleb," in consequence of the name of
+Caleb DAnvers having been used in The Craftsman, of which he
+was the principal author.-D.
+
+(674) It was very remarkable that Lord Orford could get and
+keep such an ascendant with King George 1. when they had no
+way of conversing but very imperfectly in Latin.
+
+(675) The coffee-house at Florence where the nobility meet.
+
+(676) The keeper of the round-house was tried but acquitted of
+wilful murder. [The keeper, whose name was William Bird, was
+tried at the Old Bailey in October, and received sentence of
+death; which was afterwards transmuted to transportation.]
+
+(677) The Honourable John Spencer, second son of Charles,
+third Earl of Sunderland, by Anne his wife, second daughter of
+the great Duke of Marlborough.  He was the favourite grandson
+of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough who left him a vast
+fortune, having disinherited, to the utmost of her power, his
+eldest brother, Charles, Duke of Marlborough.  The condition
+upon which she made this bequest was that neither he nor his
+heirs should take any place or pension from any government,
+except the rangership of Windsor Park.  He was the ancestor of
+the present Earl Spencer, and died in 1746.- D.
+
+(678) Lord George Graham, youngest son of the Duke of
+Montrose, and a captain in the navy.  He died in 1747.-D.
+
+(679) Prince and Princess Craon.
+
+
+
+
+278 Letter 79
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Chelsea, July 29, 1742.
+
+I am quite out of humour; the whole town is melted away; you
+never saw such a desert.  You know what Florence is in the
+vintage-season, at least I remember what it was: London is
+just as empty, nothing but half-a-dozen private gentlewomen
+left, who live upon the scandal that they laid up in the
+winter.  I am going too! this day se'nnight we set out for
+Houghton, for three months; but I scarce think that I shall
+allow thirty days apiece to them.  Next post I shall not be
+able to write to you; and when I am there shall scarce find
+any materials to furnish a letter above every other post.  I
+beg, however, that you will write constantly to me: it will be
+my only entertainment, for I neither hunt, brew, drink, nor
+reap.  When I return in the winter, I will make amends for
+this barren season of our correspondence.
+
+I carried Sir Robert the other night to Ranelagh for the first
+time: my uncle's prudence, or fear, would never let him go
+before.  It was pretty full, and all its fulness flocked round
+us: we walked with a train at our heels, like two chairmen
+going to fight; but they were extremely civil, and did not
+crowd him, or say the least impertinence--I think he grows
+popular already!  The other day he got it asked, whether he
+should be received if he went to Carleton House?-no,
+truly!-but yesterday morning Lord Baltimore' came (680) to
+soften it a little; that his royal highness -did not refuse to
+see him, but that now the Court was out of town, and he had no
+drawing-room, he did not see any body.
+
+They have given Mrs. Pultney an admirable name, and one that
+is likely to stick by her-instead of Lady Bath, they call her
+the wife of Bath.(681)  Don't you figure her squabbling at the
+gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny.
+
+Cibber has published a little pamphlet against Pope, which has
+a great deal of spirit, and, from some circumstances, will
+notably vex him.(682)  I will send it to you by the first
+opportunity, with a new pamphlet, said to be Doddington's,
+called "A Comparison of the Old and New Ministry:" it is much
+liked.  I have not forgot your magazines, but will send them
+and these pamphlets together.  Adieu! I am at the end of my
+tell.
+
+P. S. Lord Edgecumbe is just made lord-lieutenant of Cornwall,
+at which the Lord of Bath looks sour. He said, yesterday, that
+the King would give orders for several other considerable
+alterations; but gave no orders, except for this, which was
+not asked by that earl.
+
+(680) Lord of the bedchamber to the Prince.
+
+(681) In allusion to the old ballad.
+
+(682) This pamphlet, which was entitled "A Letter from Mr.
+Cibber to Mr. Pope; inquiring into the motives that might
+induce him, in his satirical works to be so frequently fond of
+Mr. Cibber's name," so "notably vexed" the great poet, that,
+in a new edition of the Dunciad, he dethroned Theobald from
+his eminence as King of the dunces, and enthroned Cibber in
+his stead.-E.
+
+
+
+
+279 Letter 80
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+(From Houghton.)
+
+Here are three new ballads,(683) and you must take them as a
+plump part of a long letter.  Consider, I am in the barren
+land of Norfolk, where news grows as slow as any thing green;
+and besides, I am in the house of a fallen minister!  The
+first song I fancy is Lord Edgcumbe's; at least he had reason
+to write it.  The second I do not think so good as the real
+Story that occasioned it.  The last is reckoned vastly the
+best, and is much admired: I cannot say I see all those
+beauties in it, nor am charmed with the poetry, which is cried
+up. I don't find that any body knows whose it is.(684) Pultney
+is very anoyed, especially as he pretends, about his wife, and
+says, "it is too much to abuse ladies!"  You see, their twenty
+years' satires come back home!  He is gone to the Bath in
+great dudgeon: the day before he went, he went in to the King
+to ask him to turn out Mr. Hill of the customs, for having
+opposed him at Heydon.  "Sir," said the King, "was it not when
+you was opposing me? I won't turn him out: I will part with no
+more of my friends." Lord Wilmington was waiting to receive
+orders accordingly, but the King gave him none.
+
+We came hither last Saturday; as we passed through
+Grosvenor-square, we met Sir Roger Newdigate, (685) with a
+vast body of Tories, proceeding to his election at Brentford:
+we might have expected some insult, but only one single fellow
+hissed. and was not followed.  Lord Edgcumbe, Mr. Ellis, and
+Mr. Hervey, in their way to Coke's,(686)
+and Lord Chief Justice Wills (on the circuit) are the Only
+company here yet.  My Lord invited nobody, but left it to
+their charity.  The other night, as soon as he had gone
+through showing Mr. Wills the house, Well," said he, "here I
+am to enjoy  't, and my Lord of Bath may--."  I forgot to tell
+you, in confirmation of what you see in the song of the wife
+of Bath having shares of places, Sir Robert told me, that when
+formerly she got a place for her own father, she took the
+salary and left him only the perquisites!
+
+It is much thought that the King will go abroad, if he can avoid
+leaving the Prince in his place--.  Imagine all this!
+
+I received to-day yours of July 21), and two from Mr. Chute
+and Madame Pucci,(687) which I will answer very soon: where is
+she now?  I delight in Mr. Villiers's, (688) modesty-in one
+place you had written it villette's; I fancy on purpose, for
+it would do for him.
+
+Good night, my dear child! I have written myself threadbare.
+I know you will hate my campaign, but what can one do!
+
+(683) As these ballads are to be found in the edition of Sir
+Charles Hanbury Williams's works, published in 1822, it has
+been deemed better to omit them here.  They are called,
+"Labour in Vain," "The Old Coachman," and "The Country
+Girl."-D.
+
+(684) it was written by Hanbury Williams.
+
+(685) Sir Roger Newdigate, the fifth baronet of the family.
+He was elected member for Middlesex, upon the vacancy
+occasioned by Pultney's being created Earl of Bath.  He
+belonged to the Tory or Jacobite party.-D. [Sir Roger
+afterwards represented the University of Oxford in five
+parliaments, and died in 1806, in his eighty-seventh year.
+Among other benefactions to his Alma Mater, he gave the noble
+candelabra in the Radcliffe library, and founded an annual
+prize
+ for English verses on ancient painting, sculpture, and
+architecture.]
+
+(686) Holkham.  Coke was the son of Lord Lovel, afterward
+Viscount Coke, when his father was created Earl of
+Leicester.-D.
+
+(687) She was the daughter of the Conte di Valvasone, of
+Friuli, sister of Madame Suares, and of the bedchamber to the
+Duchess of Modena.
+
+(688) Thomas Villiers a younger son of william, second Earl of
+Jersey, at this time British minister at the court of Dresden,
+and eventually created Lord Hyde, and Earl of clarendon.  Sir
+H. Mann had alluded in one of his letters to a speech
+attributed to Mr. Villiers, in which he took great credit to
+himself for having induced the King of Poland to become a
+party to the peace of Breslau, recently concluded between the
+Queen of Hungary and the King, of Prussia; a course of
+proceeding, which, in fact, his Polish Majesty had no
+alternative but to adopt.  Villettes was an inferior
+diplomatic agent from England to some of the Italian courts,
+and was at this moment resident at the court of Turin.-D.
+
+
+
+
+280 Letter 81
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Aug. 20, 1742
+
+
+By the tediousness of the post, and distance of place, I am
+still receiving letters from you about the Secret Committee,
+which seems strange, for it is as much forgotten now, as if it
+had happened in the last reign.  Thus much I must answer you
+about it, that it is possible to resume the inquiry upon the
+Report next session; but you may judge whether they will,
+after all the late promotions.
+
+We are willing to believe that there are no news in town, for
+we hear none at all: Lord Lovel sent us word to-day, that he
+heard, by a messenger from the post office, that Montemar
+(689) is put under arrest.  I don't tell you this for news,
+for you must know it long ago: but I expect the confirmation
+of it from you next post.  Since we came hither I have heard
+no more of the king's journey to Flanders: our troops are as
+peaceable there as On Hounslow Heath, except some bickerings
+and blows about beef with butchers, and about sacraments with
+friars.  You know the English can eat no meat, nor be civil to
+any God but their own.
+
+As much as I am obliged to you for the description of your
+Cocchiata,(690) I don't like to hear of it.  It is very
+unpleasant, instead of being at it, to be prisoner, in a
+melancholy, barren province, which would put one in mind of
+the deluge, only that we have no water.  Do remember exactly
+how your last was; for I intend that you shall give me just
+such another Cocchiata next summer, if it pleases the kings
+and queens of this world to let us be at peace For "it rests
+that without fig-leaves," as my Lord Bacon says in one of his
+letters , "I do ingenuously confess and acknowledge," (691)
+that I like nothing so well as Italy.
+
+I agree with you extremely about Tuscany for Prince
+Charles,(692) but I can only agree with you on paper; for as
+to knowing anything of it, I am sure Sir Robert himself knows
+nothing of it: the Duke of Newcastle and my Lord Carteret keep
+him in as great ignorance as possible, especially the latter;
+and even in other times, you know how little he ever thought
+on those things.  Believe me, he will every day know less.
+
+Your last, which I have been answering, was the. 5th of
+August; I this minute receive another of the 12th.  How I am
+charmed with your spirit and usage of Richcourt!  Mais ce
+n'est pas d'aujourdhui que je commence `a les m`epriser!  I am
+so glad that you have quitted your calm, to treat them as they
+deserve.  You don't tell me if his opposition in the council
+hindered your intercession from taking place for the valet de
+chambre.  I hope not! I could not bear his thwarting you!
+
+I am now going to write to your brother, to get you the
+overtures; and to desire he will send them with some pamphlets
+and the magazines which I left in commission for you, at my
+leaving London.  I am going to send him, too, des pleins
+pouvoirs, for nominating a person to represent me at his new
+babe's christening.
+
+I am sorry Mrs. Goldsworthy is coming to England, though I
+think it can be of no effect.  Sir Charles (692) has no sort
+of interest with the new powers, and I don't think the
+Richmonds have enough to remove foreign ministers.  However, I
+will consult with Sir Robert about it, and see if he thinks
+there is any danger for you, which I do not in the least; and
+whatever can be done by me, I think you know, will.
+
+P. S. I inclose an answer to Madame Pucci's letter.  Where is
+she in all this Modenese desolation
+
+(689) Montemar was the General of the King of Spain, who
+commanded the troops of that sovereign against the
+Imperialists in Italy.-D.
+
+(690) A sort of serenade.  Sir H. Mann had mentioned, that he
+was about to give an entertainment of this kind in his garden
+to the society of Florence.-D.
+
+(691) Prince Charles of Lorraine, younger brother of Francis,
+who was now Grand Duke of Tuscany.  He was a general of some
+abilities; but it was his misfortune to be so often opposed to
+the superior talents of the King of Prussia.-D.
+
+(692) Sir Charles Wager.
+
+
+
+281 Letter 82
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, August 28, 1742.
+
+I did receive your letter of the 12th, as I think I mentioned
+in my last; and to-day another of the 19th.  Had I been you,
+instead of saying that I would have taken my lady's(693) woman
+for my spy, I should have said, that I would hire Richcourt
+himself: I dare to say that one might buy the count's own
+secrets of himself.
+
+I am sorry to hear that the Impressarii have sent for the
+Chiaretta; I am not one of the managers; I should have
+remonstrated against her, for she will not do on the same
+stage with the Barbarina.  I don't know who will be glad of
+her coming, but Mr. Blighe and Amorevoli.
+
+'Tis amazing, but we hear not a syllable of Prague taken,(694)
+it must be!  Indeed, Carthagena, too, was certain of being
+taken! but it seems, Maillebois is to stop at Bavaria.  I hope
+Belleisle (695) will be made prisoner?  I am indifferent about
+the fate of the great Broglio-but Belleisle is able, and is
+our most determined enemy: we need not have more, for to-day
+it is confirmed that Cardinal Tencin (696) and M. d'Argenson
+are declared of the prime ministry.  The first moment they
+can, Tencin will be for transporting the Pretenders into
+England.  Your advice about Naples was quite judicious: the
+appearance of a bomb will have great weight in the councils of
+the little king.
+
+We don't talk now of any of the Royals passing into Flanders;
+though the Champion (697) this morning had an admirable
+quotation, on the supposition that the King would go himself:
+it was this line from the Rehearsal:-
+
+"Give us our fiddle; we ourselves will play."
+
+The lesson for the Day (698) that I sent you, I gave to Mr.
+Coke, who came in as I was writing it, and by his dispersing
+it, it has got into print, with an additional one, which I
+cannot say I am proud should go under my name.  Since that,
+nothing but lessons are the fashion: first and second lessons,
+morning and evening lessons, epistles, etc.  One of the Tory
+papers published so abusive an one last week on the new
+ministry, that three gentlemen called on the printer, to know
+how he dared to publish it.  Don't you like these men who for
+twenty years together led the way, and published every thing
+that was scandalous, that they should wonder at any body's
+daring to publish against them! Oh! it will come home to them!
+Indeed, every body's fame now is published at length: last
+week the Champion mentioned the Earl of Orford and his natural
+daughter, Lady Mary, at length (for which he had a great mind
+to prosecute the printer).  To-day, the London Evening Post
+says, Mr. Pane, nephew of Mr. Scrope, is made first clerk of
+the treasury, as a reward for his uncle's taciturnity before
+the Secret Committee.  He is in the room of old Tilson, who
+was so tormented by that Committee that it turned his brain,
+and he is dead.
+
+I am excessively shocked at Mr. Fane's (699) behaviour to you;
+but Mr. Fane is an honourable man! he lets poor you pay him
+his salary for eighteen months, without thinking of returning
+it! But if he had lost that sum to Jansen,(700) or to any of
+the honourable men at White's, he would think his honour
+engaged to pay it.  There is nothing, sure, so whimsical as
+modern honour! You may debauch a woman upon a promise of
+marriage, and not marry her; you may ruin your tailor's or
+your baker's family by not paying them; you may make Mr. Mann
+maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out of
+his own pocket, and still be a man of honour! But, not to pay
+a common sharper, or not to murder a man that has trod upon
+your toe, is such a blot in your scutcheon, that you could
+never recover your honour, though you had in your veins "all
+the blood of all the Howards!"
+
+My love to Mr. Chute: tell him, as he looks on the east front
+of Houghton, to tap under the two windows in the left-hand
+wing, up stairs, close to the colonnade-there are Patapan and
+I, at this instant, writing to you; there we are almost every
+morning, or in the library; the evenings, we walk till dark;
+then Lady Mary, Miss Leneve, and I play at comet; the Earl,
+Mrs. Leneve, and whosoever is here, discourse; car telle est
+notre vie!  Adieu!
+
+(693) Lady Walpole.  Richcourt, the Florentine minister, was
+her lover, and both, as has been seen in the former part of
+these letters, were enemies of Sir . H. Mann.-D.
+
+(694) This means retaken by the Imperialists from the French,
+who had obtained possession of it on the 25th of November,
+1741.  The Austrian troops drove the French out of Prague, in
+December, 1742.-D.
+
+(695) This wish was gratified, though not in this year.
+Marshal Belleisle was taken prisoner in 1745, by the
+Hanoverian dragoons, was confined for some months in Windsor
+Castle, and exchanged after the battle of Fontenoy.-D.
+
+(696) A profligate ecclesiastic, who was deeply engaged in the
+corrupt political intrigues of the day.  In these he was
+assisted by his sister Madame Tencin, an unprincipled woman of
+much ability, who had been the mistress of the still more
+infamous Cardinal Dubois.  Voltaire boasts in his Memoirs, of
+having killed the Cardinal Tencin from vexation, at a sort of
+political hoax, which he played off upon him.-D. [The cardinal
+was afterwards, made Archbishop of Lyons.  In 1752, he
+entirely quitted the court, and retired to his diocese, where
+he died in 1758, ,greatly esteemed," says the Biog. Univ.  for
+his extensive charities." His sister died in 1749.  She was
+mother of the celebrated D'Alembert by Destouches Canon, and
+authoress of "Le Comte de Comminges," "Les Malheurs de
+l'Amour," and other romances.]
+
+(697) 'The Champion was an opposition Journal, written by
+Fielding. [Assisted by Ralph, the historian.)
+
+(698) Entitled " The Lessons for the Day, 1742." Published in
+Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's works, but written by
+Walpole.-D.
+
+(699) Charles Fane, afterwards Lord Fane, had been minister at
+Florence before Mr. Mann.
+
+(700) A notorious gambler.  He is mentioned by Pope, in the
+character of the young man of fashion, in the fourth canto of
+the Dunciad,
+
+"As much estate, and principle, and wit,
+As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber, shall think fit."-D.
+
+
+
+
+284 Letter 83
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Sept. 11, 1742.
+
+I could not write     to you last week, for I was at
+Woolterton,(701) and in a course of visits, that took up my
+every moment.  I received one from you there, of August 26th,
+but have had none at all this week.
+
+You know I am not prejudiced in favour of the country, nor
+like a place because it bears turnips well, or because you may
+gallop over it without meeting a tree: but I really was
+charmed with Woolterton; it is all wood and water! My uncle
+and aunt may, without any expense, do what they have all their
+lives avoided, wash themselves and make fires.(702)  Their
+house is more than a         good one; if they had not saved
+eighteen pence in every room, it would have been a fine one.
+I saw several of my acquaintance,(703)  Volterra vases,
+Grisoni landscapes, the four little bronzes, the
+raffle-picture, etc.
+
+We have printed about the expedition to Naples: the affair at
+Elba, too, is in the papers, but we affect not to believe it.
+ We are in great apprehensions of not taking Prague--the only
+thing that has been taken on our side lately, I think, is my
+Lord Stair's journey hither and back again-we don't know for
+what-he is such an Orlando! The papers are full of the most
+defending King'S Journey to Flanders;our private letters say
+not a word of it-I say our, for at                  present I
+think the earl's intelligences and mine are pretty equal as to
+authority.
+
+Here is a little thing which I think has humour in it.
+
+A CATALOGUE OF NEW FRENCH BOOKS.
+
+1. Jean-sans-terre, on l'Empereur en pet-en-l'air; imprim`e `a
+Frankfort.
+
+                  2. La France mourante d'une suppression
+d'hommes et d'argent: dedi`e au public.
+
+                  3. L'art de faire les Neutralit`es, invent`e
+en Allemagne, et `ecrit en cette langue, par Un des Electeurs,
+et nouvellement traduit en Napolitain; par le Chef d'Escadre
+Martin.
+
+4. Voyage d'Allemaune, par Monsieur de Maupertuis; avec un
+t`elescope, invent`e pendant son voyage; `a l'usage des
+H`eros, pour regarder leur victoires de loin.
+
+5. M`ethode court et facile pour faire entrer les troupes
+Fran`coies en Allemagne:-mais comment faire, pour les en faire
+sortir?
+
+6. Trait`e tr`es salutaire et tr`es utile sur la
+reconnoissance envers les bienfaicteurs, par le Roy de
+Pologne.  Folio, imprim`e `a Dresde.
+
+7. Obligation sacr`ee des Trait`es, Promesses, et
+Renonciations, par le Grand Turc; avec des Remarques
+retractoires, par un Jesuite.
+
+8. Probleme; combien il faut d'argent FranSois pour payer le
+sang Su`edois circul`e par le Comte de Gyllembourg
+
+9. Nouvelle m`ethode de friser les cheveux `a la Francoise;
+par le Colonel Mentz et sa Confrairie.
+
+10. Recueil de Dissertations sur la meilleure mani`ere de
+faire la partition des successions, par le Cardinal de Fleury;
+avec des notes, historiques et politiques, par la Reine
+d'Espagne.
+
+11. Nouveau Voyage de Madrid `a Antibes, par l'Infant Dom
+Philippe.
+
+12. Lart de chercher les ennemis sans lea trouver; par le
+Marechal de Maillebois.
+
+13. La fid`elit`e couronn`ee, par le G`en`eral Munich et le
+Comte d'Osterman.
+
+14. Le bal de Lintz et les amusements de DOnawert; pi`ece
+pastorale et galante,
+                           en un acte, par le Grand Duc.
+
+15. l'Art de maitriser les Femmes, par sa Majest`e
+Catliolique.
+
+16. Avantures Boh`emiennes, tragi-comiques, tr`es curieuses,
+tr`es int`erressantes, et charg`ees d'incidents.  Tom. i. ii.
+iii.
+N.B. Le dernier tome, qui fera le denouement, est sous presse.
+
+Adieu! my dear child; if it was not for this secret of
+transcribing, what should one do in the country to make out a
+letter?
+
+
+
+285 Letter 84
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Sept. 25th, 1742.
+
+At last, my dear child, I have got two letters from you! I
+have been in strange pain, between fear of your being ill, and
+apprehensions of your letters being stopped; but I have
+received that by Crew, and another since.  But you have been
+ill! I am angry with Mr. Chute for not writing to let me know
+it.  I fancied you worse than you say, or at least than you
+own.  But I don't wonder you have fevers!  such a busy
+politician as Villettes,(704) and such a blustering negotiator
+as il Furibondo (705) are enough to put all your little
+economy of health and spirits in confusion.  I agree with you,
+that " they don't pique themselves upon understanding sense,
+any more than Deutralities!"  The grand journey to
+Flanders(706) is a little -it a stand: the expense has been
+computed at two thousand pounds a day! Many dozen of
+embroidered portmanteaus full of laurels and bays have been
+prepared this fortnight.  The Regency has been settled and
+unsettled twenty times: it is now said, that the weight of it
+is not to be laid on the Prince.  The King is to return by his
+birthday; but whether he is to bring back part of French
+Flanders with him, or will only have time to fetch Dunkirk, is
+uncertain.  In the mean time, Lord Carteret is gone to the
+Hague; by which jaunt it seems that Lord Stair's journey was
+not conclusive.  The converting of the siege of Prague into a
+blockade makes no great figure in the journals on this side
+the water and question-but it is the fashion not to take towns
+that one was sure of taking.  I cannot pardon the Princess for
+having thought of putting off her `epuisements and lassitudes
+to take a trip to Leghorn, "pendant qu'on ne donnoit `a manger
+`a Monsieur le Prince son fils, que de la chair de chevaux!"
+Poor Prince Beauvau!(707)  I shall be glad to hear he is safe
+from this siege.  Some of the French princes of the blood have
+been stealing away a volunteering, but took care to be missed
+in time.  Our Duke goes with his lord and father-they say, to
+marry a princess of Prussia, whereof great preparations have
+been making in his equipage and in his breeches.
+
+Poor Prince Craon! where did De Sade get fifty sequins.  When
+I was at Florence, you know all his clothes were in pawn to
+his landlord; but he redeemed them by pawning his Modenese
+bill of credit to his landlady! I delight in the style of the
+neutrality maker(708)-his neutralities and his English arc
+perfectly of a piece.
+
+You have diverted me excessively with the history of the
+Princess Eleonora's(709) posthumous issue-but how could the
+woman have spirit enough to have five children by her footman,
+and yet not have enough to own them.  Really, a woman so much
+in the great world should have known better! Why, no yeoman's
+dowager could have acted more prudishly! It always amazes me,
+when I reflect on the women, who are the first to propagate
+scandal of one another.  If they would but agree not to
+censure what they all agree to do, there would be no more loss
+of characters among them than amongst men.  A woman cannot
+have an affair, but instantly all her sex travel about to
+publish it, and leave her off: now, if a man cheats another of
+his estate at play, forges a will, or marries a ward to his
+own son, nobody thinks of leaving him off for such trifles.
+
+The English parson at Stosch's, the archbishop on the chapter
+of music, the Fanciulla's persisting in her mistake, and old
+Count Galli's distress, are all admirable stories.(710)  But
+what is the meaning of Montemar's writing to the Antinora?--I
+thought he had left the Galia for my illustrissima,(711) her
+sister.  lord! I am horridly tired of that romantic love and
+correspondence! Must I answer her last letter?  there were but
+six lines--what can I say? I perceive, by what you mention of
+the cause of his disorder, that Rucellai does not turn out
+that simple, honest man you thought him-come, own it
+
+I just recollect a story, which perhaps will serve your
+archbishop on his Don Pilogio(712)-the Tartuffe was meant for
+the then archbishop of Paris, who, after the first night,
+forbad its being acted.  Moliere came forth, and told the
+audience, "Messieurs, on devoit vous donner le Tartuffe, mais
+MOnSeigneur l'Archev`eque ne veut pas qu'on le joue."
+
+My lord is very impatient for his Dominichin; so you will send
+it by the first safe conveyance.  He is making a gallery, for
+the ceiling of which I have given the design of that in the
+little library of St. Mark at Venice: Mr. Chute will remember
+how charming it was; and for the frieze, I have prevailed to
+have that of the temple at Tivoli.  Naylor(713) came here the
+other day with two coaches full of relations: as his
+mother-in-law, who was one of the company is widow of Dr.
+Hare, Sir Robert's old tutor at Cambridge, he made them stay
+to dine: when they were gone, he said, "Ha, child! what is
+that Mr. Naylor, Horace  ? he is the absurdest man I ever
+saw!" I subscribed to his opinion; won't you?  I must tell you
+a story of him.  When his father married this second wife,
+Naylor said,"Father, they say you are to be married to-day,
+are you?"  "Well," replied the bishop, "and what is that to
+you?"  "Nay, nothing; only if you had told me, I would have
+powdered my hair."
+
+(704) Mr. Villettes was minister at Turin.
+
+(705) Admiral Matthews; his ships having committed some
+outrages on the coast of Italy, the Italians called him it
+Furibondo.
+
+(706) Of George the Second.-D.
+
+(707) Afterwards a marshal of France. He was a man of some
+ability, and the friend and patron of St. Lambert, and of
+other men of letters of the time of Lewis XV.-D.  [He was made
+a marshal in 1783 by the unfortunate Louis XVI. and in 1789 a
+minister of state.  He died in 1793, a few weeks after the
+murder of his royal master.]
+
+(708) Admiral Matthews.
+
+(709) Eleonora of Guastalla, widow of the last cardinal of
+Medici, died at Venice. (The father of the children was a
+French running footman.-D.) [Cosmo the Third was sixty-seven
+years old at the period of the marriage: "une fois le marriage
+conclu," says the Biog. Univ. "El`eonore refusa de la
+consommer, rebut`ee par la figure, par l'age et surtout par
+les d`esordres de son `epouse."  Cosmo died at the age of
+eighty-one. A translation of his Travels through England, in
+1669, was published in 1820.
+
+(710) These are stories in a letter of Sir H. Mann's, which
+are neither very decent nor very amusing.-D.
+
+(711) Madame Grifoni.
+
+(712) The Archbishop of Florence had forbid the acting of a
+burlettae called Don Pilogio, a sort of imitation of Tartuffe.
+When the Impresario of the Theatre remonstrated upon the
+expense he had been put to in preparing the music for it, the
+archbishop told him he might use it for some other opera.-D.
+
+(713) He was the son of Dr. Here, Bishop of Chichester, and
+changed his name for an estate.
+
+
+
+
+                            287 Letter 85
+          To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Oct. 8th, 1742.
+
+I have not heard from you this fortnight; if I don't receive a
+letter to-morrow, I shall be quite out of humour.  It is true,
+of late I have written to you but every other post; but then I
+have been in the country, in Norfolk, in Siberia!  You were
+still at Florence, in the midst of Kings of Sardinia,
+Montemars, and Neapolitan neutralities; your letters are my
+only diversion.  As to German news, it is all so simple that I
+am peevish: the raising of the siege of Prague,((714) and
+Prince Charles and Marechal Maillebois playing at hunt the
+squirrel, have disgusted me from inquiring about the war.  The
+earl laughs in his great chair, and sings a bit of an old
+ballad,
+
+"They both did fight, they both did beat, they both did run
+     away,
+They both strive again to meet, the quite contrary way."
+
+
+Apropos! I see in the papers that a Marquis de Beauvau escaped
+out of Prague with the Prince de Deuxpons and the Duc de
+Brissac; was it our Prince Beauvau?
+
+At last the mighty monarch does not go to Flanders, after
+making the greatest preparations that ever were made but by
+Harry the Eighth, and the authors of the grand Cyrus and the
+illustrious Hassa: you may judge by the quantity of napkins,
+which were to the amount of nine hundred dozen-indeed, I don't
+recollect that ancient heroes were ever so provident of
+necessaries, or thought how they were to wash their hands and
+face after a victory.  Six hundred horses, under the care of
+the Duke of Richmond, were even shipped; and the clothes and
+furniture of his court magnificent enough for a bull-fight at
+the conquest of Granada.  Felton Hervey's(715) war-horse,
+besides having richer caparisons than any of the expedition,
+had a gold net to keep off the flies-in winter!  Judge of the
+clamours this expense to no purpose will produce! My Lord
+Carteret is set out from the Hague, but was not landed when
+the last letters came from London: there are no great
+expectations from this trip; no more than followed from my
+Lord Stair's.
+
+I send you two more odes on Pultney,(716) I believe by the
+same hand as the former, though none are equal to the Nova
+Progenies, which has been more liked than almost ever any
+thing was.  It is not at all known whose they are; I believe
+Hanbury Williams's.  The note to the first was printed with
+it: the advice to him to be privy seal has its foundation; for
+when the consultation was held who were to have places, and my
+Lord Gower was named to succeed Lord Hervey, Pultney said with
+some warmth, "I designed to be privy seal myself!"
+
+We expect some company next week from Newmarket: here is at
+present only Mr. Keene and Pigwiggin,(717)-you never saw so
+agreeable a creature!-oh yes! you have seen his parents!  I
+must tell you a new story of them Sir Robert had given them a
+little horse for Pigwiggin, and somebody had given them
+another: both which, to save the charge of keeping, they sent
+to grass in Newpark.  After three years that they had not used
+them, my Lord Walpole let his own son ride them, while he was
+at the park, in the holidays.  Do you know, that the woman
+Horace sent to Sir Robert, and made him give her five guineas
+for the two horses, because George had ridden them?  I give
+you my word this is fact.
+
+There has been a great fracas at Kensington: one of the
+Mesdames(718) pulled the chair from under Countess
+Deloraine(719) at cards, who, being provoked that her monarch
+was diverted with her disgrace, with the malice of a
+hobby-horse, gave him just such another fall.  But alas! the
+Monarch, like Louis XIV. is mortal in the part that touched
+the ground, and was so hurt and so angry, that the countess is
+disgraced, and her German rival (720) remains in the sole and
+quiet possession of her royal master's favour.
+
+October 9th.
+
+Well! I have waited till this morning, but have no letter from
+you; what can be the meaning of it? Sure, if you was ill, Mr.
+Chute would write to me!  Your brother protests he never lets
+your letters lie at the office.
+
+Sa Majest`e Patapanique(721) has had a dreadful
+misfortune!-not lost his first minister, nor his purse--nor
+had part of his camp equipage burned in the river, nor waited
+for his secretary of state, who is perhaps blown to
+Flanders--nay, nor had his chair pulled from under him-worse!
+worse! quarrelling with a great pointer last night about their
+countesses, he received a terrible shake by the back and a
+bruise on the left eye--poor dear Pat! you never saw such
+universal consternation! it was at supper.  Sir Robert, who
+makes as much rout with him as I do, says, he never saw ten
+people show so much real concern! Adieu! Yours, ever and
+ever-but write to me.
+
+(714) The Marshal de Maillebois and the Count de Saxe had been
+sent with reinforcements from France, to deliver the Marshal
+de Broglio and the Marshal de Belleisle, who, with their army,
+were shut up in Prague, and surrounded by the superior forces
+of the Queen of Hungary, commanded by Prince Charles of
+Lorraine.  They succeeded in facilitating the escape of the
+Marshal de Broglio, and of a portion of the French troops; but
+the Marshal de Belleisle continued to be blockaded in Prague
+with twenty-two thousand men, till December 1742, when he made
+his escape to Egra.-D.
+
+(715) Felton Hervey, tenth son of John, first Earl of Bristol;
+in 1737, appointed groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of
+Cumberland.  He died in 1775.-E.
+
+(716) These are "The Capuchin," and the ode beginning, "'Great
+Earl of Bath, your reign is o'er;"  As they have been
+frequently published, they are omitted.  The "Nova Progenies"
+is the well-known ode beginning, "See, a new progeny
+descends."-D.
+
+(717) Eldest son of old Horace Walpole. [Afterwards the second
+Lord Walpole of Wolterton, and in 1806, at the age of
+eighty-three created Earl of Orford.  He died in 1809.-E.]
+
+(718) The Princesses, daughters of George II.-D.
+
+(719) Elizabeth Fenwick, widow of Henry Scott, third Earl of
+Deloraine.  She was a favourite of George II. and lived much
+in his intimate society.  From the ironical epithets applied
+to her in Lord Hervey's ballad in the subsequent letter, it
+would appear, that her general conduct was not considered to
+be very exemplary.  She died in 1794.-D.
+
+(720) Lady Yarmouth.
+
+
+
+289 Letter 86
+                                        To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Oct. 18, 1742.
+
+I have received two letters from you since last post; I
+suppose the wind stopped the packet-boat.
+
+Well! was not I in the right to persist in buying the
+Dominichin?  don't you laugh at those wise connoisseurs, who
+pronounced it a copy? If it is one, where is the original? or
+who was that so great master that could equal Dominichin? Your
+brother has received the money for it, and Lord Orford is in
+great impatience for it; yet he begs, if you can find any
+opportunity, that it may be sent in a man-of-war.  I must
+desire that the statue may be sent to Leghorn, to be shipped
+with it, and that you will get Campagni and Libri to transact
+the payment as they did for the picture, and I will pay your
+brother.
+
+Villettes' important despatches to you are as ridiculous as
+good Mr. Matthews's devotion. - I fancy Mr. Matthews's own god
+(722) would make as foolish a figure about a monkey's neck, as
+a Roman Catholic one.  You know, Sir Francis Dashwood used to
+say that Lord Shrewsbury's providence was an old angry man in
+a blue cloak: another person-that I knew, believed providence
+was like a mouse, because he is invisible.  I dare to say
+Matthews believes, that providence lives upon beef and
+pudding, loves prize-fighting and bull-baiting, and drinks fog
+to the health of Old England.
+
+I go to London in a week, and then will send you cart-loads of
+news: I know none now, but that we hear to-day of the arrival
+of Duc d'Aremberg-I suppose to return my Lord Carteret's
+visit.  The latter was near being lost; he told the King that
+being in a storm, he had thought it safest to put into
+Yarmouth roads, at which he laughed, hoh! hoh! hoh!
+
+For want of news, I live upon ballads to you; here is one that
+has made a vast noise, and by Lord Hervey's taking great pains
+to disperse it, has been thought his own-if it is,(723) he has
+taken true care to disguise the niceness of his style.
+
+1. O England, attend. while thy fate I deplore,
+Rehearsing the schemes and the conduct of power.
+And since only of those who have power I sing,
+I am sure none can think that I hint at the King.
+
+2. From the time his son made him old Robin depose,
+All the power of a King he was well-known to lose;
+But of all but the name and the badges bereft,
+Like old women, his paraphernalia are left.
+
+3. To tell how he shook in St. James's for fear,
+When first these new Ministers bullied him there,
+Makes my blood boil with rage, to think what a thing
+They have made of a man We 'obey as a King.
+
+4. Whom they pleas'd they put in, whom they pleas'd they put
+out,
+And just like a top they all lash'd him about,
+Whilst he like a top with a murmuring noise,
+Seem'd to grumble, but turn'd to these rude lashing boys.
+
+5. At last Carteret arriving, spoke thus to his grief,
+If you'll make me your Doctor, I'll bring you relief;
+You see to your closet familiar I come,
+And seem like my wife in the circle-at home."
+
+6. Quoth the King, "My good Lord, perhaps you've been told,
+That I used to abuse you a little of old;
+'But now bring whom you will, and eke turn away,
+But let me and my money, and Walmoden(724) stay."
+
+7." For you and Walmoden, I freely consent,
+But as for your money, I must have it spent;
+I have promised your son (nay, no frowns,) shall have some,
+Nor think 'tis for nothing we patriots are come.
+
+8. "But, however, little King, since I find you so good,
+Thus stooping below your high courage and blood,
+Put yourself in my hands, and I'll do what I can,
+To make you look yet like a King and a man.
+
+9. "At your Admiralty and your Treasury-board,
+To save one single man y; u shan't say a word,
+For, by God! all your rubbish front both you shall shoot,
+Walpole's ciphers and Gasherry'S(725) vassals to boot.
+
+10. "And to guard Prince's ears, as all Statesmen take care,
+So, long as yours are-not one man shall come near;
+For of all your Court-crew we'll leave only those
+Who we know never dare to say boh! to a goose.
+
+11. "So your friend booby Grafton I'll e'en let you keep,
+Awake he can't hurt, and is still half asleep;
+Nor ever was dangerous, but to womankind,
+And his body's as impotent now as his mind.
+
+12. "There's another Court-booby, at once hot and dull,
+Your pious pimp, Schutz, a mean, Hanover tool;
+For your card-play at night he too shall remain,
+With virtuous and sober, and wise Deloraine.(726)
+
+
+13. "And for all your Court-nobles who can't write or read,
+As of such titled ciphers all courts stand in need,
+Who, like parliament-Swiss, vote and fight for their pay,
+They're as good as a new set to cry yea and nay.
+
+14. "Though Newcastle's as false, as he's silly, I know,
+By betraying old Robin to me long ago,
+As well as all those who employed him before,
+Yet I leave him in place, but I leave him no power.
+
+15. "For granting his heart is as black as his hat,
+With no more truth in this, than there's sense beneath that;
+Yet as he's a coward, he'll shake when I frown;
+You call'd him a rascal, I'll use him like one,
+
+16. "And since his estate at elections he'll spend,
+And beggar himself, without making a friend;
+So whilst the extravagant fool has a sous,
+As his brains I can't fear, so his fortune I'll use,
+
+17. "And as miser Hardwicke, with all courts will draw,
+He too may remain, but shall stick to his law;
+For of foreign affairs, when he talks like a fool,
+I'll laugh in his face,, and will cry 'Go to school!'
+
+18. "The Countess of Wilmington, excellent nurse,
+I'll trust with the Treasury, not with its purse,
+For nothing by her I've resolved shall be done,
+She shall sit at that board, as you sit on the throne.
+
+19. "Perhaps now, you expect that I should begin
+To tell you the men I design to bring in;
+But we're not yet determined on all their demands
+-And you'll know soon enough, when they come to kiss hands.
+
+20. "All that weathercock Pultney shall ask, we must grant,
+For to make him a great noble nothing, I want;
+And to cheat such a man, demands all my arts,
+For though he's a fool, he's a fool with great parts,
+
+21. "And as popular Clodius, the Pultney of Rome,
+>From a noble, for power did plebeian become,
+So this Clodius to be a Patrician shall choose,
+Till what one got by changing, the other shall lose.
+
+22. "Thus flatter'd and courted, and gaz'd at by all,
+Like Phaeton, rais'd for a day, he shall fall,
+Put the world in a flame, and show he did strive
+To get reins in his hand, though 'tis plain he can't drive.
+
+23. "For your foreign affairs, howe'er they turn out,
+At least I'll take care you shall make a great rout:
+Then cock your great hat, strut, bounce, and look bluff,
+For though kick'd and cuffd here, you shall there kick and
+cuff.
+
+24. "That Walpole did nothing they all used to say,
+So I'll do enough, but I'll make the dogs pay;
+Great fleets I'll provide, and great armies engage,
+Whate'er debts we make, or whate'er wars we wage."
+
+25. With cordials like these the Monarch's new guest
+Revived his sunk spirits and gladden'd his heart;
+Till in raptures he cried, " y dear Lord, you shall do
+Whatever you will, give me troops to review.
+
+26. "But oh! my dear England, since this is thy state,
+Who is there that loves thee but weeps at thy fate?
+Since in changing thy masters, thou art just like old Rome,
+Whilst Faction, Oppression, and Slavery's thy doom.
+
+27. "For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire,
+You're out of the frying-pan into the fire!
+But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend,
+I tremble to think where these changes may end!"
+
+This has not been printed.  You see the burthen of all the
+songs Is the rogue Walpole, which he has observed himself, but
+I believe is content, as long as they pay off his arrears to
+those that began the tune.  Adieu!
+
+(722) Admiral Matthews's crew having disturbed some Roman
+Catholic ceremonies in a little island on the coast of Italy,
+hung a crucifix about a monkey's neck.
+
+(723) It was certainly written by Lord Hervey.
+
+(724) Lady Yarmouth.
+
+(725) Sir Charles Wager's nephew, and Secretary to the
+Admiralty.
+
+(726) Countess Dowager of Deloraine, governess to the young
+Princesses.
+
+
+
+293 Letter 87
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Oct. 23, 1742.
+
+At last I see an end of my pilgrimage; the day after tomorrow
+I am affirming it to you as earnestly as if' you had been
+doubting of it like myself: but both my brothers are here, and
+Sir Robert will let me go.  He must follow himself soon: the
+Parliament meets the 16th of November, that the King may go
+abroad the first of March: but if all threats prove true
+prophecies, he will scarce enter upon heroism so soon, for we
+are promised a winter just like the last-new Secret Committees
+to be tried for, and impeachments actually put into execution.
+It is horrid to have a prospect of a session like the last.
+
+In the meantime, my Lord of Bath and Lord Hervey, who seem
+deserted by every body else, are grown the greatest friends in
+the world at Bath; and to make a complete triumvirate, my Lord
+Gower is always of their party: how they must love one
+another, the late, the present, and the would-be Privy Seal!
+
+Lord Hyndford has had great honours in Prussia: that King
+bespoke for him a service of plate to the value of three
+thousand pounds.  He asked leave for his Majesty's arms to be
+put upon it: the King replied, "they should, with the arms of
+Silesia added to his paternal coat for ever." I will tell you
+Sir ]Robert's remark on this: "He is rewarded thus for having
+obtained Silesia for the King of Prussia, which he was sent to
+preserve to the Queen of Hungary!"  Her affairs begin to take
+a little better turn again; Broglio is prevented from joining
+Maillebois, who, they affirm, can never bring his army off, as
+the King of Poland is guarding all the avenues of Saxony, to
+prevent his passing through that country.
+
+I wrote to you in my last to desire that the Dominichin and my
+statue might come by a man-of-war.  Now.  Sir Robert, who is
+impatient for his picture, would have it sent in a Dutch ship,
+as he says he can easily get it from Holland.  If you think
+this conveyance quite safe, I beg my statue may bear it
+company.
+
+Tell me if you are tired of ballads on my Lord Bath; if you
+are not, here is another admirable one,(727) I believe by the
+same hand as the others; but by the conclusion certainly ought
+not to be Williams's.  I only send you the good ones, for the
+newspapers are every day full of bad ones on this famous earl.
+
+My compliments to the Princess; I dreamed last night that she
+was come to Houghton, and not at all `epuis`ee with her
+journey.  Adieu!
+
+P.S. I must add a postscript, to mention a thing I have often
+designed to ask you to do for me.  Since I came to England I
+have been buying drawings, (the time is well chosen, when I
+had neglected it in Italy!)  I saw at Florence two books that
+I should now be very glad to have, if you could get them
+tolerably reasonable; one was at an English painter's; I think
+his name was Huckford, over against your house in via Bardi;
+they were of Holbein: the other was of Guercino, and brought
+to me to see by the Abb`e Bonducci; my dear child, you will
+oblige me much if you can get them.
+
+(727) Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's ode, beginning "What
+Statesman, what Hero, what King-." It is to be found in all
+editions of his poems.-D.
+
+
+
+294 Letter 88
+             To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 1, 1742.
+
+I have not felt so pleasantly these three months as I do at
+present, though I have a great cold with coming into an
+unaired house, and have been forced to carry that cold to the
+King's levee and the drawing-room.  There were so many new
+faces that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken 'it
+for Carlton House, or my Lady Mayoress's visiting-day, only
+the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted
+to see the King dine in public.  'Tis quite ridiculous to see
+the numbers of old ladies, who, from having been wives of
+patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years; out they
+come, in all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen
+Anne's days.  Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is
+inexpressible!  They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are
+always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour
+before the time.  I met several on the birthday, (for I did
+not arrive time enough to make clothes,) and they were dressed
+in all the colours of the rainbow: they seem to have said to
+themselves twenty years ago, ,Well, if ever I do go to court
+again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver,"
+and they keep their resolutions.- But here's a letter from
+you, sent to me back from Houghton; I must stop to read
+it.-Well, I have read it, and am diverted with Madame
+Grifoni's being with child; I hope she was too.  I don't
+wonder that she hates the country; I dare to say her child
+does not owe its existence to the Villeggiatura.  When you
+wrote, it seems you had not heard what a speedy determination
+was put to Don Philip's reign in Savoy.  I suppose he will
+retain the title: you know great princes are fond of titles,
+which proves they are not so great as they once were.
+
+I find a very different face of things from what we had
+conceived in the country.  There are, indeed, thoughts of
+renewing attacks on Lord Orford, and Of stepping the supplies;
+but the new ministry laugh at these threats, having secured a
+vast majority in the House: the Opposition themselves own that
+the Court will have upwards of a hundred majority: I don't,
+indeed, conceive how; but they are confident of carrying every
+thing.  They talk of Lord Gower's not keeping the privy seal;
+that he will either resign it, or have it taken away: Lord
+Bath, who is entering into all the court measures, is most
+likely to succeed him.  The late Lord Privy Seal(728) has had
+a most ridiculous accident at Bath: he used to play in a
+little inner room; but one night some ladies had got it, and
+he was reduced to the public room; but being extremely absent
+and deep in politics, he walked through the little room to a
+convenience behind the curtain, from whence (still absent) he
+produced himself in a situation extremely diverting to the
+women: imagine his delicacy, and the passion he was in at
+their laughing!
+
+I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of
+absence; I was writing on the King's birthday, and being
+disturbed with the mob in the street, I rang for the porter,
+and, with an air of grandeur, as if I was still at Downing
+Street, cried, "Pray send away those marrowbones and
+cleavers!" The poor fellow with the most mortified air in the
+world, replied, "Sir, they are not at our door, but over the
+way at my Lord Carteret's." "Oh," said I, "then let them
+alone; may be he does not dislike the noise!" I pity the poor
+porter, who sees all his old customers going over the way too.
+
+Our operas begin to-morrow with a pasticcio, full of most of
+my favourite songs: the Fumagalli has disappointed us; she had
+received an hundred ducats, and then wrote word that she had
+spent them, and was afraid of coming through the Spanish
+quarters; but if they would send her an hundred more, she
+would come next year.  Villettes has what been written to in
+the strongest manner to have her forced hither (for she is at
+Turin.) I tell you this by way of key, in case you should
+receive a mysterious letter in cipher from him about this
+important business.
+
+I have not seen Due d'Aremberg; but I hear that all the
+entertainments for him are suppers, for he -will dine at his
+own hour, eleven in the morning.  He proposed it to the
+Duchess of Richmond when she invited him; but she said she did
+not know where to find company to dine with him at that hour.
+
+I must advise YOU to be cautious how you refuse humouring our
+captains (729) in any of their foolish schemes; for they are
+popular, and I should be very sorry to have them out of humour
+with you when they come home, lest it should give any handle
+to your enemies.  Think of it, my dear child! The officers in
+Flanders, that are members of parliament, have had
+intimations, that if they asked leave to come on their private
+affairs, and drop in, not all together, they will be very well
+received; this is decorum.  Little Brook's little wife is a
+little with child.  Adieu!
+
+(728) Lord Hervey.
+
+(729) The captains of ships in the English fleet at Leghorn.
+
+
+
+296 Letter 89
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Nov. 15, 1742.
+
+I have not written to you lately, expecting letters from you;
+last I have received two.  I still send mine through France,
+as I am afraid they would get to you with still more
+difficulty through Holland.
+
+Our army is just now ordered to march to Mayence, at the
+repeated instances of the Queen of Hungary; Lord Stair goes
+with them, but almost all the officers that arc in parliament
+arc come over, for the troops are only to be in garrison till
+March, when, it is said, the King will take the field with
+them.  This step makes a great noise, for the old remains of
+the Opposition are determined to persist, and have termed this
+a H(inoverian measure.  They begin to-morrow, with opposing
+the address on the King's speech: Pitt is to be the leading
+mail; there are none but he and Lyttelton of the Prince's
+court, who do not join with the ministry: the Prince has told
+them, that he will follow the advice they long ago gave him,
+"turning out all his people who do not vote as he would have
+them."
+
+Lord Orford is come to town, and was at the King's levee
+to-day; the joy the latter showed to see him was very visible:
+all the new ministry came and spoke to him; and he had a long,
+laughing conversation with my Lord Chesterfield, who is still
+in Opposition.
+
+You have heard, I suppose, of the revolution in the French
+Court; Madame de Mailly is disgraced, and her handsome sister
+De la Tournelle(730) succeeds: the latter insisted on three
+conditions; first, that the Mailly should quit the palace
+before she entered it; next, that she should be declared
+mistress, to which post, they pretend, there is a large salary
+annexed, (but that is not probable,) and lastly, that she may
+always have her own parties at supper: the last article would
+very well explain what she proposes to do with her salary.
+
+There are admirable instructions come up from Worcester to
+Sandys and Winnington; they tell the latter how little hopes
+they always had of him.  "But for you, Mr. Sandys, who have
+always, etc., you to snatch at the first place you could get,"
+etc.  In short, they charge him, who is in the Treasury and
+Exchequer not to vote for any supplies.(731)
+
+I write to you in a vast hurry, for I am going to the meeting
+at the Cockpit, to hear the King's speech read to the members:
+Mr. Pelham presides there.  They talk of a majority of
+fourscore: we shall see to-morrow.
+
+The Pomfrets stay in the country most part of the winter-.
+Lord Lincoln and Mr. (George) Pitt have declared off in
+form.(732)  So much for the schemes of my lady!  The Duke of
+Grafton used to say that they put him in mind of a troop of
+Italian comedians; Lord Lincoln was Valere, Lady Sophia,
+Columbine, and my lady the old mother behind the scenes.
+
+Our operas go on au plus miserable: all our hopes lie in a new
+dancer, Sodi, who has performed but once, but seems to please
+as much as the Fausan.  Did I tell you how well they had
+chosen the plot of the first opera? There was a prince who
+rebels against his father, who had before rebelled against
+his.(733)  The Duke of Montagu says, there is to be an opera
+of dancing, with singing between the acts.
+
+My Lord Tyrawley(734) is come from Portugal, and has brought
+three wives and fourteen children; one of the former is a
+Portuguese, with long black hair plaited down to the bottom of
+her back.  He was asked the other night at supper, what he
+thought of England; whether he found much alteration from
+fifteen years ago?  "No," he said, "not at all: why, there is
+my Lord Bath, I don't see the least alteration in him; he is
+just what he was: and then I found Lord Grantham (735) walking
+on tiptoe, as if he was still afraid of waking the Queen."
+
+Hanbury Williams is very ill at Bath, and his wife in the same
+way in private lodgings in the city.  Mr. Doddington has at
+last owned his match with his old mistress.(736)  I suppose he
+wants a new one.
+
+I commend your prudence about Leghorn; but, my dear child,
+what pain I am in about you! Is it possible to be easy while
+the Spaniards are at your gates! write me word every minute as
+your apprehensions vanish or increase.  I ask every moment
+what people think; but how can they tell here? You say nothing
+of Mr. Chute, sure he is with You Still! When I am in such
+uneasiness about you, I want you every post to mention your
+friends being with you: I am sure you have none so good or
+sensible as he is.  I am vastly obliged to you for the thought
+of the book of shells, and shall like -it much; and thank you
+too about my Scagliola table; but I am distressed about your
+expenses.  Is there any way one could get your allowance
+increased? You know how low my interest is now; but you know
+too what a push I would make to be of any service to you-tell
+me,, and adieu!
+
+(730) Afterwards created Duchess of Chateauroux. (Mary Anne
+(le Mailly, widow of the Marquis de la Tournelle.  She
+succeeded her sister Madame de Mailly, as mistress of Louis
+XV., as the latter had succeeded the other sister, Madame de
+Vintimille, in the same situation.  Madame de Chateauroux was
+sent away from the court during the illness of Louis at Metz;
+but on his recovery he recalled her.  Shortly after which she
+died, December 10, 1744, and on her deathbed accused M. de
+Maurepas, the minister, of having poisoned her.  The intrigue,
+by means of which she supplanted her sister, was conducted
+principally by the Marshal de Richelieu.-D.
+
+(731) "We earnestly entreat, insist, and require, that you
+will postpone the supplies until you have renewed the secret
+committee of inquiry."-E.
+
+
+(732) An admirer of Lady Sophia Fermor.-D.
+
+(733) This was a pasticcio, called "Mandane," another name for
+Metastasio's drama of "Artaserse."-E.
+
+(734) Lord Tyrawley was many years ambassador at Lisbon.  Pope
+has mentioned his and another ambassador's seraglios in one of
+his imitations of Horace, "Kinnoul's lewd cargo, or Tyrawley's
+crew." [James O'Hara, second and last Lord Tyrawley of that
+family, He died in 1773, at the age of eighty-five.]
+
+(735) Henry Nassau d'Auverquerque, second Earl of Grantham.
+He had been chamberlain to Queen Caroline.  He died in 1754,
+when his titles became extinct.-E.
+
+(736) Mrs. Beghan.
+
+
+
+
+298 Letter 90
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1742.,
+
+You will wonder that it is above a fortnight Since I wrote to
+you; but I have had an inflammation in one of my eyes, and
+durst not meddle with a pen.  I have had two letters from you
+of Nov. 6th and 13th, but I am in the utmost impatience for
+another, to hear you are quite recovered of your Trinculos and
+FuribOndos.  You tell me you was in a fever; I cannot be easy
+till I hear from you again.  I hope this will come much too
+late for a medicine, but it will always serve for sal volatile
+to give you spirits.  Yesterday was appointed for considering
+the army; but Mr. Lyttelton stood up and moved for another
+Secret Committee, in the very words of last year; but the
+whole debate ran, not upon Robert Earl of Orford, but Robert
+Earl of Sandys:(737) he is the constant butt of the party;
+indeed he bears it notably.  After five hours' haranguing, we
+came to a division, and threw out the motion by a majority of
+sixty-seven, 253 against 186.  The Prince had declared so
+openly for union and agreement in all measures, that, except
+the Nepotism,(738) all his servants but one were with us.  I
+don't know whether they will attempt any thing else, but with
+these majorities we must have an easy winter.  The union of
+the Whigs has saved this parliament.  It is expected that Pitt
+and Lyttelton will be dismissed by the Prince.  That faction
+and Waller are the only Whigs of any note that do not join
+with the Court.  I do not  count Doddington, who must now
+always be with the minority, for no majority will accept him.
+It is believed that Lord Gower will retire, or be desired to
+do so.  I suppose you have heard from Rome,(739) that Murray
+is made Solicitor-general, in the room of Sir John Strange,
+who has resigned for his health.  This is the sum of politics;
+we can't expect any winter, (I hope no winter will be) like
+the last.  By the crowds that come hither, one should not know
+that Sir Robert is out of place, only that now he is scarce
+abused.
+
+De reste, the town is wondrous dull; operas unfrequented,
+plays not in fashion, amours as old as marriages-in short,
+nothing but whist!  I have not yet learned to play, but I find
+that I wait in vain for its being left off.
+
+I agree with you about not sending home the Dominichin in an
+English vessel; but what I mentioned to you of its coming in a
+Dutch vessel, if you find an opportunity, I think will be very
+safe, if you approve it; but manage that as you like.  I shall
+hope for my statue at the same time; but till the conveyance
+is absolutely safe, I know you will not venture them.  Now I
+mention my statue, I must beg you will send me a full bill of
+all my debts to you, which I am sure by this time must be
+infinite; I beg to know the particulars, that I may pay your
+brother.  Adieu, my dear Sir; take care of yourself, and
+submit to popery and slavery rather than get colds with
+sea-heroes.(740)
+
+(737) Samuel Sandys, chancellor of the Exchequer, in the room
+of Sir R. Walpole.
+
+(738) Lord Cobham's nephews and cousins.-D.
+
+(739) This alludes to the supposed Jacobite principles of
+Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield.-D.
+
+(740) Sir H. Mann had complained, in one of his letters, of
+the labours he had gone through in doing the honours of
+Florence to some of Admiral Matthews's (il Furibondo)
+officers.  The English fleet was now at Leghorn, upon the plea
+of defending the Tuscan territories, in case of their being
+attacked by the Spaniards.-D.
+
+
+
+
+299 Letter 91
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 9, 1742.
+
+I shall have quite a partiality for the post of Holland; it
+brought me two letters last week, and two more yesterday, of
+November 20th and 27th; but I find you have your perpetual
+headaches-how can you say that you shall tire me with talking
+Of them? you may make me suffer by your pains, but I will hear
+and insist upon your always telling me of your health.  Do you
+think I only correspond with you to know the posture of the
+Spaniards or the `epuisements of the Princess! I am anxious,
+too, to know how poor Mr. Whithed does, and Mr. Chute's gout.
+I shall look upon our sea captains with as much horror as the
+King of Naples can, if they bring gouts, fits, and headaches.
+You will have had a letter from me by this time, to give up
+sending the Dominichin by a man-of-war, and to propose its
+coming in a Dutch ship.  I believe that will be safe.
+
+
+We have had another great day in the House on the army in
+Flanders, which the Opposition were for disbanding; but we
+carried 'it by a hundred and twenty.(741)  Murray spoke for
+the first time, with the greatest applause; Pitt answered him
+with all his force and art of language, but on an ill-founded
+argument.  In all appearances, they will be great rivals.
+Shippen was in great rage at Murray's apostacy;(742) if any
+thing can really change his principles, possibly this
+competition may.  To-morrow we shall have a tougher battle on
+the sixteen thousand Hanoverians.  Hanover is the word given
+out for this winter: there is a most bold pamphlet come out,
+said to be Lord
+Marchmont's,(743) which affirms that in every treaty made
+since the accession of this family, England has been
+sacrificed to the interest of Hanover, and consequently
+insinuates the incompatibility of the two. Lord Chesterfield
+says, "that if we have a mind effectually to prevent the
+Pretender from ever obtaining this crown, we should make him
+Elector of Hanover, for the people of England will never fetch
+another king from thence."  Adieu! my dear child.  I am sensible
+that I write you short letters, but I write you all I know.  I
+don't know how it is, but the wonderful seems worn out.  In this
+our day, we have no rabbit women-no elopements-no epic
+poems,(744) finer than Milton's-no contest about harlequins and
+Polly Peachems.  Jansen (745) has won no more estates, and the
+Duchess of Queensberry is grown as tame as her neighbours.  Whist
+has spread an universal opium over the whole nation; it makes
+courtiers and patriots sit down to the same pack of cards.
+The only thing extraordinary, and which yet did not seem to
+surprise any body, was the Barberina's(746) being attacked by
+four men masqued, the other night, as she came out of the
+opera house, who would have forced her away, but she
+screamed, and the guard came.  Nobody knows who set them on,
+and I believe nobody inquired.
+
+The Austrians in Flanders have separated from our troops a
+little out of humour, because it was impracticable for them to
+march without any preparatory provisions for their reception.
+They will probably march in two months, if no peace prevents
+it.  Adieu!
+
+(741) Upon a motion, made by Sir William Yonge, that 534,763
+pounds be granted for defraying the charge of 16,259 men, to
+be employed in Flanders.  The numbers on the division were 280
+against 160.-E.
+
+(742) From Toryism.-D.
+
+
+(743) Hugh Hume, third Earl of Marchmont.
+
+(744) This alludes to the extravagant encomiums bestowed on
+Glover's Leonidas by the young patriots.
+
+(745) H. Jansen, a celebrated gamester, who cheated the late Duke
+of Bedford of an immense sum: Pope hints at that affair in this
+line, "Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White's."
+
+(746) A famous dancer.
+
+
+
+
+301 Letter 92
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1742.
+
+I have had no letter from you this fortnight, and I have heard
+nothing this month: judge now how fit I am to write.  I hope
+it is not another mark of growing old; but, I do assure you,
+my writing begins to leave me.  Don't be frightened! I don't
+mean this as an introduction towards having done with you-I
+will write to you to the very stump of my pen, and as Pope
+says,
+
+"Squeeze out the last dull droppings of my sense."
+
+But I declare, it is hard to sit spinning out one's brains by
+the fireside, without having heard the least thing to set
+one's hand a-going.  I am so put to it for something to say,
+that I would make a memorandum of the most improbable lie that
+could be invented by a viscountess-dowager; as the old Duchess
+of Rutland (747) does when she is told of some strange
+casualty, "Lucy, child, step into the next room and set that
+down."-"Lord, Madam!" says Lady Lucy,(748) "it can't be
+true!"-"Oh, no matter, child; it will do for news into the
+country next post." But do you conceive that the kingdom of
+the Dull is come upon earth-not with the forerunners and
+prognostics of other to-come kingdoms? No, no; the sun and the
+moon go on just as they used to do, without giving us any
+hints: we see no knights come prancing upon pale horses, or
+red horses; no stars, called wormwood, fall into the Thames,
+and turn a third part into wormwood; no locusts, like horses,
+with their hair as the hair of women-in short, no
+thousand things, each of which destroys a third part of
+mankind: the only token of this new kingdom is a woman riding
+on a beast, which is the mother of abominations, and the name
+in the forehead is whist: and the four-and-twenty elders, and
+the woman, and the whole town, do nothing but play with this
+beast.  Scandal itself is dead, or confined to a pack of
+cards; for the only malicious whisper I have heard this
+fortnight, is of an intrigue between the Queen of hearts and
+the Knave of clubs.  Y
+our friend Lady Sandwich (749) has got a son; if one may
+believe the belly she wore, it is a brave one.  Lord
+Holderness(750) has lately given a magnificent repast to
+fifteen persons; there were three courses of ten, fifteen, and
+fifteen, and a sumptuous dessert: a great saloon illuminated,
+odours, and violins-and, who do you think were the
+invited?-the Visconti, Giuletta, the Galli, Amorevoli,
+Monticelli, Vanneschi and his wife, Weedemans the hautboy, the
+prompter, etc. The bouquet was given to the Guiletta, who is
+barely handsome.  How can one love magnificence and low
+company at the same instant!  We are making great parties for
+the Barberina and the Auretti, a charming French girl; and our
+schemes succeed so well, that the opera begins to fill
+surprisingly; for all those who don't love music, love noise
+and party, and will any night give half-a-guinea for the
+liberty of hissing-such is English harmony.
+
+I have been in a round of dinners with Lord Stafford, and
+Bussy the French minister, who tells one stories of Capuchins,
+confessions, Henri Quatre, Louis XIV., Gascons, and the string
+which all Frenchmen go through, without any connexion or
+relation to the discourse.  These very stories, which I have
+already heard four times, are only interrupted by English
+puns, which old Churchill translates out of jest-books into
+the mouth of my Lord Chesterfield, and into most execrable
+French.
+
+Adieu! I have scribbled, and blotted, and made nothing out,
+and, in short, have nothing to say, so good night!
+
+
+(747) Lady Lucinda Sherard, widow of John Manners, second Duke
+of Rutland.  She died in 1751.-E.
+
+(748) Lady Lucy Manners, married, in 1742, to William, second
+Duke of Montrose.  She died in 1788.-E.
+
+(749) Judith, sister of Lord Viscount Fane, wife of John
+Montagu, fifth Earl of Sandwich.-E.
+
+(750) Robert d'Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness; subsequently
+made secretary of State.  Upon his death his earldom
+extinguished, and what remained of his estate, as well as the
+Barony of Conyers, descended to his only daughter, who was
+married to Francis Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds, in 1773.-D.
+[From whom she was divorced in 1779.  She afterwards married
+Captain John Byron, son of Admiral Byron, and father of the
+great poet.]
+
+
+
+302 Letter 93
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 6, 1743.
+
+You will wonder that you have not heard from me, but I have
+been too ill to write.  I have been confined these ten days
+with a most violent cough, and they suspected an inflammation
+on my lungs; but I am come off with the loss of my eyes and my
+voice, both of which I am recovering, and would write to you
+to-day.  I have received your long letter of December 11th,
+and return you a thousand thanks for giving up so much of your
+time; I wish I could make as long a letter for you, but we arc
+in a neutrality of news.  The Elector Palatine (751) is dead;
+but I have not heard what alterations that will make.  Lord
+Wilmington's death, which is reckoned hard upon, is likely to
+make more conversation here.  He is going to Bath, but that is
+only to pass away the time until be dies.
+
+The great Vernon is landed, but we have not been alarmed with
+any bonfires or illuminations; he has outlived all his
+popularity.  There is nothing new but the separation of a Mr.
+and Mrs. French, whom it is impossible you should know.  She
+has been fashionable these two winters; her husband has
+commenced a suit in Doctors' Commons against her cat, and
+will, they say, recover considerable damages: but the lawyers
+are of opinion, that the kittens must inherit Mr. French's
+estate, as they were born in lawful wedlock.
+
+The parliament meets again on Monday, but I don't hear of any
+fatigue that we are likely to have; in a little time, I
+suppose, we shall hear what campaigning we are to make.
+
+I must tell you of an admirable reply of your acquaintance the
+Duchess of Queensberry:(752) old Lady Granville, Lord
+Carteret's mother, whom they call the Queen-Mother, from
+taking upon her to do the honours of her son's power, was
+pressing the duchess to ask her for some place for herself or
+friends, and assured her that she would procure it, be it what
+it would.  Could she have picked out a fitter person to be
+gracious to?  The duchess made her a most grave curtsey, and
+said, "Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart
+on."-"Dear child, how you oblige me by asking, any thing! What
+is it?  tell me."  "Only that you would speak to my Lord
+Carteret to get me made lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of
+Hungary."
+
+I come now to your letter, and am not at all pleased to find
+that the Princess absolutely intends to murder you with her
+cold rooms.  I wish you could come on those cold nights and
+sit by my fireside; I have the prettiest warm little
+apartment, with all my baubles, and Patapans, and cats!
+Patapan and I go to-morrow to New Park, to my lord, for the
+air, and come back with him on Monday.
+
+What an infamous story that affair of Nomis is! and how
+different the ideas of honour among officers in your world and
+ours!  Your history of cicisbeosm is more entertaining: I
+figure the distress of a parcel of lovers who have so many
+things to dread-the government in this world! purgatory in the
+next! inquisitions, villeggiaturas, convents, etc.
+
+Lord Essex is extremely bad, and has not strength enough to go
+through the remedies that are necessary to his recovery.  He
+now fancies that he does not exist, will not be persuaded to
+walk or talk, because, as he sometimes says, "How should he do
+any thing? he is not."  You say, "How came I not to see Duc
+d'Aremberg?" I did once at the opera; but he went away soon
+after: and here it is not the way to visit foreigners, unless
+you are of the Court, or are particularly in a way of having
+them at your house: consequently Sir R. never saw him
+either-we are not of the Court! Next, as to Arlington Street:
+Sir R. is in a middling kind of house, which has long been
+his, and was let; he has taken a small one next to it for me,
+and they are laid together.
+
+I come now to speak to you of the affair of the Duke of
+Newcastle; but absolutely, on considering it much myself, and
+on talking of it with your brother, we both are against your
+attempting any such thing.  In the first place, I never heard
+a suspicion of the duke's taking presents, and should think he
+would rather be affronted: in the next place, my dear child,
+though you are fond of that coffee-pot, it would be thought
+nothing among such wardrobes as he has, of the finest wrought
+plate: why, he has- a set of gold plates that would make a
+figure on any sideboard in the Arabian Tales;(753) and as to
+Benvenuto cellini, if the duke could take it for his, people
+in England understand all work too well to be deceived.
+Lastly, as there has been no talk of alterations in the
+foreign ministers, and as all changes seem at an end, why
+should you be apprehensive?  As to Stone,(754) if any thing
+was done, to be sure it should be to him though I really can't
+advise even that.  These are my sentiments sincerely: by no
+means think of the duke.  Adieu!
+
+(751) Charles Philip of Neubourg, , Elector Palatine.  He died
+December 31, 1742.  He was succeeded by Charles Theodore,
+Prince of Sulzbach, descended from a younger branch of the
+house of Neubourg, and who, in his old age, became Elector of
+Bavaria.-D.
+
+(752) Catherine Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, and
+wife of Charles Douglas, Duke of Queensberry; a famous beauty,
+celebrated by Prior in that pretty poem which begins, "Kitty,
+beautiful and young," and often mentioned in Swift and Pope's
+letters, She was forbid the Court for promoting subscriptions
+to the second part of the Beggar's Opera, when it had been
+prohibited from being acted.  She and the duke erected the
+monument to Gay in Westminster Abbey. [And to which Pope
+supplied the epitaph, "the first eight lines of which," says
+Dr. Johnson, "have no grammar; the adjectives without
+substantives, and the epithets without a subject." The duchess
+died in 1777, and her husband in the year following.]
+
+(753) Walpole, in his Memoires, says that the duke's houses,
+gardens, table, and equipages swallowed immense treasures, and
+that the sums he owed were only exceeded by those he wasted.
+He employed several physicians, without having had apparently
+much need of them.  His gold plate appears to have been almost
+as dear to him as his health; for he usually kept it in pawn,
+except when he wished to display it on great occasions.
+
+(754) Andrew Stone, at this time private secretary to the Duke
+of Newcastle.  he subsequently filled the offices of under-
+secretary of state, sub-governor to Prince George, keeper of
+the state-paper office, and, on the marriage of George the
+third, treasurer to the Queen.  he died in 1773.-E.
+
+
+
+304 Letter 94
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 13, 1743,
+
+Your brother brought me two letters together this morning, and
+at the same time showed me yours to your father. How should I
+be ashamed, were I he, to receive such a letter! so dutiful,
+so humble, and yet so expressive of the straits to which he
+has let you be reduced! My dear child, it looks too much like
+the son of a minister, when I am no longer so; but I can't
+help repeating to you offers of any kind of service that you
+think I can do for you any way.
+
+I am quite happy at your thinking Tuscany so secure from
+Spain, unless the wise head of Richcourt works against the
+season; but how can I ever be easy while a provincial
+Frenchman, Something half French, half German, instigated by a
+mad Englishwoman is to govern an Italian dominion?
+
+I laughed much at the magnificent presents made by one of the
+first families in Florence to their young accouch`ee.  Do but
+think if a Duke or Duchess of Somerset were to give a Lady
+Hertford fifty pounds and twenty yards of velvet for bringing
+an heir to the blood of Seymour!
+
+It grieves me that my letters drop in so slowly to you: I have
+never missed writing, but when I have been absolutely too much
+out of order, or once or twice when I had no earthly thing to
+tell you.  This winter is so quiet, that one must inquire much
+to know any thing.  The parliament is met again, but we do not
+hear of any intended opposition to any thing.  the tories have
+dropped the affair of the Hanoverians in the House of Lords,
+in compliment to Lord Gower.  there is a second pamphlet on
+that subject which makes a great noise.(755)  The ministry are
+much distressed on the ways and means for raising the money
+for this year: there is to be a lottery, but that will not
+supply a quarter of what they want.  They have talked of a new
+duty on tea, to be paid by every housekeeper for all the
+persons in their families; but it will scarce be proposed.
+Tea is so universal, that it would make a greater clamour than
+a duty on wine.  Nothing is determined; the new folks do not
+shine at expedients.  Sir Robert's health is now drunk at all
+the clubs in the city; there they are for having him made a
+duke, and placed again at the head of the Treasury; but I
+believe nothing could prevail on him to return thither.  He
+says he will keep the 12th of February,.-the day he resigned,
+with his family as long as he lives.  They talk of Sandys
+being raised to the peerage, by way of getting rid of him; he
+is so dull they can scarce draw him on.(756)
+
+The English troops in Flanders march to-day, whither we don't
+know, but "probably to Liege: from whence they imagine the
+Hanoverians are going into Juliers and Bergue.(757)  The
+ministry have been greatly alarmed with the King of Sardinia's
+retreat, and suspected that it was a total one from the
+Queen's interest; but it seems he sent for Villettes and the
+Hungarian minister, and had their previous approbations of his
+deserting Chamberry, etc.
+
+Vernon is not yet got to town, we are impatient for what will
+follow the arrival of this mad hero.  Wentworth will certainly
+challenge him, but Vernon does not profess personal valour: he
+was once knocked down by a merchant, who then offered him
+satisfaction-but he was satisfied.
+
+Lord Essex' is dead:(758) Lord Lincoln will have the
+bedchamber; Lord Berkeley of Stratton(759) (a disciple of
+Carteret's) the Pensioners; and Lord Carteret himself probably
+the riband.
+
+As to my Lady Walpole's dormant title,(760) it was in her
+family; but being in the King's power to give to which sister
+in equal claim he pleased, it was bestowed on Lord Clinton,
+who descended from the younger sister of Lady W.'s
+grandmother, or great grand-something.  My Lady Clifford,(761)
+Coke's mother, got her barony so, in preference to Lady
+Salisbury and Lady Sondes, her elder sisters, who had already
+titles for their children.  It is called a title in abeyance.
+
+Sir Robert has just bid me tell you to send the Dominichin by
+the first safe conveyance to Matthews, who has had orders from
+Lord Winchilsea (762) to send it by the first man-of-war to
+England; or if you meet with a ship going to Port Mahon, then
+you must send it thither to Anstruther, and write to him that
+Lord Orford desires that he will take care of it, and send it
+by the first ship that comes directly home.  He is so
+impatient for it, that he will have it thus; but I own I
+should not like to have my things tumbled out of one ship into
+another, and beg mine may stay till they can come at once.
+Adieu!
+
+(755) Entitled "The Case of the Hanover Forces in the Pay of
+Great Britain examined."  It was written by Lord Chesterfield,
+and excited much attention.-E.
+
+(756) In December he was created a peer, by the title of Lord
+Sandys, Baron of Ombersley, and made cofferer of the
+household.-E.
+
+(757) The British troops began their march from Flanders at
+the end of February, under the command of the Earl of Stair;
+but were so tardy in their movements, that it was the middle
+of May before they crossed the Rhine and fixed their station
+at Hochst, between Mayence and Frankfort.-E.
+
+(758) William Capel, third Earl of Essex. [A lord of the
+bedchamber, knight of the garter, and captain of the yeomen of
+the guard.)
+
+(759) John, fifth and last Lord Berkeley of Stratton.  He died
+in 1773.-D.
+
+(760) The barony of Clinton in fee descended to the daughters
+of Theophilus, Earl of Huntingdon, who died without male
+issue.  One of those ladies died without children, by which
+means the title lay between the families of Rolle and
+Fortescue.  King George I. gave it to Hugh Fortescue,
+afterwards Created an earl; on whose death it descended to his
+only sister, a maiden lady, after whom, without issue, it
+devolved on Lady Orford.
+
+(761) Lady Margaret Tufton, third daughter of Thomas, sixth
+Earl of Thanet.  the barony of De Clifford had descended to
+Lord Thanet, from his mother, Lady Margaret Sackville,
+daughter of Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and
+Montgomery.  Upon Lord Thanet's death, the barony of De
+Clifford fell into abeyance between his five daughters.  These
+were Lady Catherine, married to Edward Watson, Viscount
+Sondus; Lady Anne, married to James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury;
+Lady Margaret, before mentioned; Lady Mary, married first to
+Anthony Grey, Earl of Harold, and secondly to John Earl Gower;
+and Lady Isabella, married to Lord Nassau Powlett.-D.
+
+(762) First lord of the admiralty.-]).
+
+
+
+306 Letter 95
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 1743.
+
+I could not write you last Thursday, I was so much out of
+order with a cold; your brother came and found me in bed.
+TO-night, that I can write, I have nothing to tell you; except
+that yesterday the welcome news (to the ministry) came of the
+accession of the Dutch to the King's measures.  They are in
+great triumph; but till it Is clear what part his Prussian
+Uprightness is acting, other people take the liberty to be
+still in suspense.  So they are about all our domestic matters
+too.  It is a general stare! the alteration that must soon
+happen in the Treasury will put some end to the uncertainties
+of this winter.  Mr. Pelham is universally named to the head
+of it; but Messrs.  Prince,(263) Carteret, Pultney, and
+Companies must be a little considered.  how they will like it:
+the latter the least.
+
+You will wonder, perhaps be peevish, when I protest I have not
+another paragraph by me in the world.  I want even common
+conversation; for I cannot persist, like the royal family, in
+asking people the same questions, "Do you love walking?" "Do
+you love music'!" "Was you at the opera?" "When do you go into
+the country!"  I have nothing else to say: nothing happens;
+scarce the common episodes of a newspaper, of a man falling
+off a ladder and breaking his leg; or of a countryman cheated
+out of his leather pouch, with fifty shillings in it.  We are
+in such a state of sameness, that I shall begin to wonder at
+the change of seasons, and talk of the spring as a strange
+accident.  Lord Tyrawley, who has been fifteen years in
+Portugal, is of my opinion; he says he finds nothing but a
+fog, whist, and the House of Commons.
+
+In this lamentable state, when I know not what to write even
+to you, what can I do about my serene Princess Grifoni? Alas!
+I owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I
+cannot tell! I believe I may have some by me in an old chest
+of draws, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom
+wigs; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten! Do bow
+to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my
+eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and
+over, I have not been able to write a line.  That will move
+her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, of
+my not being able to write-nay, indeed it will not be so
+ridiculous as you think; for it is ten times worse for the
+eyes to write in a language one don't much practise! I
+remember a tutor at Cambridge, who had been examining some
+lads in Latin, but in a little while excused himself, and said
+he must speak English, for his mouth was very sore.
+
+I had a letter from you yesterday of January 7th, N. S. which
+has wonderfully excited my compassion for the necessities of
+the princely family,(764) and the shifts the old Lady' is put
+to for quadrille.(765)
+
+I triumph much on my penetration about the honest
+Rucellai(766)-we little people, who have no honesty, virtue,
+nor shame, do so exult when a good neighbour, who was a
+pattern, turns out as bad as oneself!  We are like the good
+woman in the Gospel, who chuckled so much on finding her lost
+bit; we have more joy on a saint's fall, than in ninety-nine
+devils, who were always de nous autres! I am a little pleased
+too, that Marquis BagneSi'(767) whom you know I always liked
+much, has behaved so well; and am more pleased to hear what a
+Beffana(768) the Electress(769) is-Pho! here am I sending you
+back your own paragraphs, cut and turned! it is so silly to
+think that you won't know them again! I will not spin myself
+any longer; it is better to make a short letter.  I am going
+to the masquerade, and will fancy myself in via della
+Pergola.(770)  Adieu! "Do you know me?"-"That man there with
+you, in the black domino, is Mr. Chute.,, Good night!
+
+(763) Frederick, Prince of Wales.-D.
+
+(764) Prince and Princess Craon.
+
+(765) Madame Sarasin.
+
+(766) Sir H. Mann says, in his letter of January 7, 1743, 11 I
+must be so just as to tell you, @my friend, the Senator
+Rucellai, is, as you always thought, a sad fellow.  He has
+quite abandoned me for fear of offending."-D.
+
+(767) "Apropos of duels, two of our young nobles, Marquis
+BagneSi and Strozzi, have fought about a debt of' fifteen
+shillings; the latter, the creditor and the occasion of the
+fight, behaved ill."-Letter from Sir H. Mann, dated Jan. 7,
+1743.-D.
+
+(768) A Beffana was a puppet, which was carried about the town
+on the evening of the Epiphany.  The word is derived from
+Epifania.  It also means an ugly woman.  The Electress
+happened to go out for the first time after an illness on the
+Epiphany, and said in joke to Prince Craon, that the "Beffane
+all went abroad on that day."-D.
+
+(769) The Electress Palatine Dowager, the last of the House of
+Medici.
+
+(770) A street at Florence, in which the Opera house stands.
+
+
+
+308 Letter 96
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 2, 1743.
+
+Last night at the Duchess of Richmond's I saw Madame
+Goldsworthy: what a pert, little, unbred thing it is! The
+duchess presented us to one another; but I cannot say that
+either of us stepped a foot beyond the first civilities.  The
+good duchess was for harbouring her and all her brood: how it
+happened to her I don't conceive, but the thing had decency
+enough to refuse it.  She is going to live with her father at
+Plymouth-tant mieux!
+
+The day before yesterday the lords had a great day: Earl
+Stanhope(771) moved for an address to his Britannic Majesty,
+in consideration of the heavy wars, taxes, etc. far exceeding
+all that ever were known, to exonerate his people of foreign
+troops, Hanoverians,) which are so expensive, and can In no
+light answer the ends for which they were hired.  Lord
+Sandwich seconded: extremely well, I hear, for I was not
+there.  Lord Carteret answered, but was under great concern.
+Lord Bath spoke too, and would fain have persuaded that this
+measure was not Solely Of one minister, but that himself and
+all the council were equally concerned in it.  The late Privy
+Seal(772) Spoke for an hour and a half, with the greatest
+applause, against the Hanoverians: and my Lord Chancellor
+extremely well for them.  The division was, 90 for the Court,
+35 against it  The present Privy Seal(773) voted with the
+Opposition: so there will soon be another.  Lord Halifax, the
+Prince's new Lord, was with the minority too; the other, Lord
+Darnley,(774) with the Court.  After the division, Lord
+Scarborough, his Royal Highness's Treasurer, moved an address
+of approbation of the measure, which was carried by 78 to the
+former 35.  Lord Orford was ill, and could not be there, but
+sent his proxy: he has got a great cold and slow fever, but
+does not keep his room.  If Lord Gower loses the Privy Seal,
+(as it is taken for granted he does not design to keep it,)
+and Lord Bath refuses it, Lord Cholmondeley stands the fairest
+for it.
+
+I will conclude abruptly, for you will be tired of my telling
+you that I have nothing to tell you-but so it is literally-
+oh! yes, you will want to know what the Duke of Argyle did-he
+was not there; he is every thing but superannuated.  Adieu!
+
+(771) Philip, second Earl Stanhope, born in 1714.  He
+succeeded his father when he was only seven years old, and
+died in 1786.  His character is thus sketched by his great-
+grandson, Viscount Mahon, in his History of England, vol. iii.
+p. 242.-"He had great talents, but fitter for speculation than
+for practical objects of action.  He made himself one of the
+best-Lalande used to say the best-mathematicians in England of
+his day, and was likewise deeply skilled in other branches of
+science and philosophy.  The Greek language was as familiar to
+him as the English; he was said to know every line of Homer by
+heart.  In public life, on the contrary, he was shy, ungainly,
+and embarrassed.  From his first onset in Parliament, he took
+part with vehemence against the administration of Sir Robert
+Walpole."  Bishop Secker says, that Lord Stanhope "spoke a
+precomposed speech, which he held in his hand, with great
+tremblings and agitations, and hesitated frequently in the
+midst of great vehemence."-E.
+
+(772) Lord Hervey.
+
+
+(773) Lord Gower.
+
+(774) Edward Bligh, second Earl of Darnley, in Ireland, and
+Lord of the Bedchamber to Frederic Prince of Wales.-D.
+
+
+
+ 309 Letter 97
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Feb. 13, 1743.
+
+Ceretesi tells me that Madame Galli is dead: I have had two
+letters from you this week; but the last mentions only the
+death of old Strozzi.  I am quite sorry for Madame Galli,
+because I proposed seeing her again, on my return to Florence,
+which I have firmly in my intention: I hope it will be a
+little before Ceretesi's, for he seems to be planted here.  I
+don't conceive who -waters him! Here are two noble Venetians
+that have carried him about lately to Oxford and Blenheim: I
+am literally waiting for him now, to introduce him to Lady
+Brown's sunday night; it is the great mart for all travelling
+and travelled calves-pho! here he is.
+
+Monday morning.-Here is your brother: he tells me you never
+hear from me; how can that be? I receive yours, and you
+generally mention having got one of mine, though long after
+the time you should.  I never miss above one post, and that
+but very seldom.  I am longer receiving yours, though you have
+never missed; but then-I frequently receive two at once.  I am
+delighted with Goldsworthy's mystery about King Theodore! If
+you will promise me not to tell him, I will tell you@a secret,
+which is, that if that person is not King Theodore, I assure
+you it is not Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+I have nothing to tell you but that Lord Effingham Howard(775)
+is dead, and Lord Litchfield(776) at the point of death; he
+was struck with a palsy last Thursday.  Adieu!
+
+(775) Francis, first Earl of Effingham, and seventh Lord
+Howard of Effingham.  He died February 12, 1743.-D.
+
+(776) George Henry Lee, second Earl of Lichfield.  He died
+February 15, 1743.-D.
+
+
+
+309 Letter 98
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 24, 1743.
+
+I write to you in the greatest hurry in the world, but write I
+will.  Besides, I must wish you joy; you are warriors; nay,
+conquerors;(777) two things quite novel in this war, for
+hitherto it has been armies without fighting, and deaths
+without killing.  We talk of this battle as of a comet; "Have
+you heard of the battle?" it Is so strange a thing, that
+numbers imagine you may go (ind see it at Charing Cross.
+Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don't quite
+like it; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight,
+and that a pair of colours should be no longer a sinecure.  I
+am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute: besides, it is cruel to
+find that abstinence is not a drug.  If mortification ever
+ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to
+carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any
+longer-not, my child, that I am one; but, tell me, is he quite
+recovered?
+
+I thank you for King Theodore's declaration,(778) and wish Him
+success with all my soul.  I hate the Genoese; they make a
+commonwealth the most devilish of all tyrannies!
+
+We have every now and then motions for disbanding Hessians and
+Hanoverians, alias mercenaries; but they come to nothing.
+To-day the party have declared that they have done for this
+session; so you will hear little more but of fine equipages
+for Flanders: our troops are actually marched, and the
+officers begin to follow them-1 hopes they know whither! You
+know in the last war in Spain, Lord Peterborough rode
+galloping about to inquire for his army.
+
+But to come to more real contests; Handel has set up an
+oratorio against the opera @ind succeeds.  He has hired all
+the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef(779)
+from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one
+note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they
+sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore
+the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what
+they call a tune.  I was much diverted the other night at the
+opera; two gentlewoman sat before my sister, and not knowing
+her, discoursed at their ease.  Says one, "Lord! how fine Mr.
+W. is!" "Yes," replied the other, with a tone of saying
+sentences, "some men love to be particularly so, your
+petit-maitres-but they are not always the brightest of their
+sex.'@-Do thank me for this period! I am sure you will enjoy
+it as much as we did.
+
+I shall be very glad of my things, and approve entirely of
+your precautions; Sir R. will be quite happy, for there is no
+telling YOU how impatient he is for his Dominichin.  Adieu!
+
+(777) This alludes to an engagement, which took place on the
+8th of February, near Bologna, between the Spaniards under M.
+de Gages, and the Austrians under General Traun, in which the
+latter were successful.-D.
+
+(778) With regard to Corsica, of which he had declared himself
+King.  By this declaration, which was dated January 30,
+Theodore recalled, under pain of confiscation of their
+estates, all the Corsicans in foreign service, except that of
+the Queen of Hungary, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany.-E.
+
+(779) It was customary at this time for the galleries to call
+for a ballad called "The Roast Beef of Old England," between
+the acts, or before or after the play.
+
+
+
+310 Letter 99
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+March 3d, 1743.
+
+So, she is dead at last, the old Electress!(780)-well, I have
+nothing more to say about her and the Medici; they had
+outlived all their acquaintance: indeed, her death makes the
+battle very considerable -makes us call a victory what before
+we did not look upon as very decided laurels.
+
+Lord Hervey has entertained the town with another piece of
+wisdom: on Sunday it was declared that he had married his
+eldest daughter the night before to a Mr. Phipps,(781)
+grandson of the Duchess of Buckingham.  They sent for the boy
+but the day before from Oxford, and bedded them at a day's
+notice.  But after all this mystery, it does not turn out that
+there is any thing great in this match, but the greatness of
+the secret.  Poor
+Hervey,(782) the brother, is in fear and trembling, for he
+apprehends being ravished to bed to some fortune or other with
+as little ceremony.  The Oratorios thrive abundantly-for my
+part, they give me an idea of heaven, where every body is to
+sing whether they have voices or not.
+
+The Board (the Jacobite Club) have chosen his Majesty's Lord
+Privy Seal(783) for their President, in the room of Lord
+Litchfield.  Don't you like the harmony of parties? We expect
+the parliament will rise this month: I shall be sorry, for if
+I am not hurried out of town, at least every body else
+will-and who can look forward from April to November? Adieu!
+though I write in defiance of having nothing to say, yet you
+see I can't go a great way in this obstinacy; but you will
+bear a short letter rather than none.
+
+(780) Anna Maria of Medicis, daughter of Cosmo III. widow of
+John William, Elector Palatine.  After her husband's death she
+returned to Florence, where she died, Feb @ 7 1743, aged
+seventy-five, being the last of that family.
+
+(781) Constantine Phipps, in 1767, created Lord Mulgrave in
+Ireland.  He married, on the 26th of February, Lepel, eldest
+daughter of Lord Hervey, and died in 1775.  Her ladyship was
+found dead in her bed, 9th March, 1780, at her son's house in
+the Admiralty.-E.
+
+
+(782) George William Hervey, afterwards second Earl of
+Bristol.  He died unmarried, in 1775.-E.
+
+(783) Lord Gower.
+
+
+
+ 311 Letter 100
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 14, 1743.
+
+I don't at all know how to advise you about mourning; I always
+think that the custom of a country, and what other foreign
+ministers do, should be your rule.  But I had a private
+scruple rose with me: that was, whether you should show so
+much respect to the late woman (784) as other ministers do,
+since she left that legacy to Quella a Roma.(785)  I mentioned
+this to my lord, but he thinks that the tender manner of her
+wording it, takes off that exception; however, he thinks it
+better that you should write for advice to your commanding
+officer.  That will be very late, and you will probably have
+determined before.  You see what a casuist I am in ceremony; I
+leave the question more perplexed than I found it.
+
+Pray, Sir, congratulate me upon the new acquisition of glory
+to my family! We have long been eminent statesmen; now that we
+are out of employment we have betaken ourselves to war-and we
+have made great proficiency in a short season.  We don't run,
+like my Lord Stair, into Berg and Juliers, to seek battles
+where we are sure of not finding them-we make shorter marches;
+a step across the Court of Requests brings us to engagement.
+But not to detain you any longer with flourishes, which will
+probably be inserted in my uncle Horace's patent when he is
+made a field-marshal; you must know that he has fought a duel,
+and has scratched a scratch three inches long on the side of
+his enemy-lo Paon! The circumstances of this memorable
+engagement were, in short, that on some witness being to be
+examined the other day in the House upon remittances to the
+army, my uncle said, He hoped they would indemnify him, if he
+told any thing that affected himself." Soon after he was
+standing behind the Speaker's chair, and Will.  Chetwynd,(786)
+an intimate of Bolingbroke, came up to him, What, Mr. Walpole,
+are you for rubbing up old sores?" He replied, "I think I said
+very little, considering that you and your friends would last
+year have hanged up me and my brother at the lobby-door
+without a trial."  Chetwynd answered, I would still have you
+both have your deserts." The other said, If you and I had,
+probably I should be here and you would be somewhere else."
+This drew more words, and Chetwynd took him by the arm and led
+him out.  In the lobby, Horace said, "We shall be-observed, we
+had better put it off till to-morrow."  "No, no, now! now!"
+When they came to the bottom of the stairs, Horace said, "I am
+out of breath, let us draw here." They drew; Chetwynd hit him
+on the breast, but was not near enough to pierce his coat.
+Horace made a pass which the other put by with his hand, but
+It glanced along his side-a clerk, who had observed them go
+out together so arm-in-arm-ly, could not believe it amicable,
+but followed them, and came up just time enough to beat down
+their swords, as Horace had driven him against a post, and
+would probably have run him through at the next thrust.
+Chetwynd went away to a surgeon's, and kept his bed the next
+day; he has not reappeared yet, but is in no danger.  My uncle
+returned to the House, and was so little moved as to speak
+immediately upon the Cambrick bill, which made Swinny say,
+"That it was a sign he was not ruffled."(787)  Don't you
+delight in this duel? I expect to see it daubed up by some
+circuit-painter on the ceiling of the saloon at Woolterton.
+
+I have no news to tell you, but that we hear King Theodore has
+sent over proposals of his person and crown to Lady Lucy
+Stanhope,(788) with whom he fell in love the last time he was
+in England.
+
+Princess Buckingham(789) is dead or dying: she has sent for
+Mr. Anstis, and settled the ceremonial of her burial.  On
+Saturday she was so ill that she feared dying before all the
+pomp was come home: she said, "Why won't they send the canopy
+for me to see? let them send it, though all the tassels are
+not finished."  But yesterday was the greatest stroke of all!
+She made her ladies vow to her, that if she should lie
+senseless, they would not sit down in the room before she was
+dead.  She has a great mind to be buried by her father at
+Paris.  Mrs. Selwyn says, "She need not be carried out of
+England, and yet be buried by her father." You know that Lady
+Dorchester always told her, that old Graham(790) was her
+father.
+
+I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken about
+the statue; do draw upon me for it immediately, and for all my
+other debts to you: I am sure they must be numerous; pray
+don't fail.
+
+A thousand loves to the Chutes: a thousand compliments to the
+Princess; and a thousand-what? to the Grifona.  Alas! what can
+one do? I have forgot all my Italian.  Adieu!
+
+(784) The Electress Palatine Dowager.
+
+(785) She left a legacy to the Pretender, describing him only
+by these words, To Him at Rome.
+
+(786) William Chetwynd, brother of the Lord Viscount Chetwynd.
+On the coalition he was made Master of the Mint.
+
+(787) Coxe, in his Memoirs of Lord Walpole, gives the
+following account of this duel: "A motion being made in the
+House of Commons, which Mr. Walpole supported, he said to Mr.
+Chetwynd, 'I hope we shall carry this question.' Mr. Chetwynd
+replied, 'I hope to see you hanged first!'  'You see me hanged
+first!' rejoined Mr. Walpole and instantly seized him by the
+nose.  They went out and fought.  The account being conveyed
+to Lord Orford, he sent his son to make inquiries; who, on
+coming into the House of Commons, found his uncle speaking
+with the same composure as if nothing had happened to ruffle
+his tamper or endanger his life.  Mr. Chetwynd was wounded."
+vol. ii. p. 68.-E.
+
+(788) Sister of Philip, second Earl Stanhope.
+
+(789) Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of
+King James II. by the Countess of Dorchester.  She was so
+proud of her birth, that she would never go to Versailles,
+because they would not give her the rank of Princess of the
+Blood.  At Rome, whither she went two or three times to see
+her brother, and to carry on negotiations with him for his
+interest, she had a box at the Opera distinguished like those
+of crowned heads.  She not only regulated the ceremony of her
+own burial, and dressed up the waxen figure of herself for
+Westminster Abbey, but had shown the same insensible pride on
+the death of her only son, dressing his figure, and sending
+messages to her friends, that if they had a mind to see him
+lie in state, she would carry them in conveniently by a
+back-door.  She sent to the old Duchess of Marlborough to
+borrow the triumphal car that had carried the Duke's body.
+Old Sarah, as mad and proud as herself, sent her word, "that
+it had carried my Lord Marlborough, and should never be
+profaned by any other corpse." The Buckingham retorted that,
+"she had spoken to the undertaker, and he had engaged to make
+a finer for twenty pounds." [See ant`e, p. 204.]
+
+(790) Colonel Graham.  When the Duchess was young, and as
+insolent as afterwards, her mother used to say, "You need not
+be so proud, for you are not the King's but old Graham's
+daughter." It is certain, that his legitimate daughter, the
+Countess of Berkshire and  Suffolk, was extremely like the
+Duchess, and that he often said with a sneer, "Well, well,
+kings are great men, they make free with whom they please! All
+I can say is, that I am sure the same man begot those two
+women." The Duchess often went to weep over her father's body
+at Paris: one of the monks seeing her tenderness, thought it a
+proper opportunity to make her observe how ragged the pall is
+that lies over the body, (which is kept unburied, to be some
+time or other interred in England,)-but she would not buy a
+new!
+
+
+
+314 Letter 101
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 25, 1743.
+
+Well! my dear Sir, the Genii, or whoever are to look after the
+seasons, seem to me to change turns, and to wait instead of
+one another, like lords of the bedchamber.  We have had loads
+of sunshine all the winter; and within these ten days nothing
+but snows, north-east winds, and blue plagues.  The last ships
+have brought over all your epidemic distempers: not a family
+in London has escaped under five or six ill: many people have
+been forced to hire new labourers.  Guernier, the apothecary,
+took two new apothecaries, and yet could not drug all his
+patients.  It is a cold and fever.  I had one of the worst,
+and was blooded on Saturday and Sunday, but it is quite gone:
+my father was blooded last night: his is but slight.  The
+physicians say that there has been nothing like it since the
+year Thirty-three, and then not so bad: in short, our army
+abroad would shudder to see what streams of blood have been
+let out! Nobody has died of it, but old Mr. Eyres, of Chelsea,
+through obstinacy of not bleeding; and his ancient Grace of
+York:(791) Wilcox of Rochester(792) succeeds him, who is fit
+for nothing in the world, but to die of this cold too.
+
+They now talk of the King's not going abroad: I like to talk
+on that side; because though it may not be true, one may at
+least be able to give some sort of reason why he should not.
+We go into mourning for your Electress on Sunday; I suppose
+they will tack the Elector of Mentz to her, for he is just
+dead.  I delight in Richcourt's calculation- I don't doubt but
+it is the method he often uses in accounting with the Great
+Duke.
+
+I have had two letters from you of the 5th and 12th, with a
+note of things coming by sea; but my dear child, you are
+either run Roman Catholicly devout, or take me to be so; for
+nothing but a religious fit of zeal could make you think of
+sending me so many presents.  Why, there are Madonnas enough
+in one case to furnish a more than common cathedral-I
+absolutely will drive to Demetrius, the silversmith's, and
+bespeak myself a pompous shrine! But indeed, seriously, how
+can I, who have a conscience, and am no saint, take all these
+things? You must either let me pay for them, or I will demand
+my unfortunate coffee-pot again, which has put you upon
+ruining yourself By the way, do let me have it again, for I
+cannot trust it any longer in your hands at this rate; and
+since I have found out its virtue, I will present it to
+somebody, whom I shall have no scruple of letting send me
+bales and cargoes, and ship-loads of Madonnas, perfumes,
+prints, frankincense, etc.  You have not even drawn upon me
+for my statue, my hermaphrodite, my gallery, and twenty other
+things, for which I am lawfully your debtor.
+
+I must tell you one thing, that I will not say a word to my
+lord of this Argosie, as Shakspeare calls his costly ships,
+till it is arrived, for he will tremble for his Dominichin,
+and think it will not come safe in all this company-by the
+way, will a captain of a man-of-war care to take all? We were
+talking over Italy last night- my lord protests, that if he
+thought he had strength, he would see Florence, Bologna, and
+Rome, by way of Marseilles, to Leghorn.  You may imagine how I
+gave in to such a jaunt.  I don't set my heart upon it,
+because I think he cannot do it; but if he does, I promise
+you, you shall be his Cicerone.  I delight in the gallantry of
+the Princess's brother.(793) I will tell you what, if the
+Italians don't take care, they will grow as brave and as
+wrongheaded as their neighbours.  Oh! how shall I do about
+writing to her? Well, if I can, I will be bold, and write to
+her to-night.
+
+I have no idea what the two minerals are that you mention, but
+I will inquire, and if there are such, you shall have them;
+and gold and silver, if they grow in this land; for I am sure
+I am deep enough in your debt.  Adieu!  .
+
+P. S. It won't do! I have tried to write, but you would bless
+yourself to see what stuff I have been forging for half an
+hour, and have not waded through three lines of paper. i have
+totally forgot my Italian, and if she will but have prudence
+enough to support the loss of a correspondence, which was long
+since worn threadbare, we will come to as decent a silence as
+may be.
+
+(791) Doctor lancelot Blackburne.  Walpole, in his Memoires,
+vol. i. p. 74, calls him "the jolly old archbishop, who had
+the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a
+buccaneer, and was a clergyman."  Noble, in his continuation
+of Granger, treats these aspersions as the effect of malice.
+"How is it possible!" he asks, ,that a buccaneer should be so
+great a scholar as Blackburne certainly was? he who had so
+perfect a knowledge of the classics, as to be able to read
+them with the same ease as he could Shakspeare, must have
+taken great pains to have acquired the learned languages, and
+have had both leisure and good masters." He is allowed to have
+been a remarkably pleasant man; and it was said of him, that
+"he gained more hearts than souls."-E.
+
+(792)  He was not succeeded by Dr. Wilcox, but by Dr. Herring,
+who was elevated, in 1747, to the archbishopric of Canterbury,
+and died in 1757.-E.
+
+(793) a Signor Capponi, brother of Madame Grifoni.
+
+
+
+
+315 Letter 102
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Monday, April 4, 1743.
+
+I had my pen in my hand all last Thursday morning to write to
+you, but my pen had nothing to say.  I would make it do
+something to-day though what will come of it, I don't
+conceive.
+
+They say, the King does not go abroad: we know nothing about
+our army.  I suppose it is gone to blockade Egra, and to not
+take Prague, as it has been the fashion for every body to send
+their army to do these three years.  The officers in
+parliament are not gone yet.  We have nothing to do, but I
+believe the ministry have something for us to do, for we are
+continually adjourned, but not prorogued.  They talk of
+marrying Princess Caroline and Louisa to the future Kings of
+Sweden and Denmark; but if the latter(794) is King of both, I
+don't apprehend that he is to marry both the Princesses in his
+double capacity.
+
+Herring, Of Bangor, the youngest bishop, is named to the see
+of York. it looks as if the bench thought the church going out
+of fashion; for two or three(795) of them have refused this
+mitre.
+
+Next Thursday we are to be entertained with a pompous parade
+for the burial of old Princess Buckingham.  They have invited
+ten peeresses to walk: all somehow or other dashed with
+blood-royal, and rather than not have King James's daughter
+attended by princesses, they have fished out two or three
+countesses descended from his competitor Monmouth.
+
+There, I am at the end of my tell! If I write on, it must be
+to ask questions.  I Would ask why Mr. Chute has left me off
+but when he sees what a frippery correspondent I am, he will
+scarce be in haste to renew with me again.  I really don't
+know why I am so dry; mine used to be the pen of a ready
+writer, but whist seems to have stretched its leaden wand over
+me too, who have nothing to do with it. I am trying to set up
+the noble game of bilboquet against it, and composing a
+grammar in opposition to Mr. Hoyle's.  You will some day or
+other see an advertisement in the papers, to tell you where it
+may be bought, and that ladies may be waited upon by the
+author at their houses, to receive any further directions.  I
+am 'really ashamed to send this scantling of paper by the
+post, over so many seas and mountains: it seems as impertinent
+as the commission which Prior gave to the winds,
+
+"Lybs must fly south, and Eurus east,
+For jewels for her neck and breast."
+
+Indeed, one would take you for my Chloe, when one looks on
+this modicum of gilt paper, which resembles a billet-doux more
+than a letter to a minister.  You must take it as the widow's
+mite, and since the death of my spouse, poor Mr. News, I
+cannot afford such large doles as formerly.  Adieu! my dear
+child, I am yours ever, from a quire of the largest foolscap
+to a vessel of the smallest gilt.
+
+(794) There was a party at this time in Sweden, who tried to
+choose the Prince Royal of Denmark for successor to King
+Frederick of sweden.
+
+(795) Dr. Wilcox, Bishop of Rochester, and Dr. Sherlock,
+Bishop of Salisbury: the latter afterwards accepted the See of
+London.
+
+
+
+317 Letter 103
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 14, 1743.
+
+This has been a noble week; I have received three letters at
+once from you.  I am ashamed when I reflect on the poverty of
+my own!  but what can one do? I don't sell you my news, and
+therefore should not be excusable to invent.  I wish we don't
+grow to have more news!  Our politics, which have not always
+been the most in earnest, now begin to take a very serious
+turn.  Our army is wading over the Rhine, up to their middles
+in snow.  I hope they will be thawed before their return: but
+they have gone through excessive hardships.  The King sends
+six thousand more of his Hanoverians at his own expense: this
+will be popular-and the six thousand Hessians march too.  All
+this will compose an army considerable enough to be a great
+loss if they miscarry.  The King certainly goes abroad in less
+than a fortnight.  He takes the Duke with him to Hanover who
+from thence goes directly to the army.  The Court will not be
+great: the King takes only Lord Carteret, the Duke of
+Richmond, master of the horse, and Lord Holderness and Lord
+Harcourt,(796) for the bedchamber.  The Duchesses of Richmond
+and Marlborough,(797) and plump Carteret,(798) go to the
+Hague.
+
+His Royal Highness is not Regent: there are to be fourteen.
+The Earl of Bath and Mr. Pelham, neither of them in
+regency-posts, are to be of the number.
+
+I have read your letters about Mystery to Sir Robert.  He
+denies absolutely having ever had transactions with King
+Theodore, and is amazed Lord Carteret can; which he can't help
+thinking but he must, by the intelligence about Lady W. Now I
+can conceive all that affected friendship for Richcourt! She
+must have meant to return to England by Richcourt's interest
+with Touissant(799) and then where was her friendship? You are
+quite in the right not to have engaged with King Theodore:
+your character is not-Furibondo.  Sir R. entirely disapproves
+all Mysterious dealings; he thinks Furibondo most bad and most
+improper, and always did.  You mistook me about Lady W.'s
+Lord-I meant Quarendon, who is now Earl of Litchfield, by his
+father's death, which I mentioned.  I think her lucky in
+Sturges's death, and him lucky in dying.  He had outlived
+resentment; I think had almost lived to be pitied.
+
+I forgot to thank you about the model, which I should have
+been sorry to have missed.  I long for all the things, and my
+Lord more. so.  Am I not to have a bill of lading, or how!
+
+
+I never say any thing of the Pomfrets, because in the great
+city of London the Countess's follies do not make the same
+figure as they did in little Florence.  Besides, there are
+such numbers here who have such equal pretensions to be
+absurd, that one is scarce aware of particular ridicules.
+
+I really don't know whether Vanneschi be dead; he married some
+low English woman, who is kept by Amorevoli; so the Abbate
+turned the opera every way to his profit.  As to
+Bonducci,(200) I don't think I could serve him; for I have no
+interest with the Lords Middlesex and Holderness, the two sole
+managers.  Nor if I had, would I employ it, 'to bring over
+more ruin to the operas.  Gentlemen directors, with favourite
+abb`es and favourite mistresses, have almost overturned the
+thing in England.  You will plead my want of interest to Mr.
+Smith(801) too: besides, we had Bufos here once, and from not
+understanding the language, people thought it a dull kind of
+dumb-show.  We are next Tuesday to have the Miserere of Rome.
+It must be curious! the finest piece of vocal music in the
+world, to be performed by three good voices, and forty bad
+ones, from Oxford, Canterbury, and the farces!  There is a new
+subscription formed for an opera next year, to be carried on
+by the Dilettanti, a club, for which the nominal qualification
+is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk: the
+two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who
+were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy.
+
+The parliament rises next week: every body is going out of
+town.  My Lord goes the first week in May; but I shall
+reprieve myself till towards August.  Dull as London is in
+summer, there is always more company in it than in any one
+place in the country.  I hate the country: I am past the
+shepherdly age of groves and streams, and am not arrived at
+that of hating every thing but what I do myself, as building
+and planting.  Adieu!
+
+(796) Simon, second Viscount Harcourt, created an earl in
+1749; in 1768 appointed ambassador at Paris, and in 1769 Lord
+Lieutenant of Ireland.  He was accidentally drowned in a well
+in his park at Nuncham, in 1777; occasioned, it is believed,
+by overreaching himself, in order to save the life of a
+favourite dog.-E.
+
+(797) Elizabeth Trevor, daughter of Thomas Lord Trevor, wife
+of Charles Spencer, Duke of Marlborough.  She died in 1761.-E.
+
+(798) Frances, only daughter of Sir Robert Worseley, first
+wife of Lord Carteret.
+
+(799) First minister of the Great Duke.
+
+(800) Bonducci was a Florentine abb`e, who translated some of
+Pope's works into Italian.
+
+(801) The English Consul at Venice.
+
+
+
+318 Letter 104
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 25, 1743.
+
+Nay, but it is serious! the King is gone, and the Duke with
+him.  The' latter actually to the army.  They must sow
+laurels, if they design to reap any; for there are no
+conquests forward enough for them to come just in time and
+finish.  The French have relieved Egra and cut to pieces two
+of the best Austrian regiments, the cuirassiers.  This is
+ugly! We are sure, you know, of beating the French afterwards
+in France and Flanders; but I don't hear that the heralds have
+produced any precedents for our conquering them on the other
+side the Rhine.(802)  We at home may be excused from trembling
+at the arrival of every post; I am sure I shall.  If I were a
+woman, should support my fears with more dignity; for if one
+did lose a husband or a lover, there are those becoming
+comforts, weeds and cypresses, jointures and weeping cupids;
+but I have only a friend or two to lose, and there are no
+ornamental substitutes settled, to be one's proxy for that
+sort of grief.  One has not the satisfaction of fixing a day
+for receiving visits of consolation from a thousand people
+whom one don't love, because one has lost the only person one
+did love.  This is a new situation, and I don't like it.
+
+You will see the Regency in the newspapers.  I think the
+Prince might have been of it when my Lord Gower is.  I don't
+think the latter more Jacobite than his Royal Highness.
+
+The Prince is to come to town every Sunday fortnight to hold
+drawing-rooms; the Princesses stay all the summer at St.
+James's-would I did! but I go in three weeks to Norfolk; the
+only place that could make me wish to live at St. James's.  My
+Lord has pressed me so much, that I could not with decency
+refuse: he is going to furnish and hang his picture-gallery,
+and wants me.  I can't help wishing that I had never known a
+Guido from a Teniers: but who could ever suspect any connexion
+between painting and the wilds of Norfolk.
+
+Princess Louisa's contract with the Prince of Denmark was
+signed the morning before the King Went; but I don't hear when
+she goes.  Poor Caroline misses her man of Lubeck,(803) by his
+missing the crown of Sweden.
+
+I must tell you an odd thing that happened yesterday at
+Leicester House.  The Prince's children were in the circle:
+Lady Augusta(804) heard somebody call Sir Robert Rich by his
+name.  She concluded there was but one Sir Robert in the
+world, and taking him for Lord Orford, the child went staring
+up to him, and said, "Pray, where is your blue string! and
+pray what has become of your fat belly?" Did one ever hear of
+a more royal education, than to have rung this mob cant in the
+child's ears till it had made this impression on her!
+
+Lord Stafford is come over to marry Miss Cantillon, a vast
+fortune, of his own religion.  She is daughter of the
+Cantillon who was robbed and murdered, and had his house
+burned by his cook(805) a few years ago.  She is as ugly as
+he; but when she comes to Paris, and wears a good deal of
+rouge, and a separate apartment, who knows but she may be a
+beauty! There is no telling what a woman is, while she is as
+she is.  There is a great fracas in Ireland in a noble family
+or two, heightened by a pretty strong circumstance of Iricism.
+A Lord Belfield(806) married a very handsome daughter of a
+Lord Molesworth.(807)  A certain Arthur Rochfort, who happened
+to be acquainted in the family, by being Lord Belfield's own
+brother, looked on this woman, and saw that she was fair.
+These ingenious people, that their history might not be
+discovered, corresponded under feigned names-And what names do
+you think they chose?-Silvia and Philander! Only the very same
+that Lord Grey(808) and his sister-in-law took upon a parallel
+occasion, and which arc printed in their letters!
+
+Patapan sits to Wootton to-morrow for his picture.  He is to
+have a triumphal arch at a distance, to signify his Roman
+birth, and his having barked at thousands of Frenchmen in the
+very heart of Paris. If you can think of a good Italian motto
+applicable to any part of his history send it to me.  If not,
+he shall have this antique one-for I reckon him a senator of
+Rome, while Rome survived,-"O, et Presidium et dulce decus
+meum!"  He is writing an ode on the future campaign of this
+summer; it is dated from his villa, where he never was, and
+being truly in the classic style, "While you, great Sir," etc.
+Adieu!
+
+(802) Walpole seems to have forgotten the battle of
+Blenheim.-D;
+
+(803) Adolphus Frederick of Holstein, Bishop of Lubeck, was
+elected successor, and did succeed to the crown of Sweden.  He
+married the Princess Louisa Ulrica of Prussia.
+
+(804) Afterwards Duchess of Brunswick.-D.
+
+(805) Cantillon was a Paris wine-merchant and banker, who had
+been engaged with Law in the Mississippi scheme.  He
+afterwards brought his riches to England and settled in this
+country.  In May 1734, some of his servants, headed by the
+cook, conspired to murder him, knowing that he kept large sums
+of money in his house.  They killed him, and then set fire to
+the house; but the fire was extinguished, and the body, with
+the wounds upon it, found.  The cook fled beyond sea; but in
+December, three of his associates were tried at the Old Bailey
+for the murder, and acquitted.-E.
+
+(806) Robert Rochfort, created Lord Belfield in Ireland in
+1737, Viscount Belfield in 1751, and Earl of Belvedere in
+1756.  His second wife, whom be married in 1736, was the Hon.
+Mary Molesworth.  D.
+
+(807) Richard, third Viscount Molesworth, in Ireland.  He had
+been aide-de-camp to the great Duke of Marlborough, and in
+that capacity distinguished himself greatly at the battle of
+Ramilies.  He became afterwards master-general of the ordnance
+in Ireland, and commander of the forces in that kingdom, and a
+field-marshal.  He died in 1758.-D.
+
+(808) Fordo, the infamous Lord Grey of werke, and his
+sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, whose "Love Letters,"
+under these romantic names, were published in three small
+volumes.  They are supposed to have been compiled by Mrs.
+Behn.-D. [Lord Grey commanded the horse at Sedgmoor, and is
+accused of flying at the first charge, and preserving his life
+by giving evidence against his associates.  He married Lady
+Mary, daughter of George, first Earl of Berkeley, and died in
+1701.)
+
+
+
+320 Letter 105
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+May 4, 1743.
+
+The King was detained four or five days at Sheerness but
+yesterday we heard that he was got to Helvoetsluys.  They
+talk' of an interview between him and his nephew of Prussia-I
+never knew any advantage result from such conferences.  We
+expect to hear of the French attacking our army, though there
+are accounts of their retiring, which would necessarily
+produce a peace-I hope so! I don't like to be at the eve, even
+of an Agincourt; that, you know, every Englishman is bound in
+faith to expect: besides, they say my Lord Stair has in his
+pocket, from the records of the Tower, the original patent,
+empowering us always to conquer.  I am told that Marshal
+Noailles is as mad as Marshal Stair.  Heavens! twice fifty
+thousand men trusted to two mad captains, without one Dr.
+Monroe(809) over
+                          them!
+
+I am sorry I could give you so little information about King
+Theodore; but my lord knew nothing of him, and as little of
+any connexion between Lord Carteret and him.  I am sorry you
+have him on your
+                          hands. He quite mistakes his
+province: an adventurer should come hither;(810) this is the
+soil for mobs and patriots              it is the country of
+the world to make one's fortune - with parts never so scanty,
+one's dulness is not discovered, nor one's dishonesty, till
+one obtains the post one wanted-and then, if they do not come
+to light-why, one slinks into one's green velvet bag,(811) and
+lies so snug! I don't approve of your hinting at the
+falsehoods(812)              of Stosch's intelligence; nobody
+                          regards it but the King , it pleases
+him-e basta.
+
+I was not in the House at Vernon's frantic speech;(813) but I
+know he made it, and have heard him pronounce several such:
+but he has worn out even laughter, and did not make impression
+enough on me to remember till the next post that he had
+spoken.
+
+I gave your brother the translated paper; he will take care of
+it.  Ceretesi is gone to Flanders with Lord Holderness.  Poor
+creature!
+he was reduced, before he went, to borrow five guineas of Sir
+Francis Dashwood.  How will he ever scramble back to Florence?
+
+We are likely at last to have no opera next year: Handel has
+had a palsy, and can't compose; and the Duke of Dorset has set
+himself strenuously to oppose it, as Lord Middlesex is the
+impresario, and must ruin the house of Sackville by a course
+of these follies.  Besides what he will lose this year, he has
+not paid his share to the losses of the last; and yet is
+singly undertaking another for next season, with
+                          the almost certainty of losing
+between four or five thousand pounds, to which the
+deficiencies of the opera generally amount now.  The
+                          Duke of Dorset has desired the King
+not to subscribe; but Lord Middlesex is so obstinate, that
+this will probably only make him lose a
+                          thousand pounds more.
+
+The Freemasons are in so low repute now in England, that one
+has scarce heard the proceedings at Vienna against them
+mentioned.  I believe nothing but a persecution could bring
+them into vogue again here.  You know, as great as our follies
+are, we even grow tired of them, and are always changing.
+
+(809) Physician of Bedlam-
+
+"Those walls where Folly holds her throne,
+And laughs to think Monroe would take her down."-E.
+
+(810) He afterwards came to England, where he suffered much
+from poverty and destitution, and was finally arrested by his
+creditors and confined in the King,'s Bench prison.  He was
+released from thence under the Insolvent Act, having
+registered the kingdom of Corsica for the use of his
+creditors.  Shortly after this event he died, December 11,
+1756, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne's, Soho,
+where Horace Walpole erected a marble slab to his memory.  He
+was an adventurer, whose name was Theodore Anthony, Baron
+Newhoff, and was born at Metz, in 1686.  Walpole, who had seen
+him, describes him as "a comely, middle-sized man, very
+reserved, and affecting much dignity,"-D.
+
+(811) The secretaries of state and lord treasurer carry their
+papers in a green velvet bag.
+
+(812) Stosch used to pretend to send over an exact journal of
+the life of the Pretender and his sons, though he had been
+sent out of Rome at the Pretender's request, and must have
+                          had very bad, or no intelligence, of
+what passed in that family.
+
+(813) The admiral had recently said, in the House of Commons,
+that "there was not, on this side Hell, a nation so burthened
+with taxes as England."-E.
+
+
+
+322 Letter 106
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, May 12, 1743.
+
+It is a fortnight since I got any of your letters, but I will
+expect two at once.  I don't tell you by way of news, because
+you will have had expresses, but I must talk of the great
+Austrian victory!(814)  We have not heard the exact
+particulars yet, nor whether it was Kevenhuller or lobkowitz
+who beat the Bavarians; but their general, Minucci, is
+prisoner.  At first, they said Seckendorffe was too; I am glad
+he is not: poor man, he has suffered enough by the house of
+Austria! But my joy is beyond the common, for I flatter myself
+this victory will save us one: we talk of nothing, but its
+producing a peace, and then one's friends will return.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal(815) is dead-eighty-five years old: she
+was a year older than her late King.  Her riches were immense;
+but I believe my Lord Chesterfield will get nothing by her
+death-but his wife: (816) she lived in the house with the
+duchess, where he had played away all his credit.
+
+Hough,(817) the good old Bishop of Worcester, is dead too.  I
+have been looking at the "Fathers in God" that have been
+flocking over the way this Morning to Mr. Pelham, who is just
+come to his new house.  This is absolutely the ministerial
+street Carteret has a house here too; and Lord Bath seems to
+have lost his chance by quitting this street.  Old Marlborough
+has made a good story of the latter; she says, that when he
+found he could not get the privy seal, he begged that at least
+they would offer it to him, and upon his honour he would not
+accept it, but would plead his vow of never taking a place; in
+which she says they humoured him.  The truth is, Lord Carteret
+did hint an offer to him, upon which he went with a nolo
+episcopari to the King-he bounced, and said, "Why I never
+offered it to you:" upon which he recommended my Lord
+Carlisle, with equal Success.
+
+Just before the King went, he asked my Lord Carteret, " Well,
+when am I to get rid of those fellows in the Treasury?" They
+are on so low a foot, that somebody said Sandys had hired a
+stand of hackney-coaches, to look like a levee.
+
+Lord Conway has begged me to send you a commission, which you
+will oblige me much by executing.  It is to send him three
+Pistoia barrels for guns: two of them, of two feet and a half
+in the barrel in length; the smallest of the inclosed buttons
+to be the size of the bore, hole, or calibre, of the two guns.
+The third barrel to be three feet and an inch in length; the
+largest of these buttons to be the bore of it; these feet are
+English measure.  You will be so good to let me know the price
+of them.
+
+There has happened a comical circumstance at Leicester House:
+one of the Prince's coachmen, who used to drive the Maids of
+Honour, was so sick of them, that he has left his son three
+hundred pounds, upon condition that he never carries a Maid of
+Honour!
+
+Our journey to Houghton is fixed to Saturday se'nnight; 'tis
+unpleasant, but I flatter myself that I shall get away in the
+beginning of August.  Direct your letters as you have done all
+this winter; your brother will take care to send them to me.
+Adieu!
+
+(814) There was no great victory this year till the battle of
+Dettingen, which took place in June; but the Austrians
+obtained many advantages during the spring over the Bavarians
+and the French, and obliged the latter to recross the
+Rhine.-D.
+
+(815) Erangard Melusina Schulembergh, the mistress of George
+I.  George I. created her Duchess of Munster and Marchioness
+of Dungannon in Ireland in 1719; Ind Duchess of Kendal,
+Countess of Feversham, and Baroness of Glastonbury. in
+England, in 1723.  All these honours were for life only.  He
+also persuaded the Emperor to create her Princess of eberstein
+in the Roman empire in 1723.-D.
+
+(816) Melusina Schulembergh, Countess of Walsingham, niece of
+the Duchess of Kendal, and her heiress.
+
+(817) Hough Was a man of piety, ability, and integrity, and
+had distinguished himself early in his life by his resistance
+to the arbitrary proceedings of James II. against Magdalen
+College, Oxford, of which he was the president.  Pope, with
+much justice, speaks of "Hough's unsullied mitre."-D. [He was
+nominated Bishop of Oxford in 1690; and translated to
+Worcester in 1717.]
+
+
+
+323 Letter 107
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+May 19, 1743.
+
+I am just come tired from a family dinner at the Master of the
+Rolls;(818) but I have received two letters from you since my
+last, and will write to you, though my head aches with maiden
+sisters' healths, forms, and Devonshire and Norfolk.  With
+yours I received one from Mr. Chute, for which I thank him a
+thousand times, and will answer as soon as I get to Houghton.
+Monday is fixed peremptorily, though we have had no rain this
+month; but we travel by the day of the week, not by the day of
+the sky.
+
+We are in more confusion than we care to own.  There lately
+came up a highland regiment from Scotland, to be sent abroad.
+One heard of nothing but their good discipline and quiet
+disposition.  When the day came for their going to the water
+side, an hundred and nine of them mutinied, and marched away
+in a body.  They did not care to go where it would not be
+equivocal for what King they fought.  Three companies of
+dragoons are sent after them.  If you happen to hear of any
+rising don't be surprised-I shall not, I assure you.  Sir
+Robert Monroe, their lieutenant-colonel, before their leaving
+Scotland, asked some of the ministry, " "But suppose there
+should be any rebellion in Scotland, what should we do for
+these eight hundred men?"  It was answered, "Why, there would
+be eight hundred fewer rebels there."
+
+"Utor permisso, caudeque pilos ut equinae
+Paulatim cello; demo unum, demo etiam unum,
+Dum-"
+
+My dear child, I am surprised to hear you enter so seriously
+into earnest ideas of my lord's passing into Italy! Could you
+think (however he, you, or I might wish it) that there could
+be any probability of it? Can you think his age could endure
+it, or him so indifferent, so totally disministered, as to
+leave all thoughts of what he has been, and ramble like a boy,
+after pictures and statues? Don't expect it.
+
+We had heard of the Duke of Modena's command before I had your
+letter.  I am glad, for the sake of the duchess, as she is to
+return to France.  I never saw any body wish anything more!
+and indeed, how can one figure any particle of pleasure
+happening to the daughter of the Regent,(819) and a favourite
+daughter too, full of wit and joy, buried in a dirty, dull
+Italian duchy, with an ugly, formal object for a husband, and
+two uncouth sister-princesses for eternal companions? I am so
+near the eve of going into Norfolk, that I imagine myself
+something in her situation, and married to some Hammond or
+Hoste (820) who is Duke of Wootton or Darsingham.  I remember
+in the fairy tales where a yellow dwarf steals a princess, and
+shows her his duchy, of which he is very proud: among the
+blessings of grandeur, of which he makes her mistress, there
+is a most beautiful ass for her palfrey, a blooming meadow of
+nettles and thistles to walk in, and a fine troubled ditch to
+slake her thirst, after either of the above mentioned
+exercises.
+
+Adieu! My next will be dated from some of the doleful castles
+in the principality of your forlorn friend, the duchy of
+Reepham.
+
+(818) William Fortescue, master of the rolls, a relation of
+Margaret Lady Walpole. ffortescue was made master of the rolls
+in 1741, and continued so until his death in 1749.  He was the
+friend and correspondent of Pope, and assisted the poet in
+drawing up the humorous report, "Stradling versus Stiles." He
+was a man of great humour, talents, and integrity.]
+
+(819) Mademoiselle de Valois, who had made herself notorious
+during the regency of her father, by her intrigue with the
+Duke of Richelieu.  She consented to marry the Duke of Modena,
+in order to obtain the liberty of her lover, who was confined
+in the Bastille, for conspiring against the Regent.  The Duke
+of Richelieu, in return, followed her afterwards secretly to
+Modena.-D.
+
+(820) The Hammonds and Hostes are two Norfolk families, nearly
+allied to the Walpoles.
+
+
+
+324 letter 108
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Jan. 4, 1743.
+
+I wrote, this week to Mr. Chute, addressed to you; I could not
+afford two letters in one post from the country, and in the
+dead of summer.  I have received one from you of May 21st,
+since I came I must tell you a smart dialogue between your
+father and me the morning we left London: he came to wish my
+lord a good journey: I found him in the parlour. "Sir," said
+he, "I may ask you how my son does; I think you hear from him
+frequently: I never do."  I replied, "Sir, I write him kind
+answers; pray do you do so?"  He coloured, and said with a
+half mutter, "Perhaps I have lived too long for him!"  I
+answered shortly, "Perhaps you have."  My dear child, I beg
+your pardon, but I could not help this.  When one loves any
+body, one can't help being warm for them at a fair
+opportunity.  Bland and Mr. Legge were present-your father
+could have stabbed me.  I told your brother Gal, who was glad.
+
+We are as private here as if we were in devotion-. there is
+nobody with us now but Lord Edgecumbe and his son.  The Duke
+of Grafton and Mr. Pelham come next week, and I hope Lord
+Lincoln with them.  Poor Lady Sophia is at the gasp of her
+hopes; all is concluded for his match with Miss Pelham.  It is
+not to be till the winter.  He is to have all Mr. Pelham and
+the Duke of Newcastle can give or settle; unless Lady
+Catherine should produce a son, or the duchess should die, and
+the duke marry again.
+
+Earl Poulett(821)  is dead, and makes vacant another riband.
+I imagine Lord Carteret will have one; Lord Bath will ask it.
+I think they should give Prince Charles(822) one of the two,
+for all the trouble he saves us. The papers talk of nothing
+but a suspension of arms: it seems toward, for at least we
+hear of no battle, though there are so many armies looking at
+one another.
+
+Old Sir Charles Wager(823) is dead at last, and has left the
+fairest character.  I can't help having a little private
+comfort, to think that Goldsworthy-but there is no danger.
+
+Madox of St. Asaph has wriggled himself into the see of
+Worcester.  He makes haste; I remember him only domestic
+chaplain to the late Bishop of Chichester.(824)  Durham is not
+dead, as I believe I told you from a false report.
+
+You tell me of dining with Madame de Modene,(824) but you
+don't tell me of being charmed with her.  I like her
+excessively-I don't mean her person, for she is as plump as
+the late Queen; but, sure her face is fine; her eyes vastly
+fine! and then she is as agreeable as one should expect the
+Regent's daughter to be.  The Princess and she must have been
+an admirable contrast; one has all the good breeding of a
+French court, and the other all the ease of it.  I have almost
+a mind to go to Paris to see her.  She was so excessively
+civil to me.  You don't tell me if the Pucci goes into France
+with her.
+
+I like the Genoese selling Corsica! I think we should follow
+their example and sell France; we have about as good a title,
+and very near as much possession.  At how much may they value
+Corsica?  at the rate of islands it can't go for much.
+Charles the Second sold Great Britain and Ireland to Louis
+XIV. for 300,000 pounds. a-year, and that was reckoned
+extravagantly dear.  Lord Bolingbroke took a single hundred
+thousand for them, when they were in much better repair.
+
+We hear to-day that the King goes to the army on the 15th N.
+S. that is, to-day; but I don't tell it you for certain.
+There has been much said against his commanding it, as it is
+only an army of succour, and not acting as principal in the
+cause.  In my opinion, his commanding will depend upon the
+more or less probability of its acting at all.  Adieu!
+
+(821) John, first Earl of Poulett, knight of the garter.  He
+died, aged upwards of eighty, on the 28th May 1743.-D.
+
+(822) Prince Charles of Lorraine, the queen of Hungary's
+general against the French.-D.
+
+(823) This distinguished admiral died on the 24th of May, in
+his seventy-seventh year; at which time he was member for West
+looe.  A splendid monument was erected to his memory in
+Westminster Abbey.-E.
+
+(824) Dr. Waddington.
+
+(825) It was not the Duchess of Modena, but the Duke's second
+sister, who went to Florence.
+
+
+
+326 letter 109
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, June 10, 1743.
+
+You must not expect me to write you a very composed, careless
+letter; my spirits are all in agitation! I am at the eve of a
+post that may bring me the most dreadful news! we expect
+to-morrow the news of a decisive battle.  Oh! if you have any
+friend there, think what apprehensions I (826) must have of
+such a post!  By yesterday's letters, our army was within
+eight miles of the French, who have had repeated orders to
+attack them.  Lord Stair and Marshal Noailles both think
+themselves superior, and have pressed for leave to fight.  The
+latter call themselves fourscore thousand; ours sixty.  Mr.
+Pelham and Lord Lincoln come to Houghton to-morrow, so we are
+sure of hearing as soon as possible, if any thing has
+happened.  By this time the King must be with them.- My fears
+for one or two friends have spoiled me for any English hopes-I
+cannot dwindle away the French army-every man in it appears to
+my imagination as big as the sons of Anak! I am conjuring up
+the ghosts of all who have perished by French ambition, and am
+dealing out commissions to these spectres,
+
+"-To sit heavy on their souls to-morrow!"
+
+Alas! perhaps that glorious to-morrow was a dismal yesterday
+at least, perhaps it was to me!  The genius of England might
+be a mere mercenary man of the world, and employed all his
+attention to turn aside cannonballs from my Lord Stair, to
+give new edge to his new Marlborough's sword: was plotting
+glory for my Lord Carteret, or was thinking of furnishing his
+own apartment in Westminster Hall with a new set of
+trophies-who would then take care of Mr. Conway? You, who are
+a minister, will see all this in still another light, will
+fear our defeat, and will foresee the train of
+consequences.-Why, they may be wondrous ugly; but till I know
+what I have to think about my own friends, I cannot be wise in
+my generation.
+
+I shall now only answer your letter; for till I have read
+to-morrow's post, I have no thoughts but of a battle.
+
+I am angry at your thinking that I can dislike to receive two
+or three of your letters at once.  Do you take me for a child,
+and imagine, that though I may like one plum-tart, two may
+make me sick?  I now get them regularly; so I do but receive
+them, I am easy.
+
+You are mistaken about the gallery; so far from unfurnishing
+any part of the house, there are several pictures undisposed
+of, besides numbers at Lord Walpole's, at the Exchequer, at
+Chelsea, and at New Park.  Lord Walpole has taken a dozen to
+Stanno, a small house, about four miles from hence, where he
+lives with my lady Walpole's vicegerent.(827)  You may imagine
+that her deputies are no fitter than she is to come where
+there is In a modest, unmarried girl.(828)
+
+I will write to London for the life of Theodore, though you
+may depend upon its being a Grub Street piece, without one
+true fact.  Don't let it prevent your undertaking his Memoirs.
+Yet I should say Mrs. Heywood,(829) or Mrs. Behn(830) were
+fitter to write his history.
+
+How slight you talk of Prince Charles's victory at Brunau! We
+thought it of vast consequence; so it was.  He took three
+posts afterwards, and has since beaten the Prince of Conti,
+and killed two thousand men.  Prince Charles civilly returned
+him his baggage.  The French in Bavaria are quite
+dispirited-poor wretches! how one hates to wish so ill as one
+does to fourscore thousand men!
+
+There is yet no news of the Pembroke.  The Dominichin has a
+post of honour reserved in the gallery.  My Lord says, as to
+that Dalton's Raphael, he can say nothing without some
+particular description of the picture and the size, and some
+hint at the price, which you have promised to get.  I leave
+the residue of my paper for tomorrow: I tremble, lest I should
+be forced to finish it abruptly!  I forgot to tell you that I
+left a particular commission with my brother Ned, who is at
+Chelsea, to get some tea-seed from the physic-garden; and he
+promised me to go to Lord Islay, to know what cobolt and
+zingho(831) are, and where they are to be got.
+
+Saturday morning.
+
+The post is come: no battle! Just as they were marching
+against the French, they received orders from Hanover not to
+engage, for the Queen's generals thought they were inferior,
+and were positive against fighting.  Lord Stair, with only the
+English, proceeded, and drew out in order; but though the
+French were then so vastly superior, they did not attack him.
+The King is now at the army, and, they say, will endeavour to
+make the Austrians fight.  It wilt make great confusion here
+if they do not.  The French are evacuating Bavaria as fast as
+possible, and seem to intend to join all their force together.
+I shall still dread all the events of this campaign.  Adieu!
+
+(826) Mr. Conway the most intimate friend of Horace Walpole,
+was now serving in Lord Stair's army.
+
+(827) Miss Norsa; she was a Jewess, and had been a singer.
+
+(828) Lady Maria Walpole.
+
+(829) Eliza Heywood, a voluminous writer of indifferent
+novels; of which the best known is one called "Betsy
+Thoughtless."  She was also authoress of a work entitled "The
+Female Spectator." - Mrs. Heywood was born in 1693, and died
+in 1756.-D.
+
+(830) Mrs. Afra Behn, a woman whose character and writings
+were equally incorrect.  Of her plays, which were seventeen in
+number, Pope says,
+
+"The stage how loosely does Astrea tread,
+Who fairly puts all characters to bed."
+
+Her novels and other productions were also marked with similar
+characteristics.  She died in 1689-D.
+
+(831) Cobalt and Zinc, two metallic substances; the former
+composed of silver, copper, and arsenic, the latter of tin and
+iron.-D.
+
+
+
+328 letter 110
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, June 20, 1743.
+
+I have painted the    Raphael to my lord almost as fine as
+Raphael himself could; but he will not think of it-. he will
+not give a thousand guineas for what he never saw.  I wish I
+could persuade him.  For the other hands, he has already fine
+ones of every one of them.  There are yet no news of the
+Pembroke: we row impatient.
+
+I have made a short tour to Euston this week with the Duke of
+Grafton, who came over from thence with Lord Lincoln and Mr.
+Pelham.  Lord Lovel and Mr. Coke carried me and brought me
+back.  It is one of the most admired seats in England-in my
+opinion, because Kent has a most absolute disposition of it.
+Kent is now so fashionable, that, like Addison's Liberty, he
+
+"Can make bleak rocks and barren mountains smile."
+
+I believe the duke wishes he could make them green too.  The
+house is large and   bad; it was built by Lord Arlington, and
+stands, as all old houses do for convenience of water and
+shelter, in a hole; so it neither sees, nor is seen: he has no
+money to build another.  The park is fine, the old woods
+excessively so: they are much grander than Mr. Kent's passion
+clumps-that is, sticking a dozen trees here and there, till a
+lawn looks like the ten of spades.  Clumps have their beauty;
+but in a great extent of country, how trifling to scatter
+arbours, where you should spread forests! He is so unhappy in
+his heir apparent,(832) that he checks his hand in almost
+every thing he undertakes.  Last week he heard a new complaint
+of his barbarity.  A tenant of Lord Euston, in
+Northamptonshire, brought him his rent: the Lord said it
+wanted three and sixpence: the tenant begged he would examine
+the account, that it would prove exact-however, to content
+him, he would willingly pay him the three and sixpence.  Lord
+E. flew into
+                            a rage, and vowed he would write
+to the Duke to have him turned out of a little place he has in
+the post-office of thirty pounds a-year.  The poor man, who
+has six children, and knew nothing of my lord's
+                            being upon no terms of power with
+his father, went home and shot himself!
+
+I know no syllable of news          '. but that my Lady
+Carteret is dead at Hanover, and Lord Wilmington dying.  So
+there will be to let a first
+                            minister's ladyship and a first
+lordship of the Treasury.  We have nothing from the army,
+though the King has now been there some time.  As new a thing
+as it is, we don't talk much about it.
+
+Adieu! the family are gone a fishing: I thought I stayed at
+home to write to you, but I have so little to say that I don't
+believe you will think so.
+
+(832) George, Earl of Euston, who died in the lifetime of his
+father.  He seems to have been a man of the most odious
+character.  He has been already mentioned in the course
+                            of these letters, upon the
+occasion of his marriage with the ill-fated lady Dorothy
+Boyle, who died from his ill-treatment of her.  Upon a picture
+of lady Dorothy at the Duke of Devonshire's at Chiswick, is
+the following touching inscription, written by her mother,
+which commemorates her virtues and her fate:-
+
+"lady Dorothy Boyle,
+Born May the 14th, 1724.
+She was the comfort and joy of her parents, the delight of all
+who knew her angelick of temper, and the admiration of all who
+saw her beauty.  She was marry'd October the 10th, 1741, and
+delivered (by death) from misery, May the 2nd, 1742.  This
+picture was drawn seven weeks after her death (from memory) by
+her most affectionate mother, Dorothy Burlington."-D.
+
+
+
+329 letter 111
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Friday noon, July 29, 1743.
+
+I don't know what I write-I am all a flurry of thoughts-a
+battle-a victory!  I dare not yet be glad-I know no
+particulars of my friends.  This instant my lord has had a
+messenger from the Duke of Newcastle, who has sent him a copy
+of Lord Carteret's letter from the field of battle.  The King
+was in all the heat of the fire, and safe--the Duke is wounded
+in the calf of the leg, but slightly; Duc d'Aremberg in the
+breast; General Clayton and Colonel Piers are the only
+officers of note said to be killed-here is all my trust!  The
+French passed the Mayne that morning with twenty-five thousand
+men, and are driven back.  We have lost two thousand, and they
+four-several of their general officers, and of the Maison du
+Roi, are taken prisoners: the battle lasted from ten in the
+morning till four.  The Hanoverians behaved admirably.  The
+Imperialists(833) were the aggressors; in short, 'In all
+public views, it is all that could be wished-the King in the
+action, and his son wounded-the Hanoverians behaving well-the
+French beaten: what obloquy will not all this wipe out!
+Triumph, and write it to Rome! I don't know what our numbers
+were; I believe about thirty thousand, for there were twelve
+thousand Hessians and Hanoverians who had not joined them.  O!
+in my hurry, I had forgot the place-you must talk of the
+battle of Dettingen!
+
+After dinner.  My child, I am calling together all my
+thoughts, and rejoice in this victory as much as I dare; for
+in the raptures of' conquest, how dare I think that my Lord
+Carteret, or the rest of those who have written, thought just
+of whom I thought? The post comes in tomorrow morning, but it
+is not sure that we shall learn any particular certainties so
+soon as that.  Well! how happy it is that the King has had
+such an opportunity of distinguishing himself'!(834)  what a
+figure he will make!  They talked of its being below his
+dignity to command an auxiliary army: my lord says it will not
+be thought below his dignity to have sought dangers These were
+the flower of the French troops: I flatter myself they will
+tempt no more battles.  such, and we might march from one end
+of France to the other.  So we are in a French war, at least
+well begun! My lord has been drinking the healths of Lord
+Stair and Lord Carteret: he says, "since it was well done, he
+does not care by whom it was done."  He thinks differently
+from the rest of the world: he thought from the first, that
+France never missed such an opportunity as when they undertook
+the German war, instead of joining with Spain against us.  If
+I hear any more tomorrow before the post goes out, I will let
+you know.  Tell me if this is the first you hear of the
+victory: I would fain be the first to give you so much
+pleasure.
+
+Saturday morning.
+
+Well, my dear child, all is safe! I have not so much as an
+acquaintance hurt.  The more we hear the greater it turns out.
+Lord Cholmondeley writes my lord from London that we gained
+the victory with only fifteen regiments, not eleven thousand
+men, and SO not half in number to the French.  I fancy their
+soldiery behaved ill, by the Gallantry of their officers; for
+Ranby, the King'S private surgeon, writes that he alone has
+150 officers of distinction desperately wounded under his
+care.  Marquis Fenelon's son is among the prisoners, and says
+Marshal Noailles is dangerously wounded; so is Duc d'Aremberg.
+Honeywood's regiment sustained the attack, and are almost all
+killed: his natural son has five wounds, and cannot live.  The
+horse were pursuing when the letters came away, so there is no
+certain account of the slaughter.  Lord Albemarle had his
+horse shot under him.  In short, the victory is complete.
+There is no describing what one hears of the spirits and
+bravery of our men.  One of them dressed himself up in the
+belts of three officers, and swore he would wear them as long
+as he lived.  Another ran up to Lord Carteret, who was in a
+coach near the action the whole time, and said, "Here, my
+lord, do hold this watch for me; I have just killed a French
+officer and taken it, and I will go take another."
+
+Adieu! my dear Sir: May the rest of the war be as glorious as
+the beginning!
+
+(833) The Bavarians.
+
+(834) Frederick the Great, in his "Histoire de mon Temps,"
+gives the Following account of George the Second at the battle
+of Dettingen.  "The King was on horseback, and rode forward to
+reconnoitre the enemy: his horse, frightened at the
+cannonading, ran away with his Majesty, and nearly carried him
+into the midst of the French lines: fortunately, one of his
+attendants succeeded in stopping him.  George then abandoned
+his horse, and fought on foot, at the head of his Hanoverian
+battalions.  With his sword drawn, and his body placed in the
+attitude of a fencing-master, who is about to make a lunge in
+carte, he continued to expose himself, without Circling, to
+the enemy's fire."-D.
+
+To Mr. Chute.
+
+My dear Sir, I wish you joy, and you wish me joy, and Mr.
+Whithed, and Mr. Mann, and Mrs. Bosville, etc.  Don't get
+drunk and get the gout.  I expect to be drunk with hogsheads
+of the Mayne-water, and with odes to his Majesty and the Duke,
+and Te Deums.  Patapan begs you will get him a dispensation
+from Rome to go and hear the thanksgiving at St. Paul's.  We
+are all mad-drums, trumpets, bumpers, bonfires! The mob are
+wild, and cry, "Long live King George and the Duke of
+Cumberland, and Lord Stair and Lord Carteret, and General
+Clayton that's dead!" My Lord Lovel says, "Thanks to the gods
+that John(835) has done his duty!"
+
+Adieu! my dear Dukes of Marlborough! I am ever your
+JOHN DUKE OF MARLBOROUGh.
+
+(835) John Bull.-D.
+
+
+
+
+
+331 Letter 112
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, July 4, 1743.
+
+I hear no particular news here, and I don't pretend to send
+you the common news; for as I must have it first from London,
+you will have it from thence sooner in the papers than in my
+letters.  There have been great rejoicings for the victory;
+which I am convinced is very considerable by the pains the
+Jacobites take to persuade it is not.  My Lord Carteret's
+Hanoverian articles have much offended; his express has been
+burlesqued a thousand ways.  By all the letters that arrive,
+the loss of the French turns out more considerable than by the
+first accounts: they have dressed up the battle into a victory
+for themselves-I hope they will always have such! By their not
+having declared war with us, one should think they intended a
+peace.  It is allowed that our fine horse did us no honour -
+the victory was gained by the foot. Two of their princes of
+the blood, the Prince de Dombes, and the Count d'Eu(836) his
+brother, were wounded, and several of their first nobility.
+Our prisoners turn out but seventy-two officers, besides the
+private men; and by the printed catalogue, I don't think of
+great family.  Marshal Noailles's mortal wound is quite
+vanished, and Duc d'Aremberg's shrunk to a very slight one.
+The King's glory remains in its first bloom.
+
+Lord Wilmington is dead.  I believe the civil battle for his
+post will be tough.  Now we shall see what service Lord
+Carteret's Hanoverians will do him.  You don't think the
+crisis unlucky for him, do you?  If you wanted a treasury,
+should you choose to have been in Arlington Street,(837) or
+driving by the battle of Dettingen?  You may imagine our Court
+wishes for Mr. Pelham.  I don't know any one who wishes for
+Lord Bath but himself-I believe that is a pretty substantial
+wish.
+
+I have got the Life of King Theodore, but I don't know how to
+convey it--I will inquire for some way.
+
+We are quite alone.  You never saw any thing so unlike as
+being here five months out of place, to the congresses of a
+fortnight in place.  but you know the "Justum et tenacem
+propositi virum" can amuse himself without the "Civium ardor!"
+As I have not so much dignity of character to fill up my time,
+I could like a little more company.  With all this leisure,
+you may imagine that I might as well be writing an ode or so
+upon the victory; but as I cannot build upon the Laureate's
+place till I know whether Lord Carteret or Mr. Pelham will
+carry the Treasury, I have vounded my compliments to a slender
+collection of quotations against I should have any occasion
+for them.  Here are some fine lines from Lord Halifax's (838)
+poem on the battle of the Boyne-
+
+"The King leads on, the King does all inflame,
+The King!-and carries millions in the name."
+
+Then follows a simile about a deluge, which you may imagine,
+but the next lines are very good -
+
+"So on the foe the firm battalions prest,
+And he, like the tenth wave, drove on the rest.
+Fierce, gallant, young, he shot through every place,
+Urging their flight, and hurrying on the chase,
+He hung upon their rear, or lighten'd in their face."
+
+The next are a magnificent compliment, and, as far as verse
+goes, to be sure very applicable.
+
+"Stop, stop! brave Prince, allay that inner flame;
+Enough is given to England and to fame.
+Remember, Sir, you in the centre stand;
+Europe's divided interests you command,
+All their designs uniting in your hand.
+Down from your throne descends the golden chain
+Which does the fabric of our world sustain,
+That once dissolved by any fatal stroke,
+The scheme of all our happiness is broke."
+
+Adieu! my dear Sir: pray for peace!
+
+(836) The two sons of the Duke du Maine, a natural son, but
+legitimated, of Lewis the Fourteenth, by Madame de
+Montespan.-E.
+
+(837) Where Mr. Pelham lived.
+
+(838) Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, the "Bufo" of Pope
+
+"Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill
+Sate full-blown Bufo, I)uff'd by every quill;
+Fed with soft dedication all day long,
+Horace and he went hand in hand in song."-E.
+
+
+
+333 Letter 113
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, July 11, 1743.
+
+The Pembroke is arrived! Your brother slipped a slice of paper
+into a letter which he sent me from you the other day, with
+those pleasant words, "The Pembroke is arrived." I am going to
+receive it. I shall be in town the end of this week, only stay
+there about ten days, and wait on the Dominichin hither.  Now
+I tremble!  If it should not stand the trial among the number
+of capital pictures here!  But it must; It will.
+
+O, sweet lady!(839) What shall I do about her letter? I must
+answer it-and where to find a penful of Italian in the world,
+I know not.  Well, she must take what she can get: gold and
+silver I have not, but what I have I give unto her.  Do you
+say a vast deal of my concern for her illness, and that I
+could not find decompounds and superlatives enough to express
+myself.  You never tell me a syllable from my sovereign lady
+the princess: has she forgot me? What is become of Prince
+Beauvau?(840) is he warring against us? Shall I write to Mr.
+Conway to be very civil to him for my sake, if he is taken
+prisoner?  We expect another battle every day.  Broglio has
+joined Noailles, and Prince Charles is on the Neckar.
+Noailles says, "Qu'il a fait une folie, mais qu'il est pr`et
+`a la r`eparer."  There is great blame thrown on Baron Ilton,
+the Hanoverian General for having hindered the Guards from
+en(,aging.  If they had, and the horse, who behaved
+wretchedly, had done their duty, it is agreed that there would
+be no second engagement.  The poor Duke is in a much worse way
+than was at first apprehended: his wound proves a bad one; he
+is gross, and has had a shivering fit, which is often the
+forerunner of a mortification.  There has been much thought of
+making knights-banneret, but I believe the scheme is laid
+aside; for, in the first place, they are never made but on the
+field of battle, and now it was not thought on till some days
+after; and besides, the King intended to make some who were
+not actually in the battle.
+
+Adieu! Possibly I may hear something in town worth telling
+you.
+
+(839) Madame Grifoni.
+
+(840) Son of Prince Craon.
+
+
+
+
+334 letter 114
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 19.
+
+Here am I come a-Dominichining! and the first thing, I hear
+is, that the Pembroke must perform quarantine fourteen days
+for coming from the Mediterranean, and a week airing.  It is
+forty days, if they bring the plague from Sicily.  I will bear
+this misfortune as heroically as I can; and considering I have
+London to bear it in, may possibly support it well enough.
+
+The private letters from the army all talk of the King's going
+to Hanover, 2nd of August, N. S. If he should not, one shall
+be no longer in pain for him; for the French have repassed the
+Rhine, and think only of preparing against Prince Charles, who
+is marching sixty-two thousand men, full of conquest and
+revenge, to regain his own country.  I most cordially wish him
+success, and that his bravery may recover what his abject
+brother gave up so tamely, and which he takes as little
+personal pains to regain.  It is not at all determined whether
+we are to carry the war into France.  It is ridiculous enough!
+we have the name of war with Spain, without the thing and war
+with France, without the name!
+
+The maiden heroes of the Guards are in great wrath with
+General Ilton, who kept them out of harm's way.  They call him
+"the Confectioner," because he says he preserved them.
+
+The week before I left Houghton my father had a most dreadful
+accident: it had near been fatal; but he escaped miraculously.
+He dined abroad, and went up to sleep.  As he was coming down
+again, not quite awakened, he was surprised at seeing the
+company through a glass-door which he had not observed: his
+foot slipped, and he, who is now entirely unwieldy and
+helpless, fell at once down the stairs against the door,
+which, had it not been there, he had dashed himself to pieces,
+in a stone hall.  He cut his forehead two inches long to the
+pericranium, and another gash upon his temple; but, most
+luckily, did himself' no other hurt, and was quite well again
+before I came away.
+
+I find Lord Stafford (841) married to Miss Cantillon; they are
+to live half the year in London, half in Paris.  Lord Lincoln
+is soon to marry his cousin Miss Pelham: it will be great joy
+to the whole house of Newcastle.
+
+There is no determination yet come about the Treasury.  Most
+people wish for Mr. Pelham; few for Lord Carteret; none for
+Lord Bath.  My Lady TOWnshend said an admirable thing the
+other day to this last: he was complaining much of a pain in
+his side-"Oh!" said she, "that can't be; you have no side."
+
+I have a new cabinet for my enamels and miniatures Just come
+home, which I am sure you would like: it is of rosewood; the
+doors inlaid with carvings in ivory.' I wish you could see
+'It! Are you to be forever ministerial sans rel`ache?  Are you
+never to have leave to come and "settle your private affairs,"
+as the newspapers call it?
+
+A thousand loves to the Chutes.  Does my sovereign lady yet
+remember me, or has she lost with her eyes all thought of m!
+Adieu!
+
+P.S. Princess Louisa goes soon to her young Denmark: and
+Princess Emily, it is now said, will have the man of Lubeck.
+If he had missed the crown of Sweden, he was to have taken
+Princess Caroline, because, in his private capacity, he was
+not a competent match for the now-first daughter of England.
+He is extremely handsome; it is fifteen years since Princess
+Emily was so.
+
+(841) William-Matthias, third Earl of Stafford.  He died in
+1751 without issue.-E.
+
+
+
+
+335 letter 115
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 31, 1743.
+
+If I went by my last week's reason for not writing to you, I
+should miss this post too, for I have no more to tell you than
+I had then; but at that rate, there would be great vacuums in
+our correspondence.  I am still here, waiting for the
+Dominichin and the rest of the things.  I have incredibly
+trouble about them, for they arrived just as the quarantine
+was established.  Then they found out that the Pembroke had
+left the fleet so long before the infection in Sicily began,
+and had not touched at any port there, that the admiralty
+absolved it.  Then the things were brought up; then they were
+sent back to be aired; and still I am not to have them in a
+week.  I tremble for the pictures; for they are to be aired at
+the rough discretion of a master
+of a hoy, for nobody I could send would be suffered to go
+aboard.  The city is outrageous; for you know, to merchants
+there is no plague so dreadful as a stoppage of their trade.
+The regency are so temporizing and timid, especially in this
+inter-ministerium, that I am in great apprehensions of our
+having the plague an island, so many ports, no power absolute
+or active enough to establish the necessary precautions, and
+all are necessary! And now it is on the continent too! While
+confined to Sicily there were hopes: but I scarce conceive
+that it will stop in two or three villages in Calabria.  My
+dear child, Heaven preserve you from it! I am in the utmost
+pain on its being so near you.  What will you do! whither will
+you go, if it reaches Tuscany? Never think of staying in
+Florence: shall I get you permission to retire out of that
+State, in case of danger? but sure you would not hesitate on
+such a crisis!
+
+We have no news from the army: the minister there communicates
+nothing to those here.  No answer comes about the Treasury.
+All is suspense: and clouds of breaches ready to burst.  now
+strange is this jumble! France with an unsettled ministry;
+England with an unsettled one; a victory just gained over
+them, yet no war ensuing, or declared from either side; our
+minister still at Paris, as if to settle an amicable
+intelligence of the losses on both sides!  I think there was
+Only wanting for Mr. Thompson to notify to them in form our
+victory over them, and for Bussy(843) to have civil letters of
+congratulation-'tis so well-bred an age!
+
+I must tell you a bon-mot of Winnington.  I was at dinner with
+him and Lord Lincoln and Lord Stafford last week, and it
+happened to be a maigre day of which Stafford was talking,
+though, you may believe, without any scruples; "Why," said
+Winnington, "what a religion is yours! they let you eat
+nothing, and vet make you swallow every thing!"
+
+My dear child, you will think when I am going to give you a
+new commission, that I ought to remember those you give me.
+Indeed I have not forgot one, though I know not how to execute
+them.  The Life of King Theodore is too big to send but by a
+messenger; by the first that goes you shall have it.  For
+cobolt and zingho, your brother and I have made all inquiries,
+but almost in vain, except that one person has told him that
+there Is some such thing in Lancashire; I have written thither
+to inquire.  For the tea-trees, it is my brother-'s fault,
+whom I desired, as he is at Chelsea, to get some from the
+Physic-garden: he forgot it; but now I am in town myself, if
+possible, you shall have some seed.  After this, I still know
+not how to give you a commission, for you over-execute; but on
+conditions uninfringeable, I will give you one.  I have begun
+to collect drawings: now, if you will at any time buy me any
+that you meet with at reasonable rates, for I will not give
+great prices, I shall be much obliged to you.  I would not
+have above one, to be sure, of any of the Florentine school,
+nor above one of any master after the immediate scholars of
+Carlo Maratti.  For the Bolognese school, I care not how many;
+though I fear they will be too dear.  But Mr. Chute
+understands them.  One condition is, that if he collects
+drawings as well as prints, there is an end of the commission;
+for you shall not buy me any, when he perhaps would like to
+purchase them.  The other condition is, that you regularly set
+down the prices you pay; otherwise, if you send me any without
+the price, I instantly return them unopened to your brother:
+this, upon my honour, I will most strictly perform.
+
+Adieu! write me minutely the history of the plague.  If it
+makes any progress towards you, I shall be a most unhappy man.
+I am far from easy on our own account here.
+
+(843) Mr. Thompson and the Abb`e de Bussy were the English and
+French residents.
+
+
+
+336 letter 117
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 14, 1743.
+
+I should write to Mr. Chute to-day, but I won't till next
+post: I will tell you why presently.  Last week I did not
+write at all; because I was every day waiting for the
+Dominichin, etc. which I at last got last night-But oh!  that
+etc.! It makes me write to you, but I must leave it etc. for I
+can't undertake to develop it.  I can find no words to thank
+you from my own fund; but Must apply an expression of the
+Princess Craon's to myself, Which the number of charming
+things you have sent me absolutely melts down from the
+bombast, of which it consisted when she sent it me. "Monsieur,
+votre g`en`erosit`e," (I am not sure it was not "votre
+magnificence,") "ne me laisse rien `a d`esirer de tout ce qui
+se trouve de pr`ecieux en Angleterre, dans la Chine, et aux
+Indes." But still this don't express etc.  The charming Madame
+S`evign`e, who was still handsomer than Madame de Craon, and
+had infinite wit, condescended to pun on sending her daughter
+an excessively fine pearl necklace-"Voil`a, ma fille, un
+pr`esent passant tous les pr`esents pass`es et pr`esents!"  Do
+you know that these words reduced to serious meaning, are not
+sufficient for what you have sent me! If I were not afraid of
+giving you all the trouble of airing and quarantine which I
+have had with them, I would send them to you back again! It is
+well our virtue is out of the ministry!  What reproach it
+would undergo! Why, my dear child, here would be bribery in
+folio! How would mortals stare at such a present as this to
+the son of a fallen minister! I believe half of it would
+reinstate us again though the vast box of essences would not
+half sweeten the treasury after the dirty wretches that have
+fouled it since.
+
+The Dominichin is safe; so is every thing.  I cannot think it
+of the same hand with the Sasso Ferrati you sent me.  This
+last is not so manier`e as the Dominichin; for the more I look
+at it, the more I am convinced it is of him.  It goes down
+with me to-morrow to Houghton.  The Andrea del Sarto is
+particularly fine! the Sasso Ferriti particularly graceful-oh!
+I should have kept that word for the Magdalen's head, which is
+beautiful beyond measure.  Indeed, my dear Sir, I am glad,
+after my confusion is a little abated, that your part of the
+things is so delightful; for I am very little satisfied with
+my own purchases.  Donato Creti's(844) copy is a wretched, raw
+daub; the beautiful Virgin of the original he has made
+horrible.  Then for the statue, the face is not so broad as my
+nail, and has not the turn of the antique.  Indeed, La Vall`ee
+has done the drapery well, but I can't pardon him the head.
+My table I like; though he has stuck in among the ornaments
+two vile china jars, that look like the modern japanning by
+ladies.  The Hermaphrodite, on my seeing it again, is too
+sharp and hard-in short, your present has put me out of humour
+with every thing of my own.  You shall hear next week how my
+lord is satisfied with his Dominichin.  I have received the
+letter and drawings by Crewe.  By the way, my drawings of the
+gallery are as bad as any thing of my own ordering.  They gave
+Crewe the letter for you at the-office, I believe, for I knew
+nothing of his going, or I had sent you the Life of King
+Theodore.
+
+I was interrupted in my letter this morning by the Duke of
+Devonshire, who called to see the Dominichin.  Nobody knows
+pictures better: he was charmed with it, and did not doubt its
+Dominichinality.
+
+I find another letter from you to-night of August 6th, and
+thank you a thousand times for your goodness about Mr. Conway:
+but I believe I told you, that as he is in the Guards, he was
+not engaged.  We hear nothing but that we are going to cross
+the Rhine.  All we know is from private letters: the Ministry
+hear nothing.  When the Hussars went to Kevenhuller for
+orders, he said, "Messieurs, l'Alsace est
+`a vous; je n'ai point d'autres ordres `a vous donner."  They
+have accordingly taken up their residence in a fine chateau
+belonging to the Cardinal de Rohan, as Bishop of Strasbourg.
+We expect nothing but war; and that war expects nothing but
+conquest.
+
+Your account of our officers was very false; for, instead of
+the soldiers going on without commanders, some of them were
+ready to go without their soldiers.  I am sorry you have such
+plague with your Neptune(845) and the Sardinian-we know not of
+them scarce.
+
+I really forget any thing of an Italian greyhound for the
+Tesi.  I promised her, I remember, a black spaniel-but how to
+send it! I did promise one of the former to Marquis Mari at
+Genoa, which I absolutely have not been able to get yet,
+though I have often tried; but since the last Lord Halifax
+died, there is no meeting with any of the breed.  If I can, I
+will get her one.  I am sorry you are engaged in the opera.  I
+have found it a most dear undertaking.  I was not in the
+management: Lord Middlesex was chief.  We were thirty
+subscribers, at two hundred pounds each, which was to last
+four years, and no other demands ever to be made.  Instead of
+that, we have been made to pay fifty-six pounds over and above
+the subscription in one winter.  I told the secretary in a
+passion, that it was the last money I would ever pay for the
+follies of directors.
+
+I tremble at hearing that the plague is not over, as we
+thought, but still spreading.  You will see in the papers That
+Lord Hervey is dead-luckily, I think. for himself; for he had
+outlived the last inch of character.  Adieu!
+
+(844) A copy of a celebrated picture by Guido at Bologna, of
+the Patron Saints of that city. VOL. 1. 29.-D.
+
+(845) Admiral Matthews.
+
+
+
+338 letter 117
+To John Chute, Esq.(846)
+Houghton, August 20, 1743.
+
+Indeed, my dear Sir, you certainly did not use to be stupid,
+and till you give me more substantial proof that you are so, I
+shall not believe it.  As for your temperate diet and milk
+bringing about such a metamorphosis, I hold it impossible.  I
+have such lamentable proofs every day before my eyes of the
+stupefying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have
+contracted a most religious veneration for your spiritual
+nouriture.  Only imagine that I here every day see men, who
+are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn
+out into the outlines of human form, like the giant-rock at
+Pratolino! I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in
+act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour one
+another.  I should not stare at all more than I do, if yonder
+alderman at the lower end of the table was to stick his fork
+into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave slice of
+brown and fat.  Why, I'll swear I see no difference between a
+country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs, or
+the latter is cut, there runs out the same stream of gravy!
+Indeed, the sirloin does not ask quite so many questions.  I
+have an aunt here, a family piece of goods, an old remnant of
+inquisitive hospitality and economy, who, to all intents and
+purposes is as beefy as her neighbours.  She wore me so down
+yesterday with interrogatories, that I dreamt all night she
+was at my ear with who's and why's, and when's and where's,
+till at last in my very sleep I cried out, For God in heaven's
+sake, Madam, ask me no more questions!
+
+Oh! my dear Sir, don't you find that nine parts in ten of the
+world are of no use but to make you wish yourself with that
+tenth part? I am so far from growing used to mankind by living
+amongst them, that my natural ferocity and wildness does but
+every day grow worse.  They tire me, they fatigue me; I don't
+know what to do with them; I don't know what to say to them; I
+fling open the windows and fancy I want air; and when I get by
+myself, I undress myself, and seem to have had people in my
+pockets, in my plaits, -and on my shoulders! I indeed find
+this fatigue worse in the country than in town, because one
+can avoid it there, and has more resources; but it is there
+too.  I fear 'tis growing old; but I literally seem to have
+murdered a man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever
+before me.  They say there is no English word for ennui;(847)
+I think you may translate it most literally by what is called
+"entertaining people," and "doing the honours:" that is, you
+sit an hour with somebody you don't know, and don't care for,
+talk about the wind and the weather, and ask a thousand
+foolish questions, which all begin with, "I think you live a
+good deal in the country," or, "I think you don't love this
+thing or that."  Oh! 'tis dreadful!
+
+I'll tell you what is delightful-the Dominichin!(848)  My dear
+Sir, if ever there was a Dominichin, if ever there was an
+original picture, this is one.  I am quite happy; for my
+father is as much transported with it as I am.  It is hung in
+the gallery, where are all his most capital pictures, and he
+himself thinks it beats all but the two Guido'S.  That of the
+Doctors and The Octagon-I don't know if you ever saw them?
+What a chain of thought this leads me into! but why should I
+not indulge it? I will flatter myself with your, some time or
+other, passing a few days with me.  Why must I never expect to
+see any thing but Beefs in a gallery which would not yield
+even to the Colonna! If I do not most unlimitedly wish to see
+you and Mr. Whithed in it this very moment, it is only because
+I would not take you from our dear Mann.  Adieu! you charming
+people all.  Is not Madam Bosville a Beef? Yours, most
+sincerely.
+
+(846) this very lively letter is the first of a series,
+hitherto unpublished, addressed by Mr. Walpole to John Chute,
+Esq. of the Vine, in the county of Hants.  Mr. Chute was the
+grandson of Chaloner Chute, Esq.  Speaker of the House of
+Commons to Richard Cromwell's parliament.  On the death of his
+brother Anthony, in 1754, he succeeded to the family estates,
+and died in 1776.-E.
+
+(847) According to Lord Byron--
+
+"Ennui is a growth of English root,
+Though nameless in our language: we retort
+The fact for words, and let the French translate
+That awful yawn, which sleep cannot abate."
+
+(848) Thus described by Walpole in his Description Of the
+Pictures at Houghton Hall:-
+"The Virgin and Child, a most beautiful, bright, and capital
+picture, by Dominichino: bought out of the Zambeccari palace
+at Bologna by Horace Walpole, junior."-E.
+
+
+
+
+340 Letter 118
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Aug. 29, 1743.
+
+You frighten me about the Spaniards entering Tuscany: it is so
+probable, that I have no hopes against it but in their
+weakness.  If all the accounts of their weakness and desertion
+are true, it must be easy to repel them.  If their march to
+Florence is to keep pace with Prince Charles's entering
+Lorrain, it is not yet near: hitherto, he has not found the
+passage of the Rhine practicable.  The French have assembled
+greater armies to oppose it than was expected.  We are
+marching to assist him: the King goes on with the army.  I am
+extremely sorry for the Chevalier de Beauvau's(849) accident;
+as sorry, perhaps, as the prince or princess; for you know he
+was no favourite.  The release of the French prisoners
+prevents the civilities which I would have taken care to have
+had shown him.  You may tell the princess, that though it will
+be so much honour to us to have any of her family it) our
+power, vet I shall always be extremely concerned to have such
+an opportunity of showing my attention to them.  there's a
+period in her own style-"Comment! Monsieur des attentions:
+qu'il est poli! qu'il s`cait tOUrner une civilit`e!"
+
+"Ha!(850) la brave Angloise! e viva!"  What would I have given
+to have overheard you breaking it to the gallant!  But of all,
+commend me to the good man Nykin!  Why, Mamie (851) himself
+could not have cuddled up an affair for his sovereign lady
+better.
+
+                         I have a commission from my lord to
+send you ten thousand thanks for his bronze-. He admires it
+beyond measure.  It came down last Friday, on his
+birthday,(852) and was placed at the upper end of the gallery,
+which was illuminated on the occasion: indeed, it is
+incredible what a magnificent appearance it made.  There were
+sixty-four candles, which showed all the pictures to great
+advantage.  The Dominichin did itself and us honour.  There is
+not the least question of its being original: one might as
+well doubt the originality of King Patapan!  His patapanic
+majesty is not one of the least curiosities of Houghton.  The
+crowds that come to see the house stare at him, and ask what
+creature it is.  As he does not speak one word of Norfolk,
+there are strange conjectures made about him.  Some think that
+he is a foreign prince come to marry Lady Mary.  The
+disaffected say he is a Hanoverian: but the common people, who
+observe my lord's vast fondness for him, take him for his good
+genius, which they call his familiar.
+
+You will have seen in the papers that Mr. Pelham is at last
+first lord of the Treasury.  Lord Bath had sent over Sir John
+Rushout's valet de chambre to Hanau to ask it.  It is a great
+question now what side he will take; or rather, if any side
+will take him.  It is not yet known what the good folks in the
+Treasury will do-I believe, what they can.  Nothing farther
+will be determined till the King's return.
+
+
+(849) Third son of Prince Craon, and knight of Malta.
+
+(850) This relates to an intrigue which was observed in a
+church between an English gentleman and a lady who was at
+Florence with her husband.  Mr. Mann was desired to speak to
+the lover to choose more proper places.
+
+(851) Prince Craon's name for the princess.  She was mistress
+of Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain, who married her to M. de
+Beauvau, and prevailed on the Emperor to make him a prince of
+the empire.  Leopold had twenty children by her, who all
+resembled him; and he got his death by a cold which he
+contracted in standing to sea a new house, which he had built
+for her, furnished.  The duchess was extremely jealous, and
+once retired to Paris, to complain to her brother the Regent;
+but he was not a man to quarrel with his brother-in-law for
+things of that nature, and sent his sister back.  Madame de
+Craon gave into devotion after the Duke's death.
+
+(852) August 26.
+
+
+
+341 letter 119
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Sept. 7, 1743.
+
+My letters are now at their ne plus ultra of nothingness so
+you may hope they will grow better again.  I shall certainly
+go to town soon, for my patience is worn out.  Yesterday, the
+weather grew cold: I put on a new waistcoat for its being
+winter's birthday-the season I am forced to love; for summer
+has no charms for me when I pass it in the country.
+
+We are expecting another battle, and a congress at the same
+time.  Ministers seem to be flocking to Aix la Chapelle: and,
+what will much surprise you, unless you have lived long enough
+not to be surprised, is, that Lord Bolingbroke has hobbled the
+same way too-you will suppose, as a minister for France; I
+tell you, no.  My uncle, who is here, was yesterday stumping
+along the gallery with a very political march: my lord asked
+him whither he was going.  Oh, said he, to Aix la Chapelle.
+
+You ask me about the marrying princesses.  I know not a
+tittle.  Princess Louisa(853) seems to be going, her clothes
+are bought; but marrying our daughters makes no conversation.
+For either of the other two, all thoughts seem to be dropped
+of it.  The senate of Sweden design themselves to choose a
+wife for their man of Lubeck.  The city, and our supreme
+governors, the mob, are very angry that there @is a troop of
+French players at Clifden.(854)  One of them was lately
+impertinent to a countryman, who thrashed him.  His Royal
+Highness sent angrily to know the cause.  The fellow replied,
+"he thought to have pleased his Highness in beating one of
+them, who had tried to kill his father and had wounded his
+brother." This was not easy to answer.
+
+I delight in Prince Craon's exact intelligence!  For his
+satisfaction, I can tell him that numbers, even here, would
+believe any story full as absurd as that of the King and my
+Lord Stair; or that very one, if any body will ever write it
+over.  Our faith in politics will match any Neapolitan's in
+religion.  A political missionary will make more converts in a
+county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China,
+and will produce more preposterous miracles.  Sir Watkin
+Williams, at the last Welsh races, convinced the whole
+principality (by reading a letter that affirmed it), that the
+King was not within two miles of the battle of Dettingen.  We
+are not good at hitting off anti-miracles, the only way of
+defending one's own religion.  I have read -,in admirable
+story of the Duke of Buckingham, who, when James II. sent a
+priest to him to persuade him to turn Papist, and was plied by
+him with miracles, told the doctor, that if miracles were
+proofs of a religion, the Protestant cause was as well
+supplied as theirs.  We have lately had a very extraordinary
+one near my estate in the country.  A very holy man, as you
+might be, doctor, was travelling on foot, and was benighted.
+He came to the cottage of a poor dowager, who had nothing in
+the house for herself and daughter but a couple of eggs and a
+slice of bacon.  However, as she was a pious widow, she made
+the good man welcome.  In the morning, in taking leave, the
+saint made her over to God for payment, and prayed that
+whatever she should do as soon as he was gone she might
+continue to do all day.  This was a very unlimited request,
+and, unless the saint was a prophet too, might not have been
+very pleasant retribution.  The good woman, who minded her
+affairs, and was not to be put out of her way, went about her
+business.  She had a piece of coarse cloth to make a couple of
+shifts for herself and child.  She no sooner began to measure
+it but the yard fell a-measuring, and there was no stopping
+it.  It was sunset before the good woman had time to take
+breath.  She was almost stifled, for she was up to her ears in
+ten thousand yards of cloth.  She could have afforded to have
+sold Lady Mary Wortley a clean shift' of the usual coarseness
+she wears, for a groat halfpenny.
+
+I wish you would tell the Princess this story.  Madame
+Riccardi, or the little Countess d'Elbenino, will doat on it.
+I don't think it will be out of Pandolfini's way, if you tell
+it to the little Albizzi.  You see that I have not forgot the
+tone of my Florentine acquaintance.  I know I should have
+translated it to them: you remember what admirable work I used
+to make of such stories in broken Italian.  I have heard old
+Churchill tell Bussy English puns out of jest-books:
+particularly a reply about eating hare, which he translated,
+"j'ai mon ventre plein de poil." Adieu!
+
+(853) Youngest daughter of George the Second.  She was married
+in the following October, and died in 1751, at the age of
+twenty-seven.-E.
+
+(854) The residence of the Prince of Wales.  This noble
+building was burnt to the ground in 1795, and nothing of its
+furniture preserved but the tapestry that represents the Duke
+of Marlborough's victories.-E.
+
+
+
+343 letter 120
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Sept. 17, 1743.
+
+As much as we laughed at Prince Craon's history of the King
+and Lord Stair, you see it was not absolutely without
+foundation.  I don't just believe that he threatened his
+master with the parliament.  They say he gives for reason of
+his Quitting, their not having accepted one plan of operation
+that he has offered.  There is a long memorial that he
+presented to the King, with which I don't doubt but his
+lordship will oblige the public.(856)  He has ordered all his
+equipages to be sold by public auction in the camp.  This is
+all I can tell you of this event, and this is more than has
+been written to the ministry here.  They talk of great
+uneasinesses among the English officers, all of which I don't
+believe.  The army is put into commission.  Prince Charles has
+not passed the Rhine, nor we any thing but our time.  The
+papers of to-day tell us of a definitive treaty signed by us
+and the Queen of Hungary with the King of Sardinia, which I
+will flatter myself will tend to your defence.  I am not in
+much less trepidation about Tuscany than Richcourt is, though
+I scarce think my fears reasonable; but while you are
+concerned, I fear every thing.
+
+My lord does not admire the account of the lanfranc; thanks
+you, and will let it alone.  I am going to town in ten days,
+not a little tired of the country, and in the utmost
+impatience for the winter; which I am sure from all political
+prospects, must be entertaining to one who only intends to see
+them at the length of the telescope.
+I was lately diverted with an article in the Abecodario
+Pittorico, in the article of William Dobson: it says, "Nacque
+nel quartiere d'Holbrons in Inghilterra."(857)  Did the author
+take Holborn for a city, or Inghilterra for the capital of the
+island of London?  Adieu!
+
+(856) In this memorial Lord Stair complained that his advice
+had been slighted, hinted at Hanoverian partialities, and
+asked permission to retire, as he expressed it, to his plough.
+His resignation was accepted, with marks of the King's
+displeasure at the language in which it was tendered.-E.
+
+(857) Charles the First used to call Dobson the English
+Tintoret.  He is said to have been the first painter who
+introduced the practice of obliging persons who sat to him to
+pay half the price in advance.-E.
+
+
+
+344 letter 121
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Newmarket, Oct. 3, 1743.
+
+I am writing to you in an inn on the road to London.  What a
+paradise should I have thought this when I was in the Italian
+inns in a wide barn with four ample windows, which had nothing
+more like glass than shutters and iron bars ' no tester to the
+bed, and the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off
+the cold.  What a paradise did I think the inn at Dover when I
+came back! and what magnificence Were twopenny prints,
+saltcellars, and boxes to hold the knives: but the summum
+bonum was small-beer and the newspaper.
+
+"I bless'd my stars, and called it luxury!"
+
+Who was the Neapolitan ambassadress (858) that could not live
+at Paris, because there was no maccaroni?  Now am I relapsed
+into all the dissatisfied repinement of a true English
+grumbling voluptuary.  I could find in my heart to write a
+Craftsman against the Government, because I am not quite so
+much at my ease as on my own sofa.  I could persuade myself
+that it is my Lord Carteret's fault that I am only sitting in
+a common arm-chair, when I would be lolling in a
+p`ech`e-mortel.  How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this
+town look and yet it has actually a street of houses better
+than Parma or Modena.  Nay, the houses of the people of
+fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what
+houses in London itself were fifteen years ago.  People do
+begin to live again now, and I suppose in a term we shall
+revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, etc.  But from that
+grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in
+coops of a dining-room, a dark back-room, with one eye in a
+corner, and a closet.  Think what London would be, if the
+chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries,
+and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of
+country.  Well, it is a tolerable place as it is! Were I a
+physician, I would prescribe nothing but recipe, CCCLXV
+drachm.  Linden.  Would you know why I like London so much?
+Why if the world must consist of so many fools as it does, I
+choose to take them in the gross, and not made into separate
+pills, as they are prepared in the country.  Besides, there is
+no being alone but in a metropolis: the worst place in the
+world to find solitude is in the country: questions grow
+there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbours.
+Oh! they are all good Samaritans, and do so pour balms and
+nostrums upon one, if one has but the toothache, or a journey
+to take, that they break one's head.  A journey to take-ay!
+they talk over the miles to you, and tell you, you will be
+late and My Lord Lovel says, John always goes two hours in the
+dark in the morning, to avoid being One hour in the dark in
+the evening.  I was pressed to set out to-day before seven: I
+did before nine; and here am I arrived at a quarter past five,
+for the rest of the night.
+
+I am more convinced every day, that there is not only no
+knowledge of the world out of a great city, but no decency, no
+practicable society-I had almost said, not a virtue.  I will
+only instance in modesty, which all old Englishmen are
+persuaded cannot exist within the atmosphere of Middlesex.
+Lady Mary has a remarkable taste and knowledge of music, and
+can sing; I don't say, like your sister, but I am sure she
+would be ready to die if obliged to sing before three people,
+or before One with whom she is not intimate.  The other day
+there came to see her a Norfolk heiress: the young gentlewoman
+had not been three hours in the house, and that for the first
+time of her life, before she notified her talent for singing,
+and invited herself up-stairs, to Lady Mary's harpsichord;
+where, with a voice
+like thunder, and with as little harmony, she sang to nine or
+ten people for an hour. "Was ever nymph like Rossvmonde?"-no,
+d'honneur.  We told her, she had a very strong voice.  "Lord,
+Sir! my master says it is nothing to what it was."  My dear
+child, she brags abominably; if it had been a thousandth
+degree louder, you must have heard it at Florence.
+
+I did not write to you last post, being overwhelmed with this
+sort of people - I will be more punctual in London.  Patapan
+is in my lap: I had him wormed lately, which he took famously:
+I made it up with him by tying a collar of rainbow-riband
+about his neck, for a token that he is never to be wormed any
+more.
+
+I had your long letter of two sheets of Sept. 17th, and wonder
+at your perseverance in telling me so much as you always do,
+when I, dull creature, find so little for you.  I can only
+tell you that the more you write, the happier you make me; and
+I assure you, the more details the better: I so often lay
+schemes for returning to you, that I am persuaded I shall, and
+would keep up my stock of Florentine ideas.
+
+I honour Matthew's punctilious observance of his Holiness's
+dignity.  How incomprehensible Englishmen are! I should have
+sworn that he would have piqued himself on calling the Pope
+the w- of Babylon, and have begun his remonstrance, with "you
+old d-d-."  What extremes of absurdities! to flounder from
+Pope Joan to his Holiness!  I like your reflection, "that
+every body can bully the Pope."  There was a humourist called
+Sir James of the Peak, who had been beat by a felony, who
+afterwards underwent the same operation from a third hand.
+"Zound," said Sir James, "that I did not know this fellow
+would take a beating!"  Nay, my dear child, I don't know that
+Matthews would!
+
+You know I always thought the Tesi comique, pendant que `ca
+devroit, `etre tragique.  I am happy that my sovereign lady
+expressed my opinion so well-by the way, is De Sade still with
+you?  Is he still in pawn by the proxy of his clothes?  has
+the Princess as constant retirements to her bedchamber with
+the colique and Amenori?  Oh! I was struck the other day with
+a resemblance of mine hostess at Brandon to old Sarah.  You
+must know, the ladies of Norfolk universally wear periwigs,
+and affirm that it is the fashion at London.  "lord! Mrs.
+White, have you been ill, that you have shaved your head?"
+Mrs. White, in all the days of my acquaintance with her, had a
+professed head of red hair: to-day, she had no hair at all
+before, and at a distance above her ears, I descried a smart
+brown bob, from beneath which had escaped some long strands of
+original scarlet--so like old Sarazin at two in the morning,
+when she has been losing at Pharoah, and clawed her wig aside,
+and her old trunk is shaded with the venerable white ivy of
+her own locks.
+
+i agree with you, that it would be too troublesome to send me
+the things now the quarantine exists, except the gun-barrels
+for Lord Conway, the length of which I know nothing about,
+being, as you conceive, no sportsman.  I must send you, with
+the Life of Theodore, a vast pamphlet (859) in defence of' the
+new administration, which makes the greatest noise.  It is
+written, as supposed, by Dr. Pearse,(860) of St. Martin's,
+whom Lord Bath lately made a dean; the matter furnished by
+him.  There is a good deal of useful ]Knowledge of the famous
+change to be found in it, and much more impudence.  Some parts
+are extremely fine; in particular, the answer to the
+Hanoverian pamphlets, where he has collected the flower of all
+that was said in defence of that measure.(861)  Had you those
+pamphlets? I will make up a parcel: tell me what other books
+you would have: I will send you nothing else, for if I give
+you the least bauble, it puts you to infinite expense, which I
+can't forgive, and indeed will never bear again: you would
+ruin yourself, and there is nothing I wish so much as the
+contrary.
+
+Here is a good Ode, written on the supposition of that new
+book being Lord Bath's; I believe by the same hand as those
+charming ones which I sent you last year: the author is not
+yet known.(862)
+
+The Duke of Argyle is dead-a death of how little moment, and
+of how much it would have been a year or two ago.(863)  It is
+provoking, if one must die, that one can't even die a propos!
+
+How does your friend Dr. Cocchi?  You never mention him: do
+only knaves and fools deserve to be spoken of? Adieu!
+
+(858) The Princess of Campoflorido.
+
+(859) Called " Faction Detected."
+
+(860) Mr. Pearse, afterwards Bishop of Bangor.  He was not the
+author, but Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont.
+
+(861) Sir John Hawkins says, that Osborne the bookseller, held
+out to Dr. Johnson a strong temptation to answer this
+pamphlet; which he refused, being convinced that the charge
+contained in it was unanswerable.-E.
+
+(862) The Ode by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, beginning,
+"Your sheets I've perused."-D.
+
+(863) "Leaving no male issue, Argyle was succeeded in his
+titles and estates by his brother, and of late his bitter
+enemy, the Earl of Islay.  With all his faults and follies,
+Argyle was still brave, eloquent, and accomplished, a skilful
+officer, and a princely nobleman."-lord Mahon, vol. iii. p.
+271.
+
+
+
+347 letter 122
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 12, 1743.
+
+They had sent your letter of Sept. 24th to Houghton the very
+night I came to town.  I did not receive it back till
+yesterday, and soon after another, with Mr. Chute's inclosed,
+for which I will thank him presently.  But, my dear child, I
+can, like you, think Of nothing but your bitter father's
+letter.--! and that I should have contributed to it! how I
+detest myself!(864)  My dearest Sir, you know all I ever said
+to him:(865) indeed, I never do see him, and I assure you that
+I would worship him as the Indians do the Devil, for fear-he
+should hurt you: tempt you I find he will not.  He is so
+avaricious, that I believe,
+if you asked for a fish, he would think it even extravagance
+to give you a stone: in these bad times, stones may come to be
+dear, and if he loses his place and his lawsuit, who knows but
+he may be reduced to turn paviour? Oh! the brute! and how
+shocking, that, for your sake, one can't literally wish to see
+him want bread! But how can you feel the least tenderness,
+when the wretch talks of his bad health, and of not denying
+himself comforts! It is weakness in you: whose health is
+worse, yours or his? or when did he ever deny himself a
+comfort to please any mortal? My dear child, what is it
+possible to do for you? is there any thing in my power? What
+would I not do for you? and, indeed, what ought I not, if I
+have done you any disservice?  I don't think there is any
+danger of your father's losing his place,(866) for whoever
+succeeds Mr. Pelham is likely to be a friend
+to this house, and would not turn out one so connected with
+it.
+
+I should be very glad to show my lord an account of those
+statues you mention: they are much wanted in his hall, where,
+except the Laocoon, he has nothing but busts.  For Gaburri's
+drawings, I am extremely pleased with what you propose to me.
+I should be well content with two of each master.  I can't
+well fix any price; but would not the rate of a sequin apiece
+be sufficient? to be sure he never gave any thing like that:
+when one buys the quantity you mention to me, I can't but
+think that full enough, one 'with another.  At
+least, if I bought so many as two hundred, I would not venture
+to go beyond that.
+
+I am not at all easy from what you tell me of the Spaniards. I
+have now no hopes but in the winter, and what it may produce.
+I fear ours will be most ugly-the disgusts about Hanover swarm
+and increase every day.  The King and Duke have left the army,
+which is marching to winter-quarters in Flanders, He will not
+be here by his birthday, but it will be kept when he comes.
+The parliament meets the 22d of November.  All is distraction!
+no union in the Court: no certainty about the House of
+Commons: Lord Carteret making no friends, the King making
+enemies: Mr. Pelham in vain courting Pitt, etc. Pultney
+unresolved.  How will it end?  No joy but in the Jacobites.  I
+know nothing more, so turn to Mr. Chute.
+
+My dear Sir, how I am obliged to you for your poem! Patapan is
+so vain with it, that he will read nothing else; I only
+offered him a Martial to compare it with the original, and the
+little coxcomb threw it into the fire, and told me, "He had
+never heard of a lapdog's reading Latin; that it was very well
+for house-dos and pointers that live in the country, and have
+several hours upon their hands: for my part," said he,
+
+"I am so nice, who ever saw
+A Latin book on my sofa?
+You'll find as soon a primer there
+Or recipes for pastry ware.
+Why do ye think I ever read
+But Crebillon or Calpren`ede?
+This very thing of Mr. Chute's
+Scarce with my taste and fancy suits,
+oh! had it but in French been writ,
+'Twere the genteelest, sweetest bit!
+One hates a vulgar English poet:
+I vow t' ye, I should blush to show it
+To women de ma connoissance,
+Did not that agr`eable stance.
+Cher double entendre! furnish means
+Of making sweet Patapanins!"(867)
+
+My dear Sir, your translation shall stand foremost in the
+Patapaniana: I hope in time to have poems upon him, and
+sayings of his own, enough to make a notable book.  En
+attendant, I have sent you some pamphlets to amuse your
+solitude; for, do you see, tramontane as I am, and as much as
+I love Florence, and hate the country, while we make such a
+figure in the world, or at least such a noise in it, one must
+consider you other Florentines as country gentlemen.  Tell our
+dear Miny that when he unfolds the enchanted carpet, which his
+brother the wise Galfridus sends him, he will find all the
+kingdoms of the earth portrayed in it.  In short, as much
+history as was described on the ever-memorable and wonderful
+piece of silk which the puissant White Cat(868) inclosed in a
+nutshell, and presented to her paramour Prince.  In short, in
+this carpet, which (filberts being out of season) I was
+reduced to pack up in a walnut, he will find the following
+immense library of political lore: Magazines for October,
+November, December; with an Appendix for the year 1741; all
+the Magazines for 1742, bound in one volume; and nine
+Magazines for 17'43.  The Life of King Theodore, a certain
+fairy monarch; with the Adventures of this Prince and the fair
+Republic of Genoa.  The miscellaneous thoughts of the fairy
+Hervey.  'The Question Stated.  Case of the Hanover Troops; and
+the Vindication of the Case.  Faction Detected.  Congratulatory
+Letter to Lord Bath.  The Mysterious Congress; and @our Old
+England Journals.  Tell Mr. Mann, or Mr. Mann tell himself, that
+I would send him nothing but this enchanted carpet, which he
+can't pretend to return.  I will accept nothing under
+enchantment.  Adieu all ! Continue to love the two Patapans.
+
+(864) Sir Horace Mann in a letter to Walpole, dated Sept.
+24th, 1743, gives an account of his father's refusal to give
+him any money; and then quotes the following passage from
+his father's letter-"He tells me he has been baited by you and
+your uncle on my account, which was very disagreeable, and
+believes he may charge it to me."-D.
+
+(865) See ant`e, p.325. (letter 108)
+
+ (866) Mr. Robert Mann, father of Sir Horace Mann, had a place
+in Chelsea College, under the Paymaster of the Forces.
+
+(867) Mr. Chute had sent Mr. Walpole the following imitation
+of an epigram of Martial:
+
+"Issa est passere nequior Catulli,
+Issa est pUrior osculo columbae."
+Martial, Lib. i, Ep. 110.
+
+"Pata is frolicksome and smart,
+As Geoffry once was-(Oh my heart!)
+He's purer than a turtle's kiss,
+And gentler than a little miss;
+A jewel for a lady's ear,
+And Mr. Walpole's pretty dear.
+He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen;
+He does not speak, but thinks, 'tis plain.
+One knows his little Guai's as well
+As if he'd little words to tell.
+Coil'd in a heap, a plumy wreathe,
+He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe.
+Then he's so nice, who ever saw
+A drop that sullied his sofa?
+His bended leg!-what's this but sense?-
+Points out his little exigence.
+He looks and points, and whisks about,
+And says, pray, dear Sir, let me out.
+Where shall we find a little wife,
+To be the comfort of his life,
+To frisk and skip, and furnish means
+Of making sweet Patapanins?
+England, alas! can boast no she,
+Fit only for his cicisbee.
+Must greedy Fate then have him all?-
+No; Wootton to our aid we'll call-
+The immortality's the same,
+Built on a shadow, or a name.
+He shall have one by Wootton's means,
+The other Wootton for his pains."
+
+(868) See the story of the White Cat in the fairy tales.
+
+
+
+349 Letter 123
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Nov. 17, 1743.
+
+I would not write on Monday till I could tell you the King was
+come.  He arrived at St. James's between five and six on
+Tuesday.  We were in great fears of his coming through the
+city, after the treason that has been publishing for these two
+months; but it is incredible how well his reception was beyond
+what it had ever been before: in short, you would have thought
+it had not been a week after the victory at Dettingen.  They
+almost carried him into -the palace on their shoulders; and at
+night the whole town was illuminated and bonfired.  He looks
+much better than he has for these five years, and is in great
+spirits.  The Duke limps a little.  The King's reception of
+the Prince, who was come to St. James's to wait for him, and
+who met him on the stairs with his two sisters and the privy
+councillors, was not so gracious-pas un mot-though the
+Princess was brought to bed the day before, and Prince George
+is ill of the small-pox.  It is very Unpopular!  You will
+possibly, by next week, hear great things: hitherto, all is
+silence, expectation, struggle, and ignorance.  The birthday
+is kept on Tuesday, when the parliament was to have met; but
+that can't be yet.
+
+Lord Holderness has brought home a Dutch bride:(869) I have
+not seen her.  The Duke of Richmond had a letter yesterday
+from Lady Albemarle,(870) at Altona.  She says the Prince of
+Denmark is not so tall as his bride, but. far from a bad
+figure: he is thin, and not ugly, except having too wide a
+mouth.  When she returns, as I know her particularly, I will
+tell you more; for the present, I think I have very handsomely
+despatched the chapter of royalties.  My lord comes to town
+the day after to-morrow.
+
+The opera is begun, but is not so well as last year.  The Rosa
+Maricini, who is second woman, and whom I suppose you have
+heard, is now old.  In the room of Amorevoli, they have got a
+dreadful bass, who, the Duke of Montagu says he believes, was
+organist at Aschaffenburgh.
+
+DO you remember a tall Mr. Vernon,(871) who travelled with Mr.
+Cotton?  He is going to be married to a sister of Lord
+Strafford.
+
+I have exhausted my news, and you shall excuse my being short
+to-day.  For the future, I shall overflow with preferments,
+alterations, and parliaments.
+
+Your brother brought me yesterday two of yours together, of
+Oct. 22 and 27, and I find you still overwhelmed with
+Richcourt's folly and the Admiral's explanatory ignorance.  It
+is unpleasant to have old Pucci (872) added to your
+embarrassments.
+
+Chevalier Ossorio (873) was with me the other morning, and we
+were talking over the Hanoverians, as every body does.  I
+complimented him very sincerely on his master's great bravery
+and success: he answered very modestly and sensibly, that he
+was glad amidst all the clamours, that there had been no cavil
+to be found with the subsidy paid to his King.  Prince
+Lobkowitz makes a great figure, and has all my wishes and
+blessings for having put Tuscany out of the question.
+
+There is no end of my giving you trouble with packing me up
+cases: I shall pay the money to your brother.  Adieu! Embrace
+the Chutes, who are heavenly good to you, and must have been
+of great use in all your illness and disputes.
+
+(869) Her name was Mademoiselle Doublette, and she is called
+in the Peerages "the niece of M. Van Haaren, of the Province
+of Holland."-D.
+
+(870) Lady Anne Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond, and
+wife of William Anne van Keppel, Earl of Albemarle: she had
+been lady of the bedchamber to the Queen; and this year
+conducted Princess Louisa to Altona, to be married to the
+Prince Royal of Denmark.
+
+(871) Henry Vernon, Esq. a nephew of Admiral Vernon, married
+to Lady Henrietta Wentworth, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of
+Strafford, of the second creation.-D.
+
+(872) Signor Pucci was resident from Tuscany at the Court of
+England.
+
+(873) Chevalier Ossorio was several years minister in England
+from the King of Sardinia, to whom he afterwards became first
+minister.
+
+
+
+ 351 Letter 124
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 30, 1743.
+
+I have had two letters from you since I wrote myself This I
+begin against to-morrow, for I should have little time to
+write.  The parliament opens, and we are threatened with a
+tight Opposition, though it must be vain, if the numbers turns
+out as they are calculated; three hundred for the Court, two
+hundred and five opponents; that is, in town; for, you know,
+the whole amounts to five hundred and fifty-eight.  The
+division of the ministry has been more violent than between
+parties; though now, they tell you, it is all adjusted.  The
+Secretary,(874) since his return, has carried all with a high
+hand, and treated the rest as ciphers; but he has been so
+beaten in the cabinet council, that in appearance he submits,
+though the favour is most evidently with him.  All the old
+ministers have flown hither as zealously as in former days;
+and of the three lev`ees (875) in this street, the greatest is
+in this house, as my Lord Carteret told them the other day; "I
+know you all go to Lord Orford - he has more company than any
+of us-- do you think I can't go to him too?" He is never
+sober; his rants are amazing; so are his parts and spirits.
+He has now made up with the Pelhams, though after naming to
+two vacancies in the Admiralty without their knowledge; Sir
+Charles Hardy and Mr. Philipson.  The other alterations are at
+last fixed.  Winnington is to be paymaster; Sandys, cofferer,
+on resigning the exchequer to Mr. Pelham; Sir John Rushout,
+treasurer of the navy; and Harry Fox, lord of the treasury.
+Mr. Compton,(876) and Gybbons remain at that board.  Wat.
+Plumber, a known man, said, the other day, "Zounds! Mr.
+Pultney took those old dishclouts to wipe out the 'treasury,
+and now they are going to lace them and lay them up!" It is a
+most just idea: to be sure, Sandys and Rushout, and their
+fellows, are dishclouts, if dishclouts there are in the world:
+and now to lace them!
+
+The Duke of Marlborough has resigned every thing, to reinstate
+himself in the old duchess's will.  She said the other day,
+"It is very natural: he listed as soldiers do when they are
+drunk, and repented when he was sober." So much for news: now
+for your letters.
+
+All joy to Mr. Whithed on the increase of his family! and joy
+to you; for now he is established in so comfortable a way, I
+trust you will not lose him soon-and la Dame s'appelle?
+
+If my Lady Walpole has a mind once in her life to speak truth,
+or to foretell,-the latter of which has as seldom any thing to
+do with truth as her ladyship has,-why she may now about the
+Tesi's dog, for I shall certainly forget what it would be in
+vain to remember.  My dear Sir, how should one convey a dog to
+Florence! There are no travelling Princes of Saxe Gotha or
+Modena here at present, who would carry a little dog in a
+nutshell.  The poor Maltese cats, to the tune of how many!
+never arrived here; and how should one little dog ever find
+its way to Florence! But tell me, and, if it is possible, I
+will send it.  Was it to be a greyhound, or of King Charles's
+breed?  It was to have been the latter; but I think you told
+me that she rather had a mind to the other sort, which, by the
+way, I don't think I could get for her.
+
+Thursday, eight o'clock at night.
+
+I am just come from the House, and dined.  Mr. Coke(877) moved
+the address, seconded by Mr. Yorke, the lord chancellor's
+son.(878)  The Opposition divided 149 against 278; which gives
+a better prospect of carrying on the winter easily.  In the
+lords' house there was no division.  Mr. Pitt called Lord
+Carteret the execrable author of our measures, and sole
+minister.(879)  Mr. Winnington replied, that he did not know
+of any sole minister; but if my Lord Carteret was so, the
+gentlemen of the other side had contributed more to make him
+so than he had.
+
+I am much pleased with the prospect you show me of the
+Correggio.  My lord is so satisfied with the Dominichin, that
+he will go as far as a thousand pounds for the Correggio.  Do
+you really think we shall get it, and for that price?
+
+You talk of the new couple, and of giving the sposa a
+mantilla: What new couple! you don't say.  I suppose, some
+Suares, by the raffle.  Adieu!
+
+(874) Lord Carteret.
+
+(875) Lord Carteret's, Mr. Pelham's, and Lord Orford's.
+
+(876) The Hon.  George Compton, second son of George, fourth
+Earl of Northampton.  He succeeded his elder brother James,
+the fifth earl, in the family titles and estates in 1754, and
+died in 1758.-D.
+
+(877) The only son of Lord Lovel.-D.
+
+(878) Philip Yorke, eldest son of Lord Hardwicke; and
+afterwards the second earl of that title.-D.
+
+(879) In Mr. Yorke's MS. parliamentary journal, the words are"an
+execrable, a sole minister, who had renounced the British
+nation, and seemed to have drunk of the potion described in
+poetic fictions."-E.
+
+
+
+352 Letter 125
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Dec. 15, 1743.
+
+I write in a great fright, lest this letter should come too
+late.  My lord has been told by a Dr. Bragge, a virtuoso,
+that, some ye(irs ago, the monks asked ten thousand pounds for
+our Correggio,(880) and that there were two copies then made
+of it: that afterwards, he is persuaded, the King of Portugal
+bought the original; he does not know at what price.  Now, I
+think it very possible that this doctor, hearing the picture
+was to be come at, may have invented this Portuguese history;
+but as there is a possibility, too, that it may be true, you
+must take all imaginable precautions to be sure it is the very
+original-a copy would do neither you nor me great honour.
+
+We have entered upon the Hanoverian campaign.  Last Wednesday,
+Waller moved in our House an address to the King, to continue
+them no longer in our pay than to Christmas-day, the term for
+which they were granted.  The debate lasted till half an hour
+after eight at night.  Two young officers (881) told some very
+trifling stories against the Hanoverians, which did not at all
+add any weight to the arguments of the Opposition; but we
+divided 231 to 181.  On Friday,' Lord Sandwich and Lord
+Halifax, in good speeches, brought the same motion into the
+Lords.  I was there, and heard Lord Chesterfield make the
+finest oration I ever did hear.(882)  My father did not speak,
+nor Lord Bath.  They threw out the motion by 71 to 36.  These
+motions will determine the bringing on the demand for the
+Hanoverians for another year in form; which was a doubtful
+point, the old part of the ministry being against it, though
+very contrary to my lord's advice.
+
+Lord Gower, finding no more Tories were to be admitted,
+resigned on Thursday; and Lord Cobham in the afternoon.  The
+privy-seal was the next day given to Lord Cholmondeley.  Lord
+Gower's resignation is one of the few points in which I am
+content the prophecy in the old Jacobite ballad should be
+fulfilled-"The King shall have his own again."
+
+The changes are begun, but will not be completed till the
+recess, as the preferments will occasion more re-elections
+than they can spare just now in the House of Commons.  Sandys
+has resigned the exchequer to Mr. Pelham; Sir John Rushout is
+to be treasurer of the navy; Winnington, paymaster; Harry Fox,
+lord of the treasury: Lord Edgcumbe, I believe, lord of the
+treasury,(883) and Sandys, cofferer and a peer.  I am so
+scandalized at this, that I will fill up my letter (having
+told you all the news) with the first fruits of my
+indignation.
+
+VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS
+ON ITS RECEIVING A NEW PEER,
+
+THou senseless Hall, whose injudicious space,
+Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race,
+Where kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean,
+Compose th' inactive soporific scene,
+
+Unfold thy doors!-and a promotion see
+That must amaze even prostituted thee!
+Shall not thy sons, incurious though they are,
+Raise their dull lids, and meditate a stare?
+Thy sons, who sleep in monumental state,
+To show the spot where their great fathers sate.
+Ambition first, and specious warlike worth,
+Call'd our old peers and brave patricians forth;
+And subject provinces produced to fame
+Their lords with scarce a less than regal name.
+Then blinded monarchs, flattery's fondled race,
+Their favourite minions stamp'd with titled grace,
+And bade the tools of power succeed to Virtue's place,
+Hence Spensers, Gavestons, by crimes grown great,
+Vaulted into degraded Honour's seat:
+Hence dainty Villiers sits in high debate,
+Where manly Beauchamps, Talbots, Cecils sate
+Hence Wentworth,(884) perjured patriot, burst each tie,
+Profaned each oath, and gave his life the lie:
+Renounced whate'er he sacred held and dear,
+Renounced his country's cause, and sank into a Peer.
+Some have bought ermine, venal Honour's veil,
+When set by bankrupt Majesty to sale
+Or drew Nobility's coarse ductile thread
+>From some distinguished harlot's titled bed.
+Not thus ennobled Samuel!-no worth
+from his mud the sluggish reptile forth;
+No parts to flatter, and no grace to please,
+With scarce an insect's impotence to tease,
+He struts a Peer-though proved too dull to stay,
+Whence (885) even poor Gybbons is not brush'd away.
+
+Adieu! I am just going to Leicester House, where the Princess
+sees company to-day and to-morrow, from seven to nine, on her
+lying-in.  I mention this per amor del Signor Marchese Cosimo
+Riccardi.(886)
+
+(880) One of the most celebrated pictures of Correggio, with
+the Madonna and Child, saints, and angels, in a convent at
+Parma.
+
+(881) Captain Ross and Lord Charles Hay.-E.
+
+(882) "Lord Chesterfield's performance," says Mr. Yorke, "was
+much cried up; but few of his admirers could distinguish the
+faults of his eloquence from its beauties." MS.  Part.
+Journal.-E.
+
+(
+883 This did not happen.
+
+(884) Earl of Strafford; but it alludes to Lord Bath.
+
+(885) The Treasury.
+
+(886) A gossiping old Florentine nobleman, whose whole
+employment was to inform himself of the state of marriages,
+pregnancies, lyings-in, and such like histories.
+
+
+
+354 Letter 126
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 26, 1743.
+
+I shall complain of        inflammations in my eyes till you
+think it is                an excuse for not writing; but your
+brother is@My Witness that I have been shut up in a dark room
+for this week.  I got frequent colds, which fall upon my eyes;
+and then I have bottles of sovereign eye- waters from all my
+acquaintance; but as they are Only accidental colds, I never
+use any thing but sage, which braces my eye-fibres again in a
+few days.  I have had two letters since my last to you; One
+Complaining of my silence, and the other acknowledging one
+from me after a week's intermission: indeed, I never have been
+so long without writing to you - I do sometimes miss two weeks
+on any great dearth of news, which is all I have to fill a
+letter; for living as I do among people, whom, from your long
+absence, you cannot know, should  talk Hebrew to mention them
+to you.  Those, that from eminent birth, folly, or parts, are
+to be found in the chronicles of the times, I tell you of,
+whenever necessity or the King puts them into new lights.  The
+latter, for I cannot think the former had any hand in it, has
+made
+                    Sandys, as I told you, a lord and
+cofferer! Lord Middlesex is one of the new treasury, not
+ambassador as you heard.  So the Opera-house and White's have
+contributed a commissioner and a secretary to the
+                    treasury,(887) as their quota to the
+government.  It is a period to make a figure in history.
+
+There is a recess of both Houses for a fortnight; and we are
+to meet again, with all the quotations and flowers that the
+young orators can collect-,ind forcibly apply to the
+Hanoverians; with all the malice which the disappointed Old
+have hoarded against Carteret, and with all the impudence his
+defenders can sell him - and when all that is
+                    vented-what then?-why then, things will
+just be where they were.
+
+General Wade (888) is made field-marshal, and is to have
+command of the army, as it is      supposed, on the King's not
+going abroad; but that is not declared .   The French
+preparations go on with much more vigour than ours; they not
+having a House of Commons to combat all the winter; a campaign
+that necessarily engages all the attention of ministers, who
+have no great variety of apartments in their understandings.
+
+I have paid your brother the bill I received from you, and
+give you a thousand thanks for all the trouble you have had;
+most particularly from the plague of hams,(889) from which you
+have saved me.  Heavens!  how blank"I should have looked at
+unpacking a great case of bacon and wine!  My dear child, be
+my friend, and preserve me from heroic presents.  I cannot
+possibly at this distance begin a new courtship of regalia;
+for I suppose all those hams were to be converted into watches
+and toys.  Now it would suit Sir Paul Methuen very well, who
+is a knight-errant at seventy-three, to carry on an amour
+between a Mrs. Chenevix's(890) shop and a noble collar in
+Florence; but alas! I am neither old enough nor young enough
+to be gallant, and should ill become the writing of heroic
+epistles to a fair mistress in Italy-no, no: "ne sono uscito
+con onore, mi pare, e non
+voglio riprendere quel impegno pi`u"  You see how rustic I am
+grown again!
+
+I knew your new brother-in-law(891) at school, but have not
+seen him since.  But your sister was in love, and must
+consequently be happy to have him.  Yet I own, I cannot much
+felicitate any body that marries for love.  It is bad enough
+to marry; but to marry where one loves, ten times worse.
+it is so charming at first, that the decay of inclination
+renders it infinitely more disagreeable afterwards.  Your
+sister has a thousand merits; but they don't count: but then
+she has good sense enough to  make her happy, if her merit cannot
+make him so.
+
+Adieu! I rejoice for your sake that Madame Royale' is
+recovered, as I saw in the papers.
+
+(887) John JefFries.
+
+(888)General George Wade, afterwards commander of the forces
+in Scotland.  He died in 1748.  A fine monument, by Roubillac,
+was erected to his memory in Westminster
+                    Abbey.-E.
+
+(889) Madame Grifoni was going to send Mr. W. a Present of
+hams and Florence wine.
+
+(890) The proprietress of a celebrated toy-shop.-D.
+
+(891) Mr. Foote.
+
+(892) The Duchess of Lorrain,   mother of the Great Duke: her
+ death would have occasioned a long mourning  at Florence.
+[Elizabeth of Orleans, only daughter of Philip, Duke of
+Orleans
+(Monsieur), by his second wife, the Princess Palatine.] -D.
+
+
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+
+Dear Sir,
+I have been much desired by a very particular friend, to
+recommend to you Sir William Maynard,(893) who is going to
+Florence.  You will oblige me extremely by any civilities you
+show him while he stays there; in particular, by introducing
+him to the Prince and Princess de Craon, Madame Suares, and
+the rest of my acquaintance there, who, I dare say, will
+continue their goodness to me, by receiving him with the same
+politeness that they received me.  I am, etc.
+
+(893) Sir William Maynard, the fourth baronet of the family,
+and a younger branch of the Lords Maynard.  His son, Sir
+Charles Maynard, became Viscount Maynard in 1775, upon the
+death of his cousin Charles, the first viscount, who had been
+so created, with special remainder to him.-D.
+
+
+
+356 Letter 127
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 24, 1744.
+
+Don't think me guilty of forgetting you a moment, though I
+have missed two or three posts.  If you knew the incessant
+hurry and fatigue in which I live, and how few 'moments I have
+to myself, you would not suspect Me.  You know, I am naturally
+indolent, and without application to any kind of business; yet
+it is- impossible, in this country, to live in the world, and
+be in parliament, and not find oneself every day more hooked
+into politics and company, especially inhabiting a house that
+is again become the centre of affairs.  My lord becomes the
+last resource, to which they are all forced to apply.  One
+part of the ministry, you may be sure, do; and for the other,
+they affect to give themselves the honour of it too.
+
+Last Thursday I would certainly have written to give you a
+full answer to your letter of grief (894) but I was shut up in
+the House till past ten at night; and the night before till
+twelve.  But I must speak to you in private first.  I don't in
+the least doubt but my Lady Walpole and Richcourt would
+willingly be as mischievous as they are malicious, If they
+could: but, my dear child, it is impossible.  Don't fear from
+Carteret's silence to you; he never writes: if that were a
+symptom of disgrace, the Duke of' Newcastle would have been
+out long ere this: and when the regency were not thought
+worthy of his notice, you could not expect it.  As to your
+being attached to Lord Orford, that is your safety.  Carteret
+told him the other day, "My Lord, I appeal to the Duke of
+Newcastle, if I did not tell the King, that it was you who had
+carried the Hanover troops." That, too, disproves the
+accusation of Sir Robert's being no friend to the Queen of
+Hungary.  That is now too stale and old.  However, I will
+speak to my lord and Mr. Pelham-would I had no more cause to
+tremble for you, than from little cabals! But, my dear child,
+when we hear every day of the 'Toulon fleet sailing, can I be
+easy for you? or can I not foresee where that must break,
+unless Matthews and the wonderful fortune of England can
+interpose effectually? We are not without our own fears; the
+Brest fleet of twenty-two sail is out at sea; they talk, for
+Barbadoes.  I believe we wish it may be thither destined?
+Judge what I think; I cannot, nor may write: but I am in the
+utmost anxiety for your situation.
+
+The whole world, nay the Prince himself allows, that if Lord
+Orford had not come to town, the Hanover troops had been
+lost.(895)  They were in effect given up by all but Carteret.
+We carried our own army in Flanders by a majority of 112.(896)
+Last Wednesday was the great day of expectation: we sat in the
+committee on the Hanover troops till twelve at night: the
+numbers were 271 to 226.  The next day on the report we sat
+again till past ten, the opposition having moved to adjourn
+till Monday, on which we divided, 265 to 177.  Then the Tories
+all went away in a body, and the troops were voted.
+
+We have still tough work to do: there are the estimates on The
+extraordinaries of the campaign, and the treaty of Worms (897)
+to come;--I know who (898) thinks this last more difficult to
+fight than the Hanover troops.  It is likely to turn out as
+laborious a session as ever was.  All the comfort is, all the
+abuse don't lie at your door nor mine; Lord Carteret has the
+full perquisites of the ministry.  The other day, after Pitt
+had called him "the Hanover troop-minister, a flagitious
+taskmaster," and said, "that the sixteen thousand Hanoverians
+were all the party he had, and were his placemen;" in short,
+after he had exhausted invectives, he added, "But I have done:
+if he were present, I would say ten times more."(899)  Murray
+shines as bright as ever he did at the bar; which he seems to
+decline, to push his fortune in the House of Commons under Mr.
+Pelham.
+
+This is the present state of our politics, which is our
+present state; for nothing else is thought of.  We. fear the
+King will again go abroad.
+
+Lord Hartington has desired me to write to you for some
+melon-seeds, which you will be so good to get the best, and
+send to me for him.
+
+I can't conclude without mentioning again the Toulon squadron:
+we vapour and say, by this time Matthews has beaten them,
+while I see them in the port of Leghorn!
+
+My dear Mr. Chute, I trust to your friendship to comfort our
+poor Miny: for my part, I am all apprehension! My dearest
+child, if it turns out so, trust to my friendship for working
+every engine to restore you to as good a situation as you will
+lose, If my fears prove prophetic! The first peace would
+reinstate you in your favourite Florence, whoever were
+sovereign of it.  I wish you may be able to smile at the
+vanity of my fears, as I did at yours about Richcourt.  Adieu!
+adieu!
+
+(894) Sir Horace Mann had written in great uneasiness, in
+consequence of his having heard that Count Richcourt, the
+Great Duke's minister; was using all his influence with the
+English government, in conjunction with Lady Walpole, to have
+Sir Horace removed from his situation at Florence.-D.
+
+(895) "Lord Orford's personal credit with his friends was the
+main reason that the question was so well disposed of: he
+never laboured any point during his own administration with
+more zeal, and at a dinner at Hanbury Williams's had a meeting
+with such of the old court party as were thought most averse
+to concurring in this measure; where he took great pains to
+convince them of the necessity there was for repeating it."
+Mr. P. Yorke's MS. Journal.-E.
+
+(896) It appears from Mr. Philip Yorke's Parliamentary
+Journal, that the letter-writer took a part in the
+debate-"Young Mr. Walpole's speech," he says, "met with
+deserved applause from every body: it was judicious and
+elegant: he applied the verse which Lucan puts in Curia's
+mouth to Caesar, to the King:-
+
+"Livor edax tibi cuncta negat, Gallasque subactos,
+Vix impune feres."-E.
+
+(897) Between the King of England, the Queen of Hungary, and
+the King of Sardinia, to whom were afterwards added Holland
+and Saxony.  It is sometimes called "the triple alliance."-D.
+
+(898) Lord Orford.
+
+(899) "Pitt as usual," says Mr. Yorke, in his MS.
+Parliamentary Journal, ,fell foul of Lord Carteret, called him
+a Hanover troop-minister; that they were his party, his
+placemen; that he had conquered the cabinet by their means,
+and after being very lavish of his abuse, wished he was in the
+House, that he might give him more of it." Tu the uncommon
+accuracy of Mr. Walpole's reports of the proceedings in
+Parliament, the above-quoted Journal bears strong evidence.-E.
+
+
+
+358 Letter 128
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Feb. 9, 1744.
+
+I have scarce time to write, or to know what I write.  I live
+in the  House of Commons.  We sat on Tuesday till ten at
+night, on a Welsh election; and shall probably stay as long
+to-day on the same.
+
+I have received all your letters by the couriers and the post:
+I am persuaded the Duke of Newcastle is much pleased with your
+despatch; but I dare not enquire, for fear he should dislike
+your having written the same to me.
+
+I believe we should have heard more of the Brest squadron, if
+their appearance off the Land's End on Friday was se'nnight,
+steering towards Ireland, had occasioned greater
+consternation.  It is incredible how little impression it
+made: the stocks hardly fell: though it was then generally
+believed that the Pretender's son was on board.  We expected
+some invasion; but as they were probably disappointed on
+finding no rising in their favour, it is now believed that
+they are gone to the Mediterranean.  They narrowly missed
+taking the Jamaica fleet, which was gone out convoyed by two
+men-of-war.  The French pursued them, outsailed them, and
+missed them by their own inexpertness.  Sir John Norris is at
+Portsmouth, ready to sail with nineteen
+                                men-of-war, and is to be
+joined by two more from Plymouth.  We
+                                hope to hear that Matthews has
+beat the Toulon squadron before they can be joined by the
+Brest.  This is the state of our situation.  "le have stopped
+the embarkation of the six thousand men for Flanders; and I
+hope the King's journey thither, The Opposition fight every
+                                measure of supply, but very
+unsuccessfully.  When this Welsh election is over, they will
+probably go out of town, and leave the rest of the session at
+ease.
+
+I think you have nothing to apprehend from the new mine that
+is preparing against you.  My lord is convinced it is an idle
+attempt and it will always be in his power to prevent any such
+thing from taking effect.  I am very unhappy for Mr. Chute's
+gout, or for any thing that disturbs the peace of people I
+love so much, and that I have such vast reason to love.  You
+know my fears for you: pray Heaven they end well!
+
+It is universally believed that the Pretender's son, who is at
+Paris, will make the campaign in one of their armies.  I
+suppose this will soon produce a declaration of war; and then
+France, perhaps, will not find her account in having brought
+him as near to England as ever he is like to be.  Adieu! My
+Lord is hurrying me down to the House.  I must go!
+
+
+
+359 Letter 129
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+House of Commons, Feb. 16, 1744.
+
+We are come nearer to a crisis than indeed I expected! After
+the various reports about the Brest squadron, it has proved
+that they are sixteen ships of the line off Torbay; in all
+probability to draw our fleet from Dunkirk, where they have
+two men-of-war and sixteen large Indiamen to transport eight
+thousand foot and two thousand horse, which are there in the
+town.  There has been some difficulty to persuade people of
+the imminence of our danger - but yesterday the King sent a
+message to both Houses to acquaint us that he has certain
+information of the young Pretender being in France, and of the
+designed invasion from thence, in concert with the disaffected
+here.(900)  Immediately the Duke of Marlborough, who most
+handsomely and seasonably was come to town on purpose, moved
+for an Address to assure the King of standing by him with
+lives and fortunes.  Lord Hartington, seconded by Sir Charles
+Windham,(901) the convert son of Sir William, moved the same
+in our House.  To our amazement, and little sure to their own
+honour, Waller and Doddington, supported in the most indecent
+manner by Pitt, moved to add, that we would immediately
+inquire into the state of the navy, the causes of our danger
+by negligence, and the sailing of the Brest fleet.  They
+insisted on this amendment, and debated it till seven at
+night, not one (professed) Jacobite speaking.  The division
+was 287 against 123.  In the Lords, Chesterfield moved the
+same amendment, seconded by old dull Westmoreland; but they
+did not divide.
+
+All the troops have been sent for in the greatest haste to
+London but we shall not have above eight thousand men together
+at most.  An express is gone to Holland, and General Wentworth
+followed it last night, to demand six thousand men, who will
+probably be here by the end of next week.  Lord Stair (902)
+has offered the King his service, and is to-day named
+commander-in-chief.  This is very generous, and will be of
+great use.  He is extremely beloved in the -army, and most
+firm to this family.
+
+I cannot say our situation is the most agreeable; we know not
+whether Norris is gone after the Brest fleet or not.  We have
+three ships in the Downs, but they cannot prevent a landing,
+which will probably be in Essex or Suffolk.  Don't be
+surprised if you hear that this crown is fought for on land.
+As yet there is no rising; but we must expect it on the first
+descent.
+
+Don't be uneasy for me, when the whole is at stake.  I don't
+feel as if my friends would have any reason to be concerned
+for me: my warmth will carry me as far as any man; and I think
+I can bear as I should the worst that can happen; though the
+delays of the French, I don't know from what cause, have not
+made that likely to happen.
+
+The King keeps his bed with the rheumatism.  He is not less
+obliged to Lord Orford for the defence of his crown, now he is
+out of place, than when he was in the administration.  His
+zeal, his courage, his attention, are indefatigable and
+inconceivable.  He regards his own life no more than when it
+was most his duty to expose it, and fears for every thing but
+that.
+
+I flatter myself that next post I shall write you a more
+comfortable letter.  I would not have written this, if it were
+a time to admit deceit.  Hope the best, and fear as little as
+you would do if you were here in the danger.  My best love to
+the Chutes; tell them -I never knew how little I was a
+Jacobite till it was almost my interest to be one.  Adieu!
+
+(900) "February 13.  Talking upon this subject with Horace
+Walpole, he told me confidentially, that Admiral Matthews
+intercepted, last summer, a felucca in her passage from Toulon
+to Genoa, on board of which were found several papers of great
+consequence relating to a French invasion in concert with the
+Jacobites; one of them particularly was in the style of an
+invitation from several of the nobility and gentry of England
+to the Pretender. These papers, he thought had not been
+sufficiently looked into and were not laid before the cabinet
+council until the night before the message was sent to both
+Houses."  Mr. P. York(,@'s Parliamentary Journal.-E.
+
+(901) Afterwards Earl of Egmont.
+
+(902) The Duke of Marlborough and Lord Stair had quitted the army
+in disgust, after last campaign, on the King's showing such
+unmeasurible preference to the Hanoverians.
+
+
+
+361 Letter 130
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Thursday, Feb. 23, 1744.
+
+I write to you, in the greatest hurry, at eight o'clock at
+night, whilst they are all at dinner round me.  I am this
+moment come from the House, where we have carried a great
+Welsh election against Sir Watkyn Williams by 26. I fear you
+have not had my last, for the packet-boat has been stopped on
+the French stopping our messenger at Calais.  There is no
+doubt of the invasion: the young Pretender is at Calais, and
+the Count de Saxe is to command the embarkation.  Hitherto the
+spirit of the nation is with us.  Sir John Norris was to sail
+yesterday to Dunkirk, to try to burn their transports; we are
+in the utmost expectation of the news.  The Brest squadron was
+yesterday on the coast of Sussex.  We have got two thousand
+men from Ireland, and have sent for two more.  The Dutch are
+coming: Lord Stair is general.  Nobody is yet taken up-God
+knows why not! We have repeated news of Matthews having beaten
+and sunk eight of the Toulon ships; but the French have so
+stopped all communication that we don't yet know it certainly;
+I hope you do.  Three hundred arms have been seized in a
+French merchant's house at Plymouth.  Attempts have been made
+to raise the clans in Scotland, but unsuccessfully.
+
+My dear child, I write short, but it is much: and I could not
+say more in ten thousand words.  All is at stake we have great
+hopes, but they are but hopes!  I have no more time: I wait
+with patience for the event, though to me it must and shall be
+decisive.
+
+
+
+361 Letter 131
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+March 1st, 1744.
+
+I wish I could put you out of the pain my last letters must
+have given you.  I don't know whether your situation, to be at
+such a distance on so great a crisis, is not more disagreeable
+than ours, who are expecting every moment to hear the French
+are landed.  We had great ill-luck last week: Sir John Norris,
+with four-and-twenty sail, came within a league of the Brest
+squadron, which had but fourteen.  The coasts were covered
+with people to see the engagement; but at seven in the evening
+the wind changed, and they escaped.  There have been terrible
+winds these four or five days . our fleet has not suffered
+materially, but theirs less.  Ours lies in the Downs; five of
+theirs at Torbay-the rest at La Hague.  We hope to hear that
+these storms, which blew directly on Dunkirk, have done great
+damage to their transports.  By the fortune of the winds,
+which have detained them in port, we have had time to make
+preparations; if they had been ready three weeks ago. when the
+Brest squadron sailed, it had all been decided.  We expect the
+Dutch in four or five days.  Ten battalions, which make seven
+thousand men, are sent for from our army in Flanders, and four
+thousand from Ireland, two of which are arrived.  If they
+still attempt the invasion, it must be a bloody war!
+
+The spirit of the nation has appeared extraordinarily in our
+favour.  I wish I could say as much for that of' the ministry.
+Addresses are come from all parts, but you know how little
+they are to be depended on-King James had them.  The merchants
+of London are most zealous: the French name will do more harm
+to their cause than the Pretender's service.  One remarkable
+circumstance happened to Colonel Cholmondeley's regiment on
+their march to London: the public-houses on all the road would
+not let them pay any thing, but treated them, and said, "You
+are going to defend us against the French." There are no signs
+of any rising.  Lord Barrymore,(903) the Pretender's general,
+and Colonel Cecil, his secretary of state, are at last taken
+up; the latter, who having removed his papers, had sent for
+them back, thinking the danger over, is committed to the
+Tower, on discoveries from them; but, alas! these discoveries
+go on but lamely.(904)  One may perceive who is not minister,
+rather than who is. The Opposition tried to put off the
+suspension of the Habeas Corpus -feebly.  Vernon (905) and the
+Grennvilles are the warmest: Pitt and Lyttelton went away
+without voting.(906)  My father has exerted himself most
+amazingly - the other day, on the King's laying some
+information before the House, when the ministry had determined
+to make no address on it, he rose up in the greatest
+agitation, and made a long and fine speech On the present
+situation.(907)  The Prince was so pleased with it, that he
+has given him leave to go to his court, which he never would
+before.  He went yesterday, and was most graciously received.
+
+Lord Stair is at last appointed general.  General Oglethorpe
+(908) is to have a commission for raising a regiment of
+Hussars, to defend the coasts.  The Swiss servants in London
+have offered to form themselves into a regiment; six hundred
+are already clothed and armed, but no colonel or officers
+appointed.  We flatter ourselves, that the divisions in the
+French ministry will repair what the divisions in our own
+undo.
+
+The answer from the court of France to Mr. Thomson on the
+subject of the boy (909) is most arrogant: "that when we have
+given them satisfaction for the many complaints which they
+have made on our infraction of treaties, then they will think
+of giving us des `eclaircissements."
+
+We have no authentic news yet from Matthews: the most credited
+is a letter from Marseilles to a Jew, which says it was the
+most bloody battle ever fought; that it lasted three days;
+that the two first we had the worst, and the third, by a lucky
+gale, totally defeated them.  Sir Charles Wager always said,
+"that if a sea-fight lasted three days, he was sure the
+English suffered the most for the two first, for no other
+nation would stand beating for two days together."
+
+Adieu! my dear child.  I have told you every circumstance I
+know: I hope you receive my letters; I hope their accounts
+will grow more favourable.  I never found my spirits so high,
+for they never were so provoked.  hope the best, and believe
+that, as long as I am, I shall always be yours sincerely.
+
+
+P. S. My dear Chutes, I hope you will still return to your own
+England.
+
+(903) James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore.  He died in 1747.
+See ant`e, p. 269. Letter 74.
+
+(904) "Some treasonable papers of consequence were found in
+Cecil's pockets, which gave occasion to the apprehending of
+Lord Barrymore.  They were both concerned in the affair of
+transmitting the Pretender's letter to the late Duke of
+Argyle; which it was now lamented had not then undergone a
+stricter examination.  I observed the Tories much struck with
+the news of this being secured." Mr. P. Yorke's Parl.
+Journal.-E.
+
+(905) Admiral Vernon.
+
+(906) "Lord Barrington's motion for deferring the suspension
+was thrown out by 181 against 83.  Pitt and Lyttelton walked
+down the House whilst Lord Barrington was speaking, and went
+away; so did Mr. Crowne, though a Tory; but most of that party
+voted with the Ayes.  Lord Chesterfield told the chancellor
+there was no opposition to this bill intended amongst the
+Lords; not even a disposition to it in any body; and greatly
+approved the limiting it to so short a time." Mr. P. Yorke's
+Parl. journal.-E.
+
+(907) "Lord Orford, though he had never spoken in the House of
+Lords, having remarked to his brother Horatio that he had left
+his tongue in the House of Commons, yet on this occasion his
+eloquent voice was once more raised, beseeching their
+lordships to forget their cavils and divisions, and unite in
+affection round the throne.  It was solely owing to him, that
+the torrent of public opposition was braved and overcome."
+Lord Mahon, Hist. vol. iii. p. 273.-E.
+
+(908) General James Oglethorpe, born in 1698.  His activity in
+settling the colony of Georgia obtained for him the friendship
+and panegyric of Pope-
+
+"One, driven by strong benevolence of soul,
+Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole."
+
+He was one of the earliest patrons of Johnson's "London," on
+its first appearance, and the Doctor, throughout life,
+acknowledged the kind and effectual support given to that
+poem.  The General sat in five parliaments, and died in 1785,
+at the age of eighty-seven.  For a striking pen-and-ink
+whole.length sketch, taken a few months before that event,
+while the General was attending the sale of Dr. Johnson's
+library at Christie's auction-room, see "Johnsoniana," 8vo.
+edit. p. 378.-E.
+
+(909) Charles Edward, the young Pretender.  His person, at
+this time, is thus described by Lord Mahon: "The Prince was
+tall and well-formed; his limbs athletic and active.  He
+excelled in all manly exercises, and was inured to every kind
+of toil, especially long marches on foot, having applied
+himself to field-sports in Italy, and become an expert walker.
+His face was strikingly handsome, of a perfect oval, and a
+fair complexion; his eyes light blue; his features high and
+noble.  Contrary to the custom of the time, which prescribed
+perukes, his own fair hair usually in long ringlets on his
+neck.  This goodly person was enhanced by his graceful
+manners; frequently condescending to the most familiar
+kindness, yet always shielded by a regal dignity: he had a
+peculiar talent to please and to persuade, and never failed to
+adapt his conversation to the taste or to the station of those
+whom he addressed." Hist. vol. iii. p. 280.-E.
+
+
+
+363 Letter 132
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+March 5th, 1744, eight o'clock at night.
+
+I have but time to write you a minute-line, but it will be a
+comfortable one.  There is just come advice, that the great
+storm on the 25th of last month, the very day the embarkation
+was to have sailed from Dunkirk, destroyed twelve of their
+transports, and obliged the whole number of troops, which were
+fifteen thousand, to debark.  You may look upon the invasion
+is at an end, at least for the present; though, as every thing
+is coming to a crisis, one shall not be surprised to hear of
+the attempt renewed.  We know nothing yet certain from
+Matthews; his victory grows a great doubt.
+
+As this must go away this instant, I cannot write more-but
+what could be more?  Adieu!  I wish you all joy.
+
+
+
+364 Letter 133
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+March 15th, 1744
+
+I have nothing new to tell you: that great storm certainly
+saved us from the invasion-then.(910)  Whether it has put an
+end to the design is uncertain.  They say the embargo at
+Dunkirk and Calais is taken off, but not a vessel of ours is
+come in from thence.  They have, indeed, opened again the
+communication with Ypres and Nieuport, etc. but we don't yet
+hear whether they have renewed their embarkation.  However, we
+take it for granted it is all over-from which, I suppose it
+will not be over.  We expect the Dutch troops every hour.
+That reinforcement, and four thousand men from Ireland, will
+be all the advantage we shall have made of gaining time.
+
+At last we have got some light into our Mediterranean affair,
+for there is no calling it a victory.  Villettes has sent a
+courier, by which it seems we sunk one great Spanish ship; the
+rest escaped, and the French fled shamefully; that was, I
+suppose, designedly, and artfully.  We can't account for
+Lestock's not coming up with his seventeen ships, and we have
+no mind to like it, which will not amaze you.  We flatter
+ourselves that, as this was only the first day, we shall get
+some more creditable history of some succeeding day.
+
+The French are going to besiege Mons: I wish all the war may
+take that turn; I don't desire to see England the theatre of
+it. We talk no more of its becoming so, nor of the plot, than
+of the gunpowder-treason.  Party is very silent; I believe,
+because the Jacobites have better hopes than from
+parliamentary divisions,-those in the ministry run very high,
+and, I think, near some crisis.
+
+I have enclosed a proposal from my bookseller to the
+undertaker of the Museum Florentinum, or the concerners of it,
+as the paper called them; but it was expressed in such
+wonderfully-battered English, that it was impossible for
+Dodsley or me to be sure of the meaning of it. He is a
+fashionable author, and though that is no sign of perspicuity,
+I hope, more intelligible.  Adieu!
+
+(910) "The pious motto," says Mr. P. Yorke, "upon the medal
+struck by Queen Elizabeth after the defeat of the Armada, may,
+with as much propriety, be applied to this event-"Flavit
+ventO, et dissipati sunt;' for, as Bishop Burnet somewhere
+observes, 'our preservation at this juncture was one of those
+providential events, for which we have much to answer."' MS.
+Parl.  Journal.-E.
+
+
+
+365 Letter 134
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, March 22, 1744.
+
+               I am .sorry this letter must date the era of a
+new correspondence, the topic of which must be blood!
+Yesterday, came advice from Mr. Thompson,(911) that Monsieur
+Amelot had sent for him and given him notice to be gone, for a
+declaration of war with England was to be published in two
+days.  Politically, I don't think it so bad; for the very name
+of war, though in effect, on foot before,, must make
+our governors take more precautions; and the French declaring
+it will range the people more on our side than on the
+Jacobite: besides, the latter will have their communication
+with France cut off.  But, my dear child, what lives, what
+misfortunes, must and may follow all this! As a man, I feel my
+humanity more touched than my spirit-I feel myself more an
+universal man than an Englishman! We have
+already lost seven millions of money and thirty thousand men
+in the Spanish war-and all the fruit of all this blood and
+treasure is the glory of having Admiral Vernon's head on
+alehouse signs! for my part, I would not purchase another Duke
+of Marlborough at the expense of one life.  How I should be
+shocked, were I a hero, when I looked on my own laurelled head
+on a medal, the reverse of which would be widows and orphans.
+How many such will our patriots have made!
+
+The embarkation at Dunkirk does not seem to go on, though, to
+be sure, not laid aside.  We received yesterday the
+particulars of the Mediterranean engagement from Matthews.  We
+conclude the French squadron retired designedly, to come up to
+Brest, where we every day expect to hear of them.  If Matthews
+does not follow them, adieu our triumphs in the Channel-and
+then! Sir John Norris has desired leave to come back, as
+little satisfied with the world as the world is with him.  He
+is certainly very unfortunate;(912) but I can't say I think he
+has tried to correct his fortune.  If England is ever more to
+be England, this sure is the crisis to exert all her vigour.
+We have all the disadvantage of Queen Elizabeth's prospect,
+without one of her ministers.  Four thousand Dutch are landed,
+and we hope to get eight or twelve ships from them.  Can we
+now say, Quatuor maria vindico?"(913)
+
+I will not talk any more politically, but turn to hymeneals,
+with as much indifference as if I were a first minister.  Who
+do you think is going to marry Lady Sophia Fermor?(914)-only
+Lord Carteret!-this very week!-a drawing-room conquest.  Do
+but imagine how many passions will be gratified in that
+family! her own ambition, vanity, and resentment-love she
+never had any; the politics, management, and pedantry of the
+mother, who will think to govern her son-in-law out of
+Froissart.(915)  Figure the instructions she will give her
+daughter!  Lincoln is quite indifferent, and laughs.  My Lord
+Chesterfield says, "It is only another of Carteret's vigorous
+measures." I am really glad of it; for her beauty and
+cleverness did deserve a better fate, than she was on the
+point of having determined for her for ever,.  How graceful,
+how charming, and how haughtily condescending she will be!
+how, if Lincoln should ever hint past history, she will
+
+"Stare upon the strange man's face,
+As one she ne'er had known!"(916)
+
+I wonder I forgot to tell you that Doddington had owned a
+match of seventeen years' standing with Mrs. Behan, to whom
+the one you mention is sister.
+
+I have this moment received yours of March 10th, and thank you
+much for the silver medal, which has already taken its place
+in my museum.
+
+I feel almost out of pain for your situation, as by the motion
+of the fleets this way, I should think the expedition to Italy
+abandoned.  We and you have had great escapes, but we have
+still occasion for all Providence!
+
+I am very sorry for the young Sposa Panciatici, and wish all
+the other parents joy of the increase of their families.  Mr.
+Whithed is en bon train; but the recruits he is raising will
+scarce thrive fast enough to be of service this war.  My best
+loves to him and Mr. Chute.  I except you three out of my want
+of public spirit.  The other day, when the Jacobites and
+patriots were carrying every thing to ruin, and had made me
+warmer than I love to be, one of them said to me, "Why don't
+you love your country?" I replied, "I should love my country
+exceedingly,'If it were not for my countrymen."  Adieu!
+
+(911) Chaplain to the late Lord Waldegrave; after whose death
+he acted as minister at Paris, till the war, when he returned,
+and was made a dean in Ireland.
+
+(912) He was called by the seamen "Foul-weather Jack."
+
+(913) Motto of a medal of Charles the Second.
+
+(914) Eldest daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret.
+
+(915) lady Pomfret had translated Froissart.
+
+(916) Verses in Congreve's Doris.
+
+
+
+366 Letter 135
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+April 2, 1744.
+
+I am afraid our correspondence will be extremely disjointed,
+and the length of time before you get my letters will make you
+very impatient, when all the world will be full of events; but
+I flatter myself that you will hear every thing sooner than by
+my letters; I mean, that whatever happens will be on the
+Continent; for the danger from Dunkirk seems blown over.  We
+declared war on Saturday: that is all I know, for every body
+has been out of town for the Easter holidays.  To-morrow the
+Houses meet again: the King goes, and is to make a speech.
+The Dutch seem extremely in earnest, and I think we seem to
+put all our strength in their preparations.
+
+The town is persuaded that Lord Clinton (916) is gone to Paris
+to make peace - he is certainly gone thither, nobody knows
+why.  He has gone thither every year -all his life, when he
+was in the Opposition; but, to be sure, this is a very strange
+time to take that journey.  Lord Stafford, who came hither
+just before the intended invasion, (no doubt for the defence
+of the Protestant religion, especially as his father-in-law,
+Bulkeley,(917), was colonel of one of the embarked regiments,)
+is gone to carry his sister to be married to a Count de
+Rohan,(918) and then returns, having a sign manual for leaving
+his wife there.
+
+We shall not be surprised to hear that the Electorate(919) has
+got a new master; shall you? Our dear nephew of Prussia will
+probably take it, to keep it safe for us.
+
+I had written thus far on Monday, and then my lord came from
+New Park: and I had no time the rest of the day to finish it.
+We have made very loyal addresses to the King on his speech,
+which I suppose they send you.  There is not the least news,
+but that my Lord Carteret's wedding has been deferred on Lady
+Sophia's falling dangerously ill of a scarlet fever; but they
+say it is to be next Saturday.  She is to have sixteen hundred
+pounds a-year jointure, four hundred pounds pin-money, and two
+thousand of jewels.  Carteret says, he does not intend to
+marry the mother and the whole family.  What do you think my
+lady intends? Adieu! my dear Sir! Pray for peace.
+
+(916) Hugh Fortescue, afterwards Earl of Clinton and Knight of
+the Bath.  Not long after he received that order he went into
+Opposition, and left off his riband and star for one day, but
+thought better of it, and put them on the next. He was created
+Lord Fortescue and Earl of Clinton in 1746, and died in 1751.)
+
+(917) Mr. Bulkeley, an Irish Roman Catholic, married the widow
+Cantillon, mother of the Countess of Stafford.  He rose high
+in the French army, and had the cordon bleu: his
+sister was second wife of the first Duke of Berwick.
+
+(918)Afterwards Duke of Rohan Chabot.-D.
+
+(919) Of Hanover.-D.
+
+
+
+367 Letter 136
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, April 15, 1744.
+
+I could tell you a great deal of news, but it would not be
+what you would expect.  It is not of battles, sieges, and
+declarations of war; nor of invasions, insurrections, and
+addresses.  It is the god of love, not he of war, who reigns
+in the newspapers.  The town has made up a list of six and
+thirty weddings, which I shall not catalogue to you; for you
+would know, them no more than you do Antilochum, fortemque
+Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum.
+
+But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of our great
+Quixote and the fair Sophia.  On the point of matrimony she
+fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he had
+the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she was well,
+he would be so.  They corresponded every day, and he used to
+plague the cabinet council with reading her letters to them.
+Last night they were married; and as all he does must have a
+particular air in it, they supped at Lord Pomfret's: at
+twelve, Lady Granville, his mother, and all his family went to
+bed, but the porter: then my lord went home, and waited for
+her in the lodge: she came alone in a hackney-chair, met him
+in the hall, and was led up the back stairs to bed.  What is
+ridiculously lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting,
+to-day, and will be to present her!  On Tuesday she stands
+godmother with the King to Lady Dysart's(920) child, her new
+grand-daughter.  I am impatient to see the whole m`enage; it
+will be admirable.  There is a wild young Venetian
+ambassadress(921) come, who is reckoned very pretty.  I don't
+think so; she is foolish and childish to a degree.  She said,
+"Lord! the old secretary is going to be married!"  hey told
+her he was but fifty-four. "But fifty-four! why," said she,
+"my husband is but two-and-forty, and I think him the oldest
+man in the world." Did I tell you that Lord Holderness(922)
+goes to Venice with the compliments of accommodation, and
+leaves Sir James Grey resident there?
+
+The invasion from Dunkirk seems laid aside.  We talk little of
+our fleets - Sir John Norris has resigned -. Lestock is coming
+home, and sent before him great complaints of Matthews; so
+that affair must be cleared up.  the King talks much of going
+abroad, which will not be very prudent.  The campaign is not
+opened yet, but I suppose will disclose at once with great
+`eclat in several quarters.
+
+I this instant receive your letter of March 31st, with the
+simple Demetrius, for which, however, I thank you.  I hope by
+this time you have received all my letters, and are at peace
+about the invasion; which we think so much over, that the
+Opposition are now breaking out about the Dutch troops, and
+call it the worst measure ever taken.  Those terms so
+generally dealt to every measure successively, will at least
+soften the Hanoverian history.
+
+Adieu!  I have nothing more to tell you: I flatter myself you
+content yourself with news; I cannot write sentences nor
+sentiments.  My best love to the Chutes, and now and then let
+my friends the Prince and Princess and Florentines know that I
+shall never forget their goodness to me.  What is become of
+Prince Beauvau?
+
+(920) Lady Grace Carteret, eldest daughter of Lord Carteret.
+She was married in 1729 to Lionel Tollemache, third Earl of
+Dysart; by whom she had fifteen children.-E.
+
+(921) Wife of Signor Capello.
+
+(922) Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, ambassador at Venice
+and the Hague, and afterwards secretary of state.
+
+
+
+369 Letter 137
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, May 8, 1744.
+
+I begin to breathe a little at ease; we have done with the
+Parliament for this year: it rises on Saturday.  We have had
+but one material day lately, last Thursday.  The Opposition
+had brought in a bill to make it treason to correspond with
+the young Pretenders:(923) the Lords added a clause, after a
+long debate, to make it a forfeiture of estates, as it is for
+dealing with the father.  We sat till one in the morning, and
+then carried it by 255 to 106.  It was the best debate I ever
+heard.(924)  The King goes to Kensington to-morrow, and not
+abroad.  We hear of great quarrels between Marshal Wade and
+Duc d'Aremberg.  The French King is at Valenciennes with
+Monsieur de Noailles, who is now looked upon as first
+minister.  He is the least dangerous for us of all.  It is
+affirmed that Cardinal Tencin is disgraced, who was the very
+worst for us.  If he is, we shall at least have no invasion
+this summer.  Successors of ministers seldom take up the
+schemes of their predecessors; especially such as by failing
+caused their ruin, which, I believe, was Tencin's case at
+Dunkirk.
+
+For a week we heard of the affair at Villafranca in a worse
+light than was true: it certainly turns out ill for both
+sides.  Though the French have had such a bloody loss, I
+cannot but think they will carry their point, and force their
+passage into Italy.
+
+
+We have no domestic news, but Lord Lovel's being created Earl
+of Leicester, on an old promise which my father had obtained
+for him.  Earl Berkeley(925) is married to Miss Drax, a very
+pretty maid of honour to the Princess; and the Viscount
+Fitzwilliam(926) to Sir Matthew Decker's eldest daughter , but
+these are people I am sure you don't know.
+
+There is to be a great ball tomorrow at the Duchess of
+Richmond's for my Lady Carteret: the Prince is to be there.
+Carteret's court to pay her the highest honours, which she
+receives with the highest state.  I have seen her but once,
+and found her just what I expected, tr`es grande dame; full of
+herself, and yet not with an air of happiness.  She looks ill
+and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the
+world.  The mother is not so exalted as I expected- I fancy
+Carteret has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.
+
+My Lord does not talk of' going out of town yet; I don't
+propose to be at Houghton till August.  Adieu!
+
+(923) Charles Edward, and Henry his brother, afterwards the
+Cardinal of York.-D.
+
+(924) The Honourable Philip Yorke, in his MS.  Parliamentary
+Journal, says, "it was a warm and long d(.-bate, in which I
+think as much violence and dislike to the proposition was
+shown by the opposers, as in any which had arisen during the
+whole winter.  I thought neither Mr. Pelham's nor Pitt's
+performances equal on this occasion to what they are on most
+others.  Many of the Prince's friends were absent; for what
+reason I cannot learn.  This was the parting blow of the
+session; for the King came and dismissed us on the 12th, and
+the Parliament broke up with a good deal of ill-humour and
+discontent on the part of the Opposition, and little
+expectation in those who knew the interior of the court, and
+the unconnected state of the alliance abroad, that much would
+be done in the ensuing campaign to allay it, or infuse a
+better temper into the nation."-E.
+
+(925) Augustus. fourth Earl Berkeley, Knight of the Thistle.
+He married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax, Esq, of
+Charborough, in Dorsetshire; and died in 1755.-D.
+
+(926) Richard, sixth Viscount Fitzwilliam in Ireland, married
+Catherine, daughter and heiress of Sir Matthew Decker, Bart.,
+and died in 1776.-E.
+
+
+
+
+370 Letter 138
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, May 29, 1744.
+
+Since I wrote I have received two from you of May 6th and
+19th.  I am extremely sorry you get mine so late.  I have
+desired your brother to complain to Mr. Preverau: I get yours
+pretty regularly.
+
+I have this morning had a letter from Mr. Conway at the army;
+he says he hears just then that the French have declared war
+against the Dutch: they had in effect before by besieging
+Menin, which siege our army is in full march to raise.  They
+have laid bridges over the Scheldt, and intend to force the
+French to a battle.  The latter are almost double our number,
+but their desertion is prodigious, and their troops extremely
+bad.  Fourteen thousand more Dutch are ordered, and their six
+thousand are going from hence with four more of ours; so we
+seem to have no more apprehensions of an invasion.  All
+thoughts of it are over! no inquiry made into it! The present
+ministry fear the detection of conspiracies more than the
+thing itself: that is, they fear every thing that they are to
+do themselves.
+
+My father has been extremely ill, from a cold he caught last
+week at New-park.  Princess Emily came thither to fish, and
+he, who is grown quite indolent, and has not been out of a hot
+room this twelve- month, sat an hour and a half by the water
+side.  He was in great danger one day, and more low-spirited
+than ever I knew him, though I think that grows upon him with
+his infirmities.  My sister was at his bedside; I came into
+the room,-he burst into tears and could not speak to me - but
+he is quite well now; though I cannot say I think he will
+preserve his life long, as he has laid aside all exercise,
+which has been of such vast service to him.  he talked the
+other day of shutting himself up in the farthest wing at
+Houghton; I said, "Dear, my Lord, you will be at a distance
+from all the family there!" He replied, "So much the better!"
+
+Pope is given over with a dropsy, which is mounted into his
+head: in an evening he is not in his senses; the other day at
+Chiswick, he said,- to my Lady Burlington, "Look at our
+Saviour there! how ill they have crucified him!"(927)
+
+There is a Prince of Ost-Frize(928) dead, which is likely to
+occasion most unlucky broils: Holland, Prussia, and Denmark
+have all pretensions to his succession; but Prussia is
+determined to make his good.  If the Dutch don't dispute it,
+he will be too near a neighbour; if they do, we lose his
+neutrality, which is now so material.
+
+The town has been in a great bustle about a private match; but
+which, by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made
+politics.  Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline
+Lennox;(929) asked her, was refused, and stole her.  His
+father(930) was a footman; her great grandfather a king: hinc
+illae, lachrymae! all the blood royal have been up in arms.
+The Duke of Marlborough, who was a friend of the Richmonds,
+gave her away.  If his Majesty's Princess Caroline had been
+stolen, there could not have been more noise made.  The
+Pelhams, who arc much attached to the Richmonds, but who have
+tried to make Fox and all that set theirs, wisely entered into
+the quarrel, and now don't know how to get out of it.  They
+were for hindering Williams,(931) who is Fox's great friend,
+and at whose house they were married, from having the red
+riband; but he has got it, with four others, the Viscount
+Fitzwilliam, Calthorpe, Whitmore, and Harbord.  Dashwood, Lady
+Carteret's quondam lover, has stolen a great fortune, a Miss
+Bateman; the marriage had been proposed, but the fathers could
+not agree on the terms.
+
+I am much obliged to you for all your Sardinian and Neapolitan
+journals.  I am impatient for the conquest of Naples, and have
+no notion of neglecting sure things, which may serve by way of
+d`edommagement.
+
+I am very sorry I recommended such a troublesome booby to you.
+Indeed, dear Mr. Chute, I never saw him, but was pressed by
+Mr. Selwyn, whose brother's friend he is, to give him that
+letter to you.  I now hear that he is a warm Jacobite; I
+suppose you somehow disobliged him politically.
+
+We are now mad about tar-water, on the publication of a book
+that I will send you, written by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of
+Cloyne.(932)  The book contains every subject from tar-water
+to the Trinity; however, all the women read, and understand it
+no more than they would if it were intelligible.  A man came
+into an apothecary's shop the other day, "Do you sell
+tar-water?"  "Tar-water!" replied the apothecary, "why, I sell
+nothing else!" Adieu!
+
+(927) Pope died the day after this letter was written; "in the
+evening," says Spence, "but they did not know the exact time;
+for his departure was so easy, that it was imperceptible even
+to the standers by."
+
+(928) The Prince of East Friesland.
+
+(929) Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Richmond, grandson of
+King Charles II.
+
+(930) Sir Stephen Fox.
+
+(931) Sir C. Hanbury Williams.
+
+(932) Having cured himself of a nervous colic by the use of
+tar-water, the bishop this year published a book entitled
+"Philosophical Reflections and Enquiries concerning the
+Virtues of Tar-water.',-E.
+
+
+
+372 Letter 139
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+June 11, 1744.
+
+Perhaps you expect to hear of great triumphs and victories; of
+General Wade grown into a Duke of Marlborough; or of the King
+being in Flanders, with the second part of the battle of
+Dettingen-why, ay: you are bound in conscience, as a good
+Englishman, to expect all this -but what if all these 10
+paeans should be played to the Dunkirk tune?  I must prepare
+you for some such thing; for unless the French are as much
+their own foes as we are our own, I don't see what should
+hinder the festival to-day(933) being kept next year a day
+sooner.  But I will draw no consequences; only sketch you out
+our present situation: and if Cardinal Tencin can miss making
+his use of it, we may burn our books and live hereafter upon
+good fortune.
+
+The French King's army is at least ninety thousand strong; has
+taken Menin already, and Ypres almost.  Remains then only
+Ostend; which you will look in the map and see does not lie in
+the high road to the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands.
+Ostend may be laid under water, and the taking it an affair of
+time.  But there lies all our train of artillery Which cost
+two hundred thousand pounds; and what becomes of our
+communication with our army? Why, they may go round by
+Williamstadt, and be in England just time enough to be some
+other body's army! It turns out that the whole combined army,
+English, Dutch, Austrians, and Hanoverians, does not amount to
+above thirty-six thousand fighting men! and yet forty thousand
+more French, under the Duc d'Harcourt are coming into
+Flanders.  When their army is already so superior to ours, for
+what can that reinforcement be intended, but to let them spare
+a triumph to Dunkirk?  Now you will naturally ask me three
+questions: where is Prince Charles?  where are the Dutch?
+what force have you to defend England?  Prince Charles is
+hovering about the Rhine to take Lorrain, which they seem not
+to care whether he does or not, and leaves you to defend the
+-Netherlands.  The Dutch seem indifferent, whether their
+barrier is in the hands of the Queen or the Emperor and while
+you are so mad, think it prudent not to be so themselves.  For
+our own force, it is too melancholy to mention: six regiments
+go away to-morrow to Ostend, with the six thousand Dutch.
+Carteret and Botzlaer, the Dutch envoy extraordinary, would
+have hurried them away without orders; but General Smitsart,
+their commander, said, he was too old to be hanged.  This
+reply was told to my father yesterday: "Ay," said he, "so I
+thought I was, but I may live to be mistaken!"  When these
+troops are gone, we shall not have in the whole island above
+six thousand men, even when the regiments are complete; and
+half of those pressed and new-listed men.  For our sea-force,
+I wish it may be greater in proportion! Sir Charles Hardy,
+whose name(934) at least is ill-favoured, is removed, and old
+Balchen, a firm Whig, put at the head of the fleet.  Fifteen
+ships are sent for from Matthews; but they may come as
+opportunely as the army from Williamstadt-in short-but I won't
+enter into reasonings-the King is not gone.  The Dutch have
+sent word, that they can let us have but six of the twenty
+ships we expected.  My father is going into Norfolk, quite
+shocked at living to see how terribly his own conduct is
+justified.  In the city the word is, "Old Sunderland'S(935)
+game is acting over again."  Tell me if you receive this
+letter: I believe you will scarce give it about in memorials.
+
+Here are arrived two Florentines, not recommended to me, but I
+have been very civil to them, Marquis Salviati and Conte
+Delci; the latter remembers to have seen me at Madame
+Grifoni's.  The Venetian ambassador met my father yesterday at
+my Lady Brown's: you would have laughed to have seen how he
+stared and @eccellenza'd him.  At last they fell into a broken
+Latin chat, and there was no getting the ambassador away from
+him.
+
+If you have the least interest in any one Madonna in Florence,
+pay her well for all the service she can do us.  If she can
+work miracles, now is her time.  If she can't, I believe we
+all shall be forced to adore her.  Adieu! Tell Mr. Chute I
+fear we should not be quite so well received at the
+conversazzioni, at Madame de Craon's, and the Casino,(936)
+when we are but refugee heretics.  Well, we must hope! Yours I
+am, and we will bear our wayward fate together.
+
+(933) The 10th of June was the Pretender's birthday, and the 11th
+the accession of George II.
+
+(934) He was of a Jacobite family.
+
+(935) Lord Sunderland, who betrayed James II.
+
+(936) The Florentine coffee-house.
+
+
+
+373 Letter 140
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, June 18, 1744.
+I have not any immediate bad news to tell you in consequence
+of my last.  The siege of Ypres does not advance so
+expeditiously as was expected; a little time gained in sieges
+goes a great way in a campaign.  The Brest squadron is making
+just as great a figure in our channel as Matthews does before
+Toulon and Marseilles.  I should be glad to be told by some
+nice computers of national glory, how much the balance is on
+our side.
+
+Anson(937) is returned with vast fortune, substantial and
+lucky.  He has brought the Acapulca ship into Portsmouth, and
+its treasure is at least computed at five hundred thousand
+pounds.  He escaped the Brest squadron by a mist.  You will
+have all the particulars in a gazette.
+
+I will not fail to make your compliments to the Pomfrets and
+Carterets.  I see them seldom, but I am in favour; so I
+conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night, that I
+said better things than any body.  I was with them all at a
+subscription-ball at Ranelagh last week, which my Lady
+Carteret thought proper to look upon as given to her, and
+thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well pleased at
+her condescending to take it to herself.  My lord stayed with
+her there till four in the morning.  They are all fondness
+-walk together, and stop every five steps to kiss.  Madame de
+Craon is a cypher to her for grandeur.  The ball was on an
+excessively hot night: yet she was dressed in a magnificent
+brocade, because it was new that morning for the
+inauguration-day.  I did the honours of all her dress:-"How
+charming your ladyship's cross is!  I am sure the design was
+your own."-"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it
+is."-"How fine your ear-rings are!"-"Oh! but they are very
+heavy." Then as much to the mother.  Do you wonder I say
+better things than any body?
+
+I send you by a ship going to Leghorn the only new books at
+all worth reading.  The Abuse(938) of Parliaments is by
+Doddington and Waller, circumstantially scurrilous.  The
+dedication of the Essay(939) to my father is fine; pray mind
+the quotation from Milton.  There is Dr. Berkeley's mad book
+on tar-water, which has made every body as mad as himself.
+
+I have lately made a great antique purchase of all Dr.
+Middleton's collection which he brought from Italy, and which
+he is now publishing.  I will send you the book as soon as it
+comes out.  I would not buy the things till the book was half
+printed, for fear of an `e Museo Walpoliano.-Those honours are
+mighty well for such known and learned men as Mr. Smith,(940)
+the merchant of Venice.  My dear Mr. Chute, how we used to
+enjoy the title-page(941) of his understanding! Do you
+remember how angry he was when showing us a Guido, after
+pompous roomsfull of Sebastian Riccis, which he had a mind to
+establish for capital pictures, you told him he had now made
+amends for all the rubbish he had showed us before?
+
+My father has asked, and with some difficulty got, his pension
+of four thousand pounds a-year, which the King gave him on his
+resignation and which he dropped, by the wise fears of my
+uncle and the Selwyns.  He has no reason to be satisfied with
+the manner of obtaining it now, or with the manner of the
+man(942) whom he employed to ask it - yet it was not a point
+that required capacity-merely gratitude.  Adieu!
+
+(937) The celebrated circumnavigator, afterwards a peer, and
+first lord of the admiralty.-D.
+
+(938) Detection of the Use and Abuse of Parliaments, by Ralph,
+under the direction of Doddington and Waller.
+
+(939) Essay on Wit, Humour, and Ridicule, by Corbyn Morris.
+
+(940) Mr. Smith, consul at Venice, had a fine library" of
+which he knew nothing at all but the title-pages.
+
+(941) Expression of Mr. Chute.
+
+(942) Mr. Pelham.
+
+
+
+
+375 Letter 141
+
+To The Hon.  H. S. Conway.(943)
+Arlington Street, June 29, 1744.
+
+My dearest Henry,
+I don't know what made my last letter so long on the road:
+yours got hither as soon as it could.  I don't attribute it to
+any examination at the post-office.  God forbid I should
+suspect any branch of the present administration of attempting
+to know any one kind of thing!  I remember when I was at Eton,
+and Mr. Bland(944) had set me an extraordinary task, I used
+sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was
+not immediately my school business.  What! learn more than I
+was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning
+that; for I was a blockhead, and pushed up above my parts.
+
+Lest you maliciously think I mean any application of this last
+sentence any where in the world, I shall go and transcribe
+some lines out of a new poem, that pretends to great
+impartiality, but is evidently wrote by some secret friend of
+the ministry.  It is called Pope's, but has no good lines but
+the following.  The plan supposes him complaining of being put
+to death by the blundering discord of his two physicians.
+Burton and Thompson; and from thence makes a transition to
+show that all the present misfortunes of the world flow from a
+parallel disagreement; for instance, in politics:
+
+"Ask you what cause this conduct can create?
+The doctors differ that direct the state.
+Craterus, wild as Thompson, rules and raves,
+A slave himself yet proud of making slaves;
+Fondly believing that his mighty parts
+Can guide all councils and command all hearts;
+Give shape and colour to discordant things,
+Hide fraud in ministers and fear in kings.
+Presuming on his power, such schemes he draws
+For bribing Iron(945) and giving Europe laws,
+That camps, and fleets, and treaties fill the news,
+And succours unobtain'd and unaccomplish'd views.
+
+"Like solemn Burton grave Plumbosus acts;
+He thinks in method, argues all from facts;
+Warm in his temper, yet affecting ice,
+Protests his candour ere he gives advice;
+Hints he dislikes the schemes he recommends,
+And courts his foes-and hardly courts his friends;
+Is fond of power, and yet concerned for fame-
+>From different parties would dependents claim
+Declares for war, but in an awkward way,
+Loves peace at heart, which he's afraid to say;
+His head perplex'd, altho' his hands are pure-
+An honest man,-but not a hero sure!"
+
+I beg you will never tell me any news till it has past every
+impression of the Dutch gazette; for one is apt to mention
+what is wrote to one: that gets about, comes at last to, the
+ears of the ministry, puts them in a fright, and perhaps they
+send to beg to see your letter.  Now, you know one should hate
+to have one's private correspondence made grounds for a
+measure,-especially for an absurd one, which is just possible.
+
+If I was writing to any body but you, who know me so well, I
+should be afraid this would be taken for pique and pride, and
+be construed into my thinking all ministers inferior to my
+father but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to
+think over-abundantly well of him.  Why I think as I do of the
+great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British
+Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest
+squadron is riding in the English Channel, and an invasion
+from Dunkirk every moment threatening your coasts: against
+which you send for six thousand Dutch troops, while you have
+twenty thousand of your own in Flanders, which not being of
+any use, you send these very six thousand Dutch to them, with
+above half of the few of your own remaining in England; a
+third part of which half of which few you countermand, because
+you are again alarmed with the invasion, and yet let the six
+Dutch go, who came for no other end but to protect you.  And
+that our naval discretion may go hand-in-hand with our
+military, we find we have no force at home; we send for
+fifteen ships from the Mediterranean to guard our coasts, and
+demand twenty from the Dutch.  The first fifteen will be here,
+perhaps in three months.  Of the twenty Dutch, they excuse all
+but six, of which six they send all but four; and your own
+small domestic fleet, five are going to the West Indies and
+twenty a hunting for some Spanish ships that are coming from
+the Indies.  Don't it put you in mind of a trick that is done
+by calculation: Think of a number: halve it-double it-and
+ten-subtract twenty-add half the first number-take away all
+you added: now, what remains?
+
+That you may think I employ my time as idly as the great men I
+have been talking of, you must be informed that every night
+constantly I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall.
+Nobody goes any where else-every body goes there.  My Lord
+Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all
+his letters to be directed thither.  If you had never seen it,
+I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell
+you how the floor is all of beaten princes-you can't set your
+foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of
+Cumberland.  The company is universal: there is from his Grace
+of Grafton down to Children out of the Foundling Hospital-
+from my Lady Townshend to the kitten--from my Lord Sandys to
+your humble cousin and sincere friend.
+
+(943) Now first printed.
+
+(944) Dr. Henry Bland, head-master, and from 1732 to his
+death, in 1746, provost of Eton College.  In No. 628 of the
+Spectator is a Latin version by him of Cato's soliloquy.-E.
+
+(945) This is nonsense@H.  W.
+
+
+
+
+377 Letter 142
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, June 29, 1744.
+
+Well, at last this is not to be the year of our captivity!
+There is a cluster of good packets come at once.  The Dutch
+have marched twelve thousand men to join our army; the King of
+Sardinia (but this is only a report) has beaten the Spaniards
+back over the Varo, and I this moment hear from the
+Secretary's office, that Prince Charles has undoubtedly passed
+the Rhine at the head of fourscore thousand men-where, and
+with what circumstances, I don't know a word; ma basta cos`i.
+It is said, too, that the Marquis de la Ch`etardie(946) is
+sent away from Russia: but this one has no occasion to
+believe.  False good news are always produced by true good,
+like the waterfall by the rainbow.  But why do I take upon me
+to tell you all this?-you, who are the centre of ministers and
+business! the actuating genius in the conquest of Naples! You
+cannot imagine how formidable you appear to me.  My poor
+little, quiet Miny, with his headache and `epuisements, and
+Cocchio, and coverlid of cygnet's down, that had no dealings
+but with a little spy-abb`e at Rome, a civil whisper with
+Count Lorenzi,(947) or an explanation on some of Goldsworthy's
+absurdities, or with Richcourt about some sbirri,(948) that
+had insolently passed through the street in which the King of
+Great Britain's arms condescended to hang!  Bless me! how he
+is changed, become a trafficking plenipotentiary with Prince
+lobkowitz, Cardinal Albani(949) and Admiral Matthews! Why, my
+dear child, I should not know you again; I should not dare to
+roll you up between a finger and thumb like wet brown paper.
+Well, heaven prosper your arms!  But I hate you, for I now
+look upon you as ten times fatter than I am.
+
+I don't think it would be quite unadvisable for Bistino(950)
+to take a journey hither.  My Lady Carteret would take
+violently to any thing that came so far as to adore her
+grandeur.  I believe even my Lady Pomfret would be persuaded
+he had seen the star of their glory travelling westward to
+direct him.  For my part, I expect soon to make a figure too
+in the political magazine, for all our Florence set is coming
+to grandeur; but you and my Lady Carteret have outstripped me.
+I remain with -the Duke of Courtland in Siberia-my father has
+actually gone thither for a long season.  I met my Lady
+Carteret the other day at Knaptons,(951) and desired leave to
+stay while she sat for her picture.  She is drawn crowned with
+corn, like the Goddess of Plenty, and a mild dove in her arms,
+like Mrs. Venus.  We had much of my lord and my lord.  The
+countess-mother was glad my lord was not there-he was never
+satisfied with the eyes; she was afraid he would have had them
+drawn bigger than the cheeks.  I made your compliments
+abundantly, and cried down the charms of the picture as
+politically as if' you yourself had been there in person.
+
+To fill up this sheet, I shall transcribe some very good lines
+published to-day in one of the papers, by I don't know whom,
+on Pope's death.
+
+"Here lies, who died, as most folks die, in hope,
+The mouldering, more ignoble part of Pope;
+The hard, whose sprightly genius dared to wage
+Poetic war with an immoral age;
+Made every vice and private folly known
+In friend and foe--a stranger to his own
+Set Virtue in its loveliest form to view,
+And still professed to be the sketch he drew.
+As humour or as interest served, his verse
+Could praise or flatter, libel or asperse:
+Unharming innocence with guilt could load,
+Or lift the rebel patriot to a god:
+Give the censorious critic standing laws-
+The first to violate them with applause;
+The just translator and the solid wit,
+Like whom the passions few so truly hit:
+The scourge of dunces whom his malice made-
+The impious plague of the defenceless dead:
+To real knaves and real fools a sore-
+Beloved by many but abhorr'd by more,
+If here his merits are not full exprest,
+His never-dying strains shall tell the rest."
+
+Sure the greater part was his true character; Here is another
+epitaph by Rolli;(952) which for the profound fall in some of
+the verses', especially in the last, will divert you.
+
+"Spento `e il Pope: de' poeti Britanni
+Uno de' lumi che sorge in mille anni:
+Pur si vuol che la macchia d'Ingrato
+N'abbia reso il fulgor men sereno:
+Stato fora e pi`u giusto e pi`u grato.
+Men lodando e biasmando ancor meno."
+
+(946) French ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, and
+for some time a favourite of the Empress Elizabeth.  The
+report of his disgrace was correct.  He died in 1758.-E.
+
+(947) A Florentine, but employed as minister by France.
+
+(948) The officers of justice, who are reckoned so infamous in
+Italy, that the foreign ministers have always pretended to
+hinder them from passing through the streets where they
+reside.
+
+(949) Cardinal Alexander Albani, nephew of Clement XI. was
+minister of the Queen of Hungary at Rome.
+
+(950) Giovanni Battista Uguecioni, a Florentine nobleman, and
+great friend of the Pomfrets.
+
+
+(951) George Knapton, a portrait painter.  Walpole says, he
+was well versed in the theory of painting, and had a thorough
+knowledge of the hands of the good masters.  He died at
+Kensington, in 1778, at the age of eighty.-E.
+
+(952) Paolo Antonio Rolli, composer of the operas, translated
+and published several things.  [Thus hitched into the Dunciad-
+
+"Rolli the feather to his ear conveys
+Then his nice taste directs our operas."
+
+Warburton says, "He taught Italian to some fine gentlemen, who
+affected to direct the operas."
+
+
+
+379 Letter 143
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Arlington Street, July 20, 1744.
+
+My dearest Harry,
+I feel that I have so much to say to you, that I foresee there
+will be but little method in my letter; but if, upon the
+whole, you see My meaning, and the depth of my friendship for
+you, I am content.
+
+It was most agreeable to me to receive a letter of confidence
+from you, at the time I expected a very different one from
+you; though, by the date of your last, I perceive you had not
+then received some letters, which, though I did not see, I
+must call simple, as they could only tend to make you uneasy
+for some months.  I should not have thought of communicating a
+quarrel to you at a distance, and I don't conceive the sort of
+friendship of those that thought it necessary.  When I heard
+it had been wrote to you, I thought it right to myself to give
+you my account of it, but, by your brother's desire,
+suppressed my letter, and left it to be explained by him, who
+wrote to you so sensibly on it, that I shall say no more but
+that I think myself so ill-used that it will prevent my giving
+you thoroughly the advice you ask of me for how can I be sure
+that my resentment might not make me see in a stronger light
+the reasons for your breaking off an affair(953) which you
+know before I never approved?
+
+You know my temper is so open to any body I love that I must
+be happy at seeing you lay aside a reserve with me, which is
+the only point that ever made me dissatisfied with you.  That
+silence of yours has, perhaps, been one of the chief reasons
+that has always prevented my saying much to you on a topic
+which I saw was so near your heart.  Indeed, its being so near
+was another reason; for how could I expect you would take my
+advice, even if you bore it? But, my dearest Harry, how can I
+advise you now? Is it not gone too far -for me to expect you
+should keep any resolution about it, especially in absence,
+which must be destroyed the moment you meet again? And if ever
+you should marry and be happy, won't you reproach me with
+having tried to hinder it?  I think you as just and honest as
+I think any man living; but any man living in that
+circumstance would think I had been prompted by private
+reasons.  I see as strongly as you can all the arguments for
+your breaking off; but, indeed, the alteration of your fortune
+adds very little strength to what they had before.  You never
+had fortune enough to make such a step at all prudent: she
+loved you enough to be content with that; I can't believe this
+change will alter her sentiments, for I must do her the
+justice to say that it is plain she preferred you with nothing
+to all the world.  I could talk upon this head, but I will
+only leave you to consider, without advising YOU On either
+side, these two things-whether you think it honester to break
+off with her after such engagements as yours (how strong I
+don't know), after her refusing very good matches for you, and
+show her that she must think of making her fortune; or whether
+you will wait with her till some amendment in your fortune can
+put it in your power to marry her.                    '
+
+
+My dearest Harry, you must see why I don't care to say more on
+this head.  My wishing it could be right for you to break off
+with her (for, without it is right, I would not have you on
+any account take such a step) makes it impossible for me to
+advise it; and therefore, I am sure you will forgive my
+declining, an act of friendship which your having put in my
+power gives me the greatest satisfaction.  But it does put
+something else in my power, which I am sure nothing can make
+me decline, and for which I have long wanted an opportunity.
+Nothing could prevent my being unhappy at the smallness of
+your fortune, but its throwing it into my way to offer you to
+share mine.  As mine is so precarious, by depending on so bad
+a constitution, I can only offer you the immediate use of it.
+I do that most sincerely.  My places still (though my Lord
+Walpole has cut off three hundred pounds a-year to save
+himself the trouble of signing his name ten times for once)
+bring me in near two thousand pounds a-year.  I have no debts,
+no connexions; indeed, no -way to dispose of it particularly.
+By living with my father, I have little real use for a quarter
+of it.  I have always flung it away all in the most idle
+manner; but, my dear Harry, idle -,is I am, and thoughtless, I
+have sense enough to have real pleasure in denying myself
+baubles, and in saving a very good income to make a man happy,
+for whom I have a just esteem and most sincere friendship.  I
+know the difficulties any gentleman and man of spirit must
+struggle with, even in having such an offer made him, much
+more in accepting it.  I hope you will allow there are some in
+making it.  But hear me: if there is such a thing as
+friendship in the world, these are the opportunities of
+exerting it, and it can't be exerted without it is accepted.
+I must talk of myself to prove to you that it will be right
+for 'you to accept it.  I am sensible of having more follies
+and weaknesses, and fewer real good qualities than most men.
+I sometimes reflect on this, though I own too seldom.  I
+always want to begin acting like a man, and a sensible one,
+which I think I might b, if I would.  Can I begin better, than
+by taking care of my fortune for one I love?  You have seen (I
+have seen you have) that I am fickle, and foolishly fond of
+twenty new people; but I don't really love them-I have always
+loved you constantly: I am willing to convince you and the
+world, what I have always told you, that I loved you better
+than any body.  If I ever felt much for any thing, which I
+know may be questioned, it was certainly my mother.  I look on
+you as my nearest relation by her, and I think I can never do
+enough to show my gratitude and affection to her.  For these
+reasons, don't deny me what I have set my heart on-the making
+your fortune easy to you.
+
+
+[The rest of this letter is wanting.]
+
+(953) This was an early attachment of Mr. Conway's.  By his
+having complied with the wishes and advice of his friends on
+this subject, and got the better of his passion, he probably
+felt that he, in some measure, owed to Mr. Walpole the
+subsequent happiness of his life, in his marriage with another
+person.  (the lady alluded to was Lady Caroline Fitzroy,
+afterwards Countess of Harrington, whose sister, Lady
+Isabella, had, three years before, married Mr. Conway's elder
+brother, afterwards Earl and Marquis of Hertford.]
+
+
+
+381 Letter 144
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 22, 1744.
+
+I have not written to you, my dear child, a good while, I know
+but, indeed, it was from having nothing to tell you.  You know
+I love you too well for it to be necessary to be punctually
+proving it to you; so, when I have nothing worth your knowing,
+I repose myself upon' the persuasion that you must have of my
+friendship.  But I will never let that grow into any
+negligence, I should say, idleness, which is always mighty
+ready to argue me out of every thing I ought to do; and
+letter-writing is one of the first duties that the very best
+people let perish out of their rubric.  Indeed, I pride myself
+extremely in having been so good a correspondent; for, besides
+that every day grows to make one hate writing, more, it is
+difficult, you must own, to keep up a correspondence of this
+sort with any spirit, when long absence makes one entirely out
+of all the little circumstances of each other's society, and
+which are the soul of letters.  We are forced to deal only in
+great events, like historians; and, instead of being Horace
+Mann and Horace Walpole, seem to correspond as Guicciardin and
+Clarendon would:
+
+Discedo Alceus puncto Illius; ille meo quis!
+Quis nisi Callimachus?
+
+Apropos to writing histories and Guicciardin; I wish to God,
+Boccalini was living! never was such an opportunity for
+Apollo's playing off a set of looks, as there is now! The good
+city of London, who, from long dictating to the government,
+are now come to preside over taste and letters, have given one
+Carte,(954) a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a-year, for seven
+years, to write the history of England; and four aldermen and
+six common councilmen are to .inspect his materials and the
+progress of the work.  Surveyors and common sewers turned
+supervisors of literature! To be sure, they think a history of
+England is no more than Stowe's Survey of the Parishes!
+Instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an
+university, they Will be printed, as churches are whitewashed,
+John Smith and Thomas Johnson, churchwardens.
+
+But, brother historian, you will wonder I should have nothing
+to communicate, when all Europe is bursting with events, and
+every day "big with the fate of Cato and of Rome."  But so it
+is; I know nothing; Prince Charles's great passage of the
+Rhine has hitherto produced nothing, more: indeed, the French
+armies are moving towards him from Flanders; and they tell us,
+ours is crossing the Scheldt to attack the Count de Saxe, now
+that we arc equal to him, from our reinforcement and his
+diminutions.  In the mean time, as I am at least one of the
+principal heroes of my own politics, being secure of any
+invasion, I am going to leave all my lares, that is, all my
+antiquities, household gods and pagods, and take a journey
+into Siberia for six weeks, where my father's grace of
+Courland has been for some time.
+
+Lord Middlesex is going to be married to Miss Boyle,(955) Lady
+Shannon's daughter; she has thirty thousand pounds, and may
+have as much more, if her mother, who is a plain widow, don't
+happen to Nugentize.(956)  The girl is low and ugly, but a
+vast scholar.
+
+Young Churchill has got a daughter by the Frasi;(957) Mr.
+Winnington calls it the opera-comique ; the mother is an opera
+girl; the grandmother was Mrs.  Oldfield.
+
+I must tell you of a very extraordinary print, which my Lady
+Burlington gives away, of her daughter Euston, -with this
+inscription:
+
+Lady Dorothy Boyle,
+Once the pride, the joy, the -comfort of her parents,
+The admiration of all that saw her,
+The delight of all that knew her.
+Born May 14, 1724, married alas! Oct. 10, 1741, an
+delivered from extremest misery May 2, 1742.
+
+This print was taken from a picture drawn by memory seven
+weeks after her death, by her most afflicted mother;
+DOROTHY BURLINGTON.(958)
+
+I am forced to begin a new sheet, lest you should think my
+letter came from my Lady Burlington, as it ends so patly with
+her name.  But is it not a most melancholy way of venting
+oneself? She has drawn numbers of these pictures: I don't
+approve her having them engraved; but sure the
+inscription(959) is pretty.
+
+I was accosted the other night by 'a little, pert petit-maitre
+figure, that claimed me for acquaintance.  Do you remember to
+have seen at Florence an Abb`e Durazzo, of Genoa? well, this
+was he: it is mighty dapper and French: however, I will be
+civil to it: I never lose opportunities of paving myself an
+agreeable passage back to Florence.  My dear Chutes, stay for
+me: I think the first gale of peace will carry me to you.  Are
+you as fond of Florence as ever? of me you are not, I am sure,
+for you never write me a line.  You would be diverted with the
+grandeur of our old Florence beauty, Lady Carteret.  She
+dresses more extravagantly, and grows more short-sighted every
+day: she can't walk a step without leaning on one of her
+ancient daughters-in law.  Lord Tweedale and Lord Bathurst are
+her constant gentlemen-ushers.  She has not quite digested her
+resentment to Lincoln yet.  He was walking with her at
+Ranelagh the other night, and a Spanish refugee marquis,(960)
+who is of the Carteret court, but who, not being quite perfect
+in the carte du pais, told my lady, that Lord Lincoln had
+promised him to make a very good husband to Miss Pelham.  Lady
+Carteret, with an accent of energy, replied, "J'esp`ere qu'il
+tiendra sa promesse!" Here is a good epigram that has been
+made on her:
+
+"Her beauty, like the Scripture feast,
+To which the invited never came,
+Deprived of its intended guest,
+Was given to the old and lame."
+
+Adieu! here is company; I think I may be excused leaving off
+at the sixth side.
+
+(954) Thomas Carte, a laborious writer of history.  His
+principal works are, his Life of the Duke of Ormonde, in three
+volumes, folio, and his History of England, in four.  He
+                        died in 1754.-D. [The former, though
+ill-written, was considered by Dr. Johnson as a work of
+authority; and of the latter Dr. Warton remarks, "You may read
+Hume for his  eloquence, but Carte is the historian for
+facts."]
+
+(955) Grace Boyle, daughter and sole heiress of Richard,
+Viscount Shannon.  She became afterwards a favourite of
+Frederick, Prince of Wales, and died in 17 63.-D.
+
+(956) See ant`e, p. 205.  (Letter 48)
+
+(957 Prima donna at the opera.
+
+(958) This is an incorrect copy of the inscription on Lady
+Euston's picture given in a note at 329 of this volume.-D.
+(Letter 110, p. 328/9)
+
+(959) It is said to be Pope's.
+
+(960) The Marquis Tabernego.
+
+
+
+383 Letter 145
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 6, 1744.
+
+I don't tell you any thing about Prince Charles, for you must
+hear all his history as soon as we do: at least much sooner
+than it can come to the very north, and be despatched back to
+Italy.  There is nothing from Flanders: we advance and they
+retire-just as two months ago we retired and they advanced:
+but it is good to be leading up this part of the tune.  Lord
+Stair is going into Scotland: the King is grown wonderfully
+fond of him, since he has taken the resolution of that
+journey.  He said the other day, "I wish my Lord Stair was in
+Flanders! General Wade is a very able officer, but he is not
+alert."  I, in my private litany, am beseeching the Lord, that
+he may contract none of my Lord Stair's alertness.
+
+When I first wrote you word of la Ch`etardie's disgrace, I did
+not believe it; but you see it is now public.  What I like is,
+her Russian Majesty's making her amour keep exact pace with
+her public indignation.  She sent to demand her picture and
+other presents. "Other presents," to be sure, were
+billet-doux, bracelets woven of her own bristles-for I look
+upon the hair of a Muscovite Majesty in the light of the
+chairs which Gulliver made out of the combings of the Empress
+of Brobdignag's tresses: the stumps he made into very good
+large-tooth combs.  You know the present is a very Amazon. she
+has grappled with all her own grenadiers.  I should like to
+see their loves woven into a French opera: La Ch`etardie's
+character is quite adapted to the civil discord of their
+stage: and then a northern heroine to reproach him in their
+outrageous quavers, would make a most delightful crash of
+sentiment, impertinence, gallantry, contempt, and screaming.
+The first opera that I saw at Paris, I could not believe was
+in earnest, but thought they had carried me to the
+op`era-comique.  The three acts of the piece(961) were three
+several interludes, of the Loves of Antony and Cleopatra, of
+Alcibiades and the Queen of Sparta, and of Tibuilus with a
+niece of Macenas; besides something of Circe, who was screamed
+by a Mademoiselle Hermans, seven feet high.  She was in
+black, with a nosegay of black (for on the French stage they
+pique themselves on propriety,) and without powder: whenever
+you are a widow, are in distress, or are a witch, you are to
+leave off powder.
+
+I have no news for you, and am going to have less, for I a)n
+going into Norfolk.  I have stayed till I have not one
+acquaintance left: the next billow washes me last off the
+plank.  I have not cared to stir, for fear of news from
+Flanders; but I have convinced myself that there will be
+none.  Our army is much superior to the Count de Saxe;
+besides, they have ten large towns to garrison, which will
+reduce their army to nothing; or they must leave us the towns
+to walk into coolly.
+
+I have received yours of July 21.  Did neither I nor your
+brother tell you, that we had received the Neapolitan
+snuff-box?(962)  it is above a month ago: how could I be so
+forgetful? but I have never heard one word of the cases, nor
+of Lord Conway's guns, nor Lord Hartington's melon-seeds, all
+which you mention to have sent.  Lestock has long been
+arrived, so to be sure the cases never came with him: I hope
+Matthews will discover them.  Pray thank Dr. Cocchi very
+particularly for his book.
+
+I am very sorry too for your father's removal; it was not done
+in the most obliging manner by Mr. Winnington; there was
+something exactly like a breach of promise in it to my father,
+which was tried to be softened by a civil alternative, that
+was no alternative at all.  He was forced to it by my Lady
+Townshend, who has an implacable aversion to all my father's
+people; and not having less to Mr. Pelham's, she has been as
+brusque with Winnington about them.  He has no principles
+himself, and those no principles of his are governed
+absolutely by hers, which are no-issimes.
+
+I don't know any of your English.  I should delight in your
+Vauxhall-ets: what a figure my Grifona must make in such a
+romantic scene!  I have lately been reading the poems of the
+Earl of Surrey,(963) in Henry the Eighth's time; he was in
+love with the fair Geraldine of Florence; I have a mind to
+write under the Grifona's picture these two lines from one of
+his sonnets:
+
+"From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race,
+Fair Florence was some time her auncient seat."
+
+And then these:
+
+"Her beauty of kinde, her vertue from above;
+Happy is he that can obtaine her love!"
+
+
+I don't know what of kinde means, but to be sure it was
+something prodigiously expressive and gallant in those days,
+by its being unintelligible now.  Adieu! Do the Chutes
+cicisb`e it?
+
+(961) I think it was the ballet de la paix.
+
+(962) It was for a present to Mr. Stone, the Duke of
+Newcastle's secretary
+
+(963) Henry Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk.  Under a
+charge of high-treason, of which he was manifestly innocent,
+this noble soldier and accomplished poet was found guilty, and
+in 1547, in his thirty-first year, was beheaded on Tower Hill.
+History is silent as to the name of fair Geraldine.-E.
+
+
+
+385 Letter 146
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+London, Aug. 16, 1744.
+
+I am writing to you two or three days beforehand, by way of
+settling my affairs-not that I am going to be married or to
+die; but something as bad as either if it were to last as
+long.  You will guess that it can only be going to Houghton;
+but I make as much an affair of that, as other people would of
+going to Jamaica.  Indeed I don't lay in store of cake and
+bandboxes, and citron-water, and cards, and cold meat, as
+country-women do after the session.  My packing-up and
+travelling concerns lie in very small compass; nothing but
+myself and Patapan, my footman, a cloak-bag, and a couple of
+books.  My old Tom is even reduced upon the article of my
+journey; he is at the Bath, patching together some very bad
+remains of a worn-out constitution.  I always travel without
+company; for then I take my own hours and my own humours,
+which I don't think the most tractable to shut up in a coach
+with any body else.  You know, St. Evremont's rule for
+conquering the passions, was to indulge them mine for keeping
+my temper in order, is never to leave it too long with another
+person.  I have found out that it will have its way, but I
+make it take its way by itself.  It is such sort of reflection
+as this, that makes me hate the country: it is impossible in
+one house with one set of company, to be always enough upon
+one's guard to make one's self agreeable, which one ought to
+do, as one always expects it from others.  If I had a house of
+my own in the country, and could live there now and then
+alone, or frequently changing my company, I am persuaded I
+should like it; at least, I fancy I should; for when one
+begins to reflect why one don't like the country, I believe
+one grows near liking to reflect in it.  I feel very often
+that I grow to correct twenty things in myself, as thinking
+them ridiculous at my age; and then with my spirit of whim and
+folly, I make myself believe that this is all prudence, and
+that I wish I were young enough to be as thoughtless and
+extravagant as I used to be. But if I know any thing of the
+matter, this is all flattering myself. I grow older, and love
+my follies less-if I did not, alas! poor prudence and
+reflection!
+
+I think I have pretty well exhausted the chapter of myself.  I
+will now go talk to YOU Of another fellow, who makes me look
+upon myself as a very perfect character; for as I have little
+merit naturally, and only pound a stray virtue now @ind then
+by chance, the other gentleman seems to have no vice, rather
+no villainy, but what he nurses in himself and metliodizes
+with as much pains as a stoic would patience.  Indeed his
+pains are not thrown away.  This painstaking person's name is
+Frederic, King of Prussia.  Pray remember for the future never
+to speak of him and H. W. without giving the latter the
+preference.  Last week we were all alarm!  He was before
+Prague with fifty thousand men, and not a man in Bohemia to
+ask him, "What dost thou?"  This week we have raised a hundred
+thousand Hungarians, besides vast militias and loyal
+nobilities.  The King of Poland is to attack him on his march,
+and the Russians to fall on Prussia.(964)  In the mean time,
+his letter or address to the people of England(965) has been
+published here: it is a poor performance!  His Voltaires and
+his litterati should correct his works before they are
+printed.  A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now
+and then, does not misbecome a monarch; but to pen manifestoes
+worse than the lowest commis that is kept jointly by two or
+three margraves, is insufferable!
+
+We are very strong in Flanders, but still expect to do nothing
+this campaign.  The French are so entrenched, that it is
+impossible to attack them.  There is talk of besieging
+Maubeuge; I don't know how certainly.
+
+Lord Middlesex's match is determined, and the writings signed.
+She proves an immense fortune; they pretend a hundred and
+thirty thousand pounds-what a fund for making operas!
+
+My Lady Carteret is going to Tunbridge--there is a hurry for a
+son: his only one is gone mad: about a fortnight ago he was at
+the Duke of Bedford's, and as much in his few senses as ever.
+At five o'clock in the morning he waked the duke and duchess
+all bloody, and with the lappet of his coat held up full of
+ears: he had been in the stable and cropped all the horses! He
+is shut up.(966)  My lady is in the honeymoon of her grandeur:
+she lives in public places, whither she is escorted by the old
+beaux of her husband's court; fair white-wigged old gallants,
+the Duke of Bolton,(967) Lord Tweedale, Lord Bathurst, and
+Charles Fielding;(968) and she all over knots, and small
+hoods, and ribands.  Her brother told me the other night,
+"Indeed I think my thister doesth countenanth Ranelagh too
+mutch."  They call Lord Pomfret, King Stanislaus, the queen's
+father.
+
+I heard an admirable dialogue, which has been written at the
+army on the battle of Dettingen, but one can't get a copy; I
+must tell you two or three strokes in it that I have heard.
+Pierot asks Harlequin, "Que donne-t'on aux g`en`eraux qui ne
+se sont pas trouv`es `a la bataille!"  Harl. "On leur donne le
+cordon rouge."  Pier. "Et que donne-t'on au g`en`eral en
+Chef(969 qui a gagn`e la victoire!"  Harl. "Son cong`e."
+Pier. "Qui a soin des bless`es?"  Harl. "L'ennemi."  Adieu!
+
+(964) This alludes to the King of Prussia's retreat from
+Prague, on the approach of the Austrian army commanded by
+Prince Charles Lorraine.-D.
+
+(965) In speaking of this address of the King of Prussia, Lady
+Hervey, in a letter of the 17th, says, "I think it very well
+and very artfully drawn for his purpose, and very
+impertinently embarrassing to our King.  He is certainly a
+very artful prince, and I cannot but think his projects and
+his ambition still more extensive, than people at present
+imagine them."-E.
+
+(66) On the death of his father this son succeeded to the
+earldom in 1763.  He died in 1776, when the title became
+extinct.-E.
+
+(967) Charles Poulett, third Duke of Bolton.
+
+(968) The Hon, Charles Fielding, third son of William, third
+Earl of Denbigh; a lieutenant-colonel in the guards, and
+Gentleman-usher to Queen Caroline.  He died in 1765.-E.
+
+(969) Lord Stair.-D.
+
+
+
+387 Letter 147
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Sept. 1, 1744.
+
+I wish you joy of your victory at Velletri!(970)  I call it
+yours, for you are the great spring of all that war.  I intend
+to publish your life, with an Appendix, that shall contain all
+the letters to you from princes, cardinals, and great men of
+the time.  In speaking of Prince Lobkowitz's attempt to seize
+the King of Naples at Velletri, I shall say: "for the share
+our hero had in this great action, vide the Appendix, Card.
+Albani's letter, p. 14."  You shall no longer be the dear
+Miny, but Manone, the Great Man; you shall figure with the
+Great Pan, and the Great Patapan.  I wish you and your laurels
+and your operations were on the Rhine, in Piedmont, or in
+Bohemia; and then Prince Charles would not have repassed the
+first, nor the Prince of Conti advanced within three days of
+Turin, and the King of Prussia would already have been
+terrified from entering the last-all this lumping bad news
+came to counterbalance your Neapolitan triumphs.  Here is all
+the war to begin again! and perhaps next winter a second
+edition of Dunkirk.  We could not even have the King of France
+die, though he was so near it.  He was in a woful fright, and
+promised the Bishop of Soissons, that if he lived, he would
+have done with his women.(971)  A man with all these crowns on
+his head, and attaching and disturbing all those on the heads
+of other princes, who is the soul of all the havoc and ruin
+that has been and is to be spread through Europe in this war,
+haggling thus for his bloody life, and cheapening it at the
+price of a mistress or two! and this was the fellow that they
+fetched to the army to drive the brave Prince Charles beyond
+the Rhine again.  It is just Such another paltry mortal(972)
+that has fetched him back into Bohemia-I forget which of his
+battles(973) it was, that when his army had got the victory,
+they could not find the King: he had run away for a whole day
+without looking behind him.
+
+I thank you for the particulars of the action, and the list of
+the prisoners: among them is one Don Theodore Diamato Amor, a
+cavalier of so romantic a name, that my sister and Miss Leneve
+quite interest themselves in his captivity; and make their
+addresses to you, who, they hear, have such power with Prince
+Lobkowitz, to obtain his liberty.  If he has Spanish gallantry
+in any proportion to his name, he will immediately come to
+England, and vow himself their knight.
+
+Those verses I sent you on Mr. Pope, I assure you, were not
+mine; I transcribed them from the newspapers; from whence I
+must send you a very good epigram on Bishop Berkeley's
+tar-water:
+
+"Who dare deride what pious Cloyne has done?
+The Church shall rise and vindicate her son;
+She tells us, all her Bishops shepherds are-
+And shepherds heal their rotten sheep with tar."
+
+I am not at all surprised at my Lady Walpole's ill-humour to
+you about the messenger.  If the resentments of women did not
+draw them into little dirty spite, their hatred would be very
+dangerous; but they vent the leisure they have to do mischief
+in a thousand meannesses, which only serve to expose
+themselves.
+
+Adieu! I know nothing here but public politics, of which I
+have already talked to you, and which you hear as soon as I
+do.
+
+Thank dear Mr. Chute for his letter; I will answer it very
+soon; but in the country I am forced to let my pen lie fallow
+between letter and letter.
+
+
+(970) The Austrians had formed a scheme to surprise the
+Neapolitan King and general at Velletri, and their first
+column penetrated into the place, but reinforcements coming
+up, they were repulsed with considerable slaughter.-E.
+
+(971) On the 8th of August, Louis the Fifteenth was seized at
+Metz, on his march to Alsace, with a malignant putrid fever,
+which increased so rapidly, that, in a few days, his life was
+despaired of.  In his illness, he dismissed his reigning
+mistress, Madame de Chateauroux.-E.
+
+(972) The King of Prussia.
+
+(973) The battle of Molwitz.
+
+
+
+388 Letter 148
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+ Houghton, Oct. 6, 1744.
+
+My dearest Harry,
+My lord bids me tell you how much he is obliged to you for
+your letter, and hopes you will accept my answer for his.
+I'll tell you what, we shall both be obliged to you if you
+will inclose a magnifying-glass in your next letters; for your
+two last were in so diminutive a character, that we were
+forced to employ all Mrs. Leneve's spectacles, besides an
+ancient family reading-glass, with which my grandfather used
+to begin the psalm, to discover what you said to us.  Besides
+this, I have a piece of news for you: Sir Robert Walpole, when
+he was made Earl of Orford, left the ministry, and with it the
+palace in Downing-street; as numbers of people found out three
+years ago, who, not having your integrity, were quick in
+perceiving the change of his situation.  Your letter was full
+as honest as you; for, though directed to Downing-street, it
+would not, as other letters would have done, address itself to
+the present possessor.  Do but think if it had!  The smallness
+of the hand would have immediately struck my Lord Sandys with
+the idea of a plot; for what he could not read' at first
+sight, he would certainly have concluded must be cipher.
+
+I march next week towards London, and have already begun to
+send my heavy artillery before me, consisting of half-a-dozen
+books and part of my linen: my light-horse, commanded by
+Patapan, follows this day se'nnight.  A detachment of hussars
+surprised an old bitch fox yesterday morning, who had lost a
+leg in a former engagement; and then, having received advice
+of another litter being advanced as far as Darsingham, Lord
+Walpole commanded Captain Riley's horse, with a strong party
+of foxhounds, to overtake them; but on the approach of our
+troops the enemy stole off, and are now encamped at Sechford
+common, whither we every hour expect orders to pursue them.
+
+My dear Harry, this is all I have to tell you, and, to my
+great joy, which you must forgive me, is full as memorable as
+any part of the Flanders campaign.  I do not desire to have
+you engaged in the least more glory than you have been.  I
+should not love the remainder of you the least better for your
+having lost an arm or a leg, and have as full persuasion of
+your courage as if you had contributed to the slicing off
+twenty pair from French officers.  Thank God. you have sense
+enough to content yourself without being a hero! though I
+don't quite forget your expedition a hussar-hunting the
+beginning of this campaign.  Pray, no more of those jaunts.  I
+don't know any body you would oblige with a present of such
+game - for my part, a fragment of the oldest hussar on earth
+should never have a place in my museum-they are not antique
+enough; and for a live one, I must tell you, I like my raccoon
+infinitely better.
+
+Adieu! my dear Harry.  I long to see you, You will easily
+believe the thought I have of being particularly well with you
+is a vast addition to my impatience, though you know it is
+nothing new to me to be overjoyed at your return.  Yours ever.
+
+
+
+390 Letter 149
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Houghton, Oct. 6, 1744.
+
+Does decency insist upon one's writing within certain periods,
+when one has nothing to say? because, if she does, she is the
+most formal, ceremonious personage I know.  I shall not enter
+into a dispute with her, as my Lady Hervey did with the
+goddess of Indolence, or with the goddess of letter-writing, I
+forget which, in a long letter that she sent to the Duke of
+Bourbon; because I had rather write than have a dispute about
+it.  Besides, I am not at all used to converse with
+hierglyphic ladies.  But, I do assure you, it is merely to
+avoid scolding that I set about this letter: I don't mean your
+scolding, for you are all goodness to me; but my own scolding
+of myself-a correction I stand in great awe of, and which I am
+sure never to escape as often as I am to blame.  One can scold
+other people again, or smile and jog one's foot, and affect
+not to mind it; but those airs won't do with oneself; One
+always comes by the worst in a dispute with one's own
+conviction.
+
+Admiral Matthews sent me down hither your great packet: I am
+charmed with your prudence, and with the good sense of your
+orders for the Neapolitan expedition; I won't say your good
+nature, which is excessive for I think your tenderness of the
+little Queen(974) a little outree, especially as their
+apprehensions might have added great weight to your menaces.
+I would threaten like a corsair, though I would conquer with
+all the good-breeding of a Scipio.  I most devoutly wish you
+success; you are sure of having me most happy with any honour
+you acquire.  You have quite soared above all fear of
+Goldsworthy, and, I think, must appear of consequence to any
+ministry.  I am much obliged to you for the medal, and like
+the design: I shall preserve it as part of your works.
+
+I can't forgive what you say to me about the coffee-pot: one
+would really think that you looked upon me as an old woman
+that had left a legacy to be kept for her sake, and a curse to
+attend the parting with it.  My dear child, is it treating me
+justly to enter into the detail of your reasons? was it even
+necessary to say, ,I have changed your coffee-pot for some
+other plate?"
+
+I have nothing to tell you but that I go to town next week,
+and will then write you all I hear.  Adieu!
+
+(974) The Queen of Naples,-Maria of Saxony, wife of Charles
+the Third, King of Naples, and subsequently, on the death of
+his elder brother, King of Spain.  This alludes to the
+Austrian campaign in the Neapolitan territories, the attack on
+the town of Velletri, etc.-E.
+
+
+
+391 Letter 150
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct 19, 1744.
+
+I have received two or three letters from you since I wrote to
+you last, and all contribute to give me fears for your
+situation at Florence.  How absurdly all the Queen's ban
+haughtinesses are dictated to her by her ministers, or by her
+own Austriacity!  She lost all Silesia because she would not
+lose a small piece of it, and she is going to lose Tuscany for
+want of a neutrality, because she would not accept one for
+Naples, even after all prospect of conquering it was vanished.
+Every thing goes ill! the King of Sardinia beaten; and to-day
+we hear of Coni lost! You will see in the papers too, that the
+Victory, our finest ship, is lost, with Sir John Balchen and
+nine hundred men.(975)  The expense alone of the ship is
+computed at above two hundred thousand pounds.  We have
+nothing good but a flying report of a victory of Prince
+Charles over the Prussian, who, it 'Is said, has lost ten
+thousand men, and both his legs by a cannon-ball.  I have no
+notion of his losing them, but by breaking them in over-hurry
+to run away.  However, it comes from a Jew, who had the first
+news of the passage of the Rhine.(976)  But, my dear child,
+how will this comfort me, if you are not to remain in peace at
+Florence! I tremble as I write!
+
+Yesterday morning carried off those two old beldamss, Sarah of
+Marlborough and the (.countess Granville;(977) so now
+Uguccioni's(978) epithalamium must be new-tricked out in
+titles, for my Lady Carteret is Countess! Poor Bistino! I wish
+my Lady Pomfret may leave off her translation of Froissart to
+English the eight hundred and forty heroics! When I know the
+particulars of old Marlborough's will, you shall.
+
+My Lord Walpole has promised me a letter for young Gardiner;
+who, by the way, has pushed his fortune en vrai b`atard,
+without being so, for it never was pretended that he was my
+brother's - he protests he is not; but the youth has profited
+of his mother's gallantries.
+
+I have not seen Admiral Matthews yet, but I take him to be
+very mad. He walks in the Park with a cockade of three
+/colours: the Duke desired a gentleman to ask him the meaning,
+and all the answer he would give was, "The Treaty of Worms!
+the treaty of Worms!"  I design to see him, thank him for my
+packet, and inquire after the cases.
+
+it is a most terrible loss for his parents, Lord
+Beauchamp's(979) death: if they were out of the question, one
+could not be sorry for such a mortification to the pride of
+old Somerset.  He has written the most shocking letter
+imaginable to poor Lord Hertford, telling him that it is a
+judgment upon him for all his undutifulness, and that he must
+always look upon himself. as the cause of' his son's death.
+Lord Hertford is as good a man as lives, and has always been
+most unreasonably ill-used by that old tyrant.  The title of'
+Somerset will revert to Sir Edward Seymour, whose line has
+been most unjustly deprived of it from the first creation.
+  The Protector when only Earl of Hertford, married a great
+heiress, and had a Lord Beauchamp, who was about twenty when
+his mother died.  His father then married an Anne Stanhope,
+with whom he was In love, and not only procured an act of
+parliament to deprive Lord Beauchamp of' his honours and to
+settle the title of Somerset, which he was going to have, on
+the children of' this second match, but took from him even his
+mother's fortune.  From him descended Sir Edward Seymour, the
+Speaker, who, on King William's landing, when he said to him,
+"Sir Edward, I think you are of the Duke of Somerset's
+family!" replied, "No, Sir: he is of mine."
+
+Lord Lincoln was married last Tuesday, and Lord Middlesex will
+be very soon.  Have you heard the gentle manner of the French
+King's dismissing Madame de Chateauroux? In the very circle,
+the Bishop of Soissons(980) told her, that, as the scandal the
+King had given with her was public, his Majesty thought his
+repentance ought to be so too, and that he therefore forbade
+her the court; and then turning to the monarch, asked him if
+that was not his pleasure, who replied, Yes.  They have taken
+away her pension too, and turned out even laundresses that she
+had recommended for the future Dauphiness.  A-propos to the
+Chateauroux: there is a Hanoverian come over, who was so
+ingenuous as to tell Master Louis,(981) how like he is to M.
+Walmoden.  You conceive that "nous autres souvereins nous
+n'aimons pas qu'on se m`eprenne aux gens:" we don't love that
+our Fitzroys should be scandalized with any mortal
+resemblance.
+
+I must tell you a good piece of discretion of a Scotch
+soldier, whom Mr. Selwyn met on Bexley Heath walking back to
+the army.  He had met with a single glove at Higham, which had
+been left there last year in an inn by an officer now in
+Flanders: this the fellow was carrying in hopes of a little
+money; but, for fear he should lose the glove, wore it all the
+way.
+
+Thank you for General Braitwitz's deux potences.(982)  I hope
+that one of them, at least will rid us of the Prussian.
+Adieu! my dear child: all my wishes are employed about
+Florence.
+
+(975) The Victory, of a hundred and ten brass guns, was lost,
+between the 4th and 5th of October, near Alderney.-E.
+
+(976) This report proved to be without foundation.
+
+(977) Mother of John, Lord Carteret, who succeeded her in the
+title.
+
+(978) A Florentine, who had employed an abbe of his
+acquaintance to write an epithalamium on Lord Carteret's
+marriage, consisting of eight hundred and forty Latin lines.
+Sir H. Mann had given an account of the composition of this
+piece of literary flattery in one of his letters to
+Walpole.-D.
+
+(979) Only son of Algernon, Earl of Hertford, afterwards the
+last Duke of Somerset of that branch. [lord Beauchamp was
+seized with the smallpox at Bologna, and, after an illness of
+four days, died on the 11th of September; on which day he had
+completed his nineteenth year.]
+
+(980) Son of Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick.  This Bishop of
+Soissons, on the King being given over at Metz, prevailed on
+him to part with his mistress, the Duchess de Chateauroux; but
+the King soon recalled her, and confined the bishop to his
+diocese.
+
+(981) Son of King George II. by Madame Walmoden, created
+Countess of Yarmouth.
+
+(982) General Braitwitz, commander of the Queen of Hungary's
+troops in Tuscany, speaking of the two powers, his mistress
+and the King of Sardinia, instead of' saying "ces deux
+pouvoirs," said "ces deux potences."
+
+
+
+
+393 Letter 151
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 9, 1744.
+
+I find I must not wait any longer for news, if I intend to
+keep up our correspondence.  Nothing happens; nothing has
+since I wrote last, but Lord Middlesex's wedding;(983) which
+was over above a week before it was known.  I believe the
+bride told it then; for he and all his family are so silent,
+that they Would never have mentioned it: she might have popped
+out a child, before a single Sackville would have been at the
+expense of a syllable to justify her.
+
+Our old acquaintance, the Pomfrets, are not so reserved about
+their great matrimony: the new Lady Granville was at home the
+other night for the first time of her being mistress of the
+house.  I was invited, for I am in much favour with them all,
+but found myself extremely d`eplac`e: there was nothing but
+the Winchilseas and Baths, and the Gleanings of a party
+stuffed out into a faction, some foreign ministers, and the
+whole blood of Fermor.  My Lady Pomfret asked me if I
+corresponded still with the Grifona: "No," I said, "since I
+had been threatened with a regale of hams and Florence wine, I
+had dropped it."  My Lady Granville said, "You was afraid of
+being thought interested."--"Yes," said the queen-mother, with
+all the importance with which she used to blunder out pieces
+of heathen mythology, "I think it was very ministerial."
+Don't you think that the Minister word came in as awkwardly as
+I did into their room?  The Minister is most gracious to me;
+he has returned my visit, which, you know, IS never practised
+by that rank: I put it all down to my father's account, who is
+not likely to keep up the civility.
+
+You will see the particulars of old Marlborough's will in the
+Evening Posts of this week: it is as extravagant as one should
+have expected; but I delight in her begging that no part of
+the Duke of Marlborough's life may be written in verse by
+Glover and Mallet, to whom she gives five hundred pounds
+apiece for writing it in prose.(984)  There is a great deal of
+humour in the thought: to be sure the spirit of the dowager
+Leonidas(985) inspired her with it.
+
+All public affairs in agitation at present go well for us;
+Prince Charles in Bohemia, the raising of the siege of Coni,
+and probably of that of Fribourg, are very good circumstances.
+I shall be very tranquil this winter, if Tuscany does not come
+into play, or another scene of invasion.  In a fortnight meets
+the Parliament; nobody guesses what the turn of the Opposition
+will be.  Adieu! My love to the Chutes.  I hope you now and
+then make my other compliments: I never forget the Princess,
+nor (ware hams!) the Grifona.
+
+(983) The Earl of Middlesex married Grace, daughter and sole
+heiress of Lord Shannon.  On the death of his father in 1765,
+he succeeded, as second Duke of Dorset, and died without
+issue, in 1769.-E.
+
+(984) Glover, though in embarrassed circumstances at the time,
+renounced the legacy; Mallet accepted it, but never fulfilled
+the terms.-E.
+
+(985) Glover wrote a dull heroic poem on the action of
+Leonidas at Thermopylae.  ["Though far indeed from being a
+vivid or arresting picture of antiquity, Leonidas," says Mr.
+Campbell, "the local descriptions of Leonidas, its pure
+sentiments, and the classical images which it recalls, render
+it interesting, as the monument of an accomplished and amiable
+mind."]
+
+
+
+394 Letter 152
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 26, 1744.
+
+I have not prepared for you a great event, because it was
+really,
+ so unlikely to happen, that I was afraid of being the author
+of a mere political report; but, to keep you no longer in
+suspense, Lord Granville has resigned: that is the term
+"l'honn`ete fa`con de parler;" but, in few words, the truth of
+the history is, that the Duke of Newcastle (by the way, mind
+that the words I am going to use are not mine, but his
+Majesty's,) "being grown as jealous of Lord Granville(986) as
+he had been of Lord Orford, and wanting to be first minister
+himself, which, a puppy! how should he be?"  (autre phrase
+royale) and his brother being as susceptible of the noble
+passion of jealousy as he is, have long been conspiring to
+overturn the great lord.  Resolution and capacity were all
+they wanted to bring it about; for the imperiousness and
+universal contempt which their rival had for them, and for the
+rest of the ministry, and for the rest of the nation, had made
+almost all men his engines; and, indeed, he took no pains to
+make friends: his maxim was, "Give any man the Crown on his
+side, and he can defy every thing."  Winnington asked him, if
+that were true, how he came to be minister? About a fortnight
+ago, the whole cabinet-council, except Lord Bath, Lord
+Winchilsea, Lord Tweedale, the Duke of Bolton, and my good
+brother-in-law,(987) (the two last severally bribed with the
+promise of Ireland,) did venture to let the King know, that he
+must part with them or with Lord Granville.  The monarch does
+not love to be forced, and his son is full as angry.  Both
+tried to avoid the rupture.  My father was sent for, but
+excused himself from coming till last Thursday, and even then
+would not ,go to the King; and at last gave his opinion very
+unwillingly.  But on Saturday it was finally determined: Lord
+Granville resigned the seals, which are given back to my Lord
+President Harrington.  Lord Winchilsea quits too; but for all
+the rest of that connexion, they have agreed not to quit, but
+to be forced out: so Mr. Pelham must have a new struggle to
+remove every one.  He can't let them stay in; because, to
+secure his power, he must bring in Lord Chesterfield, Pitt,
+the chief patriots, and perhaps some Tories. The King has
+declared that my Lord Granville has his opinion and
+affection-the Prince warmly and openly espouses him.  Judge
+how agreeably the two brothers will enjoy their ministry!
+To-morrow the Parliament meets: all in suspense! every body
+will be staring at each other! I believe the war will still go
+on, but a little more Anglicized.  For my part, I behold all
+with great tranquillity; I cannot --be sorry for Lord
+Granville,-for he certainly sacrificed everything to please
+the King; I cannot be glad for the Pelhams, for they sacrifice
+every thing to their own jealousy and ambition.
+
+Who are mortified, are the fair Sophia and Queen Stanislaus.
+However, the daughter carries it off heroically: the very
+night of her fall she went to the Oratorio.  I talked to her
+much, and recollected all that had been said to me upon the
+like occasion three years ago: I succeeded, and am invited to
+her assembly next Tuesday.  Tell Uguccioni that she still
+keeps conversazioni, or he will hang himself.  She had no
+court, but an ugly sister and the fair old-fashioned Duke of
+Bolton.  It put me in mind of a scene in Harry VIII., where
+Queen Catherine appears after her divorce, with Patience her
+waiting-maid, and Griffith her gentleman-usher.
+
+My dear child, voil`a le monde! are you as great a philosopher
+about it as I am? You cannot imagine how I entertain myself,
+especially as all the ignorant flock hither, and conclude that
+my lord must be minister again.  Yesterday, three bishops came
+to do him homage; and who should be one of them but Dr.
+Thomas.(988) the only man mitred by Lord Granville! As I was
+not at all mortified with our fall, I am only diverted with
+this imaginary restoration.  They little think how incapable
+my lord is of business again.  He has this whole summer been
+troubled with bloody water upon the least motion; and to-day
+Ranby assured me, that he has a stone in his bladder, which he
+himself believed before: so now he must never use the least
+exercise, never go into a chariot again; and if ever to
+Houghton, in a litter.  Though this account will grieve you, I
+tell it you, that you may know what to expect; yet it is
+common for people to live many years in his situation.
+
+if you are not as detached from every thing as I am, you will
+wonder at my tranquillity, to be able to write such variety in
+the midst of hurricanes.  It costs me nothing; so I shall
+write on, and tell you an adventure of my own.  The town has
+been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage,
+very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even an
+affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms.
+Fleetwood, the master of Drury-Lane, has omitted nothing to
+support them, as they supported his house.  About ten days
+ago, he let into the pit great numbers of Bear-garden bruisers
+(that is the term), to knock down every body that hissed.  The
+pit rallied their forces, and drove them out: I was sitting
+very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this.  On a
+sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage
+filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs, to
+menace the audience.  This raised the greatest uproar; and
+among the rest, who flew 'into a passion, but your friend the
+philosopher.  In short, one of the actors, advancing to the
+front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had
+scarce begun to say, "Mr. Fleetwood--" when your friend, with
+a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, "He is
+an impudent rascal!"  The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the
+words.  Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was
+still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the
+consistence of a hero, One of the chief ringleaders of the
+riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his
+hat, said, "Mr.  Walpole, what would you please to have us do
+next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into
+which this apostrophe threw me.  I sank down into the box, and
+have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse.
+The next night, the uproar was repeated with greater violence,
+and nothing was heard but voices calling out, "Where's Mr. W.?
+where's Mr. W.?"  In short, the whole town has been
+entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the
+name of Wat Tyler; which, I believe, would have stuck by me,
+if this new episode of Lord Granville had not luckily
+interfered.
+
+We every minute expect news of the Mediterranean engagement
+for, besides your account, Birtles has written the same from
+Genoa.  We expect good news, too, from Prince Charles, who is
+driving the King of Prussia before him.  In the mean time, his
+wife the Archduchess is dead, which may be a signal loss to
+him.
+
+I forgot to tell you that, on Friday, Lord Charles Hay,(989)
+who has more of the parts of an Irishman than of a Scot, told
+my Lady Granville at the drawing-room, on her seeing so full a
+court, "that people were come out of curiosity."  The
+Speaker,(990) is the happiest of any man in these bustles: he
+says, "this Parliament has torn two favourite ministers from
+the throne."  His conclusion is, that the power of the
+Parliament will in the end be so great, that nobody can be
+minister but their own speaker.
+
+Winnington says my Lord Chesterfield and Pitt will have places
+before old Marlborough's legacy to them for being patriots is
+paid.  My compliments to the family of Suares on the
+Vittorina's marriage.  Adieu!
+
+(986) By the death of his mother, Lord Carteret had become
+Earl Granville.-E.
+
+(987) George, Earl Cholmondeley.
+
+(988) Bishop of Lincoln [successively translated to Salisbury
+and Winchester.  He died in 1781.]
+
+(989) Brother of Lord Tweedale.
+
+(990) Arthur Onslow.
+
+
+
+397 Letter 153
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec.  '24, 1744.
+
+You will wonder what has become of me: nothing has.  I know it
+is above three weeks since I wrote to you; but I will tell you
+the reason.  I have kept a parliamentary silence, which I must
+'explain to you.  Ever since Lord Granville went out, all has
+been in suspense. The leaders of the Opposition immediately
+imposed silence upon their party; every thing passed without
+the least debate--in short, all were making their bargains.
+One has heard of the corruption of courtiers; but believe me,
+the impudent prostitution of patriots, going to market with
+their honesty, beats it to nothing.  Do but think of two
+hundred men of the most consummate virtue, setting themselves
+to sale for three weeks!  I have been reprimanded by the wise
+for saying that they all stood like servants at a country
+statute fair to be hired.  All this while nothing was certain:
+one day the coalition was settled; the next, the treaty broke
+off-I hated to write to you what I might contradict next post.
+Besides, in my last letter I remember telling you that the
+Archduchess was dead; she did not die till a fortnight
+afterwards.
+
+The result of the whole is this: the King, instigated by Lord
+Granville, has used all his ministry as ill as possible, and
+has with the greatest difficulty been brought to consent to
+the necessary changes.  Mr. Pelham has had as much difficulty
+to regulate the disposition of places.  Numbers of lists of
+the hungry have been given in by their centurions of those,
+several Tories have refused to accept the proffered posts
+some, from an impossibility of being rechosen for their
+Jacobite counties.  But upon the whole, it appears that their
+leaders have had very little influence with them; for not
+above four or five are come into place.  The rest will stick
+to Opposition.  Here is a list of the changes, as made last
+Saturday:
+
+Duke of Devonshire, Lord Steward, in the room of the Duke of
+Dorset.
+Duke of Dorset, Lord President, in Lord Harrington's room.
+Lord Chesterfield,+ Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in the Duke of
+Devonshire's.
+Duke of Bedford,+ Lord Sandwich,+ George Grenville,+ Lord Vere
+Beauclerc,(991) and Admiral Anson, Lords of the Admiralty, in
+the room of Lord Winchilsea,* Dr. Lee,* Cockburn,* Sir Charles
+Hardy,* and Philipson.*
+Mr. Arundel and George Lyttelton,f Lords of the Treasury, in
+the room of Compton* and Gybbon.*
+Lord Gowerf again Privy Seal, in Lord Cholmondeley's* room,
+who is made Vice-Treasurer of Ireland in Harry Vane's.*
+Mr. Doddington,+ Treasurer of the Navy, in Sir John
+Rushout's.*
+Mr. Waller,+ Cofferer, in Lord Sandys'.*
+Lord Hobart, Captain of the Pensioners, in Lord Bathurst's.*
+Sir John Cotton, +(992) Treasurer of the Chambers, in Lord
+Hobart'S.(993)
+Mr. Keene, Paymaster of the Pensions, in Mr. Hooper's.*
+Sir John Philippsf and John Pitt+ Commissioners of Trade, in
+Mr. Keene's and Sir Charles Gilmour's.*
+William Chetwynd,+ Master of the Mint, in Mr. Arundel's.
+Lord Halifax,+ Master of the Buck-hounds, in Mr. Jennison's,
+who has a pension.
+
+All those with a cross are from the Opposition; those with a
+star, the turned-out, and are of the Granville and Bath
+squadron, except Lord Cholmondeley, (who, too, had connected
+with the former,) and Mr. Philipson.  The King parted with
+great regret with Lord Cholmondeley, and complains loudly of
+the force put upon him.  The Prince, who is full as warm as
+his father for Lord Granville, has already turned out
+Lyttelton, who was his secretary, and Lord Halifax; and has
+named Mr. Drax and Lord Inchiquin(994) in their places.  You
+perceive the great Mr. William Pitt is not in the list, though
+he comes thoroughly into the measures.  To preserve his
+character and authority in the Parliament, he was unwilling to
+accept any thing yet: the ministry very rightly insisted that
+he should; he asked for secretary at war, knowing it would be
+refused-and it was.(995)
+
+By this short sketch, and it is impossible to be more
+explanatory, you will perceive that all is confusion: all
+parties broken to Pieces, and the whole Opposition by tens and
+by twenties selling themselves for profit-power they get none!
+It is not easy to say where power resides at present: it is
+plain that it resides not in the King; and yet he has enough
+to hinder any body else from having it.  His new governors
+have no interest with him-scarce any converse with him.
+
+The Pretender's son is owned in France as Prince of Wales; the
+princes of the blood have been to visit him in form.  The
+Duchess of Chateauroux is poisoned there; so their monarch is
+as ill-used as our most gracious King!(996)  How go your
+Tuscan affairs? I am always trembling for you, though I am
+laughing at every thing else.  My father is pretty well: he is
+taking a preparation of Mr. Stephens's(997) medicine; but I
+think all his physicians begin to agree that he has no large
+stone.
+
+Adieu! my dear child: I think the present comedy cannot be of
+long duration.  the Parliament is adjourned for the holidays;
+I am impatient to see the first division.
+
+(991) Lord Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St.
+Albans, afterwards created Lord Vere, of Hanworth.  He entered
+early into a maritime life, and distinguished himself in
+several commands, He died in 1781.-E.
+
+(992) The King was much displeased that an adherent of the
+exiled family should be forced into the service of his own. in
+consequence of this appointment a caricature was circulated,
+representing the ministers thrusting Sir John, who was
+extremely corpulent, down the King's throat.
+
+(993) John, first Lord Hobart, so created in 1728, by the
+interest of his sister, Lady Suffolk, the mistress of George
+the Second.  In 1746 he was created Earl of Buckinghamshire;
+and died in 1756.-D.
+
+(994) William O'Brien, fourth Earl of Inchiquin, in Ireland.
+He died in 1777.-E.
+
+(995) Pitt alone was placeless.  He loftily declared, that he
+would accept no office except that of secretary at war, and
+the ministers were not yet able to dispense with Sir William
+Yonge in that department.  This resolution of Pitt, joined to
+the King's pertinacity against him, excluded him, for the
+present, from any share in power."-Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p.
+315.
+
+(996) The Duchess died on the 8th of December.  The Biog.
+Univ. says, that the rumour of her having been poisoned was
+altogether without foundation.-E.
+
+(997) It was Dr. Jurin's preparation.
+
+
+
+399 Letter 154
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 4, 1745.
+
+When I receive your long letters I am ashamed: mine are notes
+in comparison.  How do you contrive to roll out your patience
+into two sheets? You certainly don't love me better than I do
+you; and yet if our loves were to b@ sold by the quire, you
+would have by far the more magnificent stock to dispose of.  I
+can only say that age has already an effect on the vigour of
+my pen; none on yours: it is not, I assure you, for you alone,
+but my ink is at low water-mark for all my acquaintance.  My
+present shame arises from a letter of eight sides, of December
+8th, which I received from you last post; but before I say a
+word to that, I must tell you that I have at last received the
+cases; three with gesse figures, and one with Lord Conway's
+gun- barrels: I thought there were to be four, besides the
+guns; but I quite forget, and did not even remember what they
+were to contain.  Am not I in your debt again? Tell me, for
+you know how careless I am.  Look over your list, and see
+whether I have received all.  There were four barrels, the
+Ganymede, the Sleeping Cupid, the model of my statue, the
+Musaeum Florentinum, and some seeds for your brother.  But
+alas! though I received them in gross, I did not at all in
+detail; the model was broken into ten thousand bits, and the
+Ganymede shorn in two: besides some of the fingers quite
+reduced to powder.  Rysbrach has undertaken to mend him.  The
+little Morpheus arrived quite whole, and is charmingly pretty;
+I like it better in plaster than in the original black marble.
+
+It is not being an upright senator to promise one's vote
+beforehand, especially in a money matter; but I believe so
+many excellent patriots have just done the same thing, that I
+shall venture readily to engage my promise to you, to get you
+any sum for the defence of Tuscany -why it is to defend you
+and my own country! my own palace in via di santo
+spirits,(998) my own Princess `epuis`ee, and all my family! I
+shall quite make interest for you: nay, I would speak to our
+new ally, and your old acquaintance, Lord Sandwich, to assist
+in it; but I could have no hope of getting at his ear, for he
+has put on such a first-rate tie-wig, on his admission to the
+admiralty board, that nothing without the lungs of a boatswain
+can ever think to penetrate the thickness of the curls.  I
+think, however, it does honour to the dignity of ministers:
+when he was but a patriot, his wig was not of half its present
+gravity.  There are no more changes made: all is quiet yet;
+but next Thursday the Parliament meets to decide the
+complexion of the session.  My Lord Chesterfield goes next
+week to Holland, and then returns for Ireland.
+
+The great present disturbance in politics is my Lady
+Granville's assembly; which I do assure you distresses the
+Pelhams infinitely more than a mysterious meeting of the
+States would, and far more than the abrupt breaking up of the
+Diet at Grodno.  She had begun to keep Tuesdays before her
+lord resigned, which now she continues with greater zeal.  Her
+house is very fine, she very handsome, her lord very agreeable
+and extraordinary; and yet the Duke of Newcastle wonders that
+people will go thither. He mentioned to my father my going
+there, who laughed at him; Cato's a proper person to trust
+with such a childish  jealousy!  Harry Fox says, "Let the Duke
+of Newcastle open his own house, and see if all that come
+thither are his friends."  The fashion now is to send cards to
+the women, and to declare that all men Are welcome without
+being asked.  This is a piece of ease that shocks the prudes
+of the last age.  You can't imagine how my Lady Granville
+shines in doing favours; you know she is made for it.  My lord
+has new furnished his mother's apartment for her, and has
+given her a magnificent set of dressing plate: he is very fond
+of her, and she as fond of his being so.
+
+You will have heard of Marshal Belleisle's being made a
+prisoner at Hanover: the world will believe it was not by
+accident.  He is sent for over hither: the first thought was
+to confine him to the Tower, but that is contrary to the
+politesse of modern war: they talk of sending him to
+Nottingham, where Tallard was.  I am sure, if he is prisoner
+at large anywhere, we could not have a worse inmate! so
+ambitious and intriguing a man, who was author of this whole
+war, will be no bad general to be ready to head the Jacobites
+on any insurrection.(999)
+
+I can say nothing more about young Gardiner, but that I don't
+think my father at all inclined now to have any letter written
+for him.  Adieu!
+
+(998) The street in Florence where Mr. Mann lived.
+(999) Belleisle and his brother, who had been sent by the King
+
+of France on a mission to the King of Prussia, were detained,
+while changing horses, at Elbengerode, and from thence
+conveyed to England; where, refusing to give their parole in
+the mode it was required, they were confined in Windsor
+Castle.
+
+
+
+
+400 Letter 155
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 14, 1745.
+
+I have given my uncle the letter from M. de Magnan; he had
+just received another from him at Venice, to desire his
+recommendation to you.  His history is, first,-the Regent
+picked him up, (I don't know from whence, but he is of the
+Greek church,) to teach the present Duke of Orleans the Russ
+tongue, when they had a scheme for marrying him into Muscovy.
+At Paris, Lord Waldegrave(1000) met with him, and sent him
+over hither, where they pensioned him and he was to be a spy,
+but made nothing out; till the King was weary of giving him
+money, and then they despatched him to Vienna, with a
+recommendation to Count d'Uhlefeldt, who, I suppose, has
+tacked him upon the Great Duke.  My uncle says, he knows no
+ill of him; that you may be civil to him, but not enter into
+correspondence with him, you need not; he is of no use.
+Apropos to you; I have been in a fright about you; we were
+told that Prince Lobkowitz was landed at Harwich; I did not
+like the name; and as he has been troublesome to you, I did
+not know but he might fancy he had some complaints against
+you.  I wondered you had never mentioned his being set out;
+but it is his son, a travelling boy of twenty; he is sent
+under the care of an apothecary and surgeon.
+
+The Parliament is met: one hears of the Tory Opposition
+continuing, but nothing has appeared; all is quiet.  Lord
+Chesterfield is set out for the Hague - I don't know what ear
+the States will lend to his embassy, when they hear with what
+difficulty the King was brought to give him a parting
+audience; and which, by a watch, did not last five-and-forty
+seconds.  The Granville faction are still the constant and
+only countenanced people at court.  Lord Winchilsea, one of
+the disgraced, played at court On Twelfth-night, and won: the
+King asked him the next morning, how much he had for his own
+share?(1001)  He replied, "Sir, about a quarter's salary."  I
+liked the spirit, and was talking to him Of it the next night
+at Lord Granville's: "Why, yes," said he, "I think it showed
+familiarity at least: tell it your father--I don't think he
+will dislike it." My Lady Granville gives a ball this week,
+but in a manner a private one, to the two families of Carteret
+and Fermor and their intimacies: there is a fourth sister,
+Lady Jullana,(1002) who is very handsome, but I think not so
+well as Sophia: the latter thinks herself breeding.
+
+I will tell you a very good thing: Lord Baltimore will not
+come into the admiralty, because in the new commission they
+give Lord Vere Beauclerc the precedence to him, and he has
+dispersed printed papers with precedents in his favour.  A
+gentleman, I don't know who, the other night at Tom's
+coffee-house, said, "It put him in mind of Ponkethman's
+petition in the Spectator, where he complains, that formerly
+he used to act second chair in Dioclesian, but now was reduced
+to dance fifth flowerpot."
+
+The Duke of Montagu has found out an old penny-history-book,
+called the Old Woman's Will of Ratcliffe-Highway, which he has
+bound up with his mother-in-law's, Old Marlborough,(1003)
+only-tearing away the title-page of the latter.
+
+My father has been extremely ill this week with his disorder--
+I think the physicians are more and more persuaded that it is
+the stone in his bladder.  He is taking a preparation of Mrs.
+Stevens's medicine, a receipt of one Dr. Jurin, which we began
+to fear was too violent for him: I made his doctor angry with
+me, by arguing on this medicine, which I never could
+comprehend.  it is of so great violence, that it Is to split a
+stone when it arrives at it, and yet it is to do no damage to
+all the tender intestines through which it must first
+pass.(1004)  I told him, I thought it was like an admiral
+going on a secret expedition of war, with instructions, which
+are not to be opened till he arrives in such a latitude.
+
+George Townshend,(1005) my lord's eldest son, who is at the
+Hague on his travels, has had an offer to raise a regiment for
+their service, of which he is to be colonel, with power of
+naming all his own officers.  It was proposed, that it should
+consist of Irish Roman Catholics, but the regency of Ireland
+have represented against that, because they think they will
+all desert to the French. He is now to try it of Scotch, which
+will scarce succeed, unless he will let all the officers be of
+the same nation.  An affair of this kind first raised the late
+Duke of Argyll; and was the cause of the first quarrel with
+the Duke of Marlborough, who was against his coming into our
+army in the same rank.
+
+Sir Thomas Hanmer has at last published his Shakspeare: he has
+made several alterations, but they will be the less talked of,
+as he has not marked in the text, margin, or notes, where or
+why he has made any change; but every body must be obliged to
+collate it with other editions.  One most curiously absurd
+alteration I have been told.  In Othello, it is said of
+Cassio, "a Florentine, one almost damned in a fair wife."  It
+happens that there is no other mention in the play of Cassio's
+wife.  Sir Thomas has altered it-how do you think?-no, I
+should be sorry if you could think how-"almost damned in a
+fair phiz!"-what a tragic word! and what sense!
+
+Adieu! I see advertised a translation of Dr. Cocchi's book on
+living on vegetables:(1006)  Does he know any thing of it? My
+service to him and every body.
+
+(1000) James, first Earl of Waldegrave, ambassador at Paris,
+K. G. He died in 1741.-D.
+
+(1001) Those who play at court on Twelfth-night, make a bank
+with several people.
+
+(1002) Lady Juliana Fermor, married in 1751 to Thomas Penn,
+Esq. (son of William Penn, the great legislator of the
+Quakers) one of the proprietors of Pennsylvania.  He died in
+1775, and Lady Juliana in 1781.-E.
+
+(1003) The Duchess of Marlborough's will was published in a
+thin octavo volume.-D.
+
+(1004) Mrs. Stephens's remedy for the stone made for some
+time, the greatest noise, and met both with medical
+approbation and national reward.  In 1742, Dr. James Parsons
+published a pamphlet on the subject, which Dr. Mead describes
+as @' a very useful book; in which both the mischiefs done by
+the medicine, and the artifices employed to bring it into
+vogue are set in a clear light."--E.
+
+(1005) Afterwards first Marquis Townshend, Lord Lieutenant of
+Ireland, Master General of the Ordnance. etc.
+
+(1006) The Doctor's treatise "Di Vitto Pythagorico," appeared
+this year in England, under the title of "The Pythagorean
+Diet; or Vegetables only conducive to the Preservation of
+Health and the Cure of Diseases."-E.
+
+
+
+
+402 letter 156
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 1, 1745.
+
+I am glad my letters, obscure as they of course must be, give
+you any light into England; but don't mind them too much; they
+may be partial; must be imperfect: don't negotiate upon their
+authority, but have Capello's(1007) example before your eyes!
+How I laugh when I see him important, and see my Lady
+Pomfret's letters at the bottom of his instructions! how it
+would make a philosopher smile at the vanity of politics! How
+it diverts me, who can entertain myself at the expense of
+philosophy, politics, or any thing else! Mr. Conway says I
+laugh at all serious characters-so I do-and at myself too, who
+am far from being of the number.  Who would not laugh at a
+world, where so ridiculous a creature as the Duke of Newcastle
+can overturn ministries! Don't take me for a partisan of Lord
+Granville's because I despise his rivals; I am not for
+adopting his measures; they were wild and dangerous -. in his
+single capacity, I think him a great genius(1008) and without
+having recourse to the Countess's translatable periods, am
+pleased with his company.  His frankness charms one when it is
+not necessary to depend upon it: and his contempt for fools is
+very flattering to any one who happens to know the present
+ministry.  Their coalition goes on as One should expect; they
+have the name of having effected it; and the Opposition is no
+longer mentioned: yet there is not a half-witted prater in the
+House but can divide with every new minister on his side,
+except Lyttelton, whenever he pleases.  They actually do every
+day bring in popular bills, and on the first tinkling of the
+brass, all the new bees swarm back to the Tory side of the
+House.  The other day, on the Flanders army, Mr. Pitt came
+down to prevent this: he was very ill, but made a very strong
+and much admired speech for coalition,(1009) which for that
+day succeeded, and the army was voted with but one negative,.
+But now the Emperor (1010) is dead, and every thing must wear
+a new face.  If it produces a peace, Mr. Pelham is a fortunate
+man!  He will do extremely well at the beginning of peace,
+like the man in Madame de la Fayette's Memoirs, Qui exer`coit
+extr`emement bien sa charge, quand il n'avoit rien `a faire."
+However, do you keep well with them, and be sure don't write
+me back any treason, in answer to all I write to you: you are
+to please them; I think of them -is they are.
+
+The new Elector(1011) seems to set out well for us, though
+there are accounts of his having taken the style of Archduke,
+as claiming the Austrian succession: if he has, it will be
+like the children's game of beat knaves out of doors, where
+you play the pack twenty times over; one gets pam, the other
+gets pam, but there is no conclusion to the game till one side
+has never a card left.
+
+After my ill success with the baronet,(1012) to whom I gave a
+letter for
+ you.  I shall always be very cautious how I recommend
+barbarians to your protection.  I have this morning been
+solicited for some credentials for a Mr. Oxenden.(1013)  I
+could not help laughing: he is a son of Sir George, my Lady
+W.'s famous lover! Can he want recommendations to Florence?
+However, I must give him a letter; but beg you will not give
+yourself any particular trouble about him, for I
+do not know him enough to bow to.  His person is good: that
+and his name, I suppose, will bespeak my lady's attentions,
+and save you the fatigue of doing him many honours.
+
+Thank Mr. Chute for his letter; I will answer it very soon.  I
+delight in the article of the Mantua Gazette.  Adieu!
+
+(1007) The Venetian ambassador.
+
+(1008) Swift, in speaking of Lord Granville, says, that "he
+carried away from college more Greek, Latin, and philosophy
+than properly became a person of his rank;" and Walpole, in
+his Memoires, describes him as "an extensive scholar, master
+of all classic criticism, and of all modern politics."-E.
+
+(1009) "Mr. Pitt, who had been laid up with the gout, came
+down with the mien and apparatus of an invalid, on purpose to
+make a full declaration of his sentiments on our present
+circumstances.  What he said was enforced with much grace both
+of action and elocution.  He commended the ministry for
+pursuing moderate and healing measures, and such -,is tended
+to set the King at the head of all his people." See Mr.- P.
+Yorke's MS. Parliamentary Journal.-E.
+
+(1010) Charles Vii.  Elector of Bavaria.
+
+(1011) Maximilian Joseph.  He died in 1777.-E.
+
+(1012) Sir William Maynard. (He married the daughter of Sir
+Cecil Bisshopp, and died in 1772.]
+
+(1013) Afterwards Sir Henry Oxenden, the sixth baronet of the
+family, and eldest son of Sir George Oxenden, for many years a
+lord of the treasury during the reign of George the Second.
+He died in 1803.-E.
+
+
+
+404 Letter 157
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 28, 1745.
+
+You have heard from your brother the reason of my not having
+written to you so long.  I have been out but twice since my
+father fell into this illness, which is now near a month; and
+all that time either continually in his room, or obliged to
+see multitudes of people; for it is most wonderful how every
+body of all kinds has affected to express their concern for
+him.  He has been out of danger above this week; but I can't
+say he mended at all perceptibly, till these last three days.
+His spirits are amazing, and his constitution more; for Dr.
+Hulse, said honestly from the first, that if he recovered, it
+would be from his own strength, not from their art.  After the
+four or five first days, in which they gave him the bark, they
+resigned him to the struggles of his own good temperament-and
+it has surmounted! surmounted an explosion and discharge of
+thirty-two pieces of stone, a constant and vast effusion of
+blood for five days, a fever of three weeks, a perpetual flux
+of water, and sixty-nine years, already (one should think)
+worn down with his vast fatigues! How much more he will ever
+recover, one scarce dare hope about: for us, he is greatly
+recovered; for himself-
+
+March 4th.
+
+I had written thus far last week, without being able to find a
+moment to finish.  In the midst of all my attendance on my
+lord and receiving visits, I am forced to go out and thank
+those that have come and sent; for his recovery is now at such
+a pause, that I fear it is in vain to expect much farther
+amendment.  How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession
+of the greatest understanding in the world, not the least
+impaired to lie without any use of it! for to keep him from
+pains and restlessness, he takes so much opiate, that he is
+scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty; but I -will
+say no more on this.
+
+Our coalition goes on thrivingly; but at the expense of the
+old Court, who are all discontented, and are likely soon to
+show their resentment.  The brothers have seen the best days
+of their ministry.  The Hanover troops dismissed to please the
+Opposition, and taken again with their consent, under the
+cloak of an additional subsidy to the Queen of Hungary, who is
+to pay them.  This has set the patriots in so villainous a
+light, that they will be ill able to support a minister who
+has thrown such an odium on the Whigs, after they had so
+stoutly supported that measure last year, and which, after all
+the clamour, is now universally adopted, as you see.  If my
+Lord Granville had any resentment, as he seems to have nothing
+but thirst, sure there is no vengeance he might not take! So
+far from contracting any prudence from his fall, he laughs it
+off every night over two or three bottles.  The countess is
+with child.  I believe she and the countess-mother have got
+it; for there is nothing ridiculous which they have not done
+and said about it.  There was a private masquerade lately at
+the Venetian ambassadress's for the Prince of Wales, who named
+the company, and expressly excepted my Lady Lincoln and others
+of the Pelham faction.  My Lady Granville came late, dressed
+like Imoinda, and handsomer than one of the houris - the
+Prince asked her why she would not dance? , Indeed, Sir, I was
+afraid I could not have come at all, for I had a fainting fit
+after dinner." The other night my Lady Townshend made a great
+ball on her son's coming of age: I went for a little while,
+little thinking of dancing.  I asked my Lord Granville, why my
+lady did not dance?  "Oh, Lord! I wish you would ask her: she
+will with you." I was caught, and did walk down one country
+dance with her; but the prudent Signora-madre would not let
+her expose the young Carteret any farther.
+
+You say, you expect much information about Belleisle, but
+there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least
+particular transpired.  He was at first kept magnificently
+close at Windsor; but the expense proving above one hundred
+pounds per day, they have taken his parole, and sent him to
+Nottingham, `a la Tallarde.  Pray, is De Sade with you still'?
+his brother has been taken too by the Austrians.
+
+My Lord Coke is going to be married to a Miss Shawe,(1014) of
+forty thousand pounds.  Lord Hartington(1015) is contracted to
+Lady Charlotte Boyle, the heiress of Burlington, and sister of
+the unhappy Lady Euston; but she is not yet old enough.  Earl
+Stanhope,(1016) too, has at last lifted up his eyes from
+Euclid, and directed them to matrimony.  He has chosen the
+eldest sister of your acquaintance Lord Haddington.  I revive
+about you and Tuscany.  I will tell you. what is thought to
+have reprieved you: it is much suspected that the King of
+Spain(1017) is dead.  I hope those superstitious people will
+pinch the queen, as they do witches, to make her loosen the
+charm that has kept the Prince of Asturias from having
+children.  At least this must turn out better than the death
+of the Emperor has.
+
+The Duke,(1018) you hear, is named generalissimo, with Count
+Koningseg, Lord Dunmore,(1019) and Ligonier,(1020) under him.
+Poor boy! he is most Brunswickly happy with his drums and
+trumpets.  Do but think that this sugar-plum was to tempt him
+to swallow that bolus the Princess of Denmark!(1021)  What
+will they do if they have children?  The late Queen never
+forgave the Duke of Richmond, for telling her that his
+children would take place before the Duke's grandchildren.
+
+I inclose you a pattern for a chair, which your brother
+desired me to send you.  I thank you extremely for the views
+of Florence; you can't imagine what wishes they have awakened.
+My best thanks to Dr. Cocci for his book: I have delivered all
+the copies as directed.  Mr. Chute will excuse me yet; the
+first moment I have time I will write.  I have: just received
+your letter of Feb. 16, and grieve for your disorder: you
+know, how much concern your ill health gives m.  Adieu! my
+dear child: I write with twenty people in the room.
+
+(1014) This marriage did not take place.  Lord Coke afterwards
+married Lady Campbell; and Miss Shawe, William, fifth Lord
+Byron, the immediate predecessor of the great poet.-E.
+
+(1015) In 1755 he succeeded his father as fourth Duke of
+Devonshire.  He died at Spa, in 1764; having filled at
+different times, the offices of lord lieutenant of Ireland,
+first lord of the treasury, and lord chamberlain of the
+household.  His marriage with Lady Charlotte Boyle took place
+in March 1748.-E.
+
+(1016) Philip, second Earl Stanhope.  See ant`e, p. 308.
+Letter 96.  He married, in July following, Lady Grizel
+Hamilton, daughter of Charles Lord Binning.-E.
+
+(1017) The imbecile and insane Philip V. He did not die till
+1746.  The Prince of Asturias was Ferdinand VI., who succeeded
+him, and died childless in 1759.-D.
+
+(1018) Of Cumberland.  He never married.-D.
+
+(1019) John Murray, second Earl of Dunmore: colonel of the
+third regiment of Scotch foot-guards.  He died in 1752-E.
+
+(1020) Sir John Ligonier a general of merit.  He was created
+Lord Ligonier in Ireland, in 1757, an English peer by the same
+title in 1763, and Earl Ligonier in 1766.  He died at the
+great age of ninety-one, in 1770.-D.
+
+(1021) The Princess was deformed and- ugly. "Having in vain
+remonstrated with the King against the marriage, the Duke sent
+his governor, mr. Poyntz, to consult Lord Orford how to avoid
+the match.  After reflecting a few moments, Orford advised
+'that the Duke should give his consent, on condition of his
+receiving an ample and immediate establishment; and believe
+me,' added he, 'that the match will be no longer pressed.'
+The Duke followed the advice, and the result fulfilled the
+prediction "' Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 321.-E.
+
+
+
+406 Letter 158
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 29, 1745.
+
+I begged your brother to tell you what it was impossible for
+me to tell you.(1023)  You share nearly in our common loss!
+Don't expect me to enter at all upon the subject.  After the
+melancholy two months, that I have passed, and in my
+situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which
+could not be bounded by a letter-a letter that would grow into
+a panegyric, or a piece of moral; improper for me to write
+upon, and too distressful for us both!-a death is only to be
+felt, never to be talked over by those it touches!
+
+I had yesterday your letter of three sheets - I began to
+flatter myself that the storm was blown over, but I tremble to
+think of the danger you are in! a danger, in which even the
+protection of the great friend you have lost could have been
+of no service to you.  How ridiculous it seems for me to renew
+protestations of my friendship for you, at an instant when my
+father is just dead, and the Spaniards just bursting into
+Tuscany! How empty a charm would my name have, when all my
+interest and significance are buried in my father's grave! All
+hopes of present peace, the only thing that could save you,
+seem vanished.  We expect every day to hear of the French
+declaration of war against Holland.  The new Elector of
+Bavaria is French, like his father; and the King of Spain is
+not dead.  I don't know how to talk to you.  I have not even a
+belief that the Spaniards will spare Tuscany.  My dear child
+what will become of you? whither will you retire till a peace
+restores you to your ministry? for upon that distant view
+alone I repose!
+
+We are every day nearer confusion.  The King is in as bad
+humour as a monarch can be; he wants to go abroad, and is
+detained by the Mediterranean affair; the inquiry into which
+was moved by a Major Selwyn, a dirty pensioner, half-turned
+patriot, by the Court being overstocked with votes.(1024)
+This inquiry takes up the whole time of the House of Commons,
+but I don't see what conclusion it can have. My confinement
+has kept me from being there, except the first day; and all I
+know of what is yet come out is, as it was stated by a Scotch
+member the other day, "that there had been one (Matthews) with
+a bad head, another, (Lestock) with a worse heart, and four
+(the captains of the inactive ships) with no heart at all."
+Among the numerous visits of form that I have received, one
+was from my Lord Sandys: as we two could only converse upon
+general topics, we fell upon this of the Mediterranean, and I
+made him allow, "that, to be sure, there is not so bad a court
+of justice in the world as the House of Commons; and how hard
+it is upon any man to have his cause tried there!"
+
+Sir Everard Falkner(1025) is made secretary to the Duke, who
+is not yet gone: I have got Mr. Conway to be one of his
+aide-de-camps.  Sir Everard has since been offered the
+joint-Postmastersh'ip, vacant by Sir John Iyles'S(1026) death;
+but he would not quit the Duke.  It was then proposed to the
+King to give it to the brother: it happened to be a cloudy
+day, and he, only answered, ,I know who Sir Everard is, but I
+don't know who Mr. Falkner is."
+
+The world expects some change when the Parliament rises.  My
+Lord Granville's physicians have ordered him to go to the Spa,
+as, you know, they often send ladies to the Bath who are very
+ill of a want of diversion.  It will scarce be possible for
+the present ministry to endure this jaunt.  Then they are
+losing many of their new allies: the new Duke of
+Beaufort,(1027) a most determined and unwavering Jacobite, has
+openly set himself at the head of that party, and forced them
+to vote against the Court, and to renounce my Lord Gower.  My
+wise cousin, Sir John Phillipps, has resigned his place; and
+it is believed that Sir John Cotton will soon resign but the
+Bedford, Pitt, Lyttelton, and that squadron, stick close to
+their places.  Pitt has lately resigned his bedchamber to the
+Prince, which, in friendship to Lyttelton, it was expected he
+would have done long ago.  They have chosen for this
+resignation a very apposite passage out of Cato:
+
+"He toss'd his arm aloft, and proudly told me
+He would not stay, and perish like Sempronius."
+
+This was Williams's.
+
+My Lord Coke's match is broken off, upon some coquetry of the
+lady with Mr. Mackenzie,(1028) at the Ridotto.  My Lord
+Leicester says, there shall not be a third lady in Norfolk of
+the species of the two fortunes(1029) that matched at Rainham
+and Houghton."  Pray, will the new Countess of Orford come to
+England?
+
+The town flocks to a new play of Thomson's, called Tancred and
+Sigismunda: it is very dull, I have read it.(1030)  I cannot
+bear modern poetry; these refiners of the purity of the stage,
+and of the incorrectness of English verse, are most
+-,,,wofully insipid.  I had rather have written the most
+absurd lines in Lee, than Leonidas or the Seasons; as I had
+rather be put into the round-house for a wrong-headed quarrel,
+than sup quietly at eight o'clock with my grandmother.  There
+is another of these tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside,(1031)  who
+writes Odes: in one he has lately published, he says, "Light
+the tapers, urge the fire." Had not you rather make gods
+jostle 'in the dark, than light the candles for fear they
+should break their heads? One Russel, a mimic, has a
+puppet-show to ridicule operas; I hear, very dull, not to
+mention its being twenty years too late: it consists of three
+acts, with foolish Italian songs burlesqued in Italian.
+
+There is a very good quarrel on foot between two duchesses;
+she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lennox(1032) to a
+ball: her Grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since
+Lady Caroline's elopement, sent word, "she could not
+determine." The other sent again the same night: the same
+answer.  The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up
+her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady
+Emily's; but at the bottom of the card wrote, "Too great a
+trust." You know how mad she is, and how capable of such a
+stroke.  There is no declaration of war come out from the
+other duchess; but, I believe it will be made a national
+quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal family.
+
+It is the present fashion to make conundrums: there are books
+of them printed, and produced at all assemblies: they are full
+silly enough to be made a fashion.  I will tell you the most
+renowned--"Why is my uncle Horace like two people
+conversing?-Because he is both teller and auditor."  This was
+Winnington's.
+
+Well, I had almost forgot to tell you a most extraordinary
+impertinence of your Florentine Marquis Riccardi.  About three
+weeks ago, I received a letter by Monsieur Wastier's footman
+from the marquis.  He tells me most cavalierly, that he has
+sent me seventy-seven antique gems to sell for him, by the way
+of Paris, not caring it should be known in Florence.  He will
+have them sold altogether, and the lowest price two thousand
+pistoles.  You know what no-acquaintance I had with him.  I
+shall be as frank as he, and not receive them.  If I did, they
+might be lost in sending back, and then I must pay his two
+thousand doppie di Spagna.  The refusing to receive them is
+Positively all the notice I shall take of it.
+
+I enclose what I think a fine piece on my father:(1033)  it
+was written by Mr. Ashton, whom you have often heard me
+mention as a particular friend.  You see how I try to make out
+a long letter, in return for your kind one, which yet gave me
+great pain by telling me of your fever.  My dearest Sir, it is
+terrible to have illness added to your other distresses! .
+
+I will take the first opportunity to send Dr. Cocchi his
+translated book; I have not yet seen it myself.
+
+Adieu! my dearest child! I write with a house full of
+relations, and must conclude.  Heaven preserve you and
+Tuscany.
+
+(1023) The death of Lord Orford. - He expired," says Coxe, "on
+the 18th of March, 1745, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.  His
+remains were interred in the parish church at Houghton,
+without monument or inscription-
+
+"So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
+Which once had honours, titles, wealth and fame!"-E.
+
+(1024) "February 26.-We had an unexpected motion from a very
+contemptible fellow, Major Selwyn, for an inquiry into the
+cause of the miscarriage of the fleet in the action off
+Toulon.  Mr. Pelham, perceiving that the inclination of the
+House was for an inquiry, acceded to the motion; but
+forewarned it of the temper, patience, and caution with which
+it should be pursued."-Mr. Yorke's MS.  Journal.-E.
+
+(1025) He had been ambassador at Constantinople.
+
+(1026) Sir John Eyles, Bart. an alderman of the city of
+London, and at one time member of parliament for the same.  He
+died March 11, 1745.-D.
+
+(1027) Charles Noel Somerset, fourth Duke of Beaufort,
+succeeded his elder brother Henry in the dukedom, February 14,
+1745.-D.
+
+(1028) The Hon.  James Stuart Mackenzie, second son of James,
+second Earl of Bute, and brother of John, Earl of Bute, the
+minister.  He married Lady Elizabeth Campbell, one of the
+daughters of John, the great Duke of Argyll, and died in
+1800.-D.
+
+(1029) Margaret Rolle, Countess of Orford, and Ethelreda
+Harrison, Viscountess Townshend.
+
+(1030) This was the most successful of all Thomson's plays;
+"but it may be doubted," says Dr. Johnson, " whether he was,
+either by the bent of nature or habits of study, much
+qualified for tragedy: it does not appear that he had much
+sense of the pathetic; and his diffusive and Descriptive style
+produced declamation rather than dialogue."-E.
+
+(1031) The author of "The Pleasures of the Imagination;" a
+poem of some merit, though now but little read.-D.
+
+(1032) Second daughter of Charles, Duke of Richmond.
+(Afterwards married to James Fitzgerald, first Duke of
+Leinster in Ireland.-D.)
+
+1033) It was printed in the public papers.
+
+
+
+410 Letter 159
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 15, 1745.
+
+By this time you have heard of my Lord's death: I fear it will
+have been a very great shock to you.  I hope your brother will
+write you all the particulars; for my part, you can't expect I
+should enter into the details of it.  His enemies pay him the
+compliment of saying, they do believe now that he did not
+plunder the public,, as he was accused (as they accused him)
+of doing, he having died in such circumstances." If he had no
+proofs of his honesty but this, I don't think this would be
+such indisputable authority: not having immense riches would
+be scanty evidence of his not having acquired them, there
+happening to be such a thing as spending them.  It is certain,
+he is dead very poor: his debts, with his legacies, which are
+trifling, amount to fifty thousand pounds.  His estate, a
+nominal eight thousand a-year, much mortgaged.  In short, his
+fondness for Houghton has endangered Houghton.  If he had not
+so overdone it, he -might have left such an estate to his
+family as might have secured the glory of the place for many
+years: another such debt must expose it to sale.  If he had
+lived, his unbounded generosity and contempt of money would
+have run him into vast difficulties.  However irreparable his
+personal loss may be to his friends, he certainly died
+critically well for himself: he had lived to stand the rudest
+trials with honour, to see his character universally cleared,
+his enemies brought to infamy for their ignorance or villainy,
+and the world allowing him to be the only man in England fit
+to be what he had been; and he died at a time when his age and
+infirmities prevented his again undertaking the support of a
+government, which engrossed his whole care, and which he
+foresaw was falling into the last confusion.  In this I hope
+his judgment failed! His fortune attended him to the last; for
+he died of the most painful of all distempers, with little or
+no pain.
+
+
+The House of Commons have at last finished their great affair,
+their inquiry into the Mediterranean miscarriage.  It was
+carried on with more decency and impartiality than ever was
+known in so tumultuous, popular, and partial a court.  I can't
+say it ended so; for the Tories, all but one single man, voted
+against Matthews, whom they have not forgiven for lately
+opposing one of their friends in Monmouthshire, and for
+carrying his election.  The greater part of the Whigs were for
+Lestock.  This last is a very great man: his cause, most
+unfriended, came before the House with all the odium that
+could be laid on a man standing in the light of having
+betrayed his country.  His merit, I mean his parts, prevailed,
+and have set him in a very advantageous point of view.  Harry
+Fox has gained the greatest honour by his assiduity and
+capacity in this affair.  Matthews remains in the light of a
+hot, brave, imperious, dull, confused fellow.  The question
+was to address the King to appoint a trial, by court-martial,
+of the two admirals and the four coward captains.  Matthews's
+friends were for leaving out his name, but, after a very long
+debate, were only 76 to 218.  It is generally supposed, that
+the two admirals will be acquitted and the captains hanged.
+By what I can make out, (for you know I have been confined,
+and could not attend the examination,) Lestock preferred his
+own safety to the glory of his country; I don't mean cowardly,
+for he is most unquestionably brave, but selfishly.  Having to
+do with a man who, he knew, would take the slightest
+opportunity to ruin him, if he in the least transgressed his
+orders, and knowing that man too dull to give right orders, he
+chose to stick to the letter, when, by neglecting it, he might
+have done the greatest service.
+
+We hear of great news from Bavaria, of that Elector being
+forced into a neutrality; but it IS not confirmed.
+
+Mr. Legge is made lord of the admiralty, and Mr. Philipson
+surveyor of the roads in his room.  This is all I know.  I
+look with anxiety every day into the Gazettes about Tuscany,
+but hitherto I find all is quiet.  My dear Sir, I tremble for
+you!
+
+
+I have been much desired to get you to send five gesse
+figures; the Venus, the Faun, the Mercury, the Cupid and
+Psyche, and the little Bacchus; you know the original is
+modern: if this is not to be had, then the Ganymede.  My dear
+child, I am sorry to give you this trouble; order any body to
+buy them, and to Send them from Leghorn by the first ship. let
+me have the bill, and bill of lading.  Adieu!
+
+
+
+411 Letter 160
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 29, 1745.
+
+When you wrote your last of the 6th of this month, you was
+still in hopes about my father.  I wish I had received your
+letters on his death, for it is most shocking to have all the
+thoughts opened again upon such a subject!-it is the great
+disadvantage of a distant correspondence.  There was a report
+here a fortnight ago of the new countess coming over.  She
+could not then have heard it.  Can she be so mad? Why should
+she suppose all her shame buried in my lord's grave? or does
+not she know, has she seen so little of the world, as not to
+be sensible that she will now return in a worse light than
+ever? A few malicious, who would have countenanced her to vex
+him, would now treat her like the rest of the world.  It is a
+private family affair; a husband, a mother, and a son, all
+party against her, all wounded by her conduct, would be too
+much to get over!
+ \\
+
+My dear child, you have nothing but misfortunes of your
+friends to lament.  You have new subject by the loss of poor
+Mr. Chute's brother.(1034)  It really is a great loss! he was
+a most rising man, and one of the best-natured and most honest
+that ever lived.  If it would not sound ridiculously, though,
+I assure you, I am far from feeling it lightly, I would tell
+you of poor Patapan's death - he died about ten days ago.
+
+This peace with the Elector of Bavaria may Produce a general
+one.  You have given great respite to my uneasiness, by
+telling me that Tuscany seems out of danger.  We have for
+these last three days been in great expectation of a battle.
+The French have invested Tournay; our army came up with them
+last Wednesday, and is certainly little inferior, and
+determined to attack them; but it is believed they are
+retired: we don't know who commands them; it is said, the Duc
+d'Harcourt.  Our good friend, the Count de Saxe, is
+dying(1036)-by Venus, not by Mars.  The King goes on Friday;
+this may make the young Duke(1036) more impatient to give
+battle, to have all the honour his own.
+
+There is no kind of news; the Parliament rises on Thursday,
+and every body is going out of town.  I shall only make short
+excursions in visits; you know I am not fond of the country,
+and have no call into it now!  My brother will not be at
+Houghton this year; he shuts it Up to enter on new, and there
+very unknown economy: he has much occasion for it!  Commend me
+to poor Mr. Chute!  Adieu!
+
+(1034) Francis Chute, a very eminent lawyer.
+
+(1035) The Marshal de Saxe- did not die till 1750.  He was,
+however, exceedingly ill at the time of the battle of
+Fontenoy.  Voltaire, in his "Si`ecle de Louis XV." mentions
+having met him at Paris just as he was setting out for the
+campaign.  Observing how unwell he seemed to b, he asked him
+whether he thought he had strength enough to go through the
+fatigues which awaited him.  To this the Marshal's reply was
+"il ne s'agit pas de vivre, mais de partir."-D.
+
+William, Duke of Cumberland.-D.
+
+
+
+412 Letter 161
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, May 11, 1745.
+
+I stayed till to-day, to be able to give you some account of
+the battle of Tournay:(1037) the outlines you will have heard
+already.  We don't allow it to be a victory on the French
+side: but that is, just as a woman is not called Mrs. till she
+is married, though she may have had half-a-dozen natural
+children.  In short, we remained upon the field  of battle
+three hours: I fear, too many of us remain there still!
+without palliating, it is certainly a heavy stroke.  We never
+lost near so many officers.  I pity the Duke, for it is almost
+the first battle of consequence that we ever lost.  By the
+letters arrived to-day we find that Tournay still holds out.
+There are certainly killed Sir James Campbell, General
+Ponsonby, Colonel Carpenter, Colonel Douglas, young Ross,
+Colonel Montagu, Geo, Berkeley, and Kellet.  Mr. Vanbrugh is
+since dead.  Most of the your),r men of quality in the Guards
+@ are wounded.  I have had the vast fortune to have nobody
+hurt, for whom I was in the least interested.  Mr. Conway, in
+particular, has highly distinguished himself; he ind Lord
+Petersham,' who is slightly wounded, are most commended;
+though none behaved ill but the Dutch horse.  There has been
+but very little consternation here: the King minded it so
+little, that being set out for Hanover, and blown back into
+Harwich-roads since the news came, he could not be persuaded
+to return, but sailed yesterday with the fair wind.  I believe
+you will have the Gazette sent Tonight; but lest it should not
+be printed time enough, here is a list of the numbers, as it
+came over this morning.
+
+British foot 1237 killed.
+Ditto horse 90 ditto.
+Ditto foot 1968 wounded.
+Ditto horse 232 ditto.
+Ditto foot 457 missing.
+Ditto horse 18 ditto.
+Hanoverian foot 432 killed.
+Ditto horse 78 ditto.
+Ditto foot 950 wounded.
+Ditto horse 192 ditto.
+Ditto horse and foot 53 missing.
+Dutch 625 killed and wounded.
+Ditto 1019 missing.
+
+So the whole hors de combat is above seven thousand three
+hundred.  The French own the loss of three thousand; I don't
+believe many more, for it was a most desperate and rash
+perseverance on our side. The Duke behaved very bravely and
+humanely;(1038) but this will not have advanced the peace.
+
+However coolly the Duke may have behaved, and coldly his
+father, at least his brother, has outdone both.  He not only
+went to the play the night the news came, but in two days made
+a ballad.  It is in imitation of the Regent's style, and has
+miscarried in nothing but the language, the thoughts, and the
+poetry.  Did I not tell you in my last that he was going to
+act Paris in Congreve's Masque? The song is addressed to the
+goddesses.
+
+1. Venez, mes ch`eres D`eesses,
+Venez calmer mon chagrin;
+Aidez, mes belles Princesses,'
+A le noyer dans le vin.
+Poussons cette douce Ivresse
+Jusqu'au milieu de la nuit,
+Et n'`ecoutons que la tendresse
+D'un charmant vis-a-vis.
+
+2. Quand le chagrin me d`evore,
+Vite `a table je me mets,
+Loin des objets que j'abhorre,
+Avec joie j'y trouve la paix.
+Peu d'amis, restes D'un naufrage
+Je rassemble autour de moi,
+Et je me ris de l'`etalage.
+Qu'a chez lui toujours on Roi.
+
+3. Que m'importe, que l'Europe
+Ait Un, ou plusieurs tyrans?
+Prions seulement Calliope,
+Qu'elle inspire nos vers, nos chants.
+Laissons Mars et toute la gloire;
+Livrons nous tous `a l'amour;
+Que Bacchus nous donne `a boire;
+A ces deux fasions la cour.
+
+4. Passons ainsi notre vie,
+Sans rover IL ce qui suit;
+Avec ma ch`ere Sylvie,(1039)
+Le tems trop Vite me fuit.
+Mais si, par Un malheur extr`eme,
+Je perdois cet objet charmant,
+Oui, cette compagnie m`eme
+Ne me tiendroit Un moment.
+
+5. me livrant `a ma tristesse,
+Toujours plein de mon chagrin,
+Je n'aurois plus d'all`egresse
+Pour mettre Bathurst(1040) en train:
+Ainsi pour vous tenir en joie
+Invoquez toujours les Dieux,
+Q Qu'elle vive et qu'elle soit
+Avec nous toujours heureuse!
+
+Adieu! I am in a great hurry.
+
+(1037) Since called the battle of Fontenoy.  (The Marshal de
+Saxe commanded the French army, and both Louis XV. and his son
+the Dauphin were present in the action.  The Duke of
+Cumberland commanded the British forces.-D.)
+
+(1037) William, Lord Petersham, eldest son of the Earl of
+Harrington.
+
+(1038) The Hon.  Philip Yorke, in a letter to Horace Walpole,
+the elder, of the following day, says,"the Duke's behaviour
+was, by all accounts, the most heroic and gallant imaginable:
+he was the whole day in the thickest of the fire.  His Royal
+Highness drew out a pistol upon an officer whom he saw running
+away."-E.
+
+(1038) Frederick, Prince of Wales.  The following song was
+written immediately after the battle of Fontenoy, and was
+addressed to Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady
+Middlesex, who were to act the three goddesses, with the
+Prince of Wales, in Congreve's Judgment of Paris, whom he was
+to represent, and Prince Lobkowitz, Mercury.-E.
+
+(1039) The Princess.
+
+(1040) Allen, Lord Bathurst.
+
+
+
+415 Letter 162
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, May 18, 1745.
+
+Dear George,
+I am very sorry to renew our correspondence upon so melancholy
+a circumstance, but when you have lost so near a friend as
+your brother,(1041) 'tis sure the duty of all your other
+friends to endeavour to alleviate your loss, and offer all the
+increase of affection that is possible to compensate it.  This
+I do most heartily; I wish I could most effectually.
+
+You will always find in me, dear Sir, the utmost inclination
+to be of service to you; and let me beg that you will remember
+your promise of writing to me.  As I am so much in town and in
+the world, I flatter myself with having generally something to
+tell you that may make my letters agreeable in the country:
+you, any where, make yours charming.
+
+Be so good to say any thing you think proper from me to your
+sisters, and believe me, dear George, yours most sincerely.
+
+(1041) Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Montagu, killed at the battle
+of Fontenoy.
+
+
+
+415 Letter 163
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, May 24, 1745.
+
+I have no consequences of the battle of Tournay to tell you
+but the taking of the town: the governor has eight days
+allowed him to consider whether he will give up the citadel.
+The French certainly lost more men than we did.  Our army is
+still at Lessines waiting for recruits from Holland and
+England; ours are sailed.  The King is at Hanover.  All the
+letters are full of the Duke's humanity and bravery: he will
+be as popular with the lower class of men as he has been for
+three or four years with the low women: he will be the
+soldier's Great Sir as well as theirs.  I am really glad; it
+will be of great service to the family, if any one of them
+come to make a figure.
+
+Lord Chesterfield is returned from Holland; you will see a
+most simple farewell speech of his in the papers.(1042)
+
+
+I have received yours of the 4th of May, and am extremely
+obliged to you for your expressions of kindness: they did not
+at all surprise me, but every instance of your friendship
+gives me pleasure.  I wish I could say the same to good prince
+Craon.  Yet I must set about answering his letter: it is quite
+an affair; I have so great a disuse of writing French, that I
+believe it will be very barbarous.
+
+My fears for Tuscany are again awakened: the wonderful march
+Which the Spanish Queen has made Monsieur de Gage take, may
+probably end in his turning short to the left; for his route
+to Genoa will be full as difficult as what he has already
+passed.  I watch eagerly every article from Italy, at a time
+when nobody will read a paragraph but from the army in
+Flanders.
+
+I am diverted with my Lady's(1043) account of the great riches
+that are now coming to her.  She has had so many foolish
+golden visions, that I should think even the Florentines would
+not be the dupes of any more.  As for her mourning, she may
+save it, if she expects to have it notified.  Don't you
+remember my Lady Pomfret's having a piece of economy of that
+sort, when she would not know that the Emperor was dead,
+because my Lord Chamberlain had not notified it to her.
+
+I have a good story to tell you of Lord Bath, whose name you
+have not heard very lately; have you? He owed a tradesman
+eight hundred pounds, and would never pay him: the man
+determined to persecute him till he did; and one morning
+followed him to Lord Winchilsea's, and sent up word that he
+wanted to speak with him.  Lord Bath came down, and said,
+"Fellow, what do you want with me'!"-"My money," said the man,
+as loud as ever he could bawl, before all the servants.  He
+bade him come the next morning, and then would not see him.
+The next Sunday the man followed him to church, and got into
+the next pew: he leaned over, and said, , "My money; give me
+my money!"  My lord went to the end of the pew; the man too:
+"Give me my money!"  The sermon was on avarice, and the text,
+"Cursed are they that heap up riches."  The man groaned out,
+"O lord!" and pointed to my Lord Bath.  In short, he persisted
+so much, and drew the eyes of all the congregation, that my
+Lord Bath went out and paid him directly.  I assure you this
+is a fact.  Adieu.
+
+(1042) " Have you Lord Chesterfield's speech on taking leave?
+It is quite calculated for the language it is wrote in, and
+makes but an indifferent figure in English.  The thoughts are
+common, and yet he strains hard to give them an air of
+novelty; and the quaintness of the expression is quite a la
+Fran`caise." The Hon.  P. Yorke to Horatio Walpole.-E.
+
+(1043) Lady Walpole, now become Countess of Orford.-D.
+
+
+
+416 Letter 164
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, May 25, 1745.
+
+Dear George,
+I don't write to you now so much to answer your letter as to
+promote your diversion, which I am as much obliged to you for
+consulting me about, at least as much as about an affair of
+honour, or your marriage, or any other important transaction;
+any one of which you might possibly dislike more than
+diverting yourself.  For my part, I shall give you my advice
+on this point with as much reflection as I should, if it were
+necessary for me, like a true friend, to counsel you to
+displease yourself.
+
+You propose making a visit at Englefield Green, and ask me, if
+I think it right? Extremely so.  I have heard it is a very
+pretty place.  You love a jaunt--have a pretty chaise, I
+believe, and, I dare swear, very easy; in all probability, you
+have a fine evening too ; and, added to all this, the
+gentleman you would go to see is very agreeable and good
+humoured.(1044)  He has some very Pretty children, and a
+sensible, learned man that lives with him, one Dr.
+Thirlby,(1045) whom, I believe you know.  The master of the
+house plays extremely well on the bass-viol, and has generally
+other musical people with him.  He knows a good deal of the
+private history of a late ministry; and, my dear George, you
+love memoires.  Indeed, as to personal acquaintance with any
+of the court beauties, I can't say you will find your account
+in him ; but, to make amends, he is perfectly master of all
+the quarrels that have been fashionably on foot about Handel,
+and can give you a very perfect account of all the modern
+rival painters.  In short, you may pass a very agreeable day
+with him; and if he does but take to you, as I can't doubt,
+who know you both, you will contract a great friendship with
+him, which he will preserve with the greatest warmth and
+partiality.
+
+In short, I can think of no reason in the world against your
+going there but one: do you know his youngest brother? If you
+to be so unlucky, I can't flatter you so far as to advise you
+to make him a visit; for there is nothing in the world the
+Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his
+brother.
+
+(1044) Mr. Walpole's brother, Sir Edward.  See Ant`e, p.189,
+letter 42.
+
+(1045) Styan Thirlby, fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge,
+published an edition of Justin Martyr, and, I think, wrote
+something against Middleton.  He communicated several notes to
+Theobald for his Shakspeare, and in the latter part of his
+life, took to study the common law.  He lived chiefly for his
+last years with Sir Edward Walpole, who had procured for him a
+small place in the Custom house, and to whom he left his
+papers: he had lost his intellects some time before his death.
+[He died a martyr to intemperance, in 1751, in his sixty-first
+year.  Mr. Nichols says, that, while in Sir Edward's houses,
+he kept a miscellaneous book of Memorables, containing
+whatever was said or done amiss by Sir Edward, or any part of
+his family.]
+
+
+
+417 Letter 165
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Arlington Street, May 27, 1745.
+
+My dear Harry,
+As gloriously as you have set out, yet I despair of seeing you
+a perfect hero! You have none of the charming violences that
+are so essential to that character.  You write as coolly,
+after behaving well in battle, as you fought in it.  Can your
+friends flatter themselves with seeing you, one day or other,
+be the death of thousands, when you wish for peace in three
+weeks after four first engagements and laugh at the ambition
+of those men who have given you this opportunity of
+distinguishing yourself? With the person of an Orondates, and
+the courage, you have all the compassion, the reason, and the
+'reflection of one that never read a romance.  Can one ever
+hope you will make a figure, when you only fight because it
+was right you should, and not because you hated the French or
+loved destroying mankind? This is so un-English, or so
+un-heroic, that I despair of you!
+
+Thank Heaven, you have one spice of madness! Your admiration
+of your master(1047) leaves me a glimmering of hope, that you
+will not be always so unreasonably reasonable.  Do you
+remember the humorous lieutenant, in one of Beaumont and
+Fletcher's plays, that is in love with the king? Indeed, your
+master is not behindhand with you; you seem to have agreed to
+puff one another.
+
+If you are acting up to the strictest rules of war and
+chivalry in Flanders, we are not less scrupulous on this side
+the water in fulfilling all the duties of the same order.  The
+day the young volunteer(1048 departed for the army (unluckily
+indeed, it was after the battle), his tender mother
+Sisygambis, and the beautiful Statira,(1049) a lady formerly
+known in your history by the name of Artemisia, from her
+cutting off her hair in your absence, were so afflicted and SO
+inseparable, that they made a party together to Mr.
+graham'S(1050) (you may read lapis if you please) to be
+blooded.  It was settled that this was a more precious way of
+expressing Concern than shaving the head, which has been known
+to be attended with false locks the next day.
+
+For the other princess you wot of, who is not entirely so tall
+as the former, nor so evidently descended from a line of
+monarchs--I don't hear her talk of retiring.  At present she
+is employed in buying up all the nose-gays in Covent Garden
+and laurel leaves at the pastry cooks, to where chaplets for
+the return of her hero.  Who that is I don't pretend to know
+or guess.  All I know is, that in this age retirement is not
+one of the fashionable expressions of passion.
+
+(1046) The battle of Fontenoy, where Mr. Conway greatly
+distinguished himself.
+
+
+(1047) The Duke of Cumberland, to whom Mr. Conway was
+aide-de-camp.
+
+(1048) George, afterwards Marquis Townshend.
+
+(1049) Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess Townshend, and her
+daughter, the Hon.  Audrey Townshend, afterwards married to
+Robert Orme, Esq.
+
+(1050) A celebrated apothecary in Pall-mall.
+
+
+
+418                 Letter 166
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+
+I have the pleasure of recommending you a new acquaintance,
+for which I am sure you will thank me.  Mr. Hobart(1051)
+proposes passing a little time at Florence, which I am sure
+you will endeavour to make as agreeable to him as possible.  I
+beg you will introduce him to all my friends, who, I don't
+doubt, will show him the same civilities that I received.
+Dear Sir, this will be a particular obligation to me, who am,
+etc.
+
+1051) Eldest son of John, Earl of Buckinghamshire, (The Hon.
+John Hobart, afterwards second Earl of Buckinghamshire, and
+lord Lieutenant of Ireland.-D.)
+
+
+
+419 Letter 167
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, June 24, 1745.
+
+I have been a fortnight in the country, and had ordered all my
+to be kept till I came to town, or I should have written to
+you sooner about my sister-countess.  She is not arrived yet,
+but is certainly coming: she has despatched several letters to
+notify her intentions: a short one to her mother, saying,
+"Dear Madam, as you have often desired me to return to
+England, I am determined to set out, and hope you will give me
+reasons to subscribe myself your most affectionate daughter."
+This "often desired me to return" has never been repeated
+since the first year of her going away.  The poor
+signora-madre is in a terrible fright, and will not come to
+town till her daughter is gone again, which all advices agree
+will be soon.  Another letter is to my Lady Townshend, telling
+her, "that, as she knows her ladyship's way of thinking, she
+does not fear the continuance of her friendship." Another, a
+long one, to my Lord Chesterfield; another to Lady Isabella
+Scot,(1052) an old friend of hers; and another to Lady
+Pomfret.  This last says, that she hears from guccioni, my
+Lady O. will stay here a very little time, having taken a
+house at Florence for three years.  She is to come to my Lady
+Denbigh.(1053)  My brother is extremely obliged to you for all
+your notices about her, though he is very indifferent about
+her motions.  If she happens to choose law (though on what
+foot no mortal can guess), he is prepared; having from the
+first hint of her journey, fee'd every one of the considerable
+lawyers.  In short, this jaunt is as simple as all the rest of
+her actions have been hardy.  Nobody wonders at her bringing
+no English servants with her-they know, and consequently might
+tell too much.
+
+I feel excessively for you, my dear child, on the loss of Mr.
+Chute!--so sensible and so good-natured a man would be a loss
+to any body; but to you, who are so meek and helpless, it is
+irreparable! who will dry you when you are very wet
+brown-paper?(1054)  Though I laugh, you know how much I pity
+you: you will want somebody to talk over English letters, and
+to conjecture with ),on; in short, I feel your distress in all
+its lights.
+
+The citadel of Tournay is gone;(1055) our affairs go ill.
+Charles of Lorrain(1056) has lost a great battle grossly! He
+was constantly drunk, and had no kind of intelligence.  Now he
+acts from his own head, his head turns out a very bad one.  I
+don't know, indeed, what they can say in defence of the great
+general to whom we have just given the garter, the Duke of
+Saxe Weissenfels; he is not of so serene a house but that he
+might have known something of the motions of the Prussians.
+Last night we heard that the Hungarian insurgents had cut to
+pieces two  Prussian regiments.  The King of Prussia and
+Prince Charles are so near, that we every day expect news of
+another battle.  We don't know yet what is to be the next step
+in Flanders.  Lord Cobham has got Churchill'S(1057) regiment,
+and Lord Dunmore his government of Plymouth.  At the Prince's
+court there is a great revolution; he, or rather Lord
+Granville, or perhaps the Princess, (who, I firmly believe, by
+all her quiet sense, will turn out a Caroline,) have at last
+got rid of Lady Archibald,(1058) who was strongly attached to
+the coalition.  They have civilly asked her, and Crossly
+forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done, with
+a pension of twelve hundred a-year.  Lady Middlesex,(1059) is
+mistress of the robes: she lives with them perpetually, and
+sits up till five in the morning at their suppers.  Don't
+mistake!-not for her person, which is wondrous plain and
+little: the town says it is for her friend Miss Granville, one
+of the maids of honour; but at least yet, that is only
+scandal.  She is a fair, red-haired girl, scarce pretty;
+daughter of the poet, Lord Lansdown.(1060)  Lady Berkeley is
+lady of the bedchamber, and Miss Lawson maid of honour.  Miss
+Neville, a charming beauty, and daughter of the pretty,
+unfortunate Lady Abergavenny,(1061) is named for the next
+vacancy.
+
+I was scarcely settled in my joy for the Spaniards having
+taken the opposite route to Tuscany, when I heard of Mr.
+Chute's leaving you.  I long to have no reason to be uneasy
+about you.  I am obliged to you for the gesse figures, and beg
+you will send me the bill in your first letter.  Rysbrach has
+perfectly mended the Ganymede and the model, which to me
+seemed irrecoverably smashed.
+
+I have just been giving a recommendatory letter for you to Mr.
+Hobart; he is a particular friend of mine, but is Norfolk, and
+in the world; so you will be civil to him. He is of the
+Damon-kind, and not one of whom you will make a Chute.  madame
+Suares may make something of him.  Adieu!
+
+(1052) Daughter of Anne, Countess of Buccleuch, and Duchess of
+Buccleuch and Monmouth, the wife of James, the unhappy Duke of
+Monmouth.  Lady Isabella Scott was the daughter of the duchess
+by her second husband, Charles, third Lord Cornwallis.  She
+died unmarried, Feb. 18, 1748.-D.
+
+(1053) Isabella de Jonghe, a Dutch lady, and wife of William
+Fielding, fifth Earl of Denbigh.  She died in 1769.-D.
+
+(1054) Mr. Mann was so thin and weak that Mr. Walpole used to
+compare him to wet brown-paper.
+
+(1055) The treachery of the principal engineer, who deserted
+to the enemy, and the timidity of other officers in the
+garrison, produced a surrender of the city in a fortnight, and
+Of the citadel in another week.-E.
+
+(1056) He was brother of Francis, at this time Grand Duke of
+Tuscany.  On the 3d of June, the King of Prussia had gained a
+signal victory over him at Friedberg.-E.
+
+(1057) General Churchill, or, as he was commonly called, "Old
+Charles Churchill," was just dead.-D.
+
+(1058) Lady Archibald Hamilton, daughter of Lord Abercorn, and
+wife of Lord Archibald Hamilton.
+
+(1059) Daughter of Lord Shannon, and wife of Charles, Earl of
+Middlesex, eldest son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset.  Her favour
+grew to be thought more than platonic.
+
+(1060) George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, one of Queen Ann,-'s
+twelve Tory Peers styled by Pope, who addressed his Windsor
+Forest to him, "the polite." He died in 1735.-E.
+
+(1061) Catherine Tatton, daughter of Lieutenant-General
+Tatton.  She married, first, Edward Neville-,, thirteenth Lord
+Abergavenny, who died without issue in his nineteenth year, in
+1724.  She remarried with his cousin and successor, William,
+fourteenth Lord Abergavenny, by whom she had issue, one son,
+George, afterwards fifteenth Lord Abergavenny, and one
+daughter, Catherine, who is mentioned above.  Lady Abergavenny
+herself died in childbed, Dec. 4, 1729, in less than one month
+after the detection of an intrigue between her and Richard
+Lyddel, Esq. against whom Lord Abergavenny brought an action
+for damages, and recovered five thousand pounds.  In a poem
+written on her death by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, she is
+praised for her gentleness, and pitied for her " cruel
+wrongs." Her husband is also called "that stern lord." All
+further details respecting her are, however, now unknown.-D.
+
+
+
+421 Letter 168
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, June 25, 1745.
+
+Dear George,
+I have been near three weeks in Essex, at Mr. Rigby's,(1062)
+and had left your direction behind me, and could not write to
+you.  It is the charmingest place by nature, and the most
+trumpery by art, that ever I saw.  The house stands on a high
+hill, on an arm of the sea, which winds itself before two
+sides of the house.  On the right and left, at the very foot
+of this hill, lie two towns; the one of market quality, and
+the other with a wharf where ships come up.  This last was to
+have a church, but by a lucky want of religion in the
+inhabitants, who would not contribute to building a steeple,
+it remains an absolute antique temple, with a portico on the
+very strand.  Cross this arm of the sea, you see six churches
+and charming woody hills in Suffolk.  All this parent Nature
+did for this place; but its godfathers and godmothers, I
+believe, promised it should renounce all the pomps and
+vanities of this world, for they have patched up a square
+house, full of windows, low rooms, and thin walls; piled up
+walls wherever there was a glimpse of prospect; planted
+avenues that go nowhere, and dug fishponds where there should
+be avenues.  We had very bad weather the whole time I was
+there! but however I rode about and sailed, not having the
+same apprehensions Of catching cold that Mrs.
+Kerwood had once at Chelsea, when I persuaded her not to go
+home by water, because it would be damp after rain.
+
+The town is not quite empty yet.  My Lady Fitzwatter, Lady
+Betty Germain,(1063) Lady Granville,(1064) and the dowager
+Strafford have their At-homes, and amass company.  Lady Brown
+has done with her Sundays, for she is changing her house into
+Upper Brook Street.  In the mean time, she goes to
+Knightbridge, and Sir Robert to the woman he keeps at
+Scarborough: Winnington goes on with the Frasi; so my lady
+Townshend is obliged only to lie of people.  You have heard of
+the disgrace of the Archibald, and that in future scandal she
+must only be ranked with the Lady Elizabeth Lucy and Madam
+Lucy Walters, instead of being historically noble among the
+Clevelands, Portsmouths, and Yarmouths.  It is said Miss
+Granville has the reversion of her coronet;
+ others say, she won't accept the patent.
+
+Your friend Jemmy Lumley,(1065)--beg pardon, I mean your kin,
+is not he? I am sure he is not your friend;--well, he has had
+an assembly, and he would write all the cards himself, and
+every one of them was to desire he's company and she's
+company, with other pieces of curious orthography.  Adieu,
+dear George!  I wish you a merry farm, as the children say at
+Vauxhall.  My compliments to your sisters.
+
+(1062) Mistley Hall, near Manningtree.
+
+(1063) Second daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and married to
+Sir John Germain.
+
+(1064) Daughter of rhomms, Earl of Pomfret.  She was Lord
+Granville's second wife.
+
+(1065) Seventh son of the first Earl of Scarborough.  He died
+in 1766, unmarried.-E.
+
+
+
+422 Letter 169
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Arlington Street, July 1, 1745.
+
+My dear harry,
+If it were not for that one slight inconvenience, that I
+should probably be dead now, I should have liked much better
+to have lived in the last war than in this; I mean as to the
+pleasantness of writing letters.  Two or three battles won,
+two or three towns taken, in a summer, were pretty objects to
+keep up the liveliness of a correspondence.  But now it hurts
+one's dignity to be talking of English and French armies, at
+the first period of our history in which the tables are
+turned.  After having learnt to spell out of the reigns of
+Edward the Third and Harry the Fifth, and begun lisping with
+Agincourt and Cressy, one uses one's self but awkwardly to the
+sounds of Tournay and Fontenoy.  I don't like foreseeing the
+time so near, when all the young orators in Parliament will be
+haranguing out of Demosthenes upon the imminent danger we are
+in from the overgrown power of King Philip.  As becoming as
+all that public spirit will be, which to be sure will now come
+forth, I can't but think we were at least as happy and as
+great when all the young Pitts and Lytteltons were pelting
+oratory at my father for rolling out a twenty years' peace,
+and not envying the trophies which he passed by every day in
+Westminster Hall.  But one must not repine; rather reflect on
+the glories which they have drove the nation headlong into.
+One must think all our distresses and dangers well laid out,
+when they have purchased us Glover'S(1066) Oration for the
+merchants, the Admiralty for the Duke of Bedford, and the
+reversion of Secretary at war for Pitt, which he will
+certainly have, unless the French King should happen to have
+the nomination; and then I fear, as much obliged as that court
+is to my Lord Cobham and his nephews, they would be so partial
+as to prefer some illiterate nephew of Cardinal Tencin's, who
+never heard of Leonidas or the Hanover troops.
+
+With all these reflections, as I love to make myself easy,
+especially politically, I comfort myself with what St.
+Evremond (a favourite philosopher of mine, for he thought what
+he liked, not liked what he thought) said in defence of
+Cardinal Mazarin, when he was reproached with neglecting the
+good of the kingdom that he might engross the riches of it:
+"Well, let him get all the riches, and then he will think of
+the good of the kingdom, for it will all be his own." Let the
+French but have England, and they won't want to conquer it.
+We may possibly contract the French spirit of being supremely
+content with the glory of our monarch, and then-why then it
+will be the first time we ever -were contented yet.  We hear
+of nothing but your retiring,(1067 and of Dutch treachery: in
+short, 'tis an holy scene!
+
+I know of no home news but the commencement of the gaming
+act,(1068) for which they are to put up a scutcheon at
+White's--for the death of play; and the death of Winnington's
+wife, which may be an unlucky event for my Lady Townshend.  As
+he has no children, he will certainly marry again; and who
+will give him their daughter, unless he breaks off that
+affair, which I believe he will now very willingly make a
+marriage article? We want him to take Lady -Charlotte Fermor.
+She was always his beauty, and has so many charming qualities,
+that she would make any body happy.  He will make a good
+husband; for he is excessively good-natured, and was much
+better to that strange wife than he cared to own.
+
+You wondered at my journey to Houghton; now -wonder more, for
+I am going to Mount Edgecumbe.  Now my summers are in my own
+hands, and I am not obliged to pass great part of them in
+Norfolk, I find it is not so very terrible to dispose of them
+up and down. In about three weeks I shall set out, and see
+Wilton and Doddington's in my way.  Dear Harry, do but get a
+victory, and I will let off every cannon at Plymouth:
+reserving two, till I hear particularly that you have killed
+two more Frenchmen with your own hand.(1069) Lady Mary(1070)
+sends you her compliments; she is going to pass a week with
+Miss Townshend(1071) at Muffits; I don't think you will be
+forgot.  Your sister Anne has got a new distemper, which she
+says feels like something jumping in her.  You know my style
+on such an occasion, and may be sure I have not spared this
+distemper.  Adieu! Yours ever.
+
+(1066) The author of Leonidas.
+
+(1067) Mr. Conway was still with the army in Flanders.
+
+(1068) An act had recently passed to prevent excessive and
+deceitful gaming.-E.
+
+(1069) Alluding to Mr. Conway's having been engaged with two
+French grenadiers at once in the battle of Fontenoy.
+
+(1070) Lady Mary Walpole, youngest daughter of Sir R. Walpole,
+afterwards married to Charles Churchill, Esq.
+
+(1071) DAUGHTER of Charles Viscount Townshend, afterwards
+married to Edward Cornwallis, brother to Earl Cornwallis, and
+groom of the bedchamber to the King.
+
+
+
+424 Letter 170
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Strawberry Hill, July 5, 1745.
+
+All yesterday we were in the utmost consternation an express
+came the night before from Ostend with an account of the
+French army in Flanders having seized Ghent and Bruges, cut
+off a detachment of four thousand men, surrounded our army,
+who must be cut to pieces or surrender themselves prisoners,
+and that the Duke was gone to the Hague, but that the Dutch
+had signed a neutrality.  You will allow that here was ample
+subject for confusion!  To-day we are a little relieved, by
+finding that we have lost but five hundred men(1072) instead
+of four thousand, and that our army, which is inferior by half
+to theirs, is safe behind a river.  With this came the news of
+the Great Duke's victory over the Prince of Conti:(1073) he
+has killed fifteen thousand, and taken six thousand prisoners.
+Here is already a third great battle this summer! But Flanders
+is gone! The Dutch have given up all that could hinder the
+French from overrunning them, upon condition that the French
+should not overrun them.  Indeed, I cannot be so exasperated
+at the Dutch as it is the fashion to be; they have not forgot
+the peace of Utrecht, though we have.  Besides, how could they
+rely on any negotiation with a people whose politics alter so
+often as ours? Or why were we to fancy that my Lord
+Chesterfield's parts would have more weight than my uncle had,
+whom, ridiculous as he was, they had never known to take a
+trip to Avignon to confer with the Duke of Ormond?(1074)
+
+Our communication with the army is cut off through Flanders
+and we are in great pain for Ostend: the fortifications are
+all out of repair.  Upon Marshal Wade's reiterated
+remonstrances, we did cast thirty cannon and four mortars for
+it-and then the economic ministry would not send them. "What!
+fortify the Queen of Hungary's towns? there will be no end of
+that."  As if Ostend was of no more consequence to us, than
+Mons or Namur! Two more battalions are ordered over
+immediately; and the old pensioners of Chelsea College are to
+mount guard at home! Flourishing in a peace of twenty years,
+we were told that we were trampled upon by Spain and France.
+Haughty nations, like those, who can trample upon an enemy
+country, do not use to leave it in such wealth and happiness
+as we enjoyed; but when the Duke of Marlborough's old
+victorious veterans are dug out of their colleges and repose,
+to guard the King's palace, and to keep up the show of an army
+which we have buried in America, or in a manner lost in
+Flanders, we shall soon know the real feel of being trampled
+upon! In this crisis, you will hear often from me; for I will
+leave you in no anxious uncertainty from which I can free you.
+
+The Countess(1075) is at Hanover, and, we hear, extremely well
+received.  It is conjectured, and it is not impossible, that
+the Count may have procured for her some dirty dab of a
+negotiation about some 'acre of territory more for Hanover, in
+order to facilitate her reception.  She has been at Hesse
+Cassel, and fondled extremely Princess Mary'S(1076) children;
+just as you know she used to make a rout about the Pretender's
+boys.  My Lord Chesterfield laughs at her letter to him; and,
+what would anger her more than the neglect, ridicules the
+style and orthography.  Nothing promises well for her here.
+
+You told me you wished I would condole with Prince Craon on
+the death of his son:(1077) which son? and where was he
+killed?  You don't tell me, and I never heard.  Now it would
+be too late.  I should have been uneasy for Prince Beauvau,
+but that you say he is in Piedmont.
+
+Adieu! my dear child: we have much to wish! A little good
+fortune will not re-establish us.  I am in pain for your
+health from the great increase of your business.
+
+(1072 The French had been successful in a skirmish against the
+English army, at a place called Melle.  The consequence of
+this success was their obtaining the possession of Ghent.-D.
+
+(1073) The army of the Prince of Conti, posted near the Maine,
+had been so weakened by the detachments sent from it to
+reinforce the army in Flanders, that it was obliged to retreat
+before the Austrians.  This retrograde movement was effected
+with considerable loss, both of soldiers and baggage; but it
+does not appear that any decisive general engagement took
+place during the campaign between the French and Austrians.-D.
+
+(1074) ant`e, p. 195; Letter 45 (note 334).
+
+(1075) Lady Orford.
+
+(1076) Princess Mary of England, daughter of George the
+Second; married in 1740 to the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who
+treated her with great inhumanity.  She died in June, 1771.-E.
+
+(1077) The young Prince de Craon was killed at the head of his
+regiment at the battle of Fontenoy.-D.
+
+
+
+425 Letter 171
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 12, 1745.
+
+I am charmed with the sentiments that Mr. Chute expresses for
+you; but then you have lost him! Here is an answer to his
+letter; I send it unsealed, to avoid repealing what I have
+thought on our affairs.  Seal it and send it.  Its being open,
+prevented my saying half so much about you as I should have
+done.
+
+There is no more news - the Great Duke's victory, of which we
+heard so much last week, is come to nothing! So far from
+having defeated the Prince of Conti, it is not at all
+impossible but the Prince may wear the imperial coat of
+diamonds, though I am persuaded the care of that will be the
+chief concern of the Great Duke, (next to his own person,) in
+a battle.  Our army is retreated beyond Brussels; the French
+gather laurels, and towns, and prisoners, as one would a
+nosegay.  In the mean time you are bullying the King of
+Naples, in the person of the English fleet; and I think may
+possibly be doing so for two months after that very fleet
+belongs to the King of France; as astrologers tell one that we
+should see stars shine for I don't know how long after they
+were annihilated.  But I like your spirit; keep it up!
+Millamant, in the Way of the World, tells Mirabel, that she
+will be solicited to the very last; nay, and afterwards. He
+replies, "What! after the last?"
+
+I am in great pain about your arrears; it is a bad season for
+obtaining payment.  In the best times, they make a custom of
+paying foreign ministers Ill; which may be very politic, when
+they send men of too great fortunes abroad in order to lessen
+them: but, my dear child, God knows that is not your case!
+
+I have some extremely pretty dogs of King Charles's breed, if
+I knew how to convey them to you: indeed they are not
+Patapans.  I can't tell how they would like travelling into
+Italy, when there is a prospect of the rest of their race
+returning from thence: besides, you must certify me that none
+of them shall ever be married below themselves; for since the
+affair of Lady Caroline Fox, one durst not hazard the Duke of
+Richmond's resentment even about a dog and bitch of that
+breed.
+
+Lord Lempster(1078) is taken prisoner in the affair of the
+detachment to Ghent.  My lady,(1079) who has heard of Spartan
+mothers, (though you know she once asserted that nobody knew
+any thing of the Grecian Republics,) affects to bear it with a
+patriot insensibility.  She told me the other day that the
+Abb`e Niccolini and the eldest Pandolfini are coming to
+England: is it true? I shall be very Clad to be civil to them,
+especially to the latter, who, you know, was one of my
+friends.
+
+My Lady Orford is at Hanover, most Graciously received by "the
+Father of all his people!" In the papers of yesterday was this
+paragraph; "Lady O. who has spent several years in Italy,
+arrived here (Hanover) the 3d, on her return to England, and
+was Graciously received by his Majesty." Lady Denbigh is gone
+into the country so I don't know where she is to lodge-perhaps
+at St. James's, out of' regard to my father's memory.
+
+Trust me, you escaped well in Pigwiggin's(1079) not accepting
+your invitation of living with you: you must have aired your
+house, as Lady Pomfret was forced to air Lady Mary Wortley's
+bedchamber.  He has a most unfortunate breath: so has the
+Princess his sister.  When I was at their country-house, I
+used to sit in the library and turn over books of prints: out
+of good breeding they would not quit me; nay, would look over
+the prints with me.  A whiff would come from the east, and I
+turned short to the west, whence the Princess would puff me
+back with another gale full as richly perfumed as her
+brother's.  Adieu!
+
+(1078) George Fermor: who, on the death of his father in 1753,
+became second Earl of Pomfret.  He died in 1785.-E.
+
+(1079) Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, mother of Lord
+Lempster.
+
+(1080) A nickname given by Walpole to his cousin Horace,
+eldest son of "Old Horace Walpole," afterwards first Earl of
+Orford of the second creation.  He died in 1809, at the age of
+eighty-six.-E.
+
+
+
+427 Letter 172
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, July 13, 1745.
+
+Dear George,
+We are all Cabob'd and Cocofagoed, as my Lord Denbigh says.
+We, who formerly, you know, could any one of us beat three
+Frenchmen, are now so .degenerated, that three Frenchmen(1081)
+can evidently beat One Englishman.  Our army is running away,
+all that is left to run; for half of it is picked up by three
+or four hundred at a time. In short, we must step out of the
+high pantoufles that were made by those cunning shoemakers at
+Poitiers and Ramilies, and go clumping about perhaps in wooden
+ones.  My Lady Hervey, who you know dotes upon every thing
+French, is charmed with the hopes of these new shoes, and has
+already bespoke herself a pair of pigeon wood.  How did the
+tapestry at Blenheim look? Did it glow with victory, or did
+all our glories look overcast?
+
+I remember a very admired sentence in one of my Lord
+Chesterfield's speeches, when he was haranguing for this war;
+with a most rhetorical transition, he turned to the tapestry
+in the House of Lords,(1082) and said, with a sigh, he feared
+there were no historical looms at work now! Indeed, we have
+reason to bless the good patriots, who have been for employing
+our manufactures so historically.  The Countess of that wise
+Earl, with whose two expressive words I began this letter,
+says, she is very happy now that my lord had never a place
+upon the coalition, for then all this bad situation of our
+affairs would have been laid upon him.
+
+Now I have been talking of remarkable periods in our annals, I
+must tell you what my Lord Baltimore thinks one:--He said to
+the Prince t'other day, "Sir, your Royal Highness's marriage
+will be an area in English history."
+
+If it were not for the life that is put into the town now and
+then by very bad news from abroad, one should be quite
+stupefied.  There is nobody left but two or three solitary
+regents; and they are always whisking backwards and forwards
+to their villas; and about a dozen antediluvian dowagers,
+whose carcasses have miraculously resisted the wet, and who
+every Saturday compose a very reverend catacomb at my old Lady
+Strafford's.  She does not take money at the door for showing
+them, but 'you pay twelvepence apiece under the denomination
+of card-money.  Wit and beauty, indeed, remain in the persons
+of Lady Townshend and Lady Caroline Fitzroy; but such is the
+want of taste of this age, that the former is very often
+forced to wrap up her wit in plain English before it can be
+understood; and the latter is almost as often obliged to have
+recourse to the same artifices to make her charms be taken
+notice of.
+
+Of beauty, I can tell you an admirable story.  One Mrs.
+Comyns, an elderly gentlewoman, has lately taken a house in
+St. James's Street: some young gentlemen went there t'other
+night;--"Well, Mrs. Comyns, I hope there won't be the same
+disturbances here that were at your other house in Air
+Street."--"Lord, Sir, I never had any disturbances there: mine
+was as quiet a house as any in the neighbourhood, and a great
+deal of company came to me: it was only the ladies of quality
+that envied Me."--"Envied you! why, your house was pulled down
+about your ears."--"Oh, dear Sir! don't you know how that
+happened?"--"No; pray how?"--"Why, dear Sir, it was my Lady
+**** who gave ten guineas to the mob to demolish my house,
+because her ladyship fancied I got women for Colonel Conway."
+
+My dear George, don't you delight in this story? If poor
+Harry(1083) comes back from Flanders, I intend to have
+infinite fun with his prudery about this anecdote, which is
+full as good as if it was true.  I beg you will visit Mrs.
+Comyns when you come to town- she has infinite humour.
+
+(1081) Alluding to the success of the French army in Flanders,
+under the command of Mareschal Saxe.
+
+(1082) Representing the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588,
+and surrounded by portraits of the principal officers who
+commanded the fleet.  This noble suit of hangings was wrought
+in Holland, at the expense of the Earl of Nottingham, lord
+high admiral.-E.
+
+(1083) The Honourable Henry Seymour Conway.
+
+
+
+428 Letter 173
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+July 15, 1745.
+
+You will be surprised at another from me so soon, when I wrote
+to you but four days ago.  This is not with any news, but upon
+a private affair.  You have never said any thing to Me about
+the extraordinary procedure of Marquis Riccardi, of which I
+wrote you word.  Indeed, as his letter came just upon my
+father's death, I had forgot it too; so much so, that I have
+lost the catalogue which he sent me. Well, the other day I
+received his cargo.  Now, My dear child, I don't write to him
+upon it, because, as he Sent the things without asking my
+leave, I am determined never to acknowledge the receipt of
+them because I will in no manner be liable to pay for them if
+they are lost: which I think highly probable; and as I have
+lost the catalogue, I cannot tell whether I have received all
+or not.
+
+I beg you will just say what follows to him.  That I am
+extremely amazed he should think of employing me to sell his
+goods for him, especially without asking my consent, that an
+English gentleman, just come from France, has brought me a box
+of things, of which he himself had no account; nor is there
+any letter or catalogue with them; that I suppose they may be
+the Marquis's collection: I have lost the catalogue, and
+consequently cannot tell whether I have received all or not,
+nor whether they are his: that as they came in so blind a
+manner, and have been opened at several custom-houses, I will
+not be answerable especially having never given my consent to
+receive them, and having opened the box ignorantly, without
+knowing the contents: that when I did open it, I concluded it
+came from Florence, having often refused to buy most of the
+things, which had long lain upon the jeweller's hands on the
+old bridge, and which are very improper for sale here, as all
+the English for some years have seen them, and not thought
+them worth purchasing - that I remember in the catalogue the
+price for the whole was fixed at two thousand pistoles; that
+they are full as much worth two-and-twenty thousand; and that
+I have been laughed at by people to whom I have showed them
+for naming so extravagant a price: that nobody living would
+think of buying all together: that for myself, I have entirely
+left off making any collection; and if I had not, would not
+buy things dear now which I have formerly refused at much
+lower prices.  That, after all, though I cannot think myself
+at all well used by Marquis Riccardi, either in sending me the
+things, in the price he has fixed on them, or in the things
+themselves, which to my knowledge he has picked up from the
+shops on the old bridge, and were no family collection, yet,
+as I received so many civilities at Florence from the
+nobility, and in particular from his wife, Madame Riccardi, if
+he will let me do any thing that is practicable, I will sell
+what I can for him. That if he will send me A new and distinct
+catalogue, with the price of each piece, and a price
+considerably less than what he has set upon the whole, I will
+endeavour to dispose of what I can for him.  But as most of
+them are very indifferent, and the total value most
+unreasonable, I absolutely will not undertake the sale of them
+upon any other terms, but will pack them up, and send them
+away to Leghorn by the first ship that sails; for as we are at
+war with France, I cannot send them that way, nor will I
+trouble any gentleman to carry them, as he might think himself
+liable to make them good if they met with any accident; nor
+will I answer for them by whatever way they go, as I did not
+consent to receive them, nor am sure that I have received the
+Marquis's collection.
+
+My dear Sir, translate this very distinctly for him, for he
+never shall receive any other notice from me; nor will I give
+them up to Wasner or Pucci,(1084) or any body else, though he
+should send me an order for it; for nobody saw me open them,
+nor shall any body be able to say I had them, by receiving
+them from me.  In short, I think I cannot be too cautious in
+such a negotiation.  If a man will send Me things to the value
+of two thousand pistoles, whether they are really worth it or
+not, he shall take his chance for losing them, and shall
+certainly never come upon me for them.  He must absolutely
+take his choice, of selling them at a proper price and
+separately, or of having them directly sent back by sea; for
+whether he consents to either or not, I shall certainly
+proceed in my resolution about them
+the very instant I receive an answer from you; for the sooner
+I am clear of them the better.  If he will let me sell them
+without setting a price, he may depend upon my taking the best
+method for his service; though really, my dear child, it will
+be for my own honour, not for his sake, who has treated me so
+impertinently.  I am sorry to give you this trouble, but judge
+how much the fool gives me!  Adieu!
+
+(1084) Ministers of the Queen of Hungary and the Great Duke.
+
+
+
+
+430 Letter 174
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 26, 1745.
+
+It is a pain to me to write to you, when all I can tell you
+will but distress you.  How much I wish myself with you!
+anywhere, where I should have my thoughts detached in some
+degree by distance and by length of time from England! With
+all the reasons that I have for not loving great part of it,
+it is impossible not to feel the shock of living at the period
+of all its greatness! to be one of the Ultimi Romanorum! I
+will not proceed upon the chapter of reflections, but mention
+some facts, which will supply your thoughts with all I should
+say.
+
+The French make no secret of their intending to come hither;
+the letters from Holland speak of it as a notoriety.  Their
+Mediterranean fleet is come to Rochfort, and they have another
+at Brest.  Their immediate design is to attack our army, the
+very lessening which will be victory for them.  Our six
+hundred men, which have lain cooped up in the river till they
+had contracted diseases, are at last gone to Ostend.  Of all
+this our notable ministry still make a secret: one cannot
+learn the least particulars from them.  This anxiety for my
+friends in the army, this uncertainty about ourselves, if it
+can be called uncertain that we are undone, and the provoking
+folly that one sees prevail, have determined me to go to the
+Hague.  I shall at least hear sooner from the army, and shall
+there know better what is likely to happen here.  The moment
+the crisis is come I shall return hither, which I can do from
+Helvoetsluys in twelve hours.  At all events, I shall
+certainly not stay there above a month or six weeks: it
+thickens too fast for something important not to happen by
+that time.
+
+You may judge of our situation by the conversation of Marshal
+Belleisle: he has said for some time, that he saw we were so
+little capable of making any defence that he would engage,
+with five thousand scullions of the French army, to conquer
+England--yet, just now, they choose to release him! he goes
+away in a week.(1085)  When he was told of the taking Cape
+Breton, he said. "he could believe that, because the ministry
+had no hand in it." We are making bonfires for Cape Breton,
+and thundering over Genoa, while our army in Flanders is
+running away, and dropping to pieces by detachments taken
+prisoners every day; while the King is at Hanover, the regency
+at their country-seats, not five thousand men in the island,
+and not above fourteen or fifteen ships at home! Allelujah!
+
+I received yours yesterday, with the bill of lading for the
+gesse figures, but you don't tell me their price; pray do in
+your 'next.  I don't know what to say to Mr. Chute's eagle; I
+would fain have it; I can depend upon his taste-but would not
+it be folly to be buying curiosities now! how can I tell that
+I shall have any thing in the world to pay for it, by the time
+it is bought? You may present these reasons to Mr. Chute; and
+if he laughs at them, why then he will buy the eagle for me;
+if he thinks them of weight, not.
+
+Adieu! I have not time or patience to say more.
+
+(1085) The Marshal and his brother left England on the 13th of
+August.-E.
+
+
+
+431 Letter 175
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+[August 1, 1745.]
+
+Dear George,
+I cannot help thinking you laugh at me when you say such very
+civil things of my letters, and yet, coming from you, I would
+fain not have it all flattery:
+
+So much the more, as, from a little elf,
+I've had a high opinion of myself,
+Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb.
+
+With this modest prepossession, you may be sure I like to have
+you commend me, whom, after I have done with myself, I admire
+of all men living.  I only beg that you will commend me no
+more: it is very ruinous; and praise, like other debts, ceases
+to be due on being paid.  One comfort indeed is, that it is as
+seldom paid as other debts.
+
+I have been very fortunate lately: I have met with an extreme
+good print of M. de Grignan;(1086) I am persuaded, very like;
+and then it has his toufie `ebouriff`ee; I don't, indeed, know
+what that was, but I am sure it Is in the-print.  None of the
+critics could ever make out what Livy's Patavinity is though
+they are confident it is in his writings.  I have heard within
+these few days, what, for your sake, I wish I could have told
+you sooner-that there is in Belleisle's suite the Abb`e
+Perrin, who published Madame S`evign`e's letters, and who has
+the originals in his hands.  How one should have liked to have
+known him! The Marshal was privately in london last Friday.
+He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of
+Grafton.(1087)  Don't you believe it was to settle the binding
+the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come
+in unto the land to possess it?  I don't at all wonder at any
+shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation.
+The bringing him here at all--the sending him away now--in
+short, the whole series of our conduct convinces me that, we
+shall soon see as silent a change as that in the Rehearsal, of
+King Usher and King Physician.  It may well be so, when the
+disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of
+Newcastle--those hands that are always groping and sprawling,
+and fluttering and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate
+person.  But there is no describing him, but as M. Courcelle,
+a French prisoner, did t'other day: "Je ne scais pas," dit il,
+"je ne scaurois m'exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage." If
+one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, always wanting to
+be hung somewhere else, one should have a comparative idea of
+him.
+
+For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection
+of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire--I am but a
+passenger!  if I were not so indolent, I think I should rather
+put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton's(1088)
+geographical resolution of going to China, when Winston told
+her the world would be burnt in three years.  Have you any
+philosophy? Tell me what you think.  It is quite the fashion
+to talk of the French coming here.  Nobody sees it in any
+other light but as a thing to be talked of, not to be
+precautioned against.  Don't you remember a report of the
+plague being in the
+city, and every body went to the house where it was to see it?
+You- see I laugh about it, for I would not for the world be so
+unenglished as to do otherwise.  I am persuaded that when
+Count Saxe, with ten thousand men, is within a day's march of
+London, people will be hiring windows at Charing-cross and
+Cheapside to see them pass by.  'Tis our characteristic to take
+dangers for sights, and evils for curiosities.
+
+Adieu! dear George: I am laying in scraps of Cato against it
+may be necessary to take leave of one's correspondents `a la
+Romaine, and, before the play itself is suppressed by a lettre
+de cachet to the booksellers.
+
+P. S. Lord! 'tis the 1st of August, 1745, a holiday(1089) that
+is going to be turned out of the almanack!
+
+(1086) Fran`cois-Adh`emar de Monteil, Comte de Grignan,
+Lieutenant-general of Provence.  He married, in 1669, the
+daughter of Madame de S`evign`e-E.
+
+(1087) As he was, on the preceding day, by the Duke of
+Newcastle, at Clermont.-E.
+
+(1088) Natural daughter of James Scot, Duke of Monmouth, by
+Eleanor, daughter of Sir Robert Needham.-E.
+
+(1089) The anniversary of the accession of the House of
+Brunswick to the throne of England.
+
+
+
+
+432 Letter 176
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 7, 1745.
+
+I have no news to tell you: Ostend is besieged, and must be
+gone in a few days.  The Regency are all come to town to
+prevent an invasion--I should as soon think them able to make
+one--not but old Stair, who still exists upon the embers of an
+absurd fire that warmed him ninety years ago, thinks it still
+practicable to march to Paris, and the other day in council
+prevented a resolution of sending for our army home; but as we
+always do half of a thing, when even the whole would scarce
+signify, they seem determined to send for ten thousand--the
+other ten will remain in Flanders, to keep up the bad figure
+that we have been making there all this summer.  Count Saxe
+has been three times tapped since the of Fontenoy: but if we
+get rid of his enmity, there is Belleisle gone, amply to supply
+and succeed to his hatred!  Van Hoey, the ingenious Dutchman at
+Paris, wrote to the States to know if he should make new liveries
+against the rejoiCings for the French conquests in Flanders.  I
+love the governor of SLuys; when the States sent him a reprimand,
+for not admitting our troops that retreated thither from the
+affair of Ghent, asking him if he did not know that he ought to
+admit their allies? he replied, "Yes; and would they have him
+admit the French too as their allies?"
+
+There is a proclamation come out for apprehending the
+Pretender's son;(1090) he was undoubtedly on board the frigate
+attendant on the Elizabeth, with which Captain Brett fought so
+bravely:(1090) the boy is now said to be at Brest.
+
+I have put off my journey to the Hague, as the sea is full of
+ships, and many French ones about the siege of
+Ostend: I go tomorrow to Mount Edgecumbe.  I don't think it
+impossible but you may receive a letter from me on the road,
+with a paragraph like that in Cibber's life, "Here I met the
+revolution."
+
+My lady Orford is set out for Hanover; her gracious sovereign
+does not seem inclined to leave it.  Mrs. Chute(1092) has sent
+me this letter, which you will be so good as to send to Rome.
+We have taken infinite riches; vast wealth in the East Indies,
+vast from the West; in short, we grow so fat that we shall
+very soon be fit to kill.
+
+Your brother has this moment brought me a letter from you,
+full of your good-natured concern for the Genoese.  I have not
+time to write you any thing but short paragraphs, as I am in
+the act of writing all my letters and doing my business before
+my journey.  I can say no more now about the affair of your
+secretary.  Poor Mrs. Gibberne has been here this morning
+almost in fits about her son.  She brought me a long letter to
+you, but I absolutely prevented her sending it, and told her I
+would let you know that it was my fault if you don't hear from
+her, but that I would take the answer upon myself.  My dear
+Sir, for her sake, for the silly boy's, who is ruined if he
+follows his own whims, and for your own sake, who will have so
+much trouble to get and form another, I must try to prevent
+your parting.  I am persuaded, that neither the fatigue of
+writing, nor the indignation of going to sea are the boy's
+true motives.  They are, the smallness of his allowance, and
+his aversion to waiting it table, For the
+first, the poor woman does not expect that you should put
+yourself to any inconvenience; she only begs that you will be
+so good as to pay him twenty pounds a-year more, which she
+herself will repay to your brother; and not let her son know
+that it comes from her, as he would then refuse to take it.
+For the other point, I must tell you, my dear child, fairly,
+that in goodness to the poor boy, I hope you will give it up.
+He is to make his fortune in your way of life, if he can be so
+lucky, It will be an insuperable obstacle to him that he is
+with you in the light of a menial servant.  When you reflect
+that his fortune may depend upon it, I am sure you will free
+him from this servitude, Your brother and I, you know, from
+the very first, thought that you should not insist upon it.
+If he will stay with you on the terms I propose, I am sure,
+from the trouble it will save yourself, and the ruin from
+which it will save him, you will yield to this request; which
+I seriously make to you, and advise you to comply with.
+Adieu!
+
+(1090) The proclamation was dated the 1st of August, and
+offered a reward of thirty thousand pounds for the young
+Prince's apprehension.  He left the island of Belleisle on the
+13th of July, disguised in the habit of a Student of the Scots
+college at Paris, and allowing his beard to grow.-E.
+
+(1091) Captain Brett was the same officer who, in Anson's
+expedition, had stormed Paita.  His ship was called the Lion.
+After a well-matched fight of five or six hours, the vessels
+parted, each nearly disabled.-E.
+
+(1092) Widow of Francis Chute, Esq.
+
+
+
+            434 Letter 177
+To The Rev. Thomas Birch.(1093)
+Woolterton 15th [Aug.] 1745
+
+When I was lately in town I was favoured with yours of the
+21st past; but my stay there was so short, and my hurry so
+great, that I had not time to see you as I intended.  As I am
+persuaded that nobody is more capable than yourself, in all
+respects, to set his late Majesty's reign in a true light, I
+am sure there is nobody to whom I would more readily give my
+assistance, as far as I am able: but, as I have never wrote
+any thing in a historical way, have now and then suggested
+hints to others as they were writing, and never published but
+two pamphlets-one was to justify the taking and keeping in our
+pay the twelve thousand Hessians, of which I have forgot the
+title, and have it not in the country; the other was published
+about two years since, entitled, "The Interest of Great
+Britain steadily Pursued," in answer to the pamphlets about
+the Hanover forces-I can't tell in what manner, nor on what
+heads to answer your desire, which is conceived in such
+general terms: if you could point out some stated times, and
+some particular facts, and I had before me a sketch of your
+narration, I perhaps might be able, to suggest or explain some
+things that are come but imperfectly to your knowledge, and
+some anecdotes might occur to my memory relating to domestic
+and foreign affairs, that are curious, and were never yet made
+public, and perhaps not proper to, be published yet;
+particularly with regard to the alteration of the ministry in
+1717, by the removal of my relation, and the measures that
+were pursued in consequence of that alteration; but in order
+to do this, or any thing else for your service, requires a
+personal conversation with you, in which I should be ready to
+let you know what might occur to me.  I am most truly, etc.
+
+(1093) This industrious historian and biographer was born in
+1705, and was killed by a fall from his horse, in 1765.  Dr.
+Johnson said of him, "Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in
+conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand,
+than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his
+faculties.--E.
+
+
+
+435 Letter 178
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Sept. 6, 1745.
+
+It would have been inexcusable in me, in our present
+circumstances and after all I have promised you, not to have
+written to you for this last month, if I had been in London;
+but I have been at Mount Edgecumbe, and so constantly upon the
+road, that I neither received your letters, had time to write,
+or knew what to write. I came back last night, and found three
+packets from you, which I have no time to answer, and but just
+time to read.  The confusion I have found, and the danger we
+are in, prevent my talking of any thing else.  The young
+Pretender(1094) at the head of three thousand men, has got a
+march on General Cope, who is not eighteen hundred strong: and
+when the last accounts came away, was fifty miles nearer
+Edinburgh than Cope, and by this time is there.  The clans
+will not rise for the Government: the Dukes of Argyll(1095)
+and Athol,(1096) are come post to town,(1097) not having been
+able to raise a man.  The young Duke of Gordon(1098) sent for
+his uncle and told him that he must arm their clan.  "They are
+in arms."--"They must march against the rebels."--"They will
+wait on the Prince of Wales." The Duke flew in a passion; his
+uncle pulled out a pistol, and told him
+it was in vain to dispute.  Lord Loudon,(1099) Lord
+Fortrose(1100) and Lord Panmure,(1101) have been very zealous,
+and have raised some men; but I look upon Scotland as gone!  I
+think of what King William said to the Duke of Hamilton, when
+he was extolling Scotland: "My Lord, I only wish it
+was a hundred thousand miles off, and that you was king of
+it!"
+
+There are two manifestos published signed Charles
+Prince, Regent for his father, King of Scotland, England,
+France, and Ireland.  By One, he promises to preserve every
+body in their just rights; and orders all persons who have
+public moneys in their hands to bring it to him; and by the
+other dissolves the union between England and Scotland.  But
+all this is not the worst!  Notice came yesterday, that there
+are ten thousand men, thirty transports, and ten men-of-war at
+Dunkirk.  Against this force we have--I don't know what--
+scarce fears! Three thousand Dutch -we hope are by this time
+landed In Scotland; three more are coming hither.  We have
+sent for ten regiments from Flanders, which may be here in a
+week, and we have fifteen men-of-war in the Downs.  I am
+grieved to tell you all this; but when it is so, how can I
+avoid telling you?  Your brother is just come in, who says he
+has written to you-I have not time to expatiate.
+
+My Lady O. is arrived; I hear she says, only to endeavour to
+get a certain allowance.  Her mother has sent to offer her the
+use of her house.  She is a poor weak woman.  I can say
+nothing to Marquis Riccardi, nor think of him; only tell him,
+that I will when I have time. My sister(1102) has married
+herself, that is, declared she will, to young Churchill.  It
+is a foolish match; but I have nothing to do with it.  Adieu!
+my dear Sir; excuse my haste, but you must imagine that one is
+not much at leisure to write long letters--hope if you can!
+
+(1094) The 'Pretender had landed, with a few followers, in the
+Highlands Of Scotland, on the 25th of July.  His appearance at
+this time is thus described by Mr. Eneas Macdonald, one of his
+attendants: "There entered the tent a tall youth, of a most
+agreeable aspect, in a plain black coat, with a plain shirt
+not very clean, and a cambric stock, fixed with a plain silver
+buckle, a plain hat with a canvass string, having one end
+fixed to one of his coat buttons. he had black stockings and
+brass buckles in his shoes.  At his first appearance I found
+my heart swell to my very throat, but we were immediately
+told, that this youth was an English clergyman, who had long
+been possessed with a desire to see and converse with
+Highlanders." "It is remarkable,"
+observes Lord Mahon, " that among the foremost to join
+Charles, was the father of Marshal Macdonald, Duke de Tarento,
+long after raised to these honours by his merit in the French
+revolutionary wars, and not more distinguished for courage and
+capacity than for integrity and honour." Hist. vol. iii. p.
+344.-E.
+
+
+(1095) Archibald, Earl of Islay, and upon the death of his
+elder brother John, Duke of Argyll,-D.
+
+(1096) James Murray, second Duke of Athol; to which he
+succeeded upon the death of his father in 1724, in consequence
+of the attainder of his elder brother, William, Marquis of
+Tullibardine.-D.
+
+(1097) This was not true of the Duke of Argyll; for he did not
+attempt to raise any men, but pleaded a Scotch act of
+parliament against arming without authority.
+
+(1098) Cosmo George, third Duke of Gordon.  He died in
+1752.-D.
+
+(1099) John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon; a general in the
+army.  He died in 1782.-D.
+
+(1100) The eldest son of Mackenzie, Earl of Seaforth-D
+
+(1101) William Maule, Earl of Panmure, in Ireland, so created
+in 1743, in consequence of the forfeiture of the Scotch
+honours in 1715, by his elder brother, James, Earl of
+Panmure.-D.
+
+(1102) Lady Maria Walpole, daughter of Lord Orford, married
+Charles Churchill, Esq. son of the General.
+
+
+
+
+436 Letter 179
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Sept. 13, 1745.
+
+The rebellion goes on; but hitherto there is no rising in
+England, nor landing of troops from abroad; indeed not even of
+ours or the Dutch.  The best account I can give you is, that
+if the Boy has apparently no enemies in Scotland, at least he
+has openly very few friends.  Nobody of note has joined him,
+but a brother of the Duke of Athol,(1103) and another of Lord
+Dunmore.(1104)  For cannon, they have nothing but
+one-pounders: their greatest resource is money; they have
+force Louis-d'ors.  The last accounts left them at Perth,
+making shoes and stockings.  It is certain that a sergeant of
+Cope's with twelve men, put to flight two hundred, on killing
+only six or seven.  Two hundred of the Monroe clan have joined
+our forces.  Spirit seems to rise in London, though not in the
+proportion it ought; and then the person(1105) most concerned
+does every thing to check its progress: when the ministers
+propose any thing with regard to the rebellion, he cries,
+"Pho! don't talk to me of that stuff." Lord Granville has
+persuaded him that it is of no consequence.  Mr. Pelham talks
+every day of resigning: he certainly will as soon as this is
+got over!--if it is got over.  So, at least we shall see a
+restoration of queen Sophia.(1106)  She has lain-in of a
+girl; though she had all the pretty boys in town brought to
+her for patterns.
+
+The young Chevalier has set a reward on the King's head: we
+are told that his brother is set out for Ireland.  However,
+there is hitherto little countenance given to the undertaking
+by France or Spain.  It seems an effort of despair, and
+weariness of the manner in which he has been kept in France.
+On the grenadier's caps is written, "a grave or a throne."  He
+stayed some time at the Duke of Athol's, whither old Marquis
+Tullybardine(1107) sent to bespeak dinner; and has since sent
+his brother word, that he likes the alterations made there.
+The Pretender found pine-apples there, the first he ever
+tasted.  Mr. Breton,(1108) a great favourite of the Southern
+Prince of Wales, went the other day to visit the Duchess of
+Athol,(1109) and happened not to know that she is parted from
+her husband: he asked how the Duke did?, "Oh," said she, "he
+turned me out of his house, and now he is turned out himself."
+Every now and then a Scotchman comes and pulls the Boy by the
+sleeve; "Prence, here is another mon taken!" then with all the
+dignity in the world, the Boy hopes nobody was killed in the
+action! Lord Bath has made a piece of a ballad, the Duke of
+Newcastle's speech to the Regency; I have heard but these two
+lines of it:
+
+"Pray consider my Lords, how disastrous a thing,
+To have two Prince of Wales's and never a King!"
+
+The merchants are very zealous, and are opening a great
+subscription for raising troops.  The other day, at the city
+meeting, to draw up the address, Alderman Heathcote proposed a
+petition for a redress of grievances, but not one man seconded
+him.  In the midst of all this, no Parliament is called!  The
+ministers say they have nothing ready to offer; but they have
+something to notify!
+
+I must tell you a ridiculous accident: when the magistrates of
+were searching houses for arms, they came to Mr. Maule's,
+brother of Lord Panmure, and a great friend of the Duke of
+Argyll.  The maid would not let them go into one room, which
+was locked, and as she said, full of arms.  They now thought
+they had found what they looked for, and had the door broke
+open--where they found an ample collection of coats of arms!
+
+The deputy governor of Edinburgh Castle has threatened the
+magistrates to beat their town about their ears, if they admit
+the rebels.  Perth is twenty-four miles from Edinburgh, so we
+must soon know whether they will go thither; or leave it, and
+come into England.  We have great hopes that the Highlanders
+will not follow him so far.  Very few of them could be
+persuaded the last time to go to Preston; and several refused
+to attend King Charles II. when he marched to Worcester.  The
+Caledonian Mercury never calls them "the rebels," but "the
+Highlanders."
+
+Adieu! my dear child --thank Mr. Chute for his letter, which I
+will answer soon.  I don't know how to define my feeling: I
+don't despair, and yet I expect nothing but bad! Yours, etc.
+
+p . S. Is not my Princess very happy with the hopes of the
+restoration of her old tenant?(1110)
+
+(1103) William, Marquis of Tullibardine.-D.
+
+(1104) John Murray, second Earl of Dunmore; he died in 1754.
+His brother, who joined the Pretender, was the Hon.  Wm.
+Murray, of Taymount.  He was subsequently pardoned for the
+part he took in the rebellion, and succeeded to the earldom on
+the death of Earl John.-D.
+
+(1105) The King.
+
+(1106) Lady Granville.
+
+(1107) Elder brother of the Duke of Athol, but outlawed for
+the last rebellion.  He was taken prisoner after the battle of
+Culloden, and died in the Tower.
+
+(1108) Afterwards Sir William Breton.  He held an office in
+the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales.-D.
+
+(1109) Jane, daughter of John Frederick, Esq. and widow of
+James Lanoy, Esq.-D.
+
+(1110) When the Old Pretender was in Lorrain, he lived at
+Prince Craon's.
+
+
+
+438 Letter 179a
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, Sept. 17, 1745.
+
+Dear George,
+How could u ask me such a question, as whether I should be
+glad to see you?  Have you a mind I should make you a formal
+speech, with honour, and pleasure, and satisfaction, etc.?  I
+will not, for that would be telling you I should not be glad.
+However, do come soon, if you should be glad to see me; for
+we, I mean we old folks that came over with the Prince of
+Orange in eighty-eight, have had notice to remove by
+Christmas-day.  The moment I have SMUgged up a closet or a
+dressing-room, I have always warning given me that my lease is
+out.  Four years ago I was mightily at my ease in
+Downing-street, and then the good woman, Sandys, took my
+lodgings over my head, and was in such a hurry to junket her
+neighbours, that I had scarce time allowed me to wrap my old
+china in a little hay.  Now comes the Pretender's boy, and
+promises all my comfortable apartments in the Exchequer and
+Custom-house to some forlorn Irish peer, who chooses to remove
+his pride and poverty out of some large unfurnished gallery at
+St. Germain's.  Why really Mr. Montagu this is not pleasant; I
+shall wonderfully dislike being a loyal sufferer in a
+threadbare coat, and shivering in an ante-chamber at Hanover,
+or reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at
+Copenhagen.  The Dowager Strafford has already written cards
+for my Lady Nithisdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchess of
+Perth and berwick, and twenty more revived peeresses, to
+invite them to play at whist, Monday three months: for your
+part, you will divert yourself with their old taffeties, and
+tarnished slippers, and their awkwardness, the first day they
+go to court in shifts and clean linen.  Will you ever write to
+me at my garret at Herenhausen? I will give you a faithful
+account of all the promising speeches that Prince George and
+Prince Edward make, -whenever they have a new sword, and
+intend to re-conquer England.  At least write to me, while you
+may with acts of parliament on your side: but I hope you are
+coming.  Adieu!
+
+
+
+
+439 Letter 180
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Sept. 20, 1745.
+
+One really don't know what to write to you: the accounts from
+Scotland vary perpetually, and at best are never very certain.
+I was just going to tell you that the rebels are in England;
+but my Uncle is this moment come in, and says, that an express
+came last night with an account of their being in Edinburgh to
+the number of five thousand.  This sounds great, to have
+walked through a kingdom, and taken possession of the capital!
+But this capital is an open town and the castle impregnable,
+and in our possession.  There never was so extraordinary a
+sort of rebellion! One can't tell what assurances of support
+they may have from the Jacobites in England, or from the
+French; but nothing of either sort has yet appeared-and if
+there does not, never was so desperate an enterprise.(1111)
+One can hardly believe that the English are more disaffected
+than the Scotch; and among the latter, no persons of property
+have joined them: both nations seem to profess a neutrality.
+Their money is all gone, and they subsist. merely by levying
+contributions.  But, sure, banditti can never conquer a
+kingdom! On the other hand, what cannot any number of men do,
+who meet no opposition? They have hitherto taken no place but
+open towns, nor have they any artillery for a siege but
+one-pounders.  Three battalions of  Dutch are landed at
+Gravesend, and ,re ordered to Lancashire: we expect every
+moment to hear that the rest are got to Scotland; none of our
+own are come yet.  Lord Granville and his faction persist in
+persuading the King, that it is an affair of no consequence;
+and for the Duke of Newcastle, he is glad when the rebels make
+any progress, in order to confute Lord Granville's assertions.
+The best of our situation is, our strength at sea: the Channel
+is well guarded, and twelve men-of-war more are arrived from
+rowley.  Vernon, that simple noisy creature, has hit upon a
+scheme that is of great service; he has laid Folkstone cutters
+all round the coast, which are continually relieved, and bring
+constant notice of every thing that stirs.  I just hear, that
+the Duke of Bedford(1112) declares he will be amused no
+longer, but will ask the King's leave to raise a regiment.
+The Duke of Montagu has a troop of horse ready, and the Duke
+of Devonshire is raising men in Derbyshire.  The Yorkshiremen,
+headed by the Archbishop and Lord Malton, meet the gentlemen
+of the county the day after to-morrow to defend that part of
+England.  Unless we have more ill fortune than is conceivable,
+or the general supineness continues, it is impossible but we
+must get over this.  You desire me to send you news: I confine
+myself to tell you nothing but what you may depend upon and
+leave you in a fright rather than deceive you.  I confess my
+own apprehensions are not near so strong as they were: and if
+we get over this, I shall believe that we never can be hurt;
+for we never can be more exposed to danger.  Whatever
+disaffection there is to the present family, it plainly does
+not proceed from love to the other.
+
+My Lady O. makes little progress in popularity.  Neither the
+protection of my Lady Pomfret's prudery, nor of my Lady
+Townshend's libertinism, do her any services The women stare
+at her, think her ugly, awkward, and disagreeable; and what is
+worse, the men think so too.  For the height of mortification,
+the
+King has declared publicly to the ministry, that he has been
+told of the great civilities which be was said to show her at
+Hanover; that he protests he showed her only the common
+civilities due to any English lady that comes thither; that he
+never intended to take any particular notice of her; nor had,
+nor would let my Lady Yarmouth. - In fact, my Lady Yarmouth
+peremptorily refused to carry her to court here: and when she
+did go with my Lady Pomfret, the King but just spoke to her.
+She declares her intention of staying in England, and protests
+against all lawsuits and violences; and says she only asks
+articles of separation, and to have her allowance settled by
+any two arbitrators chosen by my brother and herself.  I have
+met her twice at my Lady Townshend's, just as I used at
+Florence.  She dresses English and plays at whist.  I forgot
+to tell a bon-mot of Leheup(1113) on her first coming over; he
+was asked if he would not go and see her? He replied "No, I
+never visit modest women." Adieu! my dear child! I flatter
+myself you will collect hopes from this letter.
+
+(1111) Mr. Henry Fox, in letters to Sir C. H. Williams, of
+September 5th and 19th, writes, "England, Wade says, and I
+believe it, is for the first comer; and if you can tell
+whether the six thousand Dutch, and the ten battalions of
+English, or five thousand French or Spaniards will be here
+first, you know our fate." "The French are not come, God be
+thanked! But had five thousand landed in any part of this
+island a week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest would
+not have cost them a battle."-B.
+
+(1112) This plan of raising regiment,,; afterwards degenerated
+into a gross job.  Sir C. H. Williams gives an account of it
+in his ballad, entitled "The Herbes." To this Horace Walpole
+appended the following explanatory note..--"In the time of the
+rebellion, these lords had proposed to raise regiments of
+their own dependents, and were allowed; Had they paid them
+too, the service had been noble: being paid by Government,
+obscured a little the merit; being paid without raising them,
+would deserve too coarse a term.  It is certain, that not six
+regiments ever were raised: not four of which were employed.
+The chief persons who were at the head of this scheme were the
+Dukes of Bedford and Montagu; the Duke of Bedford actually and
+served with his regiment."--The other lords mentioned in the
+ballad are, the Duke of Bolton, Lord Granby, Lord Harcourt,
+Lord Halifax, Lord Falmouth, Lord Cholmondeley, and Lord
+Berkeley.  They were in all fifteen-
+
+"Fifteen nobles of great fame,
+All brib'd by one false muster."-D.
+
+(1113) Isaac Leheup, brother-in-law of Horace Walpole the
+elder.  He was a man of great wit and greater brutality, and
+being minister at Hanover, was recalled for very indecent
+behaviour there.
+
+
+
+441 Letter 181
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Sept. 27, 1745.
+
+I can't doubt but the joy of the Jacobites has reached
+Florence before this letter.  Your two or three Irish priests,
+I forget their names, will have set out to take possession of
+abbey-lands here.  I feel for what you will feel, and for the
+insulting things that will be said to you upon the
+battle(1114) we have lost in Scotland; but all this is
+nothing, to what it prefaces.  The express came hither on
+Tuesday morning, but the Papists knew it on Sunday night.
+Cope lay in face of the rebels all Friday; he scarce two
+thousand strong, they vastly superior, though we don't know
+their numbers.  The military people say that he should have
+attacked them.  However, we are sadly convinced that they are
+not such raw ragamuffins as they were represented. The
+rotation that has been established in that country, to give
+all the Highlanders the benefit of serving in the independent
+companies, has trained and disciplined them.  Macdonald (I
+suppose, he from Naples,) -who is reckoned a very experienced
+able officer, is said to have commanded them, and to be
+dangerously wounded.  One does not hear the Boy's personal
+valour cried up; by which I conclude he was not in the
+action.(1115)  Our dragoons most shamefully fled without
+striking a blow, and are with Cope, who escaped in a boat to
+Berwick.  I pity poor him(1116) who with no shining abilities,
+and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight for a
+crown! He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he
+got his red riband: Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and
+my Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to this misfortune.  We
+have lost all our artillery, five hundred men taken and three
+killed, and several officers, as you will see in the papers.
+This defeat has frightened every body but those it rejoices,
+and those it should frighten most; but my Lord Granville still
+buoys up the King's spirits, and persuades him it is nothing.
+He uses his ministers as ill as possible, and discourages
+every body that would risk their lives and fortunes with him.
+Marshal Wade is marching against the rebels; but the King will
+not let him take above eight thousand men; so that if they
+come into England, another battle, with no advantage on our
+side, may determine our fate.  Indeed, they don't seem so
+unwise as to risk their cause upon so precarious an event; but
+rather to design to establish themselves in Scotland, till
+they can be supported from France, and be set up with taking
+Edinburgh Castle, where there is to the value of a million,
+and which they would make a stronghold.  It is scarcely
+victualled for a month, and must surely fall into their hands.
+Our coasts are greatly guarded, and London kept in awe by the
+arrival of the guards.  I don't believe what I have been told
+this morning, that more troops are sent for from Flanders, and
+aid asked of Denmark.
+
+Prince Charles has called a Parliament in Scotland for the 7th
+of October; ours does not meet till the 17th, so that even in
+the show of liberty and laws, they are beforehand with us.
+With all this, we hear of no men of quality or fortune having
+joined him but Lord Elcho(1117) whom you have seen at
+Florence; and the Duke of Perth,(1118) a silly race-horsing
+boy, who is said to be killed in this battle.  but I gather no
+confidence from hence: my father always said, "If you see them
+come again, they will begin by their lowest people; their
+chiefs will not appear till the end." His prophecies verify
+every day!
+
+The town is still empty; in this point only the English act
+contrary to their custom, for they don't throng to see a
+Parliament, though it is likely to prove a curiosity!
+
+I have so trained myself to expect this ruin, that I see it
+approach without an emotion.  I shall suffer with fools,
+without having any malice to our enemies, who act sensibly
+from principle and from interest.  Ruling parties seldom have
+caution or common sense.  I don't doubt but Whigs and
+Protestants will be alert enough in trying to recover what
+they lose so supinely.
+
+I know nothing of my Lady O. In this situation I dare say she
+will exert enough of the spirit of her Austrian party, to be
+glad the present government is oppressed; her piques and the
+Queen of Hungary's bigotry will draw satisfaction from what
+ought to be so contrary to each of their wishes.  I don't
+wonder my lady hates you so much, as I think she meant to
+express by her speech to Blair.
+Quem non credit Cleopatra nocentem,
+A quo casta fuit?"
+
+She lives chiefly with my Lady Townshend: the latter told me
+last night, that she had seen a new fat player, who looked
+like every body's husband.  I replied, "I could easily believe
+that, from seeing so many women who looked like every body's
+wives." Adieu! my dear Sir: I hope your spirits, like mine,
+will grow calm, from being callous of ill news.
+
+(1114) At Preston-Pans, near Edinburgh; where the Pretender
+completely defeated Sir John Cope, on the 21st of
+September.-D.
+
+(1115) "Charles," says Lord Mahon, 'put himself at the head of
+the second line, which was close behind the first, and
+addressed them in these words@ Follow me, gentlemen, and by
+the blessing of God, I will this day make you a free and happy
+people." Hist. Vol. iii. P. 392.-E.
+
+(1116) General Cope was tried afterwards for his behaviour in
+this action, and it appeared very clearly, that the ministry,
+his inferior officers, and his troops, were greatly to blame;
+and that he did all he could, so ill-directed, so
+ill-supplied, and so ill-obeyed.
+
+(1117) Eldest son of the Earl of Wemyss.
+
+(1118) James Drummond, who would have been the fifth Earl of
+Perth, had it not been for the attainder and outlawry under
+which his family laboured.  His grandfather, the fourth earl,
+had been created a duke by James II. after his abdication.  He
+was not killed at Preston-Pans.-D.
+
+
+
+443 Letter 182
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 4, 1745.
+
+I am still writing to you as "R`esident de sa Majest`e
+Britannique;" and without the apprehension of your suddenly
+receiving letters of recall, or orders to notify to the
+council of Florence the new accession.  I dare say your fears
+made you think that the young Prince (for he is at least
+Prince of Scotland) had vaulted from Cope's neck into St.
+James's House; but he is still at Edinburgh; and his cousin
+Grafton, the lord chamberlain has not even given orders for
+fitting up this palace for his reception.  The good people of
+England have at last rubbed their eyes and looked about them.
+A wonderful spirit is arisen in all counties, and among all
+sorts of people.  The nobility are raising regiments, and
+every body else is-being raised.  Dr. Herring,(1119) the
+Archbishop of York, has set an example that would rouse the
+most indifferent; in two days after the news arrived at York
+of Cope's defeat, and when they every moment expected the
+victorious rebels at their gates, the bishop made a speech to
+the assembled county, that had as much true spirit, honesty,
+and bravery in it, as ever was penned by an historian for an
+ancient hero.
+
+The rebels returned to Edinburgh, where they have no hopes of
+taking the Castle, for old Preston, the deputy-governor, and
+General Guest, have obliged them to supply the Castle
+constantly with fresh provisions, on pain of having the town
+fired with red-hot bullets.  They did fling a bomb on Holyrood
+House, and obliged the Boy to shift his quarters.  Wade is
+marching against them, and will have a great army: all the
+rest of our troops are ordered from Flanders, and are to meet
+him in Yorkshire, with some Hessians too.  That county raises
+four thousand men, besides a body of foxhunters, whom
+Oglethorpe has converted into hussars.  I am told that old
+Stair, who certainly does not want zeal, but may not want envy
+neither, has practised a little Scotch art to prevent wade
+from having an army, and consequently the glory of saving this
+country.  This I don't doubt he will do, if the rebels get no
+foreign aid; and I have great reason to hope they will not,
+for the French are privately making us overtures of peace.  My
+dear child, dry your wet-brown-paperness, and be in spirits
+again!
+
+It is not a very civil joy to send to Florence, but I can't
+help telling you how glad I am of news that came two days ago,
+of the King of Prussia having beat Prince Charles,(1120) who
+attacked him just after we could have obtained for them a
+peace with that King.  That odious house of Austria!  It will
+not be decent for you to insult Richcourt but I would, were I
+at Florence.
+
+Pray let Mr. Chute have ample accounts of our zeal to figure
+with at Rome. of the merchants of London undertaking to
+support the public credit; of universal associations; of
+regiments raised by the dukes of Devonshire, Bedford, Rutland,
+Montagu; Lords Herbert, Halifax, Cholmondeley, Falmouth,
+Malton, Derby,(1121) etc.; of Wade with an army of twenty
+thousand men; of another about London of near as many--and
+lastly, of Lord Gower having in person assured the King that
+he is no Jacobite, but ready to serve him with his life and
+fortune.  Tell him of the whole coast so guarded, that nothing
+can pass unvisited; and in short, send him this advertisement
+out of to-day's papers, as an instance of more spirit and wit
+than there is in all Scotland:
+
+TO ALL JOLLY BUTCHERS.
+MY BOLD hearts,
+The Papists eat no meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, nor
+during Lent.
+Your friend,
+JOHN STEEL.
+
+Just as I wrote this, a person is come in, who tells me that
+the rebels have cut off the communication between Edinburgh
+and the Castle: the commanders renewed their threats: and the
+good magistrates have sent up hither to beg orders may be sent
+to forbid this execution.  It is modest! it is Scotch!-and, I
+dare say, will be granted.  Ask a government to spare your
+town which you yourself have given up to rebels: and the
+consequence of which will be the loss of your Castle!-but they
+knew to what Government they applied! You need not be in haste
+to have this notified at Rome.  Tell it not in Gath! Adieu! my
+dear Sir.  This account has put Me so out of humour, and has
+so altered the strain of my letter, that I must finish.
+
+(1119) An excellent prelate, afterwards promoted to the see of
+Canterbury.  Walpole, in his Memoires, mentioning his death,
+thus speaks of him: "On the 13th of March, 1757, died Dr.
+Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury a very amiable man, to whom
+no fault was objected; though perhaps the gentleness of his
+Principles, his great merit, was thought one.  During the
+rebellion he had taken up arms to defend from oppression that
+religion, which he abhorred making an instrument of
+oppression."-D.
+
+(1120) The battle of Soor in Bohemia, gained by the King of
+Prussia over the Austrians, on the 30th of September, 1745.-D.
+
+(1121) For an account of this transaction see note 1112,
+letter 181, at p. 440.  The noblemen here mentioned were,
+William Cavendish, Third Duke of Devonshire; John Russell,
+fourth Duke of Bedford; John, second and last Duke of Montagu;
+Henry Arthur Herbert, first Lord Herbert of cherbury of the
+third creation; George Montagu, third Earl of Halifax; George,
+third Earl of Cholmondeley; Hugh Boscawen, second Viscount
+Falmouth; Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Malton; and Edward
+Stanley, eleventh Earl of Derby.--D.
+
+
+
+445 Letter 183
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 11, 1745.
+
+This is likely to be a very short letter; for I have nothing
+to tell you, nor any thing to answer.  I have not had one
+letter from you this month, which I attribute to the taking of
+the packet-boat by the French, with two mails in it.  It was a
+very critical time for our negotiations; the ministry will
+say, it puts their transactions out of order.
+
+Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you
+will be very sorry for-Lady Granville is dead.  She had a
+fever for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get
+it off.  Last Saturday they called in another physician, Dr.
+Oliver; on Monday he pronounced her out of danger.  About
+seven in the evening, as Lady Pomfret and Lady Charlotte were
+sitting by her, the first notice they had of her immediate
+danger, was her sighing and saying, "I feel death come very
+fast upon me!" She repeated the same words frequently-remained
+perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about eleven at
+night.  Her mother and sister sat by her till she was cold.
+It is very shocking for any body so young, so handsome, so
+arrived at the height of happiness, so sensible of it, and on
+whom all the joy and grandeur of her family depended, to be so
+quickly snatched away! Poor Uguccioni! he will be very sorry
+and simple about it.
+
+For the rebels, they have made no figure since Their victory.
+The Castle of Edinburgh has made a sally and taken twenty head
+of cattle, and about thirty head of Highlanders.  We heard
+yesterday, that they are coming this way.  The troops from
+Flanders are expected to land in Yorkshire to-morrow.  A
+privateer of Bristol has taken a large Spanish ship, laden
+with arms and money for Scotland.  A piece of a plot has been
+discovered in Dorsetshire, and one Mr. Weld(1122) taken up.
+The French have declared to the Dutch, that the House of
+Stuart is their ally, and that the Dutch troops must not act
+against them; but we expect they shall.  The Parliament meets
+next Thursday, and by that time, probably, the armies will
+too.  The rebels are not above eight thousand, and have little
+artillery; so you may wear what ministerial spirits you will.
+
+The Venetian ambassador has been making his entries this week:
+he was at Leicester-fields to-day with the Prince, and very
+pretty compliments passed between them in Italian.  Do excuse
+this letter; i really have not a word more to say; the next
+shall be all arma virumque cano!
+
+(1122) Edward Weld, Esq. of Lulworth Castle.  Hutchins, in his
+History of Dorsetshire, says, that, "although he ever behaved
+as a peaceful subject, he was ordered into custody, in 1745,
+on account of his name being mentioned in a treasonable
+anonymous letter dropped near Poole; but his immediate and
+honourable discharge is the most convincing proof of his
+innocence."-E.
+
+
+
+
+446 Letter 184
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 21, 1745.
+
+I had been almost as long without any of Your letters as you
+had without mine; but yesterday I received one, dated the 5th
+of this month, N. S.
+
+The rebels have not left their camp near Edinburgh, and, I
+suppose, will not now, unless to retreat into the Highlands.
+General Wade was to march yesterday from Doncaster for
+Scotland.  By their not advancing, I conclude that either the
+Boy and his council could not prevail On the Highlanders to
+leave their own country, or that they were not strong enough,
+and still wait for foreign assistance, which, in a new
+declaration, he intimates that he still expects.(1123)  One
+only ship, I believe a Spanish one, has got to them with arms,
+and Lord John Drummond(1124) and some people of quality on
+board.  We don't hear that the younger Boy is of the number.
+Four ships sailed from Corunna; the one that got to Scotland,
+one taken by a privateer of bristol, and one lost on the Irish
+coast; the fourth is not heard of.  At Edinburgh and
+thereabouts they commit the most horrid barbarities.  We last
+night expected as bad here: information was given of an
+intended insurrection and massacre by the Papists; all the
+Guards were ordered out, and the Tower shut up at seven.  I
+cannot be surprised at any thing, considering the supineness
+of the ministry--nobody has yet been taken up!
+
+The Parliament met on Thursday.  I don't think, considering
+the crisis, that the House was very full. Indeed, many of the
+Scotch members cannot come if they would.  The young Pretender
+had published a declaration, threatening to confiscate the
+estates of Scotch that should come to Parliament, and making
+it treason for the English.  The only points that have been
+before the house, the address and the suspension of the Habeas
+Corpus, met with obstructions from the Jacobites.  By this we
+may expect what spirit they will show hereafter.(1125)  With
+all this, I am far            from thinking that they are so
+confident and sanguine as their friends at Rome.  I blame the
+Chutes extremely for cockading themselves: why take a part
+when they are only travelling? I should certainly retire to
+Florence on this occasion.
+
+You may imagine how little I like our situation; but I don't
+despair.  The little use they made, or could make of their
+victory; their not having marched into England; their
+miscarriage at the Castle of Edinburgh; the arrival of our
+forces, and the non-arrival of any French or Spanish, make me
+conceive great hopes of getting over this ugly business.  But
+it is still an affair wherein the chance Of battles, or
+perhaps of one battle, may decide.
+
+I write you but short letters, considering the circumstances
+of the time; but I hate to send you paragraphs only to
+contradict them again: I still less choose to forge events;
+and, indeed, am glad I have so few to tell you.
+
+My lady O. has forced herself upon her mother, who receives
+her very coolly: she talks highly of her demands, and quietly
+of her methods - the fruitlessness of either will, I hope,
+soon send her back--I am sorry it must be to you!
+
+You mention Holdisworth:(1126) he has had the confidence to
+come and visit me within these ten days; and (I suppose, from
+the overflowing of his joy) talked a great deal and with as
+little sense as when he was more tedious.
+
+Since I wrote this, I hear the Countess has told her mother,
+that she thinks her husband the best of our family, and me the
+worst--nobody so bad, except you! I don't wonder at my being
+so ill with her; but what have you done? or is it, that we are
+worse than any body, because we know more of her than any body
+does! Adieu!
+
+(1123) "At three several councils did Charles propose to march
+into England and fight Marshal Wade; but as often was his
+proposal overruled.  At length he declared in a very
+peremptory manner, 'I see, gentlemen, you are determined to
+stay in Scotland and defend your country; but I am not less
+resolved to try my fate in England, though I should go
+alone.'" Lord Mahon, vol. iii. P.241.-E.
+
+(1124) Brother of the titular Duke of Perth.
+
+(1125) "As to the Parliament," writes Horatio Walpole to Mr.
+Milling, on the 29th of October, "although the address was
+unanimous the first day, yesterday, upon a motion 'to enquire
+into the causes of the progress of the rebellion' the House
+was so fully convinced of the necessity of immediately putting
+an end to it, and that the fire should be quenched before we
+should enquire who kindled or promoted it, that it was
+carried, not to put the question at this time, by 194 against
+112."-E.
+
+(1126) A nonjuror who travelled with Mr. George Pitt.
+
+
+
+447 Letter 185
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 4, 1745.
+
+It is just a fortnight since I wrote to you last: in all that
+time the rebellion has made no progress, nor produced any
+incidents worth mentioning.  They have entrenched themselves
+very strongly in the Duke of Buccleuch's park, whose seat,
+about seven miles from Edinburgh, they have seized.  We had an
+account last week of the Boy's being retired to Dunkirk, but
+it was not true.  Kelly,(1127) who is gone to solicit succour
+from France, was seized at Helvoet, but by a stupid burgher
+released.  Lord Loudon is very brisk in the north of Scotland,
+and has intercepted and beat some of their parties.  Marshal
+Wade was to march from Newcastle yesterday.
+
+But the rebellion does not make half the noise here that one
+of its consequences does.
+
+Fourteen lords (most of them I have named to you), at the
+beginning, offered to raise regiments; these regiments, so
+handsomely tendered at first, have been since put on the
+regular establishment; not much to the honour of the
+undertakers or of the firmness of the ministry, and the King
+is to pay them.  One of the great grievances of this is, that
+these most disinterested colonels have named none but their
+own relations and dependents for the officers, who are to have
+rank; and consequently, both colonels and subalterns will
+interfere with the brave old part of the army, who have served
+all the war.  This has made great clamour.  The King was
+against their having rank, but would not refuse it; yet wished
+that the House of Commons would address him not to grant it.
+This notification of his royal mind encouraged some of the old
+part of the ministry, particularly Winnington and Fox, to
+undertake to procure this Address.  Friday it came on in the
+committee; the Jacobites and patriots (such as are not
+included in the coalition) violently opposed the regiments
+themselves; so did Fox, in a very warm speech, levelled
+particularly at the Duke of Montagu, who, besides his old
+regiment, has one Of horse and one of foot on this new
+plan.(1128)  Pitt defended them as warmly: the Duke of
+Bedford, Lord Gower, and Lord Halifax, being at the head of
+this job.  At last, at ten at night, the thirteen regiments of
+foot were voted without a division, and the two of horse
+carried by 192 to 82.  Then came the motion for the address,
+and in an hour and half more, was rejected by 126 to 124.  Of
+this latter number were several of the old corps; I among the
+rest.  It is to be reported to the House to-morrow, and will,
+I conclude, be at least as warm a day as the former.  The King
+is now against the address, and all sides are using their
+utmost efforts.  The fourteen lords threaten to throw up,
+unless their whole terms are complied with; and the Duke of
+Bedford is not moderately insolent against such of the King's
+servants as voted against him.  Mr. Pelham espouses him; not
+recollecting that at least twice a-week all his new allies are
+suffered to oppose him as they please.  I should be sorry, for
+the appearance, to have the regiments given up; but I am sure
+our affair is over, if our two old armies are beaten and we
+should come to want these new ones; four only of which are
+pretended to be raised.  Pitt, who has alternately bullied and
+flattered Mr. Pelham, is at last to be secretary-at-war;(1129)
+Sir W. Yonge to be removed to vice-treasurer of Ireland, and
+Lord Torrington(1130) to have a pension in lieu of it.  An
+ungracious parallel between the mercenary views Of these
+patriot heroes, the regiment-factors, and of their acquiescent
+agents, the ministry, with the disinterested behaviour of m
+Lord Kildare,(1131) was drawn on Friday by Lord Doneraile; who
+read the very proposals of the latter for raising, clothing,
+and arming a regiment at his own expense, and for which he had
+been told, but the very day before this question, that the
+King had no occasion.--"And how," said Lord Doneraile, "can
+one account for this, but by saying, that we have a ministry
+who are either too good-natured to refuse a wrong thing, or
+too irresolute to do a right one!"
+
+I am extremely pleased with the, purchase of the Eagle and
+Altar, and think them cheap: and I even begin to believe that
+I shall be able to pay for them.  The gesse statues are all
+arrived safe.  Your last letter was dated Oct. 19, N. S. and
+left you up to the chin in water(1132) just as we were drowned
+five years ago.  Good night, if you are alive still!
+(1127) He had been confined in the Tower ever since the
+assassination plot, in the reign of King William; but at last
+made his escape.
+
+(1128) This circumstance is thus alluded to in Sir C. H.
+Williams's ballad of "The heroes.
+
+"Three regiments one Duke contents,
+With two more places you know:
+Since his Bath Knights, his Grace delights
+In Tri-a junct' in U-no."
+
+The Duke of Montagu was master of the great wardrobe, a place
+worth eight thousand pounds a-year.  He was also grand-master
+of the order of the Bath.-D.
+
+(1129) In the May following, Mr. Pitt was appointed paymaster
+of the forces.-E.
+
+(1130) Pattee Byng, second Viscount Torrington.    He  had
+been made vice-treasurer of Ireland upon the going out of the
+Walpole administration.-D.
+
+(1131) @ James Fitzgerald, twentieth Earl of Kildare; created
+in 1761, Marquis of Kildare, and in 1766 Duke of Leinster-
+-Irish honours.-D.
+
+(1132) By an inundation of the Arno.
+
+
+
+449 Letter 186
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1745.
+
+I told you in my last what disturbance there had been about
+the new regiments; the affair of rank was again disputed on
+the report till ten at night, and carried by a majority of 23.
+The King had been persuaded to appear for it, though Lord
+Granville made it a party point against Mr. Pelham.
+Winnington did not speak.  I was not there, for I could not
+vote for it, and yielded not to give any hindrance to a public
+measure (or at least what was called so) ' just now.  The
+Prince acted openly, and influenced his people against it; but
+it, only served to let Mr. Pelham see, what, like every thing
+else, he did not know, how strong he is.  The King will scarce
+speak to him, and he cannot yet get Pitt into place.
+
+The rebels are come into England: for two days we believed
+them near Lancaster, but the ministry now own that they don't
+know if they have passed Carlisle.  Some think they will
+besiege that town, which has an old wall, and the militia in
+it of Cumberland and Westmoreland; but as they can pass by it,
+I don't see why they should take it; for they are not strong
+enough to leave garrisons.  Several desert them as they
+advance south; and altogether, good men and bad, nobody
+believes them ten thousand.  By their marching westward to
+avoid Wade, it is evident they are not strong enough to fight
+him.  They may yet retire back into their mountains, but if
+once they get to Lancaster, their retreat is cut off; for Wade
+'will not stir from Newcastle, till he has embarked them deep
+into England, and then he will be behind them.  He has sent
+General Handasyde from Berwick with two regiments to take
+possession of Edinburgh.  The rebels are certainly in a Very
+desperate situation: they dared not meet Wade; and if they had
+waited for him their troops would have deserted.  Unless they
+meet with great risings in their favour in Lancashire, I don't
+see what they can hope, except from a continuation of our
+neglect.  That, indeed, has nobly exerted itself for them.
+They were suffered to march the whole length of Scotland, and
+take possession of the capital, without a man appearing
+against them.  Then two thousand men sailed to them, to run
+from them.  Till the flight of Cope's army, Wade was not sent.
+'Two roads still lay into England, and till they had chosen
+that which Wade had not taken, no
+ army was thought of being sent to secure the other.  Now
+Ligonier, with seven old regiments, and six of the new, is
+ordered to Lancashire: before this first division of the army
+could get to Coventry, they are forced to order it to halt,
+for fear the enemy should be up with it before it was all
+assembled.  It is uncertain if the rebels will march to the
+north of Wales, to Bristol, or towards London.  If to the
+latter, Ligonier must fight the n: if to either of the other,
+I hope, the two armies may join and drive them into a corner,
+where they must all perish.  They cannot subsist in Wales, but
+by being supplied by the' Papists in Ireland(.  The best is,
+that we are in no fear from France; there is no preparation
+for invasions in any of their ports.  Lord Clancarty,(1133) a
+Scotchman of great parts, but mad and drunken, and whose
+family forfeited 90,000 pounds a-@ear for King James, is made
+vice-admiral at Brest.  The Duke of Bedford goes in his little
+round person with his regiment: he now takes to the land, and
+says he is tired of being a pen and ink man.  Lord Gower too,
+insisted upon going with his regiment, but is laid up with the
+gout.
+
+With the rebels in England, you may imagine we have no private
+news, nor think of foreign.  From this account you may judge,
+that our case is far from desperate, though disagreeable, The
+Prince, while the Princess lies-in, has taken to give dinners,
+to which he asks two of the ladies of the bedchamber, two of
+the maids of honour, etc. by turns, and five or six others.
+He sits at the head of the table, drinks and harangues to all
+this medley till nine at night; and the other day, after the
+affair of the regiments, drank Mr. Fox's health in a bumper,
+with three huzzas, for opposing Mr. Pelham--
+
+"Si quel fata aspera rumpas,
+Tu Marcellus eris!"
+
+You put me in pain for my eagle, and in more for the Chutes;
+whose zeal is very heroic, but very ill-placed.  I long to
+hear that all my Chutes and eagles are safe out of the Pope's
+hands! Pray wish the Suares's joy of all their espousals.
+Does the Princess pray abundantly for her friend the
+Pretender? Is she extremely abbatue with her devotion? and
+does she fast till she has got a violent appetite for supper?
+And then, does she eat so long that old Sarrasin is quite
+impatient to go to cards again? Good night!  I intend you
+shall be resident from King George.
+
+P. S. I forgot to tell you, that the other day I concluded the
+ministry knew the danger was all over; for the Duke of
+Newcastle ventured to have the Pretender's declaration burnt
+at the Royal Exchange.
+
+(1133) Donagh Maccarty, Earl of Clancarty, was an Irishman,
+and not a Scotchman.-D.
+
+
+
+451 Letter 187
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 22, 1745.
+
+For these two days we have been expecting news of a battle.
+Wade marched last Saturday from Newcastle, and must have got
+up with the rebels, if they stayed for him, though the roads
+are exceedingly bad and great quantities of snow have fallen.
+But last night there was some notice of a body of rebels being
+advanced to Penryth.  We were put into great spirits by an
+heroic letter from the mayor of Carlisle, who had fired on the
+rebels and made them retire; he concluded with saying, "And so
+I think the town of Carlisle has done his Majesty more service
+than the great city of Edinburgh, or than all Scotland
+together."  But this hero, who was crown the whole fashion for
+four-and-twenty hours, had chosen to stop all other letters.
+The King spoke of him at his levee with great encomiums; Lord
+Stair said, "Yes, sir, Mr. Patterson has behaved very
+bravely." The Duke of Bedford interrupted him; "My lord, his
+name is not Paterson; that is a Scotch name; his name is
+Patinson." But, alack! the next day the rebels returned, having
+placed the women and children of the country in wagons
+in front of their army, and forcing the peasants to fix the
+scaling-ladders.  The great Mr. Pattinson, or Patterson (for
+now his name may be which one pleases,) instantly surrendered
+the town and agreed to pay two thousand pounds to save it from
+pillage.  Well! then we were assured that the citadel could
+hold out seven or eight days but did not so many hours.  On
+mustering the militia, there were not found above four men in
+a company; and for two companies, which the ministry, on a
+report of Lord Albemarle, who said they were to be sent from
+Wade's army, thought were there, and did not know were not
+there, there was nothing but two of invalids.  Colonel Durand,
+the governor, fled, because he would not sign the
+capitulation, by which the garrison, it is said, has sworn
+never to bear arms against the house of Stuart.  The Colonel
+sent two expresses, one to Wade, and another to Ligonier at
+Preston; but the latter was playing at whist with Lord
+Harrington at Petersham.  Such is our diligence and attention!
+All my hopes are in Wade, who was so sensible of the ignorance
+of our governors that he refused to accept the command, till
+they consented that he should be subject to no kind of orders
+from hence.  The rebels are reckoned up to thirteen thousand;
+Wade marches with about twelve; but if they come southward,
+the other army will probably be to fight them; the Duke is to
+command it, and sets out next week with another brigade of
+Guards, and Ligonier under him.  There are great apprehensions
+for Chester from the Flintshire-men, who are ready to rise.  A
+quartermaster, first sent to Carlisle, was seized and carried
+to Wade; he behaved most insolently; and being asked by the
+General, how many the rebels were, replied, "enough to beat
+any army you have in England." A Mackintosh has been taken,
+who reduces their formidability, by being sent to raise two
+clans, and with orders, if they would not rise, at least to
+give out they had risen, for that three clans would leave the
+Pretender, unless joined by those two.  Five hundred new
+rebels are arrived at Perth, where our prisoners are kept.
+
+I had this morning a subscription pool@ brought me for our
+parish; Lord Granville had refused to subscribe.  This is in
+the style of his friend Lord Bath, who has absented himself
+whenever any act of authority was to be executed against the
+rebels.
+
+Five Scotch lords are going to raise regiments `a l'Angloise!
+resident in London, while the rebels were in Scotland; they
+are to receive military emoluments for their neutrality!
+
+The Fox man-of-war of twenty guns is lost off Dunbar.  One
+Beavor, the captain, had done us notable service: the
+Pretender sent to commend his zeal and activity, and to tell
+him, that if he would return to his allegiance, be should soon
+have a flag.  Beavor replied, "he never treated with any but
+principals; that if the Pretender would come on board him, he
+would talk with him." I must now tell you of our great Vernon:
+without once complaining to the ministry, he has written to
+Sir John Philipps, a distinguished Jacobite, to complain of
+want of provisions; yet they do not venture to recall him!
+Yesterday they had another baiting from Pitt, who is ravenous
+for the place of secretary at war: they would give it him; but
+as a preliminary, he insists on a declaration of our having
+nothing to do with the Continent.  He mustered his forces, but
+did not notify his intention; only at two o'clock Lyttelton
+said at the Treasury, that there would be business at the
+House.  The motion was to augment our naval force, which, Pitt
+said, was the only method of putting an end to the rebellion.
+Ships built a year hence to suppress an army of Highlanders,
+now marching through England!  My uncle attacked him, and
+congratulated his country on the wisdom of the modern young
+men; and said he had a son of two-and-twenty, who, he did not
+doubt, would come over wiser than any of them.  Pitt was
+provoked, and retorted on his negotiations and greyheaded
+experience.  At those words, my uncle, as if he had been at
+Bartholomew fair, snatched off his wig, and showed his gray
+hairs, which made the august senate laugh, and put Pitt out,
+who, after laughing himself, diverted his venom upon Mr.
+Pelham.  Upon the question, Pitt's party amounted but to
+thirty-six: in short, he has nothing left but his words, and
+his haughtiness, and his Lytteltons, and his Grenvilles.
+Adieu!
+
+
+
+453 Letter 188
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 29, 1745.
+
+We have had your story here this week of the pretended
+pretender, but with the unlucky circumstance of its coming
+from the Roman Catholics.  With all the faith you have in your
+little spy, I cannot believe it; though, to be sure, it has a
+Stuart-air, the not exposing the real boy to danger.  The Duke
+of Newcastle mentioned your account this morning to my uncle;
+but they don't give any credit to the courier's relation.  It
+grows so near being necessary for the young man to get off by
+any evasion, that I am persuaded all that party will try to
+have it believed.  We are so far from thinking that they have
+not sent us one son, that two days ago we believed we had got
+the other too.  A small ship has taken the Soleil privateer
+from Dunkirk, going to Montrose, with twenty French officers,
+sixty others, and the brother of the beheaded Lord
+Derwentwater and his son,(1134) who at first was believed to
+be the second boy.  News came yesterday of a second privateer,
+taken with arms and money; of another lost on the Dutch coast,
+and of Vernon being in pursuit of two more.  All this must be
+a great damp to the party, who are coming on--fast--fast to
+their destruction.  Last night they were to be at Preston, but
+several repeated accounts make them under five thousand--none
+above seven; they must have diminished greatly by desertion.
+The country is so far from rising for them, that the towns are
+left desolate on their approach, and the people hide and bury
+their effects, even to their pewter.  Warrington bridge is
+broken down, which will turn them some miles aside.  The Duke,
+with the flower of that brave army which stood all the fire at
+Fontenoy, will rendezvous at Stone, beyond Litchfield, the day
+after to-morrow: Wade is advancing behind them, and will be at
+Wetherby in Yorkshire to-morrow.  In short, I have no
+conception of their daring to fight either army, nor see any
+visible possibility of their not being very soon destroyed.
+My fears have been great, from the greatness of our stake; but
+I now write in the greatest confidence of our getting over
+this ugly business.  We have another very disagreeable affair,
+that may have fatal consequences: there rages a murrain among
+the cows; we dare not eat milk, butter, beef, nor any thing
+from that species.  Unless there is snow or frost soon, it is
+likely to @spread dreadfully though hitherto it has not
+reached many miles from London.  At first, it was imagined
+that the Papists had empoisoned the pools; but the physicians
+have pronounced it infectious, and brought from abroad.
+
+I forgot to tell you, that my uncle begged the Duke of
+Newcastle to stifle this report of the sham Pretender lest the
+King should hear it and recall the Duke, as too great to fight
+a counterfeit.  It is certain that the army adore the Duke,
+and are gone in the greatest spirits; and on the parade, as
+they began their march, the Guards vowed that they would
+neither give nor take quarter.  For bravery, his Royal
+Highness is certainly no Stuart, but literally loves to be in
+the act of fighting.  His brother has so far the same taste,
+that the night of his new son's christening, he had the
+citadel of Carlisle in sugar at supper, and the company
+besieged it with sugar-plums.  It was well imagined,
+considering the time and the circumstances.  One thing was
+very proper; old Marshal Stair was there, who is grown child
+enough to be fit to war only with such artillery.  Another
+piece of ingenuity of that court was on the report of Pitt
+being named secretary at war.  The Prince hates him, since the
+fall of Lord Granville: he said, Miss Chudleigh,(1135) one of
+the maids, was fitter for the employment; and dictated a
+letter which he made her write to Lord Harrington, to desire
+he would draw the warrant for her.  There were fourteen people
+at table, and all were to sign it: the Duke of
+Queensberry(1136 would not, as being a friend of Pitt, nor
+Mrs. Layton, one of the dressers: however, it was actually
+sent, and the footman ordered not to deliver it till Sir
+William Yonge was at Lord Harrington's-alas! it would be
+endless to tell you all his Caligulisms!  A ridiculous thing
+happened when the Princess saw company: the new-born babe was
+shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a
+canopy in the great drawing-room.  Sir William Stanhope went
+to look at it; Mrs. Herbert, the governess, advanced to
+unmantle it; he said, "In wax, I suppose."--"Sir!"--"In wax,
+Madam?"--"The young Prince, Sir."--"Yes, in wax, I suppose."
+This is his odd humour? when he went to see this duke at his
+birth, he said, "Lord! it sees!"
+
+The good Provost of Edinburgh has been with Marshal Wade at
+Newcastle, and it is said, is coming to London-he must trust
+hugely to the inactivity of the ministry!  They have taken an
+agent there going with large contributions from the- Roman
+Catholics, who have pretended to be so quiet!  The Duchess of
+Richmond, while her husband is at the army, was going to her
+grace of Norfolk:(1137) when he was very uneasy at her
+intention, she showed him letters from the Norfolk, "wherein
+she prays God that this wicked rebellion may be soon
+suppressed, lest it hurt the poor Roman Catholics." But this
+wise jaunt has made such a noise that it is laid aside.
+
+Your friend Lord Sandwich has got one of the Duke of Montagu's
+regiments: he stayed quietly till all the noise was over.  He
+is now lord of the admiralty, lieutenant-colonel to the Duke
+of Bedford, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Richmond, and colonel
+of a regiment!
+
+A friend of mine, Mr. Talbot, who has a good estate in
+Cheshire, with the great tithes, which he takes in kind, and
+has generally fifteen hundred pounds stock, has expressly
+ordered his steward to burn it, if the rebels come that way: I
+don't think this will make a bad figure in Mr. Chute's brave
+gazette.  As we go on prospering, I will take care to furnish
+him with paragraphs, till he kills Riviera(1138) and all the
+faction.  When my lovely eagle comes, I will consecrate it to
+his Roman memory; don't think I want spirits more than he,
+when I beg you to send me a case of drams: I remember your
+getting one for Mr. Trevor.
+
+I guessed at having lost two letters from you in the
+packet-boat that was taken: I have received all you mention,
+but those of the 21st and 28th of September, one of which I
+suppose was about Gibberne: his mother has told me how happy
+you have made her and him, for which I much thank you and your
+usual good-nature.  Adieu! I trust all my letters will grow
+better and better.  You must have passed a lamentable scene of
+anxiety; we have had a good deal; but I think we grow in
+spirits again.  There never was so melancholy a town; no kind
+of public place but the playhouses, and they look as if the
+rebels had just driven away the company.  Nobody but has some
+fear for themselves, for their money, or for their friends in
+the army: of this number am I deeply; Lord Bury(1139) and mr.
+Conway, two of the first in my list, are aide-de-camps to the
+Duke, and another, Mr. Cornwallis,(1140) is in the same army,
+and my nephew, Lord Malpas(1141)--so I still fear the rebels
+beyond my reason.  Good night.
+
+P. S. It is now generally believed from many circumstances,
+that the youngest Pretender is actually among the prisoners
+taken on board the Soleil: pray wish Mr. Chute joy for me.
+
+(1134) Charles Radcliffe, brother of James, Earl of
+Derwentwater, who was executed for the share he took in the
+rebellion of 1715.  Charles was executed in 1746, upon the
+sentence pronounced against him in 1716, which he had then
+evaded, by escaping from Newgate.  His son was Bartholomew,
+third Earl of Newburgh, a Scotch title he inherited from his
+mother.-D.
+
+(1135) Afterwards the well-known Duchess of Kingston.-D.
+
+(1136) Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry, and second
+Duke of Dover: died 1778.-D.
+
+(1137) Mary Blount, Duchess of Norfolk, the wife of Duke
+Edward.  She and her Husband were suspected of Jacobitism.-D.
+
+(1138) Cardinal Riviera, promoted to the purple by the
+interest of the Pretender.
+
+(1139) George Keppel, eldest son of the Earl of Albemarle,
+whom he succeeded in the title in 1754.
+
+(1140) Edward, brother of Earl Cornwallis, groom of the
+bedchamber to the King, and afterwards governor of Nova
+Scotia.
+
+(1141) George, eldest son of George, Earl of Cholmondeley, and
+of Mary, second daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+
+
+455 Letter 189
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, December 9, 1745.
+
+I am glad I did not write to you last post as I intended; I
+should have sent you an account that would have alarmed you,
+and the danger would have been over before the letter had
+crossed the sea.  The Duke, from some strange want of
+intelligence, lay last week for four-and-twenty hours under
+arms at Stone, in Staffordshire, expecting the rebels every
+moment, while they were marching in all haste to Derby.(1142)
+The news of this threw the town into great consternation but
+his Royal Highness repaired his mistake, and got to
+Northampton, between the Highlanders and London.  They got
+nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the books brought to
+them, and obliged every body to give them what they had
+subscribed against them.  Then they retreated a few miles, but
+returned again to Derby, got ten thousand pounds more,
+plundered the town, and burnt a house of the Countess of
+Exeter.  They are gone again, and got back to Leake, in
+Staffordshire, but miserably harassed, and, it is said, have
+left all their cannon behind them, and twenty wagons of
+sick.(1143)  The Duke has sent General Hawley with the
+dragoons to harass them in their retreat, and despatched Mr.
+Conway to Marshal Wade, to hasten his march upon the back of
+them.  They must either go to North Wales, where they will
+probably all perish, or to Scotland, with great loss.  We
+dread them no more We are threatened with great preparations
+for a French invasion, but the coast is exceedingly guarded;
+and for the people, the spirit against the rebels increases
+every day.  Though they have marched thus into the heart of
+the kingdom, there has not been the least symptom of a rising,
+not even in the great towns of which they possessed
+themselves.  They have got no recruits since their first entry
+into England, excepting one gentleman in Lancashire, one
+hundred and fifty common men, and two parsons, at Manchester,
+and a physician from York.  But here in London the aversion to
+them is amazing: on some thoughts of the King's going to an
+encampment at Finchley, the weavers not Only offered him a
+thousand men, but the whole body of the Law formed themselves
+into a little army, under the command of Lord Chief-Justice
+Willes,(1144) and were to have done duty at St. James's, to
+guard the royal family in the King's absence.
+
+But the greatest demonstration of loyalty appeared on the
+prisoners being brought to town from the Soleil prize - the
+young man is certainly Mr. Radcliffe's son; but the mob,
+persuaded of his being the youngest Pretender, could scarcely
+be restrained from tearing him to pieces all the way on the
+road, and at his arrival.  He said he had heard of English
+mobs, but could not conceive they were so dreadful, and wished
+he had been shot at the battle of Dettingen, where he had been
+engaged.  The father, whom they call Lord Derwentwater, said,
+on entering the Tower, that he had never expected to arrive
+there alive.  For the young man, he must only be treated as a
+French captive; for the father, it is sufficient to produce
+him at the Old Bailey, and prove that he is the individual
+person condemned for the last rebellion, and so to Tyburn.
+
+We begin to take up people, but it is with as much caution and
+timidity as women of quality begin to pawn their Jewels; we
+have not ventured upon any great stone yet!
+
+The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger; and the
+other day they seized an, odd man, who goes by the name of
+Count St. Germain.  he has been here these two years, and will
+not tell who he is, or whence, but professes that he does not
+go by his right name.  He sings, plays on the violin
+wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible.  He is
+called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married
+a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to
+Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman, The
+Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in
+vain.  However, nothing has been made out against him -.' he
+is released: and, what convinces me that he is not a
+gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being taken up for a
+spy.
+
+I think these accounts, upon which you may depend, must raise
+your spirits, and figure in Mr. Chute's royal journal.-But you
+don't get my letters: I have sent you eleven since I came to
+town; how many of these have you received? Adieu!
+
+(1142) The consternation was so great as to occasion that day
+being named Black Friday.  (Fielding, in his True Patriot,
+says, that, "when the Highlanders, by a most incredible march,
+got between the Duke's army and the metropolis, they struck a
+terror into it scarce to be credited." An immediate rush was
+made upon the Bank of England, which,  it is said, only
+escaped bankruptcy by paying in sixpences, to gain time.  The
+shops in general were shut up; public business, for the most
+part, was suspended, and the restoration of the Stuarts was
+expected by all as no improbable or distant occurrence.  See
+Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 444.)
+
+(1143 "Charles arrived at Derby in high spirits, reflecting
+that he was now within a hundred and thirty miles of the
+capital.  Accordingly, that evening, at supper, he studiously
+directed his conversation to his intended progress and
+expected triumph--whether it would be best for him to enter
+London on foot or on horseback, in Highland or in English
+dress.  Far different were the thoughts of his followers, who,
+early next morning, laid before him their earnest and
+unanimous opinion for an immediate retreat to Scotland,
+Charles said, that, rather than go back, he would wish to be
+buried twenty feet under ground.  On the following day he
+sullenly consented to retreat, but added, that, in future, he
+would call no more councils; since he was accountable to
+nobody for his actions, excepting to God and his father, and
+would therefore no longer either ask or accept their advice."
+See Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, vol. v. p. 226.-E.
+
+
+(1144) Sir John Willes, knight, chief justice of the common
+pleas from 1737 to 1762.-D.
+
+(1145) In the beginning of the year 1755, on rumours of a
+great armament at Brest, one Virette, a Swiss, who had been a
+kind of toad-eater to this St. Germain, was denounced to Lord
+Holderness for a spy; but Mr. Stanley going pretty surlily to
+his lordship, on his suspecting a friend of his, Virette was
+declared innocent, and the penitent secretary of state made
+him the honourable amends of a dinner in form.  About the same
+time, a spy of ours was seized at Brest, but not happening to
+be acquainted with Mr. Stanley, was broken upon the wheel.
+
+
+
+
+457 Letter 190
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington street, Dec. 20, 1745.
+
+I have at last got your great letter by Mr. Gambier, and the
+views of the villas,(1146) for which I thank you much.  I
+can't say I think them too well done. nor the villas
+themselves pretty; but the prospects are charming.  I have
+since received two more letters from you, of November 30th and
+December 7th.  You seem to receive mine at last, though very
+slowly.
+
+We have at last got a spring-tide of good luck.  The rebels
+turned back from Derby, and have ever since been flying with
+the greatest precipitation.(1147)  The Duke, with all his
+horse, and a thousand foot mounted, has pursued them with
+astonishing rapidity; and General Oglethorpe, with part of
+Wade's horse, has crossed over upon them.  There has been
+little prospect of coming up with their entire body, but it
+dismayed them; their stragglers were picked up, and the towns
+in their way preserved from plunder, by their not having time
+to do mischief. This morning an express is arrived from Lord
+Malton(1148) in Yorkshire, who has had an account of
+Oglethorpe's cutting a part of them to pieces, and of the
+Duke's overtaking their rear and entirely demolishing it.  We
+believe all this; but, as it is not yet confirmed, don't
+depend upon it too much.  The fat East India ships are arrived
+safe from Ireland--I mean the prizes; and yesterday a letter
+arrived from Admiral Townshend in the West Indies, where he
+has fallen in with the Martinico fleet (each ship valued at
+eight thousand pounds), taken twenty, sunk ten, and driven
+ashore two men-of-war, their convoy, and battered them to
+pieces.  All this will raise the pulse Of the stocks, which
+have been exceedingly low this week, and the Bank itself in
+danger.  The private rich are making immense fortunes out of
+the public distress: the dread of the French invasion has
+occasioned this.  They have a vast embarkation at Dunkirk; the
+Duc de Richelieu, Marquis Fimarcon, and other general
+officers, are named in form to command.  Nay, it has been
+notified in form by the insolent Lord John Drummond,(1149) who
+has got to Scotland, and sent a drum to Marshal Wade, to
+announce himself commander for the French King in the war he
+designs to wage in England, and to propose a cartel for the
+exchange of prisoners.  No answer has been made to this rebel;
+but the King has acquainted the Parliament with this audacious
+message.  We have a vast fleet at sea; and the main body of
+the Duke's army is coming down to the coast to prevent their
+landing, if they should slip our ships.  Indeed, I can't
+believe they will attempt coming hither, as they must hear of
+the destruction of the rebels in England; but they will
+probably, dribble away to Scotland, where the war may last
+considerably.  Into England, I scarce believe the Highlanders
+will be drawn again:--to have come as far as Derby--to have
+found no rising in their favour, and to find themselves not
+strong enough to fight either army, will make lasting
+impressions!
+
+Vernon, I hear, is recalled for his absurdities, and at his
+own request, and Martin named for his successor.(1150) We had
+yesterday a very remarkable day in the House: the King
+notified his having sent for six thousand Hessians into
+Scotland.  Mr. Pelham, for an address of thanks.  Lord
+Cornbury (indeed, an exceedingly honest man(1151)) was for
+thanking for the notice, not for the sending for the troops;
+and proposed to add a representation of the national being the
+only constitutional troops, and to hope we should be
+exonerated of these foreigners as soon as possible.  Pitt, and
+that clan, joined him; but the voice of the House, and the
+desires of the whole kingdom for all the troops we can get,
+were so strong, that, on the division, we were 190 to 44: I
+think and hope this will produce some Hanoverians too. That it
+will produce a dismission of the Cobhamites is pretty certain;
+the Duke of Bedford and Lord Gower arc warm for both points.
+The latter has certainly renounced Jacobitism.
+
+Boetslaar is come again from Holland, but his errand not yet
+known.  You will have heard of another victory,(1152) which
+the Prussian has gained over the Saxons; very bloody on both
+sides--but now he is master of Dresden.
+
+We again think that we have got the second son,(1153) under
+the name of Macdonald.  Nobody is permitted to see any of the
+prisoners.
+
+In the midst of our political distresses, which, I assure you,
+have reduced the town to a state of Presbyterian dulness, we
+have been entertained with the marriage of the Duchess of
+Bridgewater(1154) and Dick Lyttelton - she, forty, plain, very
+rich, and with five children; he, six-and-twenty, handsome,
+poor, and proper to get her five more.  I saw, the other day,
+a very good Irish letter.  A gentleman in Dublin, full of the
+great qualities  of my Lord Chesterfield, has written a
+panegyric on them, particularly on his affability and
+humility; with a comparison between him and the hauteur of all
+other lord-lieutenants.  As an instance, he says, the earl was
+invited to a great dinner, whither he went, by mistake, at
+one, instead of three.  The master was not at home, the lady
+not dressed, every thing in confusion.  My lord was so humble
+as to dismiss his train and take a hackney-chair, and went and
+stayed with Mrs. Phipps till dinner-time--la belle humilit`e!
+
+
+I am not at all surprised to hear of my cousin Don Sebastian's
+stupidity.  Why, child, he cannot articulate; how would you
+have had him educated?  Cape Breton, Bastia, Martinico! if we
+are undone this year, at least we go out with `eclat.  Good
+night.
+
+1146) Villas of the Florentine nobility.
+
+(1147) "Now few there were," says Captain Daniel, in his MS.
+Memoirs, " who would go on foot if they could ride; and mighty
+taking, stealing, and pressing of horses there was amongst us!
+Diverting it was to see the Highlanders mounted, without
+either breeches, saddle, or any thing else but the bare back
+of the horses to ride on; and for their bridle, only a straw
+rope!  in this manner do we march out of England." See Lord
+Mahon's Hist. vol. iii. p. 449.-E.
+
+(1148) Sir Thomas Watson Wentworth, Knight of the Bath and
+Earl of Malton. [In April 1746, he was advanced to the dignity
+of Marquis of Rockingham.  He died in 1750, was succeeded by
+his second son, Charles Watson Wentworth, second marquis; on
+whose death, in 1782, all the titles became extinct.]
+
+(1149) Brother of the titular Duke of Perth. [And a general
+officer in the French army.  "The amount of supplies brought
+by him reminds us," says Sir Walter Scott, "of those
+administered to a man perishing of famine, by a comrade, who
+dropped into his mouth, from time to time, a small shelfish,
+affording nutriment enough to keep the sufferer from dying,
+but not sufficient to restore him to active exertion."]
+
+(1150) On the 2d of January, Admiral Vernon, having arrived in
+the Downs from a cruise, struck his flag; upon which, Admiral
+Martin took the command, in his room.-E.
+
+(1151) Henry Hyde, only son of Henry, the last Earl of
+Clarendon.  He was called up to the House of Peers, by the
+style of Lord Hyde, and died unmarried, before his father, at
+Paris, 1753. (When Lord Cornbury returned from his travels,
+Lord Essex, his brother-in-law, told him, with a great deal of
+pleasure, that he had got a handsome pension for him, All Lord
+Cornbury's answer was, "How could you tell, my Lord, that I
+was to be sold? or, at least, how came you to know my price so
+exactly?"--"It was on this account," says Spence, "that Pope
+complimented him with this passage-
+
+"Would you be bless't? despise low joys, low gains;
+Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;
+Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains."
+
+On the death of the earl, a few months after his son, the
+viscounty of Cornbury and earldom of Clarendon became
+extinct.-E.]
+
+(1152) The battle of Kesselsdorf, gained by Prince Leopold of
+Anhalt Dessau over the Saxon army, commanded by Count
+Rutowsky.  This event took place on the 15th of December, and
+was followed by the taking of Dresden by the King of
+Prussia.-D.
+
+(1153) Henry Stuart, afterwards Cardinal of York.  This
+intelligence did not prove true.-D.
+
+(1154) lady Rachel Russel, eldest sister of John, Duke of
+Bedford, and widow of Scrope Egerton, Duke of Bridgewator;
+married to her second husband, Colonel Richard Lyttelton,
+brother of Sir George Lyttelton, and afterwards Knight of the
+Bath.
+
+
+
+460 Letter 191
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan, 3, 1746.
+
+I deferred writing to you till I could tell you that the
+rebellion was at an end in England.  The Duke has taken
+Carlisle, but was long enough before it to prove how basely or
+cowardly it was yielded to the rebel: you will see the
+particulars' in the Gazette.  His Royal Highness is expected
+in town every day; but I still think it probable that he will
+go to Scotland.(1155)  That country is very clamorous for it.
+If the King does send him, it should not be with that sword of
+mercy with which the present family have governed those
+people.  All the world agrees in the fitness of severity to
+highwaymen, for the sake of the innocent who suffer; then can
+rigour be ill-placed against banditti. who have so terrified,
+pillaged, and injured the poor people in Cumberland,
+Lancashire, Derbyshire, and the counties through which this
+rebellion has stalked? There is a military magistrate of some
+fierceness sent into Scotland with Wade's army, who is coming
+to town; it is General Hawley.(1156)  He will not sow the
+seeds of future disloyalty by too easily pardoning the
+present.
+
+The French still go on with their preparations at Dunkirk and
+their sea-ports; but I think, few people believe now that they
+will be exerted against us: we have a numerous fleet in the
+Channel, and a large army on the shores opposite to France.
+The Dutch fear that all this storm is to burst on them.  Since
+the Queen's making peace with Prussia, the Dutch are applying
+to him for protection; and I am told, wake from their neutral
+lethargy.
+
+We are in a good quiet state here in town; the Parliament is
+reposing itself for the holidays; the ministry is in private
+agitation; the Cobham part of the coalition is going to be
+disbanded; Pitt's wild ambition cannot content itself with
+what he had asked, and had granted: and he has driven
+Lyttelton and the Grenvilles to adopt all his extravagances.
+But then, they are at 'variance again within themselves:
+Lyttelton's wife(1157) hates Pitt, and does not approve his
+governing her husband and hurting their family; so that, at
+present, it seems, he does not care to be a martyr to Pitt's
+caprices, which are in excellent training; for he is governed
+by her mad Grace of Queensberry.  All this makes foul weather;
+but, to me, it is only a cloudy landscape.
+
+The Prince has dismissed Hume Campbell(1158) who was his
+solicitor, for attacking Lord Tweedale(1159) on the Scotch
+affairs: the latter has resigned the seals of secretary of
+state for Scotland to-day.  I conclude, when the holidays are
+over, and the rebellion travelled so far back, we shall have
+warm inquiries in Parliament.  This is a short letter, I
+perceive; but I know nothing more; and the Carlisle part of it
+will make you wear, your beaver more erect than I believe you
+have of late.  Adieu!
+
+(1155) The Duke of Cumberland entered Carlisle on the 31 st of
+December; but his pursuit of the Highlanders in person was
+interrupted by despatches, which called him to London, to be
+ready to take command against the projected invasion from
+France.-E.
+
+(1156) "Hawley," says Lord Mahon, "was an officer of some
+experience,
+but destitute of capacity, and hated, not merely by his
+enemies, but by his own soldiers, for a most violent and
+vindictive temper.  One of his first measures, on arriving at
+Edinburgh, to take the chief command, was to order two gibbets
+to be erected, ready for the rebels who might fall into his
+hands; and, with a similar view, he bid several executioners
+attend his army on his march." Vol. ii. p. 357.
+
+(1157) Lucy Fortescue, sister of Lord Clinton, first wife of
+Sir George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton. [She died in January
+1747, at the age of twenty-nine.
+
+(1158) twin-brother to the Earl of Marchmont; who, in his
+Diary .of the 2d of January, says, "My brother told me he had
+been, last night, with Mr. Drax, the Prince's secretary, when
+he had notified to him that the Prince expected all his family
+to go together to support the measures of the administration,
+and that, as Mr. Hume did not act so, he was to write him a
+letter, discharging him, In the conversation, Mr. Drax said,
+that the Prince was to support the Pelhams, and that his
+dismission was to be ascribed to Lord Granville.  My brother
+said, that he had nothing to say to the Prince, other than
+that he would support all the measures he thought conducive to
+the King's interests, but no others."-E.
+
+(1159) The Marquis of Tweedale was one of the discontented
+Whigs, during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole; on
+whose removal he came to court, and was made secretary of
+state, attaching himself to Lord Granville's faction, whose
+youngest daughter, Frances, he afterwards married, He was
+reckoned a good civilian, but was a very dull man.
+
+
+
+461 Letter 192
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 17,1746.,
+
+It is a very good symptom, I can tell you, that I write to you
+seldom -. it is a fortnight since my last; and nothing
+material has happened in this interval.  The rebels are
+intrenching and fortifying themselves in Scotland; and what a
+despicable affair is a rebellion upon the defensive! General
+Hawley is marched from Edinburgh, to put it quite out.  I must
+give you some idea of this man, who will give a mortal blow to
+the pride of the Scotch nobility.  He is called Lord chief
+Justice; frequent and sudden executions are his passion.  Last
+winter he had intelligence of a spy to come from the French
+army: the first notice our army had of his arrival, was by
+seeing him dangle on a gallows in his mufti and boots.  One of
+the surgeons of the army begged the body of a soldier who was
+hanged for desertion, to dissect: "Well," said Hawley, "but
+then you shall give me the skeleton to hang up in the
+guard-room." He is very brave and able; with no small bias to
+the brutal.  Two years ago, when he arrived at Ghent, the
+magistrates, according to customs sent a gentleman, with the
+offer of a sum Of money to engage his favour.  He told the
+gentleman, in great wrath, that the King his master paid him,
+and that he should go tell the magistrates so; at the same
+time dragging him to the head of the stairs, and kicking him
+down.  He then went to the town-hall; on their refusing him
+entrance, he burst open the door with his foot, and seated
+himself abruptly: told them how he had been affronted, was
+persuaded they had no hand in it, and demanded to have the
+gentleman given up to him, who never dared to appear in the
+town while he stayed in it.  Now I am telling you anecdotes of
+him, you shall hear two more.  When the Prince of Hesse, our
+son-in-law, arrived at Brussels, and found Hawley did not wait
+on him, the Prince sent to know if he expected the first
+visit?  He replied, "He always expected that inferior officers
+should wait on their commanders; and not only that, but he
+gave his Highness but half an hour to consider of it." The
+Prince went to him.  I believe I told you of Lord John
+Drummond sending a drum to Wade to propose a cartel.  Wade
+returned a civil answer, which had the King's and council's
+approbation.  When the drummer arrived with it at Edinburgh,
+Hawley opened it and threw it into the fire, would not let the
+drummer go back, but made him write to Lord J. "That rebels
+were not to be treated with." If you don't think that spirit
+like this will do-do you see, I would not give a farthing for
+your presumption.(1160)
+
+The French invasion is laid aside; we are turning our hands to
+war again upon the continent.  The House of Commons is
+something of which I can give YOU no description: Mr. Pitt,
+the meteor of it, Is neither yet in place, nor his friends
+out.  Some Tories oppose: Mr. Pelham is distressed, and has
+vast majorities.  When the scene clears a little, I will tell
+you more of it.
+
+The two last letters I have had from you, are of December 21
+and January 4. You was then still in uneasiness; by this time
+I hope you have no other distresses than are naturally
+incident to your miny-ness.
+
+I never hear any thing of the Countess(1161) except just now,
+that she is grown tired of sublunary affairs, and willing to
+come to a composition with her lord: I believe that the price
+will be two thousand a-year.  The other day, his and her
+lawyers were talking over the affair before her and several
+other people: her counsel, in the heat of the dispute, said to
+my lord's lawyers, "Sir, Sir, we shall be able to prove that
+her ladyship was denied nuptial rights and conjugal enjoyments
+for seven years." It was excellent! My lord must have had
+matrimonial talents indeed, to have reached to Italy; besides,
+you know, she made it a point after her son was born, not to
+sleep with her husband.
+
+Thank you for the little medal.  I am glad I have nothing more
+to tell you-you little expected that we should so soon recover
+our tranquility.  Adieu!
+
+(1160) Glover, in his Memoirs, speaks of Hawley with great
+contempt, and talks of "his beastly ignorance and negligence,"
+which occasioned the loss of the battle of Falkirk.-D.
+
+(1161) Lady Orford.
+
+
+
+463 Letter 193
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 28, 1746.
+
+Do they send you the gazettes as they used to do? If you have
+them, you will find there an account of another battle lost in
+Scotland. Our arms cannot succeed there.  Hawley, of whom I
+said so much to you in my last, has been as unsuccessful as
+Cope, and by almost every circumstance the same, except that
+Hawley had less want of skill and much more presumption.  The
+very same dragoons ran away at Falkirk, that ran away at
+Preston Pans.(1162)  Though we had seven thousand men, and the
+rebels but five, we had scarce three regiments that behaved
+well.  General Huske and Brigadier Cholmondeley,(1163) my
+lord's brother, shone extremely - the former beat the enemy's.
+right wing; and the latter, by rallying two regiments,
+prevented the pursuit.  Our loss is trifling: for many of the
+rebels fled as fast as the glorious dragoons- but we have lost
+some good officers, particularly Sir Robert Monroe; and seven
+pieces of cannon.  A worse loss is apprehended, Stirling
+Castle, which could hold out but ten days; and that term
+expires to-morrow.  The Duke is gone post to Edinburgh, where
+he hoped to arrive to-night; if possible, to relieve Stirling.
+Another battle will certainly be fought before you receive
+this; I hope with the Hessians in it, who are every hour
+expected to land in Scotland.  With many other glories, the
+English courage seems gone too! The great dependence is upon
+the Duke; the soldiers adore him, and with reason: he has a
+lion's courage, vast vigilance and activity, and, I am told,
+great military genius.  For my own particular, I am uneasy
+that he is gone: Lord Bury and Mr. Conway, two of his
+aides-de-camp, and brave as he, are gone with him.  The ill
+behaviour of the soldiers lays a double obligation on the
+officers to set them examples of running on danger.  The
+ministry would have kept back Mr. Conway, as being in
+Parliament; which when the Duke told him, he burst into tears,
+and said nothing should hinder his going--and he is gone!
+Judge, if I have not reason to be alarmed!
+
+Some Of our prisoners in Scotland (the former Prisoners) are
+returned.  They had the Privilege of walking about the town,
+where they were confined, upon their parole: the militia of
+the country rose and set them at liberty.  General Hawley is
+so strict as to think they should be sent back; but nobody
+here comprehends such refinement: they could not give their
+word that the town should not be taken.  There are two or
+three others, who will lay the government under difficulties,
+when we have got over the rebellion.  They were come to
+England on their parole; and when the executions begin, they
+must in honour be given up--the question indeed will be, to
+whom?
+
+Adieu! my dear sir!  I write you this short letter, rather
+than be taxed with negligence on such an event; though, YOU
+perceive, I know nothing but what you will se in the printed
+papers.
+
+P.S. The Hessians would not act, because we would not settle a
+cartel with rebels!
+
+(1162) "Hawley was never seen in the field during the battle;
+and every thing would have gone to wreck, in a worse manner
+than at Preston, if General Huske had not acted with judgment
+and courage, and appeared every where." Culloden Papers, p.
+267.-E.
+
+(1163) The Hon.  James Cholmondeley, second son of George,
+second Earl of Cholmondeley.  He served with distinction both
+in Flanders and Scotland.  In 1750, he became colonel of the
+Inniskillen regiment of dragoons; and died in 1775.-D.
+
+
+
+464 Letter 194
+To Sir Horace MANN.
+Arlington Street Feb. 7, 1746.
+
+Till yesterday that I received your last of January 27, I was
+very uneasy at finding you still remained under the same
+anxiety about the rebellion, when it had so long ceased to be
+formidable with us: but you have got all my letters, and are
+out of your pain.  Hawley's defeat (or at least what was
+called so, for I am persuaded that the victory was ours as far
+as there was any fighting, which indeed lay in a very small
+compass, the great body of each army running away) will have
+thrown you back into your terrors; but here is a letter to
+calm you again.  All Monday and Tuesday we were concluding
+that the battle between the Duke and the rebels must be
+fought, and nothing was talked of but the expectation of the
+courier.  He did arrive indeed on Wednesday morning, but with
+no battle; for the moment the rebel army saw the Duke's, they
+turned back with the utmost precipitation; spiked their
+cannon, blew up their magazine, and left behind them their
+wounded and our prisoners.  They crossed the Forth, and in one
+day fled four-and-thirty miles to Perth, where, as they have
+strong intrenchments, some imagine they will wait to fight;
+but their desertion is too great; the whole clan of the
+macdonalds, one of their best has retired on the accidental
+death of their chief.  In short, it looks exceedingly like the
+conclusion of this business, though the French have embarked
+Fitzjames's regiment at Ostend for Scotland.  The Duke's name
+disperses armies, as the Pretender's raised them.
+
+The French seem to be at the eve of taking Antwerp and
+Brussels, the latter of which is actually besieged.  In this
+case I don't see how we can send an army abroad this summer,
+for there will be no considerable towns in Flanders left in
+the possession of the Empress-Queen.
+
+The new regiments, of which I told you so much, have again
+been in dispute: as their term was near expired, the ministry
+proposed to continue them for four months longer.  This was
+last Friday, when, as we every hour expected the news of a
+conclusive battle, which, if favourable, would render them
+useless, Mr. Fox, the general against the new regiments,
+begged it might only be postponed till the following
+Wednesday, but 170 against 89 voted them that very day.  On
+the very Wednesday came the news of the flight of the rebels;
+and two days before that, news from Chester of Lord Gower's
+new regiment having mutinied, on hearing that they were to be
+continued beyond the term for which they had listed.
+
+At court all is confusion-. the King, at Lord Bath's
+instigation, has absolutely refused to make Pitt secretary at
+war.(1164)  How this will end, I don't know, but I don't
+believe in bloodshed: neither side is famous for being
+incapable of yielding.
+
+I wish you joy of having the Chutes again, though I am a
+little sorry that their bravery was not rewarded by staying at
+Rome till they could triumph in their turn: however, I don't
+believe that at Florence you want opportunities of exulting.
+That Monro you mention was made travelling physician by my
+father's interest, who had great regard for the old
+doctor.(1165)  if he has any skill in quacking madmen, his art
+may perhaps be of service now in the Pretender's court.
+
+I beg my eagle may not come till it has the opportunity of a
+man-of-war: we have lost so many merchantmen lately, that I
+should never expect to receive it that way.
+
+I can say nothing to your opinion of the young Pretender being
+a cheat; nor, as the rebellion is near at end, do I see what
+end it would answer to prove him original or spurious.
+However, as you seem to dwell upon it, I will mention it again
+to my uncle.
+
+I hear that my sister-Countess is projecting her return, being
+quite sick of England, where nobody visits her.  She says
+there is not one woman of sense in England.  Her journey,
+however, will have turned to account, and, I believe, end in
+almost doubling her allowance. Adieu! my dear child; love the
+Chutes for me as well as for yourself.
+
+(1164) Lord Marchmont, in his Diary of Feb. 9, says, "My
+brother told me, that on the ministry insisting on Mr. Pitt
+being secretary at war, and the King having said he should not
+be his secretary, Lord Bath had gone to the King and told him,
+though he had resolved never to take a place, yet now, finding
+his ministers would force a servant on him, rather than he
+should be so used, he would undertake to get him his money.
+The King said. the ministers had the Parliament; Lord Bath
+said, his Majesty had it, and not they: and that hereupon the
+King thanked him; and it was expected the ministers would all
+be out."-E.
+
+(1165) In 1743, Dr. John Monro was appointed, through the
+influence of Sir Robert Walpole, to one of the Radcliffe
+travelling fellowships.  In 1752, he succeeded his father as
+physician to Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals.  In 1758, he
+published "Remarks on Dr. Battie's Treatise on Madness," in
+which he vindicated his father's treatment of that disorder.
+He died in 1791.-E.
+
+
+
+466 Letter 195
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 14, 1746.
+
+By the relation I am going to make, you will think that I am
+describing Turkish, not English revolutions; and will cast
+your eye upwards to see if my letter is not dated from
+Constantinople.  Indeed, violent as the changes have been,
+there has been no bloodshed; no Grand Vizier has had a cravat
+made of a bowstring, no Janizaries have taken upon them to
+alter the succession, no Grand Signior is deposed--only his
+Sublime Highness's dignity has been a little impaired.  Oh! I
+forgot; I ought not to frighten you; you will interpret all
+these fine allusions, and think on the rebellion--pho! we are
+such considerable proficients in politics, that we can form
+rebellions within rebellions, and turn a government
+topsy-turvy at London, while we are engaged in a civil war in
+Scotland.  In short, I gave you a hint last week of an
+insurrection in the closet, and of Lord Bath having prevented
+Pitt from being secretary at war.  The ministry gave up that
+point; but finding that a change had been made in a scheme of
+foreign politics, which they had laid before the King, and for
+which he had thanked them; and perceiving some symptoms of a
+resolution to dismiss them at the end of the session, they
+came to a sudden determination not to do Lord Granville's
+business by carrying the supplies, and then to be turned out:
+so on Monday morning, to the astonishment of every body, the
+two secretaries of state threw up the seals; and the next day
+Mr. Pelham, with the rest of the Treasury, the Duke of Bedford
+with the Admiralty, Lord Gower, privy seal, and Lord
+Pembroke,' groom of the stole, gave up too - the Dukes of
+Devonshire, Grafton, and Richmond, the Lord Chancellor,
+Winnington, paymaster, and almost all the other great officers
+and offices, declaring they would do the same.  Lord Granville
+immediately received both seals, one for himself, and the
+other to give to whom he pleased.  Lord Bath was named first
+commissioner of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer;
+Lord Carlisle, privy seal, and Lord Winchilsea reinstated in
+the Admiralty.  Thus far all went swimmingly; they had only
+forgot one little point, which was, to secure a majority in
+both Houses: in the Commons they unluckily found that they had
+no better man to take the lead than poor Sir John Rushout, for
+Sir John Barnard refused to be chancellor of the exchequer; so
+did Lord Chief Justice Willes to be lord chancellor; and the
+wildness of the scheme soon prevented others, who did not wish
+ill to Lord Granville, or well to the Pelhams, from giving in
+to it.  Hop, the Dutch minister, did not a little increase the
+confusion by declaring that he had immediately despatched a
+courier to Holland, and did not doubt but the States would
+directly send to accept the terms of France.
+
+I should tell you too, that Lord Bath's being of the
+enterprise contributed hugely to poison the success of it.  In
+short, his lordship, whose politics were never characterized
+by steadiness, found that he had not courage enough to take
+the Treasury.  You may guess how ill laid his schemes were,
+when be durst not indulge both his ambition and avarice! In
+short, on Wednesday morning (pray mind, this was the very
+Wednesday after the Monday on which the chance had happened,)
+he went to the King, and told him he had tried the House of
+Commons, and found it would not do!(1167)  Bounce! went all
+the project into shivers, like the vessels in Ben Jonson's
+Alchymist, when they are on the brink of the philosopher's
+stone.  The poor King, who, from being fatigued with the Duke
+of Newcastle, and sick of Pelham's timidity and compromises,
+had given in to this mad hurly-burly of alterations, was
+confounded with having floundered to no purpose, and to find
+himself more than ever in the power of men he hated, shut
+himself up in his closet, and refused to admit any more of the
+persons who were pouring in upon him with white sticks, and
+golden keys, and commissions, etc.  At last he sent for
+Winnington, and told him, he was the only honest man about
+him, and he should have the honour of a reconciliation, and
+sent him to Mr. Pelham to desire they would all return to
+their employments.(1168)
+
+Lord Granville is as jolly as ever; laughs and drinks, and
+owns it was mad, and owns he -would do it again to-morrow.  It
+would not be quite so safe, indeed, to try it soon again, for
+the triumphant party are not at all in the humour to be turned
+out every time his lordship has drunk a bottle too much; and
+that House of Commons that he could not make do for him, would
+do to send him to the Tower till he was sober.  This was the
+very worst period he could have selected, when the fears of
+men had made them throw themselves absolutely into all
+measures of Government to secure the government itself; and
+that temporary strength of Pelham has my Lord Granville
+contrived to fix to him: and people will be glad to ascribe to
+the Merit and virtue of the ministry, what they would be
+ashamed to Own, but was really the effect of their own
+apprehensions.  It was a good idea Of somebody, when no man
+would accept a place under the new system, that Granville and
+Bath were met going about the streets, calling odd man! as the
+hackney chairman do when they want a partner.  This little
+faction of Lord Granville goes by the name of the
+Grandvillains.
+
+There! who would think that I had written you an entire history
+ in the compass of three sides of paper?(1169)  ***Vertot
+would have composed a volume on this event. and entitled it,
+the Revolutions of England.  You will wonder at not having it
+notified to you by Lord Granville himself, as is customary for
+new secretaries of state: when they mentioned to him writing
+to Italy, he said-"To Italy! no: before the courier can get
+thither, I shall be out again."  it absolutely makes one
+laugh: as serious as the consequences might be, it is
+impossible to hate a politician of such jovial good-humour.  I
+am told that he ordered the packet-boat to be stopped at
+Harwich till Saturday, till he should have time to determine
+what he would write to Holland.  This will make the Dutch
+receive the news of the double revolution at the same instant.
+
+Duke and his name are pursuing the scattered rebels into their
+very mountains, determined to root out sedition entirely.  It
+is believed, and we expect to hear, that the young Pretender
+is embarked and gone.  Wish the Chutes joy of the happy
+conclusion of this affair!
+
+Adieu! my dear child!  After describing two revolutions, and
+announcing the termination of a rebellion, it would be below
+the dignity of my letter to talk of any thing of less moment.
+Next post I may possibly descend out of my historical buskin,
+and converse with you more familiarly--en attendant, gentle
+reader, I am, your sincere well-wisher,
+
+Horace Walpole, Historiographer
+to the high and mighty Lord John, Earl Granville.
+
+(1166) Henry Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke, an intelligent
+lover of the arts, and an amateur architect of considerable
+merit.  Walpole says of him, in his account of Sculptors and
+Architects, The soul of Inigo Jones, who had been patronised
+by his ancestors, seemed still to hover over its favourite
+Wilton, and to have assisted the Muses of Arts in the
+education of this noble person.  No man had a purer taste in
+building than Earl Henry, of which he gave a few specimens:
+besides his works at Wilton, the new Lodge in Windsor Park;
+the Countess of Suffolk's house, at Marble Hill, Twickenham;
+the Water-house, in Lord Orford's park at Houghton, are
+incontestable proofs of Lord Pembroke's taste: it was more
+than taste; it was passion for the utility and honour of his
+country that engaged his lordship to promote and assiduously
+overlook the construction of Westminster Bridge by the
+ingenious M. Lahelye, a man that deserves more notice than
+this slight encomium can bestow." He died in January
+1750-1.-E.
+
+(1167) "Feb. 13.  Lord Bolingbroke told me, that Bath had
+resigned, and all was now over.  He approved of what had been
+done, though he owned that Walpole'S faction had done what he
+had wrote every King must expect who nurses up a faction by
+governing by a party; and that it was a most indecent thing,
+and must render the King contemptible.  Lord Cobham told me,
+that the King had yesterday sent Winnington to stop the
+resignations; that he had offered Winnington the seat of
+exchequer, after Bath had resigned it; but Winnington said it
+would not do.  At court I met Lord Granville, who is still
+secretary, but declared to be ready to resign when the King
+pleases." Marchmont Diary.-E.
+
+(1168) In a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, of the 18th, Lord
+Chesterfield says, " Your victory is complete: for God's sake
+pursue it.  Good policy still more than resentment, requires
+that Granville and Bath should be marked-out,'and all their
+people cut off.  Every body now sees and knows that you have
+the power; let them see and know too, that you will use it.  A
+general run ought to be made upon Bath by all your followers
+and writers."-E.
+
+(1169) The projectors of this ,attempt to remove the ministers
+were overwhelmed with ridicule.  Among other jeux d'esprit,
+was "A History of the Long Administration," bound up like the
+works printed for children, and sold for a penny; and of which
+one would suspect Walpole to be the author.  It concluded as
+follows: "And thus endeth the second and last part of this
+astonishing administration, which lasted forty-eight hours,
+three quarters, seven minutes, and eleven seconds; which may
+be truly called the most wise and most Honest of all
+administrations, the minister having, to the astonishment of
+all wise men, never transacted one rash thing, and, what is
+more marvellous, left as much money in the treasury as he
+found in it.  This worthy history I have faithfully recorded
+in this mighty volume, that it may be read with the valuable
+works of our immortal countryman, Thomas Thumb, by our
+children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to the end
+of the world:'-E.
+
+
+
+469 Letter 196
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 6, 1746.
+
+I know I have missed two or three posts, but you have lost
+nothing: you perhaps expected that our mighty commotions did
+not subside at once, and that you should still hear of
+struggles and more shocks; but it all ended at once; with only
+some removals and promotions which you saw in the Gazette.  I
+should have written, however, but I have been hurried with my
+sister'S(1170) wedding; but all the ceremony of that too is
+over now, and the dinners and the visits.
+
+The rebellion has fetched breath; the dispersed clans have
+reunited and marched to Inverness, from whence Lord Loudon was
+forced to retreat, leaving a garrison in the castle, which has
+since yielded without firing a gun.  Their numbers are now
+reckoned at seven thousand: old Lord lovat(1171) has carried
+them a thousand Frasers.  The French continually drop them a
+ship or two: we took two, with the Duke of Berwick's brother
+on board: it seems evident that they design to keep up our
+disturbances as long as possible, to prevent our sending any
+troops to Flanders.  Upon the prospect of the rebellion being
+at an end, the Hessians were ordered back, but luckily were
+not gone; and now are quartered to prevent the rebels slipping
+the Duke, (who is marching to them,) and returning into
+England.  This counter-order was given in the morning, and in
+the evening came out the Gazette, and said the Hessians are to
+go away.  This doubling style in the ministry is grown so
+characteristic, that the French are actually playing a farce,
+in which harlequin enters, as an English courier, with two
+bundles of despatches fastened to his belly and his back: they
+ask him what the one is? "Eh! Ces sont mes ordres." and what
+the other?  "Mais elles sont mes contre-ordres."
+
+We have been a little disturbed in some other of our politics,
+by the news of the King of Sardinia having made his peace: I
+think it comes out now that he absolutely had concluded one
+with France, but that the haughty court of Spain rejected it:
+what the Austrian pride had driven him to, the Spanish pride
+drove him from.  You will allow that our affairs are
+critically bad, when all our hopes centre in that honest
+monarch, the King of Prussia-but so it is: and I own I see
+nothing that can restore us to being a great nation but his
+interposition.  Many schemes are framed, of making him
+Stadtholder of Holland, or Duke of Burgundy in Flanders, in
+lieu of the Silesias, or altogether, and that I think would
+follow-but I don't know how far any of these have been carried
+into propositions.
+
+I see by your letters that our fomentations of the Corsican
+rebellion have had no better success than the French tampering
+in ours-for ours, I don't expect it will be quite at an end,
+till it is made one of the conditions of peace, that they
+shall give it no assistance.
+
+The smallpox has been making great havoc in London; the new
+Lord Rockingham,(1172) whom I believe you knew when only
+Thomas Watson, is dead of it, and the title extinct.  My Lady
+Conway(1173) has had it, but escaped.
+
+My brother is on the point of finishing all his affairs with
+his countess; she is to have fifteen hundred per year; and her
+mother gives her two thousand pounds.  I suppose this will
+send her back to you, added to her disappointments in
+politics, in which it appears she has been tampering.  Don't
+you remember a very foolish knight, one Sir Bourchier
+Wrey?(1174)  Well, you do: the day Lord Bath was in the
+Treasury, that one day! she wrote to Sir Bourchier at Exeter,
+to tell him that now their friends were coming into power, and
+it was a brave opportunity for him to Come Up and make his own
+terms.  He came, and is lodged in her house, and sends about
+cards to invite people to come and see him at the Countess of
+Orford's.  There is a little fracas I hear in their domestic;
+the Abb`e-Secretary has got one of the maids with child.  I
+have seen the dame herself but once these two months, when she
+came into the Opera at the end of the first act, fierce as an
+incensed turkey-cock, you know her look, and towing after her
+Sir Francis Dashwood's new Wife,(1175) a poor forlorn
+Presbyterian prude, whom he obliges to consort with her.
+
+Adieu! for I think I have now told you all I know.  I am very
+sorry that you are so near losing the good Chutes, but I
+cannot help having an eye to myself in their coming to
+England.
+
+(1170) Lady Maria Walpole, married to Charles Churchill, Esq.
+
+(1171) Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, a man of parts, but of
+infamous character.  He had the folly, at the age of eighty,
+to enter into the rebellion, upon a promise from the
+Pretender, that he would make him Duke of Fraser.  He was
+taken, tried, and beheaded.-D.
+
+)1172) Thomas Watson, third Earl of Rockingham, succeeded his
+elder brother Lewis in the family honours in 1745, and died
+himself in 1746.  The earldom extinguished upon his death';
+but the Barony of Rockingham devolved upon his kinsman, Thomas
+Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, who was soon afterwards
+created Marquis of Rockingham.  ant`e, p. 458, letter 191.
+
+(1173) Lady Isabella Fitzroy, daughter of Charles, Duke of
+Grafton, and wife of Francis, Lord Conway, afterwards Earl of
+Hertford.
+
+(1174) Sir Bourchier Wrey of Tavistock, in Devonshire, the
+fifth baronet of the family.  He was member of parliament for
+Barnstaple, and died in 1784.-D.
+
+(1175) Widow of Sir Richard Ellis.
+
+
+
+470 Letter 197
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 21, 1746.
+
+I have no new triumphs of the Duke to send you: he has been
+detained a great while at Aberdeen by the snows.  The rebels
+have gathered numbers again, and have taken Fort Augustus, and
+are marching to Fort William.  The Duke complains extremely of
+the loyal Scotch: says he can get no intelligence, and reckons
+himself more in an enemy's country, than when he was warring
+with the French in Flanders.  They profess the big professions
+wherever he comes, but, before he is out of sight of any town,
+beat up for volunteers for rebels.  We see no prospect of his
+return, for he must stay in Scotland while the rebellion
+lasts; and the existence of that seems too intimately
+connected with the being of Scotland, to expect it should soon
+be annihilated.
+
+We rejoice at the victories of the King of Sardinia, whom we
+thought lost to our cause.  To-day we are to vote subsidies to
+the Electors of Cologne and Mentz.  I don't know whether they
+will be opposed by the Electoral Prince;(1176) but he has
+lately erected a new opposition, by the councils of Lord Bath,
+who has got him from Lord Granville: the latter and his
+faction act with the court.
+
+I have told you to the utmost extent of my political
+knowledge; of private history there is nothing new.  Don't
+think, my dear child, that I hurry over my letters, or neglect
+writing to you; I assure you I never do, when I have the least
+grain to lap up in a letter: but consider how many chapters of
+correspondence are extinct: Pope and poetry are dead!
+Patriotism has kissed hands on accepting a place: the Ladies
+O. and T.' have exhausted scandal both in their persons and
+conversations: divinity and controversy are grown good
+Christians, say their prayers and spare their neighbours; and
+I think even self-murder is out of fashion.  Now judge whether
+a correspondent can furnish matter for the common intercourse
+of the post.
+
+Pray what luxurious debauch has Mr. Chute been guilty of, that
+he is laid up with the gout? I mean, that he was, for I hope
+his fit has not lasted till now.  If you are ever so angry, I
+must say, I flatter myself I shall see him before my eagle,
+which I beg may repose itself still at Leghorn, for the French
+privateers have taken such numbers of our merchantmen, that I
+cannot think of suffering it to come that way.  If you should
+meet with a good opportunity of a man-of-war, let it come-or I
+will postpone my impatience.  Adieu!
+
+P. S. I had sealed my letter, but break it open, to tell you
+that an account is just arrived of two of our privateers
+having met eight-and- twenty transports going with supplies to
+the Brest fleet, and sunk ten, taken four, and driven the rest
+on shore.
+
+)1176)  The prince of Wales.
+
+
+
+471 Letter 198
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 28, 1746.
+
+I don't at all recollect what was in those two letters of
+mine, which I find you have lost: for your sake, as you must
+be impatient for English news, I am sorry you grow subject to
+these miscarriages but in general, I believe there is little
+of consequence in my correspondence.
+
+The Duke has not yet left Aberdeen, for want of his supplies;
+but by a party which he sent out, and in which Mr. Conway was,
+the rebels do not seem to have recovered their spirits, though
+they have recruited their numbers; for eight hundred of them
+fled on the first appearance of our detachment, and quitted an
+advantageous post.  As much as you know, and as much as you
+have lately heard of Scotch finesse, you will yet be startled
+at the refinements that nation have made upon their own
+policy.  Lord Fortrose,(1177) whose father was in the last
+rebellion, and who has himself been restored to his fortune,
+is in Parliament and in the army: he is with the Duke-his wife
+and his clan with the rebels.  The head of the mackintosh's is
+acting just the same part.  The clan of the Grants, always
+esteemed the most Whig friendly tribe, have literally in all
+the forms signed a neutrality with the rebels.  The most
+honest instance I have heard, is in the town of Forfar, there
+they have chosen their magistrates; but at the same time
+entered a memorandum in their town-book, that they shall not
+execute their office "till it is decided which King is to
+reign."
+
+The Parliament is adjourned for the Easter holidays.  Princess
+Caroline is going to the Bath for a rheumatism.  The countess,
+whose return you seem so much to dread, has entertained the
+town with an excellent vulgarism.  She happened One night at
+the Opera to sit by Peggy Banks,(1178) a celebrated beauty,
+and asked her several questions about the singers and dancers,
+which the other naturally answered, as one woman of fashion
+answers another.  The next morning Sir Bourchier Wrey sent
+Miss Banks an opera-ticket, and my lady sent her a card, to
+thank her for her civilities to her the night before, and that
+she intended to wait on her very soon.  Do but think of Sir B.
+Wrey's paying a woman of fashion for being civil to my Lady
+O.! Sure no apothecary's wife in a market-town could know less
+of the world than these two people!  The operas flourish more
+than in any latter years; the composer is Gluck, a German: he
+is to have a benefit, at which he is to play on a set of
+drinking-glasses, which he modulates with water--I think I
+have heard you speak of having seen some such thing.
+
+You will see in the papers long accounts of a most shocking
+murder, that has been committed by a lad(1179) on his
+mistress, who was found dead in her bedchamber, with an
+hundred wounds; her brains beaten out, stabbed, her face,
+back, and breasts slashed in twenty places- one hears of
+nothing else wherever one goes.  But adieu! it is time to
+finish a letter, when one is reduced for news to the
+casualties of the week.
+
+(1177) William Mackenzie, fifth Earl of Seaforth, the father
+of Kenneth Lord Fortrose, had been engaged in the rebellion of
+1715, and was attainted.  He died in 1740.  In consequence of
+his attainder, his son never assumed the title of Seaforth,
+but continued to be called Lord Fortrose, the second title of
+the family. He was member of parliament in 1741 for the burghs
+of Fortrose, etc., and in 1747 and 1754, for the county of
+Ross, He died in 1762.  His only son, Kenneth, was created
+Viscount Fortrose, and Earl of Seaforth in Ireland.-D.
+
+
+(1178_ Margaret, sister of John Hodgkinson Bank,.;, Esq.;
+married, in 1757, to the Hon. Henry Grenville, fifth son of
+the Countess Temple, who was appointed governor of Barbadoes
+in 1746, and ambassador to the Ottoman Porte in 1761.-D.
+
+(1179) One Henderson, hanged for murdering Mrs. Dalrymple.
+
+
+
+473 Letter 199
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 15, 1746.
+
+Your triumphs in Italy are in high fashion: till very lately,
+Italy was scarce ever mentioned as part of the scene of war.
+The apprehensions of your great King making his peace began to
+alarm us and when we just believed it finished, we have
+received nothing but torrents of good news.  The King of
+Sardinia(1180) has not only carried his own character and
+success to the highest pitch, but seems to have given a turn
+to the general face of the war, which has a much more
+favourable aspect than was to be expected three months ago,
+has made himself as considerable in the scale as the Prussian,
+but with real valour, and as great abilities, and without the
+infamy, of the other's politics.
+
+The rebellion seems once more at its last gasp; the Duke is
+marched, and the rebels fly before him, in the utmost want of
+money.  The famous Hazard sloop is taken, with two hundred men
+and officers, and about eight thousand pounds in money, from
+France.  In the midst of such good news from thence, Mr.
+Conway has got a regiment, for which, I am sure, you will take
+part in my joy.  In Flanders we propose to make another great
+effort, with an army of above ninety thousand men; that is,
+forty Dutch, above thirty Austrians, eighteen Hanoverians, the
+Hessians, who are to return; and we propose twelve thousand
+Saxons, but no English; though, if the rebellion is at all
+suppressed in any time, I imagine some of our troops will go,
+and the Duke command the whole: in the mean time, the army
+will be under Prince Waldeck and Bathiani.  You will wonder at
+my running so glibly over eighteen thousand Hanoverians,
+especially as they are all to be in our pay, but the nation's
+digestion has been much facilitated by the pill given to Pitt,
+of vice-treasurer of Ireland.(1181)  Last Friday was the
+debate on this subject, when we carried these troops by 255
+against 122: Pitt, Lyttelton, three Grenvilles, and Lord
+BarringTton, all voting roundly for them, though the eldest
+Grenville, two years ago, had declared in the House, that he
+would seal it with his blood that he never would give his vote
+for a Hanoverian.  Don't you shudder at such perjury? and this
+in a republic, and where there is no religion that dispenses
+with oaths! Pitt was the only one of this ominous band that
+opened his - mouth,(1182) and it was to add impudence to
+profligacy; but no criminal at the Place de Greve was ever so
+racked as he was by Dr. Lee, a friend of Lord Granville, who
+gave him the question both ordinary and extraordinary.
+
+General Hawley has been tried (not in person, you may believe)
+and condemned by a Scotch jury for murder, on hanging a spy.
+What do you say to this? or what will you say when I tell you,
+that Mr. Ratcliffe, who has been so long confined in the
+Tower, and supposed the Pretender's youngest son, is not only
+suffered to return to France, but was entertained at a great
+dinner by the Duke of Richmond as a relation!(1183) The same
+Duke has refused his beautiful Lady Emily to Lord
+Kildare,(1184) the richest and the first peer of Ireland, on a
+ridiculous notion of the King's evil being in the family--but
+sure that ought to be no objection: a very little grain more
+of pride and Stuartism might persuade all the royal bastards
+that they have a faculty of curing that distemper.
+
+The other day, an odd accidental discovery was made; some of
+the Duke's baggage, which he did not want, was sent back from
+Scotland, with a bill of the contents.  Soon after, -.another
+large parcel, but not specified in the bill, was brought to
+the captain, directed like the rest.  When they came to the
+Custom-house here, it was observed, and they sent to Mr.
+Poyntz,(1185) to know what they should do: be bade them open
+it, suspecting some trick; but when they did, they found a
+large crucifix, copes, rich vestments, beads, and heaps of
+such like trumpery, consigned from the titulary primate of
+Scotland, who is with the rebels: they imagine, with the
+privity of some of the vessels, to be conveyed to somebody
+here in town.
+
+Now I am telling you odd events, I must relate one of the
+strangest I ever heard.  Last week, an elderly woman gave
+information against her maid for coining, and the trial came
+on at the Old Bailey.  The mistress deposed, that having been
+left a widow several years ago, with four children, and no
+possibility of maintaining them, she had taken to coining:
+that she used to buy old pewter-pots, out Of each of which she
+made as many shillings, etc. as she could put off for three
+pounds, and that by this practice she had bred up her
+children, bound them out apprentices, and set herself up in a
+little shop, by which she got a comfortable livelihood; that
+she had now given over coining, and indicted her maid as
+accomplice.  The maid in her defence said, "That when her
+mistress hired her, she told her that she did something up in
+a garret into which she must never inquire: that all she knew
+of the matter was, that her mistress had often given her
+moulds to clean, which she did, as it was her duty: that,
+indeed, she had sometimes seen pieces of pewter-pots cut, and
+did suspect her mistress of coining; but that she never had
+had, or put off; one single piece of bad money." The judge
+asked the mistress if this was true; she answered, "Yes; and
+that she believed her maid was as honest a creature as ever
+lived; but that, knowing herself in her power, she never could
+be at peace; that she knew,-by informing, she should secure
+herself; and not doubting but the maid's real innocence would
+appear, she concluded the poor girl would come to no harm."
+The judge flew into the greatest rage; told her he wished he
+could stretch the law to hang her, and feared he could not
+bring off the maid for having concealed the crime; but,
+however, the jury did bring her in not guilty.  I think I
+never heard a more particular instance of parts and villainy.
+
+I inclose a letter for Stosch, which was left here with a
+scrap of paper, with these words; "Mr. Natter is desired to
+send the letters for Baron de Stosch, in Florence, by Mr. H.
+W." I don't know who Mr. Natter(1186) is, nor who makes him
+this request, but I desire Mr. Stosch will immediately put an
+end to this method of correspondence; for I shall not risk my
+letters to you by containing his, nor will I be post to such a
+dirty fellow.
+
+Your last was of March 22d, and you mention Madame Suares
+illness; I hope she is better, and Mr. Chute's gout better.  I
+love to hear of my Florentine acquaintance, though they all
+seem to have forgot me; especially the Princess, whom YOU
+never mention.  Does she never ask after me? Tell me a little
+of the state of her state, her amours, devotions, and
+appetite.  I must transcribe a paragraph out of an old book of
+letters,(1187) printed in 1660, which I met with-the other
+day: "My thoughts upon the reading your letter made me stop in
+Florence, and go no farther, than to consider the happiness of
+them who live in that town, where the people come so near to
+angels in knowledge, that they can counterfeit heaven well
+enough to give their friends a taste of it in this life."  I
+agree to the happiness of living in Florence, but I am sure
+knowledge was not one of its recommendations, which never was
+any where it a lower ebb--I had forgot; I beg Dr. Cocchi's
+pardon, who is much an exception; how does he do? Adieu!
+
+P. S. Lord Malton, who is the nearest heir-male to the extinct
+earldom of Rockingham, and has succeeded to a barony belonging
+to it, is to have his own earldom erected into a marquisate,
+with the title of Rockingham.  Vernon, is struck off the list
+of admirals.
+
+(1180) Charles Emmanuel the Third, an able sovereign, and the
+last of the House of Savoy who possessed any portion of that
+talent for which the race had previously been so
+celebrated.-.D.
+
+(1181) On the death of Mr. Winnington, in the following month,
+Mr. Pitt was appointed paymaster of the forces, and chosen of
+the privy council.-E.
+
+(1182) In a letter to the Duke of Cumberland, of the 17th, the
+Duke of Newcastle says, "Mr. Pitt spoke so well, that the
+premier told me he had the dignity of Sir William Wyndham, the
+wit of Mr. Pulteney, and the knowledge and judgment of Sir
+Robert Walpole: in short, he said all that was right for the
+King, kind and respectful to the old corps, and resolute and
+contemptuous of the Tory opposition."-E.
+
+(1183) He was related to the Duke's mother by the Countess of
+Newburgh, his mother.
+
+(1184) Afterwards Duke of Leinster. he married Lady Emily in
+the following February.-E.
+
+(1185) Stephen Poyntz, treasurer, and formerly governor to the
+Duke.
+
+(1186) He was an engraver of seals.
+
+(1187) A Collection of letters made by Sir Toby Matthews. [In
+this Volume will be found an interesting account of the trial
+of Sir Walter Raleigh.]
+
+
+
+476 Letter 200
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 25, 1746.
+
+You have bid me for some time send you good news-well! I think
+I will.  How good would you have it? must it be a total
+victory over the rebels; with not only the Boy, that is here,
+killed, but the other, that is not here, too; their whole army
+put to the sword, besides -in infinite number of prisoners;
+all the Jacobite estates in England confiscated, and all those
+in Scotland--what would you have done with them?--or could you
+be content with something much under this? how much will you
+abate? will you compound for Lord John Drummond, taken by
+accident? or for three Presbyterian parsons, who have very
+poor livings, stoutly refusing to pay a large contribution to
+the rebels? Come, I will deal as well with you as I can, and
+for once, but not to make a practice of it, will let you have
+a victory! My friend, Lord Bury,(1188) arrived this morning
+from the Duke, though the news was got here before him; for,
+with all our victory, it was not thought safe to send him
+through the heart of Scotland; so he was shipped at Inverness,
+within an hour after the Duke entered the town, kept beating
+at sea five days, and then put on shore at North Berwick, from
+whence he came post in less than three days to London; but
+with a fever upon him, for which he had twice been blooded but
+the day before the battle; but he is young, and high in
+spirits, and I flatter myself will not suffer from this
+kindness of the Duke: the King has immediately ordered him a
+thousand pound, and I hear will make him his own aide-de-camp.
+My dear Mr. Chute, I beg your pardon; I had forgot you have
+the gout, and consequently not the same patience to wait for
+the battle, with which I, knowing the particulars, postpone
+it.
+
+On the 16th, the Duke, by forced marches came up with the
+rebels, a little on this side Inverness--by the way, the
+battle is not christened yet; I only know that neither
+Preston-Pans(1189) nor Falkirk(1190) are to be godfathers.
+The rebels, who fled from him after their victory, and durst
+not attack him, when so much exposed to them at his
+passage(1191) of the Spey, now stood him, they seven thousand,
+he ten.  They broke through Barril's regiment, and killed Lord
+Robert Kerr,(1192) a handsome young gentleman, who was cut to
+pieces with above thirty wounds; but they were soon repulsed,
+and fled; the whole engagement not lasting above a quarter of
+an hour.  The young Pretender escaped; Mr. Conway, says, he
+hears, wounded: he certainly was in the rear. -They have lost
+above a thousand men in the engagement and pursuit; and six
+hundred were already taken; among which latter are their
+French ambassador and Earl Kilmarnock.(1193)  The Duke of
+Perth and Lord ogilvie(1194) are said to be slain; Lord
+Elcho(1195) was in a salivation, and not there.  Except Lord
+Robert Kerr, we lost nobody of note: Sir Robert Rich's eldest
+son has lost his hand, and about a hundred and thirty private
+men fell.  The defeat is reckoned total, and the dispersion
+general: and all their artillery is taken.  It is a brave
+young Duke! the town is all blazing round me, as I write, with
+fireworks and illuminations - I have some inclination to wrap
+up half-a-dozen skyrockets, to make you drink the Duke's
+health.  Mr. Doddington, on the first report, came out with a
+very pretty illumination; so pretty, that I believe he had it
+by him, ready for any occasion.
+
+I now come to a more melancholy theme, though your joy will
+still be pure, except from what part you take in a private
+grief of mine.  It is the death of Mr. Winnington,(1196) whom
+you only knew as One Of the first men in England, from his
+parts and from his employment.  But I was familiarly
+acquainted with him, loved and admired him, for he had great
+good-nature, and a quickness of wit most peculiar to himself:
+and for his public talents he has left nobody equal to him, as
+before, nobody was superior to him but my father.  The history
+of his death is a cruel tragedy, but what, to indulge me who
+am full of it, and want to vent the narration, you must hear.
+He was not quite fifty, extremely temperate and regular, and
+of a constitution remarkably strong, hale and healthy.  A
+little above a fortnight ago he was seized with an
+inflammatory rheumatism, a common and known case, dangerous,
+but scarce ever remembered to be fatal.  He had a strong
+aversion to all physicians, and lately had put himself into
+the hands of one Thomson, a quack, whose foundation of method
+could not be guessed, but by a general contradiction to all
+received practice.  This man was the oracle of Mrs.
+Masham,(1197) sister, and what one ought to hope she did not
+think of, coheiress to Mr. Winnington-. his other sister is as
+mad in methodism as this in physic, and never saw him.  This
+ignorant wretch, supported by the influence of the sister,
+soon made such progress in fatal absurdities, as purging,
+bleeding, and starving him, and checking all perspiration,
+that his friends Mr. Fox and Sir Charles Williams absolutely
+insisted on calling in a physician.  Whom could they call, but
+Dr. Bloxholme, an intimate old friend of Mr. Winnington, and
+to whose house he always went once a year? This doctor, grown
+paralytic and indolent, gave in to every thing the quack
+advised: Mrs. Masham all the while ranting and raving  At
+last, which at last came very speedily, they had reduced him
+to a total dissolution, by a diabetes and a thrush; his
+friends all the time distracted for him, but hindered from
+assisting him; so far, that the night before he died, Thomson
+gave him another purge, though he could not get it all down.
+Mr. Fox by force brought Dr. Hulse, but it was too late: and
+even then, when Thomson owned him lost, Mrs. Masham was
+against trying Hulse's assistance.  In short, madly, or
+wickedly, they have murdered(1199) a man to whom nature would
+have allotted a far longer period, and had given a decree of
+abilities that were carrying that period to so great a height
+of lustre, as perhaps would have excelled both ministers, who
+in this country have owed their greatness to the greatness of
+their merit.
+
+Adieu! my dear Sir; excuse what I have written to indulge my
+own concern, in consideration of what I have written to give
+you JOY.
+
+P. S. Thank you for Mr. Oxenden; but don't put yourself to any
+great trouble, for I desired you before not to mind formal
+letters much, which I am obliged to give: I write to you
+separately, when I wish you to be particularly kind to my
+recommendations.
+
+(1188) George Keppel, eldest son of William Anne, Earl of
+Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title.
+
+(1189/1190) @ Where the King's troops had been beaten by the
+rebels.  This was called the battle of Culloden.
+
+(1191) the letter, relating that event, was one of those that
+were lost.
+
+(1192) Second son of the Marquis of Lothian.
+
+(1193) William Boyd, fourth Earl of Kilmarnock in Scotland.
+He was tried by the House of Lords for high treason, condemned
+and beheaded on Tower Hill, August 18, 1746.  (He was the
+direct male ancestor of the present Earl of Errol.  Johnson
+says of him,
+
+"Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died."-D.)
+
+
+(1194) James, Lord Ogilvie, eldest son of David, third Earl of
+Airlie.  He had been attainted for the part he took in the
+rebellion of 1715.-D.
+
+(1195) David Lord Elcho, eldest son of James, fourth Earl of
+Wemyss.  He was attainted in 1746; but the family honours were
+restored, as were those of Lord Airlie, by act of parliament,
+in 1826.-D.
+
+(1196) Thomas Winnington, paymaster of the forces.
+
+(1197) Harriet, daughter of Salway Winnington, Esq. of
+Stanford Court, in the county of Worcester: married to the
+Hon. Samuel Masham, afterwards second Lord Masham.  She died
+in 1761.-D.
+
+(1198) At the conclusion of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's
+political Odes will be found an affectionate epitaph to the
+memory of his deceased friend.-E.
+
+(1199) There were several Pamphlets published on this case, on
+both sides. @In May, Dr. Thomson published "The Case of Thomas
+Winnington."  Esq.;" to which Dr. J. Campbell published a
+reply, entitled "A Letter to a friend in Town, occasioned by
+the Case of the Right Hon.  Thomas Winnington."]
+
+
+
+478 Letter 201
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, May 16, 1746.
+
+I have had nothing new to tell you since the victory, relative
+to it, but that it has entirely put an end to the rebellion.
+The number slain is generally believed much greater than is
+given out.  Old Tullybardine(1200) has surrendered himself;
+the Lords Kilmarnoch, Balmerino,(1201) and Ogilvie(1202) are
+prisoners, and coming up to their trials.  The Pretender is
+not openly taken, but many people think he is in their power;
+however, I dare say he will be allowed to escape; and some
+French ships are hovering about the coast to receive him.  The
+Duke is not yet returned, but we have amply prepared for his
+reception, by settling on him immediately and for ever
+twenty-five thousand pounds a-year, besides the fifteen which
+he is to have on the King's death.  It was imagined the Prince
+would have opposed this, on the reflection that fifteen
+thousand was thought enough for him, though heir of the Crown,
+and abounding in issue but he has wisely reflected forwards,
+and likes the precedent, as it will be easy to find victories
+in his sons to reward, when once they have a precedent to
+fight with.
+
+You must live on domestic news, for our foreign is exceedingly
+unwholesome.  Antwerp is gone;(1203) and Bathiani with the
+allied army retired under the cannon of Breda; the junction of
+the Hanoverians cut off, and that of the Saxons put off.  We
+are now, I suppose, at the eve of a bad peace; though, as Cape
+Breton must be a condition, I don't know who will dare to part
+with it.  Little Eolus (the Duke of Bedford) says they shall
+not have it, that they shall have Woburn(1204) as soon-and I
+suppose they will! much such positive patriot politics have
+brought on all this ruin upon us! All Flanders is gone, and
+all our money, and half our men, and half our navy, because we
+would have no search.  Well! but we ought to think on what we
+have got too!--we have got Admiral Vernon's head on our signs,
+and we are going to have Mr. Pitt at the head of our affairs.
+Do you remember the physician in Moli`ere, who wishes the man
+dead that he may have the greater honour from recovering him?
+Mr. Pitt is paymaster; Sir W. Yonge vice-treasurer of Ireland:
+Mr. Fox, secretary-at-war; Mr. Arundel,(1205) treasurer of the
+chambers, in the room of Sir John Cotton, who is turned out;
+Mr. Campbell (one of my father's admiralty) and Mr. Legge in
+the treasury, and Lord Duncannon(1206) succeeds Legge in the
+admiralty.
+
+Your two last were of April 19th and 26th.  I wrote one to Mr.
+Chute, inclosed to you, with farther particulars of the
+battle; and I hope you received @it.  I am entirely against
+your sending my eagle while there is any danger.  Adieu! my
+dear child! I wrote to-day, merely because I had not written
+very lately; but you see I had little to say.
+
+(1200) Elder brother of the Duke of Athol; he was outlawed for
+the former rebellion.
+
+(1201) Arthur Elphinstone, sixth Lord Balmerino in Scotland.
+He was beheaded at the same time and place with Lord
+Kilmarnock; and on the scaffold distinguished himself by his
+boldness, fortitude, and even cheerfulness.-D.'
+
+(1202) This was a mistake; it was not Lord Ogilvie, but Lord
+Cromarty.
+
+(1203) It was taken by the French.-D.
+
+(1204) The seat of the Duke of Bedford.
+
+(1205) The Hon. Richard Arundel, youngest son of John, second
+Lord Arundel of Trerice.  He had been master of the mint under
+Sir Robert Walpole's administration.-D.
+
+(1206) William Ponsonby, Viscount Duncannon, afterwards second
+Earl of Besborough.-D.
+
+
+
+479 Letter 202
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, May 22, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+After all your goodness to me, don't be angry that I am glad I
+am got into brave old London again: though my cats don't purr
+like Goldwin, yet one of them has as good a heart as old
+Reynolds, and the tranquillity of my own closet makes me some
+amends for the loss of the library and toute la belle
+compagnie celestine.  I don't know whether that expression
+will do for the azure ceilings; but I found it at my fingers'
+ends, and so it slipped through my pen.  We called at
+Langley,(1207) but did not like it, nor the Grecian temple at
+all; it is by no means gracious.
+
+I forgot to take your orders about your poultry; the partlets
+have not laid since I went, for little chanticleer
+
+Is true to love, and all for recreation,
+And does not mind the work of propagation.
+
+But I trust you will come Yourself in a few days, and then you
+may settle their route.
+
+I am got deep into the Sidney papers, there are old wills full
+of bequeathed ovoche and goblets with fair enamel, that will
+delight you; and there is a little pamphlet of Sir Philip
+Sidney's in defence of his uncle Leicester, that gives me a
+much better opinion of his parts than his dolorous Arcadia,
+though it almost recommended him to the crown of Poland; at
+least I have never been able to discover what other great
+merit he had.  In this little tract he is very vehement in
+clearing up the honour of his lineage; I don't think he could
+have been warmer about his family, if he had been of the blood
+of the Cues.(1208)  I have diverted myself with reflecting how
+it would have entertained the town a few years ago, if my
+cousin Richard Hammond had wrote a treatise to clear up my
+father's pedigree, when the Craftsman used to treat him so
+roundly 'With being Nobody's son.  Adieu! dear George!
+
+Yours ever,
+THE GRANDSON OF NOBODY.
+
+(1207) A seat of the Duke of Marlborough.
+
+(1208) Mr. Montagu used to call his own family the Cues.
+
+
+
+480 Letter 203
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, June 5, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+You may perhaps fancy that you are very happy in the country,
+and that because you commend every thing you see, you like
+every thing: you may fancy that London is a desert, and that
+grass grows now where Troy stood; but it does not, except just
+before my Lord Bath's door, whom nobody will visit.  So far
+from being empty, and dull, and dusty, the town is full of
+people, full of water, for it has rained this week, and as gay
+as a new German Prince must make any place.  Why, it rains
+princes: though some people are disappointed of the arrival of
+the Pretender, yet the Duke is just coming and the Prince of
+Hesse come.  He is tall, lusty, and handsome; extremely like
+Lord Elcho in person, and to Mr. Hussey,(1209) in what
+entitles him more to his freedom in Ireland, than the
+resemblance of the former does to Scotland.  By seeing him
+with the Prince of Wales, people think he looks stupid; but I
+dare say in his own country he is reckoned very lively, for
+though he don't speak much, he opens his mouth very often.
+The King has given him a fine sword, and the Prince a ball.
+He dined with the former the first day, and since with the
+great officers.  Monday he went to Ranelagh, and supped in the
+house; Tuesday at the Opera he sat with his court in the box
+on the stage next the Prince, and went into theirs to see the
+last dance; and after it was over to the Venetian
+ambassadress, who is the only woman he has yet noticed.
+To-night there is a masquerade at Ranelagh for him, a play at
+Covent Garden on Monday, and a Ridotto at the Haymarket; and
+then he is to go.  His amours are generally very humble, and
+very frequent; for he does not much affect our daughter.(1210)
+A little apt to be boisterous when he has drank.  I have not
+heard, but I hope he was not rampant last night with Lady
+Middlesex, or Charlotte Dives.(1211)  Men go to see him in the
+morning, before he goes to see the lions.
+
+The talk of peace is blown over; nine or ten battalions were
+ordered for Flanders the day before yesterday, but they are
+again countermanded; and the operations of this campaign again
+likely to be confined within the precincts of Covent Garden,
+where the army- surgeons give constant attendance.  Major
+Johnson commands (I can't call it) the corps de reserve in
+Grosvenor Street.  I wish you had seen the goddess of those
+purlieus with him t'other night at Ranelagh; you would have
+sworn it had been the divine Cucumber in person.
+
+The fame of the Violetta(1212) increases daily; the
+sister-Countesses of Burlington and Talbot exert all their
+stores of sullen partiality in competition for her- the former
+visits her, and is having her picture, and carries her to
+Chiswick, and she sups at Lady Carlisle's, and lies--indeed I
+have not heard where, but I know not at Leicester House, where
+she is in great disgrace, for not going once or twice a week
+to take lessons of Denoyer, as he(1213) bid her: you know,
+that is politics in a court where dancing-masters are
+ministers.
+
+Adieu! dear George: my compliments to all at the farm.  Your
+cocks and hens would write to you, but they are dressing in
+haste for the masquerade - mind, I don't say that Asheton is
+doing any thing like that; but he is putting on an odd sort of
+a black gown - but, as Di Bertie says on her message cards,
+"mum for that."  Yours ever.
+
+(1209) Edward Hussey, afterwards Earl of Beaulieu.  [He
+married Isabella, widow of William, second Duke of Manchester,
+the heroine of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's poem entitled
+"Isabella; or, the Morning;" and died in 1802.]
+
+(1210) The Princess Mary, who was married to the Prince of
+Hesse Cassel, in 1740.-E.
+
+(1211) Afterwards married to Samuel, second and last Lord
+Masham, who died in 1776.-E.
+
+(1212) Afterwards Mrs. Garrick.
+
+(1213) The Prince of Wales; with whom the dancing-master was a
+great favourite.
+
+
+
+482 Letter 204
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, June 6, 1746.
+
+It was a very unpleasant reason for my not hearing from you
+last post, that you was ill; but I have had a letter from you
+since of May 24th, that has made me easy again for your
+health: if you was not losing the good Chutes, I should have
+been quite satisfied; but that is a loss you will not easily
+repair, though I were to recommend you Hobarts(1214) every
+day.  Sure you must have had flights of strange awkward
+animals, if you can be so taken with him! I shall begin to
+look about me, to see the merits of England: he was no
+curiosity here; and yet heaven knows there are many better,
+with whom I hope I shall never be acquainted.  As I have
+cautioned you more than once against minding my recommendatory
+letters, (which one gives because one can't refuse them,)
+unless I write to you separately, I have no scruple in giving
+them.  You are extremely good to give so much credit to my
+bills at first sight; but don't put down Hobart to my account;
+I used to call him the Clearcake; fat, fair, sweet, and seen
+through in a moment.  By what you tell me, I should conclude
+the Countess was not returning; for Hobart is not a morsel
+that she can afford to lose.
+
+I am much obliged to you for the care you take in sending my
+eagle by my commodore-cousin, but I hope it will not be till
+after his expedition.  I know the extent of his genius; he
+would hoist it overboard on the prospect of an engagement, and
+think he could buy me another at Hyde Park Corner with the
+prize-money; like the Roman tar that told his crew, that if
+they broke the antique Corinthian statues, they should find
+new ones.
+
+We have been making peace lately, but I think it is off again;
+there is come an unpleasant sort of a letter, transmitted from
+Van Hoey(1215) at Paris; it talks something of rebels not to
+be treated as rebels, and of a Prince Charles that is
+somebody's cousin and friend-but as nobody knows any thing of
+this--why, I know nothing of it neither.  There are battalions
+ordered for Flanders, and countermanded, and a few less
+ordered again - if I knew exactly what day this would reach
+ you, I could tell you more certainly, because the
+determination for or against is only of every other day.  The
+Duke is coming: I don't find it certain, however, that the
+Pretender is got off.
+
+We are in the height of festivities for the Serenity of Hesse,
+our son-in-law, who passes a few days here on his return to
+Germany.  If you recollect Lord Elcho, you have a perfect idea
+of his person and parts.  The great officers banquet him at
+dinner; in the evenings; there are plays, operas, ridottos,
+and masquerades.
+
+You ask me to pity you for losing the Chutes - indeed I do;
+and I pity them for losing you.  They will often miss
+Florence, and its tranquillity and happy air.  Adieu! Comfort
+yourself with what you do not lose.
+
+(1214) The Hon. John Hobart, afterwards second Earl of
+Buckinghamshire.  Walpole had given him a letter of
+introduction to Sir Horace Mann.-E.
+
+(1215) The Dutch minister at Paris.
+
+
+
+483 Letter 205
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, June 12th, 1746.
+
+My dear George,
+Don't commend me -. you don't know what hurt it will do me;
+you will make me a pains-taking man, and I had rather be dull
+Without any trouble.  From partiality to me you won't allow my
+letters to be letters.  If you have a mind I should write you
+news, don't make me think about it; I shall be so long turning
+my periods, that what I tell you will cease to be news.
+
+The Prince of Hesse had a most ridiculous tumble t'other night
+at the Opera; they had not pegged up his box tight after the
+ridotto, and down he came on all four; George Selwyn says he
+carried it off with an unembarrassed countenance.  He was to
+go this morning; I don't know whether he did or not.  The Duke
+is expected to-night by all the tallow candles and fagots in
+town.
+
+Lady Carolina Fitzroy's match is settled to the content of all
+parties; they are taking Lady Abergavenny's house in Brook
+Street; the Fairy Cucumber houses all Lady Caroline's
+out-pensioners; Mr. Montgomery(1216) is now on half pay with
+her.  Her Major Johnstone is chosen at White's, to the great
+terror of the society.- When he was introduced, Sir Charles
+Williams presented Dick Edgecumbe(1217) to him, and said, , I
+have three favours to beg of you for Mr. Edgecumbe: the first
+is that you would not lie with Mrs. Day; the second, that you
+would not poison his cards; the third, that you would not kill
+him;" the fool answered gravely, "Indeed I will not."
+
+The Good has borrowed old Bowman's house in Kent, and is
+retiring thither for six weeks: I tell her she has lived so
+rakish a life, that she is obliged to go and take up.  I hope
+you don't know any more of it, and that Major Montagu is not
+to cross the country to her.  There--I think you can't commend
+me for this letter; it shall not even have the merit of being
+one.  My compliments to all your contented family.
+Yours ever.
+
+P.S. I had forgot to tell you, that Lord Lonsdale had summoned
+the peers to-day to address the King not to send the troops
+abroad in the present conjuncture.  I hear he made a fine
+speech, and the Duke of Newcastle a very long one in answer,
+and then they rose without a division.(1218)  Lord Baltimore
+is to bring the same motion into our House.(1219)
+
+(1216) The Honourable Archibald Montgomerie.  He succeeded his
+brother as eleventh Earl of Eglinton, in 1769, and died in
+1796.-E.
+
+(1217) Richard Edgecumbe, second Lord Edgecumbe.
+
+(1218) 'There was a debate," writes Mr. Pelham to Horatio
+Walpole on the 12th, "in the House of Lords this day, upon a
+motion of Lord Lonsdale, who would have addressed the King, to
+defer the sending abroad any troops till it was more clear
+that we are in no danger @ home; which he would by no means
+allow to be the case at present.  The Duke of Newcastle spoke
+well for one that was determined to carry on the war.
+Granville was present, but said nothing. flattered the Duke of
+Newcastle when the debate was over, and gave a, strong
+negative to the motion."-E.
+
+(1219) Lord Baltimore made his motion in the House of Commons,
+on the 18th; when it was negatived by the great majority of
+103 against 12.-E.
+
+
+
+484 Letter 206
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, June 17, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+I wrote to you on Friday night as soon as I could after
+receiving your letter, with a list of the regiments to go
+abroad; one of which I hear since, is your brothers.  I am
+extremely sorry it is his fortune, as I know the distress it
+will occasion in your family.
+
+For the politics which you inquire after, and which may have
+given motion to this step, I can give you no satisfactory .  I
+have heard that it is in consequence of an impertinent letter
+sent over by Van Hoey in favour of the rebels, though at the
+same time I hear we are making steps towards a peace.  There
+centre all my politics, all in peace.  Whatever your
+cousin(1220) may think, I am neither busy about what does
+happen, nor making parties for what may.  If he knew how happy
+I am, his intriguing nature would envy my tranquillity more
+than his suspicions can make him jealous of my practices.  My
+books, my virt`u, and my other follies and amusements take up
+too much of my time to leave me much leisure to think of other
+people's affairs; and of all affairs. those of the public are
+least my concern.  You will be sorry to hear of Augustus
+Townshend's(1221) death.  I lament it extremely, not much for
+his sake, for I did not honour him, but for his poor sister
+Molly's, whose little heart, that is all tenderness, and
+gratitude, and friendship, will be broke with the shock.  I
+really dread it, considering how delicate her health is.  My
+Lady Townshend has a son with him.  I went to tell it her.
+Instead of thinking of her child's distress, she kept me half
+an hour with a thousand histories of Lady Caroline Fitzroy and
+Major Johnstone, and the new Paymaster's(1222) m`enage, and
+twenty other things, nothing to me, nor to her, if only she
+could drop the idea Of the pay of office.
+
+The serene hessian is gone.  Little Brooke is to be an earl.
+I went to bespeak him a Lilliputian coronet at
+Chenevix's.(1223)  Adieu! dear George.
+
+(1220) George
+Dunk, Earl of Halifax.
+
+(1221) Son of Viscount Townshend and Dorothy, sister of Sir
+Robert Walpole.  he was a captain in the service of the East
+India Company, and died at Batavia, having at that time the
+command of the Augusta.-E.
+
+(1222) Mr. Pitt.
+
+(1223) A celebrated toy-shop.
+
+
+
+
+485 Letter 207
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, June 20, 1746.
+
+We are impatient for letters from Italy, to confirm the news
+of a victory over the French and Spaniards-(1224) The time is
+critical, and every triumph or defeat material, as they may
+raise or fall the terms of peace.  The wonderful letters of
+Van Hoey and M. d'Argenson in favour of the rebels, but which,
+if the ministry have any spirit, must turn to their harm, you
+will see in all the papers.  They have rather put off the
+negotiations, and caused the sending five thousand men this
+week to Flanders.  The Duke is not yet returned from Scotland,
+nor is anything certainly known of the Pretender.  I don't
+find any period fixed for the trial of the Lords; yet the
+Parliament sits on, doing nothing, few days having enough to
+make a House.  Old Marquis Tullibardine, with another set of
+rebels are come, amongst whom is Lord Macleod, son of Lord
+Cromarty,(1225) already in the Tower. Lady Cromarty went down
+incog. to Woolwich to see her son pass by, without the power
+of speaking to him: I never heard a more melancholy instance
+of affection! Lord Elcho(1226) has written from Paris to Lord
+Lincoln to solicit his pardon; but as he has distinguished
+himself beyond all the rebel commanders by brutality and
+insults and cruelty to our prisoners, I think he is likely to
+remain where he is.
+
+Jack Spenser,(1227) old Marlborough's grandson and heir, is
+just dead, at the age of six or seven and thirty, and in
+possession Of near 30,000 pounds a-year, merely because he
+would not be abridged of those invaluable blessings of an
+English subject, brandy, small-beer, and tobacco.
+
+Your last letter was of May 31st.  Since you have effectually
+lost the good Chutes, I may be permitted to lay out all my
+impatience for seeing them.  There are no endeavours I shall
+not use to show how much I love them for all their friendship
+to you.  You are very kind in telling me how much I am
+honoured by their Highnesses Of Modena; but how can I return
+it? would it be civil to send them a compliment through a
+letter of yours? Do what you think properest for me.
+
+I have nothing to say to Marquis Riccardi about his trumpery
+gems, but what I have already said; that nobody here will buy
+them together; that if he will think better, and let them be
+sold by auction, he may do it most advantageously, for, with
+all our distress, we have not at all lost the rage of expense;
+but that for sending them to Lisbon, I will by no means do it,
+as his impertinent sending them to me without my leave, shall
+in no manner draw me into the risk of paying for them.  That,
+in short, if he will send any body to me with full authority
+to receive them, and to give me the most ample discharge for
+them, I will deliver them, and shall be happy so to get rid of
+them.  There they lie in a corner of my closet, and will
+probably come to light at last with excellent antique mould
+about them! Adieu.
+
+(1224) The battle of Placentia, which took place on the 15th
+of May.-E.
+
+(1225) George Mackenzie, third Earl of Cromartie, and his
+eldest son John, Lord Macleod.  They had been deeply engaged
+in the rebellion, were taken prisoners at Dunrobin Castle in
+Sutherland, and from thence conveyed to the Tower.  They were,
+upon trial, found guilty of high treason; but their lives were
+granted to them.  Lord Macleod afterwards entered the Swedish
+service.  Lady Cromartie was Isabel, daughter of Sir William
+Gordon, of Invergordon, Bart.-D.
+
+(1226) Eldest son of the Earl of Wemyss.
+
+(1227) Brother of Charles Spenser, Earl of Sunderland and Duke
+of Marlborough.
+
+
+
+486 Letter 208
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, June 24, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+You have got a very bad person to tell you news; for I hear
+nothing before all the world has' talked it over, and done
+with it.  Till twelve o'clock last night I knew nothing of all
+the kissing hands that had graced yesterday morning;
+Arundel(1228) for treasurer of the chambers; Legge, and your
+friend Walsh Campbell, for the treasury; Lord Duncannon for
+the admiralty; and your cousin Halifax (who is succeeded by
+his predecessor in the buck hounds) for chief justice in eyre,
+in the room of Lord Jersey.  They talk of new earls, Lord
+Chancellor, Lord Gower, Lord Brooke, and Lord Clinton; but I
+don't know that this will be, because it is not past.
+
+Tidings are every minute expected of a great sea-fight; Martin
+has got between the coast and the French fleet, which has
+sailed from Brest.  The victory in Italy is extremely big; but
+as none of my friends are aide-de-camps there, I know nothing
+of the particulars, except that the French and-Spaniards have
+lost ten thousand men.
+
+All the inns about town are crowded with rebel Prisoners, and
+people are making parties of pleasure, which you know is the
+English genius, to hear their trials.  The Scotch, which you
+know is the Scotch genius, are loud in censuring the Duke for
+his severities in the highlands.
+
+The great business of the town is Jack Spenser's will, who has
+left Althorp and the Sunderland estate in reversion to Pitt;
+after more obligations and more pretended friendship for his
+brother, the Duke, than is conceivable.  The Duke is in the
+utmost uneasiness about it, having left the drawing of the
+writings for the estate to his brother and his grandmother,
+and without having any idea that himself was cut out of the
+entail.
+
+I have heard nothing of Augustus Townshend's will: my lady,
+who you know hated him, came from the Opera t'other night, and
+on pulling off her gloves, and finding her hands all black,
+said immediately, "My hands are guilty, but my heart is free."
+Another good thing she said, to the Duchess of Bedford,(1229)
+who told her the Duke was windbound at Yarmouth, "Lord! he
+will hate Norfolk as much as I do."
+
+I wish, my dear George, you could meet with any man that could
+copy the beauties in the castle: I did not care if it were
+even in Indian ink.  Will you inquire?  Eckardt has done your
+picture excellently well.  What shall I do with the original?
+Leave it with him till you come?
+
+Lord Bath and Lord Sandys have had their pockets picked at
+Cuper's Gardens.  I fancy it was no bad scene, the avarice and
+jealousy of their peeresses on their return.  A terrible
+disgrace happened to Earl Cholmondeley t'other night at
+Ranelagh.  You know all the history of his letters to borrow
+money to pay for damask for his fine room at Richmond.  As he
+was going in, in the crowd, a woman offered him roses--"Right
+damask, my lord!" he concluded she had been put upon it.  I
+was told, a-propos, a bon-mot on the scene in the Opera, where
+there is a view of his new room, and the farmer comes dancing
+out and shaking his purse.  Somebody said there was a
+tradesman had unexpectedly got his money.
+
+I think I deal in bon-mots to-day.  I'll tell you now another,
+but don't print my letter in a new edition of Joe Miller's
+jests.  The Duke has given Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender's
+coach, on condition he rode up to London in it. "That I will,
+Sir," said he, "and drive till it stops of its own accord at
+the Cocoa Tree."
+
+(1228) The Honourable Richard Arundel, second son to John,
+Lord Arundel, of Trerice.  He married, 1732, Lady Frances
+Manners, daughter of John, second Duke of Rutland.-E.
+
+(1229) Daughter of John, Earl Gower.
+
+
+
+487 Letter 209
+To George Montagu,
+Arlington Street, July 3, 1746.
+
+My dear George,
+I wish extremely to accept your invitation, but I can't bring
+myself to it.  If I have the pleasure of meeting Lord
+North(1230) oftener-at your house next winter, I do not know
+but another summer I may have courage enough to make him a
+visit; but I have no notion of going to any body's house, and
+have the servants look on the arms of the chaise to find out
+one's name, and learn one's face from the Saracen's head.  You
+did not tell me how long you stayed at Wroxton, and so I
+direct this thither.  I have wrote one to Windsor since you
+left it.
+
+The Dew earls have kissed hands, and kept their own titles.
+The world reckon Earl Clinton obliged for his new honour to
+Lord GranVille, though they made the Duke of Newcastle go in
+to ask for it.
+
+Yesterday Mr. Hussey's friends declared his marriage with her
+grace of Manchester,(1231) and said he was gone down to
+Englefield Green to take possession.
+
+I can tell you another wedding more certain, and fifty times
+more extraordinary; it is Lord Cooke with Lady Mary Campbell,
+the Dowager of Argyle's youngest daughter.  It is all agreed,
+and was negotiated by the Countess of Gower and Leicester.  I
+don't know why they skipped over Lady Betty, who, if there
+were any question of beauty, is, I think, as well as her
+sister.  They drew the girl in to give her consent, when they
+first proposed it to her; but now la Belle n'aime pas trop le
+Sieur L`eandre.  She cries her eyes to scarlet.  He has made
+her four visits, and is so in love, that he writes to her
+every other day.  'Tis a strange match.  After offering him to
+all the great lumps of gold in all the alleys of the city,
+they fish out a woman of quality at last with a mere twelve
+thousand pound.  She objects his loving none of her sex but
+the four queens in a pack of cards, but he promises to abandon
+White's and both clubs for her sake.
+
+A-propos to White's and cards, Dick Edgecumbe is shut up with
+the itch.  The ungenerous world ascribes it to Mrs. Day; but
+he denies it; owning, however, that he is very well contented
+to have it, as nobody will venture on her.  Don't you like
+being pleased to have the itch, as a new way to 'keep one's
+mistress to one's self!
+
+You will be in town to be sure for the eight-and-twentieth.
+London will be as full as at a coronation.  The whole form is
+settled for the trials, and they are actually building
+scaffolds in Westminster-hall.
+
+I have not seen poor Miss Townshend yet; she is in town, and
+better, but most unhappy.
+
+(1230) Francis, Lord North and Grey; in 1752 created Earl of
+Guilford.  His lordship died in 1790, at the age of
+eighty-six.-E.
+
+(1231) Isabella, eldest daughter of John, Duke of Montagu,
+married in 1723 to William, second Duke of Manchester, who
+died in 1739.  She married afterwards to Edward Hussey, Esq.
+who was created Baron Beaulieu in 1762, and Earl Beaulieu in
+1784.
+
+
+
+488 Letter 210
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 7, 1746.
+
+I have been looking at the dates of my letters, and find that
+I have not written you since the 20th of last month.  As long
+as it seems, I am not in fault; I now write merely lest you
+should think me forgetful of you, and not because I have any
+thing to say.  Nothing great has happened; and for little
+politics, I live a good deal out of the way of' them.  I have
+no manner of connexion with any ministry, or opposition to
+ministry; and their merits and their faults are equally a
+secret to me.  The Parliament sitting, so long has worn itself
+to a skeleton; and almost every body takes the opportunity of
+shortening, their stay in the country, which I believe in
+their hearts most are glad to do, by going down, and returning
+for the trials, which are to be on the 28th of this month.  I
+am of the number; so don't expect to hear from me again till
+that aera.
+
+The Duke is still in Scotland, doing his family the only
+service that has been done for them there since their
+accession.  He daily picks Up notable prisoners, and has
+lately taken Lord Lovat, and Murray the secretary.  There are
+flying reports of the Boy being killed, but I think not
+certain enough for the father(1232) to faint away again-I
+blame myself for speaking lightly of the old man's distress;
+but a swoon is so natural to his character, that one smiles at
+it at first, without considering when it proceeds from
+cowardice, and when from misery.  I heard yesterday that we
+are to expect a battle in Flanders soon: I expect it with all
+the tranquillity that the love of one's country admits, when
+one's heart is entirely out of the question, as, thank God!
+mine is: not one of my friends will be in it.  I -wish it may
+be as magnificent a victory for us, as your giornata di San
+Lazaro!
+
+I am in great pain for my eagle, now the Brest fleet is
+thought to be upon the coast of Spain: bi-it what do you mean
+by him and his pedestal filling three cases? is he like the
+Irishman's bird, in two places at once?
+
+Adieu! my dear child; don't believe my love for you in the
+least abridged, whenever my letters are scarce or short.  I
+never loved you better, and never had less to say, both which
+I beg you will believe by my concluding, yours, etc.
+
+P. S. Since I finished my letter, we hear that the French and
+Spaniards have escaped from Placentia, not without some
+connivance of your hero-king.(1233)  Mons is taken.
+
+(1232) James Stuart, called " The Old Pretender."-D.
+
+(1233) The King of Sardinia.-D.
+
+
+
+
+489 Letter 211
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 1, 1746.
+
+I am this moment come from the conclusion of the greatest and
+most melancholy scene I ever yet saw! you will easily guess it
+was the trials of the rebel Lords.  As it was the most
+interesting sight, it was the most solemn and fine:
+a coronation is a puppet-show, and all the splendour of it
+idle; but this sight at once feasted one's eyes and engaged
+all one's passions.  It began last Monday; three parts of
+Westminster-hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung with
+scarlet; and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most
+awful solemnity and decency, except in the one point of
+leaving the prisoners at the bar, amidst the idle curiosity of
+some crowd, and even with the witnesses who had sworn against
+them, while the Lords adjourned to their own House to consult.
+No part of the royal family was there, which was a proper
+regard to the unhappy men, who were become their victims.  One
+hundred and thirty-nine lords were present, and made a noble
+sight on their benches, frequent and full.  The
+Chancellor(1234) was Lord High Steward; but though a most
+comely personage with a fine voice, his behaviour was mean,
+curiously searching for occasion to bow to the minister(1235)
+that is no peer, and consequently applying to the other
+ministers, in a manner for their orders; and not even ready at
+the ceremonial.  To the prisoners he was peevish; and instead
+of keeping up to the humane dignity of the law of England,
+whose character it is to point out favour to the criminal, he
+crossed them, and almost scolded at any offer they made
+towards defence. I had armed myself with all the resolution I
+could, whit the thought of their crimes and of the danger
+past, and was assisted by the sight of the Marquis
+of Lothian(1236) in weepers for his son who fell at Culloden--
+but the first appearance of the prisoners shocked me! their
+behaviour melted me!  Lord Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie are
+both past forty, but look younger.  Lord Kilmarnock is tall
+and slender, with an extreme fine person: his behaviour a most
+just mixture between dignity and submission; if in any thing
+to be reprehended, a little affected, and his hair too exactly
+dressed for a man in his situation; but when I say this, it is
+not to find fault with him but to show how little fault there
+was to be found.  Lord Cromartie is an indifferent figure,
+appeared much dejected, and rather sullen: he dropped a few
+tears the first day, and swooned as soon as he got back to his
+cell.  For Lord Balmerino, he is the most natural brave old
+fellow I ever saw: the highest intrepidity, even to
+indifference,.  At the bar he behaved like a soldier and a
+man; in the intervals of form, with carelessness and humour.
+He pressed extremely to have his wife, his pretty Peggy,(1237)
+with him in the tower.  Lady Cromartie only sees her husband
+through the grate, not choosing to be shut up with him, as she
+thinks she can serve him better by her intercession without:
+she is big with child and very handsome; so are their
+daughters.  When they were to be brought from the Tower in
+separate coaches, there was some dispute in which the axe must
+go--old Balmerino cried, "Come, come, put it with me."  At the
+bar, he plays with his fingers upon the axe, while he talks to
+the gentleman-gaoler; and one day somebody coming up to
+listen, he took up the blade and held it like a fan between
+their faces.  During the trial, a little boy was near him, but
+not tall enough to see; he made room for the child and placed
+him near himself.
+
+When the trial began, the two earls pleaded guilty; Balmerino
+not guilty, saying he could prove he was not at the taking of
+the castle of Carlisle, as was laid in the Indictment.  Then
+the King's counsel opened, and Serjeant Skinner pronounced the
+most absurd speech imaginable; and mentioned the Duke of
+Perth, "who," said he, "I see by the papers is dead."(1238)
+Then some witnesses were examined, whom afterwards the old
+hero shook cordially by the hand.  The Lords withdrew to their
+House, and returning demanded, of the judges, whether one
+point not being proved, though all the rest were, the
+indictment was false? to which they unanimously answered in
+the negative.  Then the Lord High Steward asked the Peers
+severally, whether Lord Balmerino @was guilty!  All said,
+"guilty upon honour," and then adjourned, the prisoner having
+begged pardon for giving them so much trouble.  While the
+lords were withdrawn, the Solicitor-General Murray (brother of
+the Pretender's minister)1239) officiously and insolently went
+up to Lord Balmerino, and asked him, how he could give the
+Lords so much trouble, when his solicitor had informed him
+that his plea could be of no use to him?  Balmerino asked the
+bystanders who this person was! and being told, he said.  "Oh,
+Mr. Murray! I am extremely glad to see you; I have been with
+several of your relations; the good lady, your mother, was of
+great use to us at Perth."  Are not you charmed with this
+speech? how just it was! As he went away, he      said, "They
+call me Jacobite; I am no more a Jacobite than any that tried
+me: but if the Great Mogul had set up his standard, I should
+have followed it, for I could not starve."  The worst of his
+case is, that after the battle of Dumblain, having a company
+in the Duke of Argyll's regiment, he deserted with it to the
+rebels, and has since been pardoned.  Lord Kilmarnock is a
+Presbyterian, with four earldoms(1240) in him, but so poor
+since Lord Wilmington's stopping a pension that my father had
+given him, that he often wanted a dinner.  Lord Cromartie was
+receiver of the rents of the King's second son in Scotland,
+which, it was understood, he should not account for; and by
+that means had six hundred a-year from the Government: Lord
+Elibank,(1241) a very prating, impertinent Jacobite, was bound
+for him in nine thousand pounds, for which the Duke is
+determined to sue him.
+
+When the Peers were going to vote, Lord Foley(1242) withdrew,
+as too well a wisher; Lord Moray,(1243) as nephew of Lord
+Balmerino--and
+ Lord Stair--as, I believe, uncle to his great-grandfather.
+Lord Windsor,(1244) very affectedly, said, "I am sorry I must
+say, guilty upon my honour."  Lord Stamford(1245) would not
+answer to the name of Henry, having been christened Harry--
+what a great way of thinking on such an occasion! I was
+diverted too with old Norsa, the father of my brother's
+concubine, an old Jew that kept a tavern; my brother, as
+auditor of the exchequer, has a gallery along one whole side
+of the court: I said, "I really feel for the prisoners!" old
+Issachar replied, "Feel for them! pray, if they had succeeded,
+what would have become of all us?"  When my Lady Townshend
+heard her husband vote, she said, "I always knew my Lord was
+guilty, but I never thought he would own it upon his honour."
+Lord Balmerino said, that one of his reasons for pleading not
+guilty, was, that so many ladies might not be disappointed of
+their show.
+
+On Wednesday they were again brought to Westminster-hall, to
+receive sentence; and being asked what they had to say, Lord
+Kilmarnock, with a very fine voice, read a very fine speech,
+confessing the extent of his crime, but offering his
+principles as some alleviation, having his eldest son (his
+second unluckily was with him,) in the Duke's army, fighting
+for the liberties of his country at Culloden, where his
+unhappy father was ? .n arms to destroy them.  He insisted
+much on his tenderness to the English prisoners, which some
+deny, and say that he was the man who proposed their being put
+to death, when General Stapleton urged that he was come to
+fight, and not to butcher; and that if they acted any such
+barbarity, he would leave them with all his men.  He very
+artfully mentioned Van Hoey's letter, and said how much he
+should scorn to owe his life to such intercession.  Lord
+Cromartie spoke much shorter, and so low, that he was not
+heard but by those who sat very near him; but they prefer his
+speech to the other.  He mentioned his misfortune in having
+drawn in his eldest son, who is prisoner with him; and
+concluded with saying, "If no part of this bitter cup must
+pass from me, not mine, O God, but thy will be done!"  If he
+had pleaded not guilty, there was ready to be produced against
+him a paper signed with his own hand, for putting to death the
+English prisoners.
+
+Lord leicester went up to the Duke of Newcastle, and said, "I
+never heard so great an orator as Lord Kilmarnock; if I was
+grace, I would pardon him, and make him paymaster."(1246)
+That morning a paper had been sent to the lieutenant of the
+Tower for the prisoners; he gave it to Lord Cornwallis,(1247)
+the governor, who carried it to the House of Lords.  It was a
+plea for the prisoners, objecting that the late act for
+regulating the trial of rebels did not take place till after
+their crime was committed.  The Lords very tenderly and
+rightly sent this plea to them, of which, as you have seen,
+the two Earls did not make use; but old Balmerino did, and
+demanded council on it.  The High Steward, almost in a
+passion, told him, that when he had been offered council, he
+did not accept it.  Do but think on the ridicule of sending
+them the plea, and then denying them council on it! The Duke
+of Newcastle, who never lets slip an opportunity of being
+absurd, took it up as a ministerial point, in defence of his
+creature the Chancellor; but Lord Granville moved, according
+to order, to adjourn to debate in the chamber of Parliament,
+where the Duke of Bedford and many others spoke warmly for
+their having council; and it was granted.  I said their,
+because the plea would have saved them all, and affected nine
+rebels who had been hanged that very morning; particularly one
+Morgan, a poetical lawyer.  Lord Balmerino asked for Forester
+and Wilbraham; the latter a very able lawyer in the House of
+Commons, who, the Chancellor said privately, he was sure would
+as soon be hanged as plead such a cause.  But he came as
+council to-day (the third day), when Lord Balmerino gave up
+his plea as invalid, and submitted, without any speech.  The
+High Steward then made his, very long and very poor, with only
+one or two good passages; and then pronounced sentence!
+
+Great intercession is made for the two Earls: Duke
+Hamilton,(1248) who has never been at court, designs to kiss
+the King's hand, and ask Lord Kilmarnock's life.  The King is
+much inclined to some mercy; but the Duke, who has not so much
+of Caesar after a victory, as in gaining it, is for the utmost
+severity.  It was lately proposed in the city to
+present him with the freedom of some company; one of the
+aldermen said aloud, "Then let it be of the Butchers!"(1249)
+The Scotch and his Royal Highness are not at all guarded in
+their expressions of each other.  When he went to Edinburgh,
+in his pursuit of the rebels, they would not admit his guards,
+alleging that it was contrary to their privileges; but they
+rode in, sword in hand; and the Duke, very justly incensed,
+refused to see any of the magistrates.  He came with the
+utmost expedition to town, in order for Flanders; but found
+that the court of Vienna had already sent Prince Charles
+thither, without the least notification, at which both King
+and Duke are greatly offended'. When the latter waited on his
+brother, the Prince carried him into a room that hangs over
+the Wall of St. James's Park, and stood there with his arm
+about his neck, to charm the gazing mob
+
+Murray, the Pretender's secretary, has made ample confessions:
+the Earl of Traquair(1250 and Dr. Barry, a physician, are
+apprehended, and more warrants are out; so much for rebels!
+Your friend, Lord Sandwich, is instantly going ambassador to
+Holland, to pray the Dutch to build more ships.  I have
+received yours of July 19th, but you see have no more room
+left, only to say, that I conceive a good idea of my eagle,
+though the sea] is a bad one.  Adieu!
+
+p S. I have not room to say any thing to the Tesi till next
+post; but, unless she will sing gratis, would advise her to
+drop this thought.
+
+(1234) Philip Yorke, lord Hardwicke.
+
+(1235 henry Pelham.
+
+(1236) William ker, third marquis of Lothian.  Lord Robert
+Ker, who was killed at Culloden, was his second son.--D.
+
+(1237) Margaret, lady Balmerino, daughter of Captain
+chalmers.--D.
+
+(1238) The duke of Perth, being a young man of delicate frame,
+expired on his passage to France.--E.
+
+(1239) Lord Dunbar.
+
+(1240) Kilmarnock, Erroll, Linlithgow, and Calendar.--D.
+
+(1241) Patrick Murray, fifth Lord Elibank.--D.
+
+(1242) Thomas, second Lord Foley, of the first creation.--D.
+
+(1243) James Stewart, ninth Earl of Moray.  His mother was
+jean Elphinstone, daughter of John, fourth Lord Balmerino.--D.
+
+(1244) Robert Windsor, second viscount Windsor in Ireland.  He
+sat in Parliament as Lord Mountjoy of the isle of Wight.  He
+died in 1758, when His titles extinguished.--D.
+
+(1245) Harry Grey, died in 1768.--D.
+
+(1246) Alluding to Mr. Pitt, who had lately been preferred to
+that post, from the fear the ministry had of his abusive
+eloquence.
+
+(1247) Charles, fifth Lord Cornwallis.  He was created an earl
+in 1753, and died in 1762.-D.
+
+(1248) James, sixth Duke of Hamilton: died in 1758.-D.
+
+
+(1249) "The Duke," says Sir Walter Scott, " was received with
+all the honours due to conquest; and all the incorporated
+bodies of the capital, from the guild brethren to the
+butchers, desired his acceptance of the freedom of their
+craft, or corporation." Billy the Butcher was one of his
+by-names.-E.
+
+(1250) Charles Stuart, fifth Earl of Traquair.-D.
+
+
+
+494 Letter 212
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 2, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+You have lost nothing by missing yesterday at the trials, but
+a little additional contempt for the High Steward; and even
+that is recoverable, as his long, paltry speech is to be
+printed; for which, and for thanks for it, Lord Lincoln moved
+the House of Lords.  Somebody said to Sir Charles Windham,
+"Oh! you don't think Lord Hardwicke's speech good, because you
+have read Lord Cowper's."--"No," replied he; "but I do think
+it tolerable, because I heard Serjeant Skinner's."(1251)  Poor
+brave old Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and
+desired the Lords to intercede for mercy.  As he returned to
+the Tower, he stopped the coach at Charing-cross to buy
+honey-blobs as the Scotch call gooseberries.  He says he is
+extremely afraid Lord Kilmarnock will not behave well.  The
+Duke said publicly at his levee, that the latter proposed
+murdering the English prisoners.  His Highness was to have
+given Peggy Banks a ball last night; but was persuaded to
+defer it, as it would have rather looked like an insult on the
+prisoners, the very day their sentence was passed.  George
+Selwyn says that he had begged Sir William Saunderson to get
+him the High Steward's wand, after it was broke, as a
+curiosity; but that he behaved so like an attorney the first
+day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not
+take it to light his fire with; I don't believe my Lady
+Hardwicke is so high-minded.
+
+Your cousin Sandwich(1252) is certainly going on an embassy to
+Holland.  I don't know whether it is to qualify him, by new
+dignity, for the head of the admiralty, or whether (which is
+more agreeable to present policy) to satisfy him instead of
+it.  I know when Lord Malton,(1253) who was a young earl,
+asked for the garter, to stop his pretensions, they made him a
+marquis.  When Lord Brooke, who is likely to have ten sons,
+though he has none yet, asked to have his barony settled on
+his daughters, they refused him with an earldom; and they
+professed making Pitt paymaster, in order to silence the
+avidity of his faction.
+
+Dear George, I am afraid I shall not be in your neighbourhood,
+as I promised myself.  Sir Charles Williams has let his house.
+I wish you would one day whisk over and look at Harley House.
+The inclosed advertisement makes it sound pretty, though I am
+afraid too large for me.  Do look at it impartially: don't be
+struck at first sight with any brave old windows; but be so
+good as to inquire the rent, and if I can have it for a year,
+and with any furniture.  I have not had time to copy out the
+verses, but you shall have them soon.  Adieu, with my
+compliments to your sisters.
+
+(1251) Matthew Skinner, afterwards a Welsh judge.-E.
+
+(1252) John, the fourth Earl of Sandwich; son of Edward
+Richard, Viscount Hichinbrooke.  He signed the treaty of peace
+at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
+
+(1253) Thomas Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, created
+Marquis of Rockingham, in 1746. [He died In 1782, when his
+title became extinct.)
+
+
+
+495 Letter 213
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 5, 1746.
+
+Though I can't this week accept your invitation, I can prove
+to you that I am most desirous of passing my time with you,
+and therefore en attendant Harley House, if you can find me
+out any clean, small house in Windsor, ready furnished, that
+is not -,absolutely in the middle of the town, but near you, I
+should be glad to take it for three or four months.(1254)  I
+have been about Sir Robert Rich's, but they will only sell it.
+I am as far from guessing why they send Sandwich in embassy,
+as you are; and, when I recollect of what various materials
+our late ambassadors have been composed, I can only say, "ex
+quovis ligno fit Mercurius."  Murray(1255) has certainly been
+discovering, and warrants are out; but I don't yet know who
+are to be their prize.  I begin to think that the ministry had
+really no intelligence till now.  I before thought they had,
+but durst not use it.  A-propos to not daring, I went t'other
+night to look at my poor favourite Chelsea,(1256) for the
+little Newcastle is gone to be dipped in the sea.  In one of
+the rooms is a bed for her Duke, and a press-bed for his
+footman; for he never dares lie alone, and, till be was
+married, had always a servant to sit up with him.  Lady
+Cromartie presented her petition to the King last Sunday.  He
+was very civil to her, but would not at all give her any
+hopes.  She swooned away as soon as he was gone.(1257)  Lord
+Corn-wallis told me that her lord weeps every time any thing
+of his fate is mentioned to him.  Old Balmerino keeps up his
+spirits to the same pitch of gaiety.  In the cell at
+Westminster he showed Lord Kilmarnock how he must lay his
+head; bid him not wince, lest the stroke should cut his skull
+or his shoulders, and advised him to bite his lips.  As they
+were to return, he begged they might have another bottle
+together, as they should never meet any more till---, and then
+pointed to his neck.  At getting into the coach, he said to
+the gaoler, "Take care, or you will break my shins with this
+damned axe."(1258)
+
+I must tell you a bon-mot of George Selwyn's at the trial.  He
+saw Bethel's(1259) sharp visage looking wistfully at the rebel
+lords; he said, What a shame it is to turn her face to the
+prisoners till they are condemned."  If you have a mind for a
+true foreign idea, one of the foreign ministers said at the
+trial to another, "Vraiment cela est auguste."  "Oui," replied
+the other, "cela est vrai, mais cela n'est pas royale."  the I
+am assured that the old Countess of Errol made her son Lord
+Kilmarnock(1260) go into the rebellion on pain of
+disinheriting him.  I don't know whether I told you that the
+man at the tennis-court protests that he has known him dine at
+the man that sells pamphlets at Storey's Gate; "and," says he,
+"he would often have been glad if I would have taken him home
+to dinner." He was certainly so poor, that in one of his
+wife's intercepted letters she tells him she has plagued their
+steward for a fortnight for money, and can get but three
+shillings.  Can any one help pitying such distress?(1261)  I
+am vastly softened, too, about Balmerino's relapse, for his
+pardon was only granted him to engage his brother's vote in
+the election of Scotch peers.
+
+My Lord Chancellor has got a thousand pounds in present for
+his high stewardship, and has @(it the reversion of clerk of
+the crown (twelve hundred a-year) for his second son.  What a
+long time it will be before his posterity are drove into
+rebellion for want, like Lord Kilmarnock!
+
+The Duke gave his ball last night to Peggy Banks at Vauxhall.
+It was to pique my Lady Rochford, in return for the Prince of
+Hesse.  I saw the company get into their barges at Whitehall
+Stairs, as I was going myself, and just then passed by two
+city companies in their great barges, who had been a
+swan-hopping:.  They laid by and played "God save our noble
+King," and altogether it was a mighty pretty show.  When they
+came to Vauxhall, there were assembled about five-and-twenty
+hundred people, besides crowds without.  They huzzaed, and
+surrounded him so, that he was forced to retreat into the
+ball-room.  He was very near being drowned t'other night going
+from Ranelagh to Vauxhall, and politeness of Lord Cathcart's,
+who, stepping on the side of the boat to lend his arm, overset
+it, and both fell into the water up to their chins.
+
+I have not yet got Sir Charles's ode;(1262) when I have, you
+shall see it: here are my own lines.  Good night!
+
+(1260) The Earl of Kilmarnock was not the son of the Countess
+of Errol.  His wife, the Lady Anne Livingstone, daughter of
+the Earl of Linlithgow, was her niece, and, eventually, her
+heiress.--E.
+
+(1261) The Duke of Argyle, telling him how sorry he was to see
+him engaged in such a cause, 'MY Lord,' says be, 'for the two
+Kings and their rights, I care not a farthing which prevailed;
+but I was starving, and by God, if Mahomet had set up his
+standard in the highlands, I had been a good Mussulman for
+bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat.'" Gray,
+vol. 5.-E.
+
+(1262) On the Duchess of Manchester, entitled Isabella, or the
+Morning.-E.
+
+
+
+497 Letter 214
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 11, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+I have seen Mr. Jordan, and have taken his house at forty
+guineas a-year, but I am to pay taxes.  Shall I now accept
+your offer of being at the trouble of giving orders for the
+airing of it? I have desired the landlord will order the key
+to be delivered to you, and Asheton will assist you.
+Furniture, I find, I have in abundance, which I shall send
+down immediately; but shall not be able to be at Windsor at
+the quivering dame's before to-morrow se'nnight, as the rebel
+Lords are not to be executed till Monday.  I shall stay till
+that is over, though I don't believe I shall see it.  Lord
+Cromartie is reprieved for a pardon.  If wives and children
+become an argument for saving rebels, there will cease to be a
+reason against their going into rebellion.  Lady Caroline
+Fitzroy's execution is certainly to-night.  I dare say she
+will follow Lord Balmerino's advice to Lord Kilmarnock, and
+not winch.
+
+Lord Sandwich has made Mr. Keith his secretary.  I don't
+believe the founder of your race, the great Quu,(1263) of
+Habiculeo, would have chosen his secretary from California.
+
+I would willingly return the civilities you laid upon me at
+Windsor.  Do command me; in what can I serve you? Shall I get
+you an earldom? Don't think it will be any trouble; there is
+nothing easier or cheaper.  Lord Hobart and Lord Fitzwilliam
+are both to be Earls to-morrow: the former, of Buckingham; the
+latter, by his already title.  I suppose Lord Malton will be a
+Duke; he has had no new peerage this fortnight.  Adieu! my
+compliments to the virtuous ladies, Arabella and Hounsibeloa
+Quus.
+
+P. S. Here is an order for the key.
+
+
+(1263) The Earl of Halifax.-E.
+
+
+
+497 Letter 215
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Aug. 12, 1746.
+
+To begin with the Tesi; she is mad if she desires to come
+hither.  I hate long histories, and so will only tell you in a
+few words, that Lord Middlesex(1264) took the opportunity of a
+rivalship between his own mistress, the Nardi, and the
+Violette,(1265) the finest and most admired dancer in the
+world, to involve the whole m`enage of the Opera in the
+quarrel, and has paid nobody; but, like a true Lord of the
+Treasury, has shut up his own exchequer.  The principal
+man-dancer was arrested for debt; to the composer his Lordship
+gave a bad note, not payable in two years, besides amercing
+him entirely three hundred pounds, on pretence of his siding
+with the Violette.  If the Tesi likes this account-venga!
+venga!
+
+Did I tell you that your friend Lord Sandwich was sent'
+/ambassador to Holland? He is: and that Lady Charlotte
+Fermor(1266) was to be married to Mr. Finch,(1267) the
+Vice-chamberlain? She is.  Mr. Finch is a comely black
+widower, without children, and heir to his brother Winchilsea,
+who has no sons.  The Countess-mother has been in an embroil,
+(as we have often known her,) about carrying Miss Shelly, a
+bosom-friend, into the Peeresses' place at the trials.  Lord
+Granville, who is extremely fond of Lady Charlotte, has given
+her all her sister's jewels, to the great discontent of his
+own daughters.  She has five thousand pounds, and Mr. Finch
+Settles fifteen thousand pounds more upon her.  Now we are
+upon the chapter of marriages, Lord Petersham(1268) was last
+night married to One Of our first beauties, Lady Caroline
+Fitzroy;(1269) and Lord Coke(1270) is to have the youngest of
+the late Duke of Argyl@s daughters,)1271) who is none of our
+beauties at all.
+
+Princess Louisa has already reached the object of her wish
+ever since she could speak, and is Queen of Denmark, We have
+been a little lucky lately in the deaths of Kings, and promise
+ourselves great matters from the new monarch in Spain.(1272)
+Princess Mary is coming over from Hesse to drink the Bath
+waters; that is the pretence for leaving her brutal husband,
+and for visiting the Duke and Princess Caroline, who love her
+extremely.  She is of the softest, mildest temper in the
+world.
+
+We know nothing certainly of the young Pretender, but that he
+is concealed in Scotland, and devoured with distempers - I
+really wonder how an Italian constitution can have supported
+such rigours!  He has said, that "he did not see what he had
+to be ashamed of; and that if he had lost one battle, he had
+gained two."  Old Lovat curses Cope and Hawley for the loss of
+those two, and                    says, if they had done their
+duty, he had never been in this scrape.  Cope is actually
+going to be tried; but Hawley, who is fifty times more
+culpable, is saved by partiality: Cope miscarried by
+incapacity; Hawley, by insolence and carelessness.
+
+Lord Cromartie is reprieved; the Prince asked his life, and
+his wife made great intercession.  Duke Hamilton's
+intercession for Lord Kilmarnock has rather hurried him to the
+block: he and Lord Balmerino are to die next Monday.  Lord
+Kilmarnock, with the greatest nobleness of soul, desired to
+have Lord Cromartie preferred to himself for pardon, if there
+could be but one saved; and Lord Balmerino laments that
+himself and Lord Lovat were not taken at the same time; "For
+then," says he, "we might have been sacrificed, and those
+other two brave men escaped." Indeed Lord Cromartie does not
+much deserve the epithet; for he wept whenever his execution
+was mentioned.  Balmerino is jolly with 'his pretty Peggy.
+There is a remarkable story of him at the battle of Dunblain,
+where the Duke of Argyll, his colonel, answered for him, on
+his being suspected.  He behaved well; but as soon as we had
+gained the victory, went off with his troop to the Pretender:
+protesting that he had never feared death but that day, as he
+had been fighting against his conscience.  Popularity has
+changed sides since the year '15, for now the city and the
+generality are very angry that so Many rebels have been
+pardoned.  Some of those taken at Carlisle dispersed papers at
+their execution, saying they forgave 'all men but three, the
+Elector of Hanover, the pretended Duke of Cumberland, and the
+Duke of Richmond, who signed the capitulation at
+Carlisle.(1273)
+
+Wish Mr. Hobart joy of ])is new lordship; his father took his
+seat to-day as Earl of Buckingham -. Lord Fitzwilliam is made
+English earl with him, by his old title.  Lord
+TankerVille(1274) goes governor to Jamaica: a cruel method of
+recruiting a prodigal nobleman's broken fortune, by sending
+him to pillage a province! Adieu!
+
+P. S. I have taken a pretty house at Windsor and am going
+thither for the remainder of the summer.
+
+(1264) Charles Sackville, eldest son of Lionel, Duke of
+Dorset, a Lord of the Treasury.
+
+(1265) She was born at Vienna, in February, 1724-5, and
+married to Garrick, the celebrated actor, in June, 1749.  She
+died in October, 1822, in the ninety-eighth year of her
+age.-E.
+
+(1266) Second daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret, and sister
+of Lady Granville.
+
+(1267) William Finch, brother of the Earl of Winchilsea, had
+been ambassador in Holland.
+
+(1268) Son of the Earl of Harrington, Secretary of State.
+
+(1269) Eldest daughter of Charles, Duke of Grafton, Lord
+Chamberlain.
+
+(1270) Edward, only son of Thomas, Earl of Leicester.
+
+(1271) Lady Mary Campbell.  She survived her husband
+fifty-eight years; he having died in 1753, and she in 1811.-D.
+
+(1272) Philip the Fifth, the mad and imbecile King of Spain,
+was just dead.  He was succeeded by his son Ferdinand the
+Sixth, who died in 1759.--D.
+
+(1273) A melancholy and romantic incident which took place
+amid the terrors of the executions is thus related by Sir
+Walter Scott:--"A young lady, of good family and handsome
+fortune, who had been contracted in marriage to James Dawson,
+one of the sufferers, had taken the desperate resolution of
+attending on the horrid ceremonial.  She beheld her lover,
+after being suspended for a few minutes, but not till death
+(for such was the barbarous sentence), cut down, embowelled,
+and mangled by the knife of the executioner.  All this she
+supported with apparent fortitude; but when she saw the last
+scene, finished, by throwing Dawson's heart into the fire, she
+drew her head within the carriage, repeated his name, and
+expired on the spot." This melancholy event was made, by
+Shenstone, the theme of a tragic ballad:--
+
+"The dismal scene was o'er and past,
+The lover's mournful hearse retired;
+The maid drew back her languid head,
+And, sighing forth his name, expired
+
+"though justice ever must prevail,
+The tear my Kitty shed is due;
+For seldom shall she hear a tale
+So sad, so tender, yet so true."
+
+James Dawson was one of the nine men who suffered at
+Kennington, on the 30th Of July.-E.
+
+(1274) Charles Bennet, second Earl of TankerVille.  The
+appointment did not take place.  He died in 1753.  His wife,
+Camilla, daughter of Edward Colville, of White-house, in the
+bishopric of Durham, Esq. survived till 1775, aged one hundred
+and five.--E.
+
+
+
+
+500 Letter 216
+To George Montagu, Esq,
+Arlington Street, Aug. 16, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+I shall be with you on Tuesday night, and since you are so
+good as to be my Rowland white, must beg my apartment at the
+quivering dame's may be aired for me.  My caravan sets out
+with all my household stuff on Monday; but  I have heard
+nothing of your sister's hamper, nor do I know how to send the
+bantams by it, but will leave them here till I am more settled
+under the shade of my own mulberry- tree.
+
+I have been this morning at the Tower, and passed under the
+new heads at Temple Bar,(1275) where people make a trade of
+letting spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look.  Old Lovat
+arrived last night.  I saw Murray, Lord Derwentwater, Lord
+Traquair, Lord Cromartie and his son, and the Lord Provost,
+-,it their respective windows.  The other two wretched Lords
+are in dismal towers, and they have stopped up one of old
+Balmerino's windows because he talked to the populace; and now
+he has only one, which looks directly upon all the
+scaffolding.  They brought in the death-warrant at his dinner.
+His wife fainted.  He said, "Lieutenant, with your damned
+warrant you have spoiled my lady's stomach." He has written a
+sensible letter to the Duke to beg his intercession, and the
+Duke has given it to the King; but gave a much colder answer
+to Duke Hamilton, who went to beg it for Lord Kilmarnock: he
+told him the affair was in the King's hands, and that he had
+nothing to do with it.  Lord Kilmarnock, who has hitherto kept
+up his spirits, grows extremely terrified.  It will be
+difficult to make you believe to what heights of affectation
+or extravagance my Lady Townshend carries her passion for my
+Lord Kilmarnock, whom she never saw but at the bar of his
+trial, and was smitten with his falling shoulders.  She has
+been under his windows; sends messages to him; has got his dog
+and his snuff-box; has taken lodgings out of town for
+to-morrow and Monday night, and then goes to Greenwich;
+forswears conversing with the bloody English, and has taken a
+French master.  She insisted on Lord Hervey's promising her he
+would not sleep a whole night for my Lord Kilmarnock, "and in
+return," says she, "never trust me more if I am not as yellow
+as a jonquil for him."(1276)  She said gravely t'other day,
+"Since I saw my Lord Kilmarnock, I really think no more of Sir
+Harry Nisbett than if there was no such man in the world." But
+of all her flights, yesterday was the strongest.  George
+Selwyn dined with her, and not thinking her affliction so
+serious as she pretends, talked rather jokingly of the
+execution.  She burst into a flood of tears and rage, told him
+she now believed all his father and mother had said of him;
+and with a thousand other reproaches flung upstairs.  George
+coolly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and made her sit down to
+finish the bottle: "And pray, sir," said Dorcas, "do you think
+my lady will be prevailed upon to let me go see the execution?
+I have a friend that has promised to take care of me, and I
+can lie in the Tower the night before." My lady has quarrelled
+with Sir Charles Windham for calling the two Lords
+malefactors.  The idea seems to be general; for 'tis said Lord
+Cromartie is to be transported, which diverts me for the
+dignity of the peerage.  The ministry really gave it as a
+reason against their casting lots for pardon, that it was
+below their dignity.  I did not know but that might proceed
+from Balmerino'S not being an earl; and therefore, now their
+hand is in, would have them make him one.  You will see in the
+papers the second great victory at Placentia.  There are
+papers pasted in several parts of the town, threatening your
+cousin Sandwich's head if be makes a dishonourable peace.  I
+will bring you down Sir Charles Williams's new Ode on the
+Manchester.(1277) Adieu!
+
+(1275)  In the sixth volume of "London and its Environs
+described," published in 1761, a work which furnishes a
+curious view of the state of the metropolis on the accession
+of George the Third, it is not only gravely stated of Temple
+Bar, that, "since the erection of this gate, it has been
+particularly distinguished by having the heads of such as have
+been executed for high treason placed upon it," but the
+accompanying plate exhibits it as being at that time
+surmounted by three such disgusting proofs of the- then
+semi-barbarous state of our criminal code.  The following
+anecdote, in reference to this exhibition, was related by Dr.
+Johnson in 1773:--"I remember once being with Goldsmith in
+Westminster Abbey: while we surveyed the Poet's Corner, I said
+to him,
+
+'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.'
+
+When we got to Temple Bar, he stopped me, pointed to the heads
+upon it, and slily whispered me,
+
+'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS."'
+Life, vol. iii. p. 2@.-E
+
+( 276) "This," says the Quarterly Review, "is an odd
+illustration of the truth of the first line in the following
+couplet, which begins an epigram ascribed to Johnson:--
+
+'Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died:
+The brave, Balmerino, are on thy side.'"--E.
+
+(1277) Isabel, Duchess of Manchester, married to Edward
+Hussey, Esq.-E.
+
+
+
+501 Letter 217
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Windsor, Aug. 21, 1746.
+
+You will perceive by my date that I am got into a new scene,
+and that I am retired hither like an old summer dowager; Only
+that I have no toad-eater to take the air with me in the back
+part of my lozenge-coach, and to be scolded.  I have taken a
+small house here within the castle and propose spending the
+greatest part of every week here till the parliament meets;
+but my jaunts to town will prevent my news from being quite
+provincial and marvellous.  Then, I promise you, I will go to
+no races nor assemblies, nor make comments upon couples that
+come in chaises to the White Hart.
+
+I came from town (for take notice, I put this place upon
+myself for the country) the day after the execution of the
+rebel Lords: I was not at it, but had two persons come to me
+directly who were at the next house to the scaffold; and I saw
+another who was upon it, so that you may depend upon my
+accounts.
+
+Just before they came out of the Tower, Lord Balmerino drank a
+bumper to King James's health.  As the clock struck ten they
+came forth on foot, Lord Kilmarnock all in black, his hair
+unpowdered in a bag: supported by Forster, the great
+Presbyterian, and by Mr. Home a young clergyman, his friend.
+Lord Balmerino followed], alone, in a blue coat turned up with
+red, his rebellious regimentals, a flannel waistcoat, and his
+shroud beneath; their hearses following They were conducted to
+a house near the scaffold; the room forwards had benches for
+spectators; in the second Lord Kilmarnock was put, and in the
+third backwards Lord Balmerino; all three chambers hung with
+black.  Here they parted!  Balmerino embraced the other, and
+said, "My lord, I wish I could suffer for both!" he had scarce
+left him, before he desired again to see him, and then asked
+him, "My Lord Kilmarnock, do you know any thing of the
+resolution taken in our army, the day before the battle of
+Culloden, to put the English prisoners to death?" He replied,
+"My lord, I was not present; but since I came hither, I have
+had all the reason in the world to believe that there was such
+order taken; and I hear the Duke has the pocket-book with the
+order." Balmerino answered, "It was a lie raised to excuse
+their barbarity to us."-Take notice, that the Duke's charging
+this on Lord Kilmarnock (certainly on misinformation) decided
+this unhappy man's fate! The most now pretended is, that it
+would have come to Lord Kilmarnock's turn to have given the
+word for the slaughter, as lieutenant-general, with the patent
+for which he was immediately drawn into the rebellion, after
+having been staggered by his wife, her mother, his own
+poverty, and the defeat of Cope.  He remained an hour and a
+half in the house, and shed tears.  At last he came to the
+scaffold, certainly much terrified, but with a resolution that
+prevented his behaving in the least meanly or unlike a
+gentleman.(1278)  He took no notice of the crowd, only to
+desire that the baize might be lifted up from the rails, that
+the mob might see the spectacle.  He stood and prayed some
+time with Forster, who wept over him, exhorted and encouraged
+him.  He delivered a long speech to the Sheriff, and with a
+noble manliness stuck to the recantation he had made at his
+trial; declaring he wished that all who embarked in the same
+cause might meet the same fate.  he then took off his bag,
+coat and waistcoat with great composure, and after some
+trouble put on a napkin-cap, and then several times tried the
+block; the executioner, who was in white with a white apron,
+out of tenderness concealing the axe behind himself.  At last
+the Earl knelt down, with a visible unwillingness to depart,
+and after five minutes dropped his handkerchief, the signal,
+and his head was cut off at once, only hanging by a bit of
+skin, and was received in a scarlet cloth by four of the
+undertaker's men kneeling, who wrapped it up and put it into
+the coffin with the body; orders having been given not to
+expose the heads, as used to be the custom.
+
+The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with saw-dust, the
+block new-covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new axe
+brought.  Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a
+general.  As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the
+inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then
+surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even
+upon masts of ships in the river; and pulling out his
+spectacles, read a treasonable speech,(1279) which he
+delivered to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so
+sweet a Prince that flesh and blood could not resist following
+him; and lying down to try the block, he said, "If I had a
+thousand lives, I would lay them all down here in the same
+cause." he said, "if he had not taken the sacrament the day
+before, he would have knocked down Williamson, the lieutenant
+of the Tower, for his ill usage of him.  He took the axe and
+felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had given
+Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas.  Two clergymen,
+who attended him, coming up, he said, "No, gentlemen, I
+believe you have already done me all the service you can."
+Then he went to the corner of the scaffold, and called very
+loud for the warder, to give him his periwig, which he took
+off, and put on a nightcap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled
+off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told he was
+on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the
+sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal
+for battle.  He received three blows, but the first certainly
+took away all sensation.  He was not a quarter of an hour on
+the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one.  Balmerino
+certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but with the
+insensibility of one too.(1280)  As he walked from his prison
+to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with
+spectators, he cried out, "Look, look, how they are all piled
+up like rotten oranges!"
+
+My Lady Townshend, who fell in love -with Lord Kilmarnock at
+his trial, will go nowhere to dinner, for fear of meeting with
+a rebel- pie; she says, every body is so bloody-minded, that
+they eat rebels!  The Prince of Wales, whose intercession
+saved Lord Cromartie, says he did it in return for old Sir
+William Gordon, Lady Cromartie's father, coming down out of
+his deathbed to vote against my father in the Chippenham
+election.(1281)  If his Royal Highness had not countenanced
+inveteracy like that of Sir Gordon he would have no occasion
+to exert his gratitude now in favour of rebels.  His brother
+has plucked a very useful feather out of the cap of the
+ministry, by forbidding any application for posts in the army
+to be made to any body but himself: a resolution I dare say,
+he will keep as strictly and minutely as he does the
+discipline and dress of the army.  Adieu!
+
+P. S. I have just received yours of Aug. 9th.  You had not
+then heard of the second great battle of Placentia, which has
+already occasioned new instructions, or, in effect, a recall,
+being sent after Lord Sandwich.
+
+(1278) "When," says Sir Walter Scott, in Tales of a
+Grandfather, "he beheld the fatal scaffold, covered with black
+cloth; the executioner with his axe and his assistants; the
+saw-dust which was soon to be drenched with his blood; the
+coffin prepared to receive the limbs which were yet warm with
+life; above all, the immense display of human countenances
+which surrounded the scaffold like a sea, all eyes being bent
+on the sad object of the preparation, his natural feelings
+broke forth in a whisper to the friend on whose arm he leaned,
+'Home, this is terrible!' No sign of indecent timidity,
+however, affected his behaviour."-E.
+
+(1279) Ford, in his account, states that " so far was this
+speech from being filled with passionate invective, that it
+mentioned his Majesty as a Prince of the greatest magnanimity
+and mercy, at the same time that, through erroneous 'political
+principles, it denied him a right to the allegiance of his
+people."-E.
+
+(1280) He once more turned to his friends and took his last
+farewell, and looking on the crowd, said, 'Perhaps some may
+think my behaviour too bold; but remember, Sir,' said he to a
+gentleman who stood near him, 'that I now declare it is the
+effect of confidence in God, and a good conscience, and I
+should dissemble if I should show any signs of fear.'"
+Ford.-E.
+
+(1281) See ant`e, P. 215. (in Letter 51, which begins p. 212.)
+
+
+
+504 Letter 218
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Windsor, Sept. 15, 1746.
+
+You have sent me Marquis Rinuncini with as much secrecy as if
+you had sent me a present.  I was here; there came an
+exceedingly fair written and civil letter from you, dated last
+May: I comprehended by the formality of it, that it was
+written for the person who brought it, not for the person it
+was sent to.  I have been to town on purpose to wait on him,
+and though you know he was not of my set, yet being of
+Florence and recommended by you, and recollecting how you used
+to cuddle over a bit of politics with the old Marquis,(1282) I
+set myself to be wondrous civil to Marquis Polco; pray, faites
+valoir ma politesse!(1283)  You have no occasion to let people
+know exactly the situation of my villa; but talk of my
+standing in campagnaz and coming directly in sedia di posta,
+to far mio dovere al Signor Marchesino.  I stayed literally an
+entire week with him, carried him to see palaces and Richmond
+gardens and park, and Chenevix's shop, and talked a great deal
+to him alle conversationi.  It is a wretched time for him;
+there is not a soul in town; no plays; and Ranelagh shut up.
+You may say I should have stayed longer with him.  but I was
+obliged to return for fear of losing my vintage.  I shall be
+in London again in a fortnight, and then I shall do more mille
+gentilezzes.  Seriously, I was glad to see him-after I had got
+over being sorry to see him, (for with all the goodness of
+one's Soquckin soqubut, as the Japanese call the heart, YOU
+must own it is a little troublesome to be showing the tombs,)
+I asked him a thousand questions, rubbed up my old tarnished
+Italian, and inquired about fifty people that I had entirely
+forgot till his arrival.  He told me some passages, that I
+don't forgive you for not mentioning; your Cicisbeatura, Sir,
+with the Antinora;(1284) and Manelli's(1285) marriage and
+jealousy: who consoles my illustrious mistress?(1286)
+Rinuncini has announced the future arrival of the Abbate
+Niccolini, the elder Pandolfini, and the younger Panciatici;
+these two last, you know, were friends of mine; I shall be
+extremely glad to see them.
+
+Your two last were of Aug. 23d and 30th.  In the latter you
+talk of the execution of the rebel lords, but don't tell me
+whether you received my long history of their trials.  Your
+Florentines guessed very rightly about my Lady O."s reasons
+for not returning amongst you: she has picked up a Mr.
+Shirley,(1287) no great genius--but with all her affectation
+of parts, you know she never was delicate about the capacity
+of her lovers.  this swain has so little pretensions to any
+kind of genius, that two years ago being to act in the Duke of
+Bedford's company,(1288) he kept back the play three weeks,
+because he could not get his part by heart, though it
+consisted but of seventeen lines and a half.  With him she has
+retired to a villa near Newpark, and lets her house in town.
+
+Your last letter only mentions the progress of the King of
+Sardinia towards Genoa; but there is an account actually
+arrived of his being master of it.  It is very big new-,, and
+I hope will make us look a little haughty again: we are giving
+ourselves airs, and sending a secret expedition against
+France: we don't indeed own that it is in favour of the
+Chevalier William Courtenay,(1289) who, you know, claims the
+crown of France, and whom King William threatened them to
+proclaim, when they proclaimed the Pretender; but I believe
+the Protestant Highlanders in the south of France are ready to
+join him the moment he lands.  There is one Sir Watkin
+Williams, a great Baron in languedoc, and a Sir John Cotton, a
+Marquis of Dauphin`e,(1290) who have engaged to raise a great
+number of men, on the first debarkation that we make.
+
+I think it begins to be believed that the Pretender's son is
+got to France - pray, if he passes through Florence, make it
+as agreeable to him as you can, ,ind introduce him to all my
+acquaintance.  I don't indeed know him myself, but he is a
+particular friend of my cousin, Sir John Philipps,(1291) and
+of my sister-in-law Lady O., who will both take it extremely
+kindly--besides, do for your own sake you may make your peace
+with her this way; and if ever Lord Bath comes into power, she
+will secure your remaining at florence.  Adieu!
+
+(1282) Marquis Rinuncini, the elder, had been envoy in
+England, and prime minister to John Gaston, the last Great
+duke.
+
+(1283) Grey, in a letter to Wharton of the 11th, says, "Mr.
+Walpole has taken a house in Windsor, and I see him usually
+once a week.  He is at present gone to town, to perform the
+disagreeable task of presenting and introducing about a young
+Florentine, the Marquis Rinuncini, who comes recommended to
+him." Works, vol. iii. @. 9.-E.
+
+(1284) Sister of Madame Grifoni.
+
+(1285) Signor Ottavio Manelli had been cicisbeo of Madame
+Grifoni.
+
+(1286) Madame Grifoni.
+
+(1287) Sewallis Shirley, uncle of Earl Ferrers.  (He married
+Lady Orford, after her first husband's death.-D)
+
+(1288) The Duke of Bedford and his friends acted several plays
+at Woburn.
+
+(1289) Sir William Courtenay, said to be the right heir of
+Louis le Gros.  There is a notion that at the coronation of a
+new King of France, the Courtenays assert their pretensions,
+and that the King of France says to them, "Apres Nous, Vous."
+[See Gibbon's beautiful account of this family, in a
+digression to his History of the Decline and Fall, Vol. xi.]
+
+(1290) Two Jacobite Knights of Wales and Cambridgeshire.
+
+(1291) Sir J. Philipps, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire; a
+noted Jacobite.  He was first cousin of Catherine Shorter,
+first wife of Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+
+
+506 Letter 219
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Windsor, Oct. 2,1746.
+
+By your own loss YOU may measure My joy at the receipt of the
+dear Chutes.(1292) I strolled to town one day last week, and
+there I found them!  Poor creatures! there they were!
+wondering at every thing they saw, but with the difference
+from Englishmen that go abroad, O keeping their amazement to
+themselves.  They will tell you of wild dukes in the
+playhouse, of streets dirtier than forests, and of women more
+uncouth than the streets.  I found them extremely surprised at
+not finding any ready-furnished palace built round two courts.
+I do all I can to reconcile their country to them; though
+seriously they have no affectation, and have nothing
+particular in them, but that they have nothing particular: a
+fault, of which the climate and their neighbours will soon
+correct.  You may imagine how we have talked you over, and how
+I have inquired after the state of your Wetbrownpaperhood.
+Mr. Chute adores you: do you know, that as well as I love you,
+I never found all those charms in you that he does! I own this
+to you out of pure honesty, that you may love him as much as
+he deserves.  I don't know how he will succeed here, but to me
+he has more wit than any body I know: he is altered, and I
+think, broken: Whitehed is grown leaner considerably, and is a
+very pretty gentleman.(1293)  He did not reply to me as the
+Turcotti(1294) did bonnement to you when you told her she was
+a little thinner: do you remember how she puffed and chuckled,
+and said, "And indeed I think you are too."  Mr. Whitehed was
+not so sensible of the blessing of decrease, as to conclude
+that it would be acceptable news even to shadows: he thinks me
+plumped out.  I would fain have enticed them down hither, and
+promised we would live just as if we were at the King's Arms
+in via di Santo Spirito:(1295) but they were obliged to go
+chez eux, not pour se d`ecrasser, but pour se crasser.  I
+shall introduce them a tutte le mie conoscenze, and shall try
+to make questo paese as agreeable to them as possible; except
+in one point, for I have sworn never to tell Mr. Chute a word
+of news, for then he will be writing it to you, and I shall
+have nothing to say.  This is a lucky resolution for you, my
+dear child, for between two friends one generally hears
+nothing; the one concludes that the other has told all.
+
+I have had two or three letters from you since I wrote.  The
+young Pretender is generally believed to have got off the 18th
+of last month: if he were not, with the zeal of the Chutes, I
+believe they would be impatient to send a limb to Cardinal
+Acquaviva and Monsignor Piccolomini.  I quite gain a winter
+with them, having had no expectation of them till spring'.
+Adieu!
+
+(1292) John Chute and Francis Whitehed had been several years
+in Italy, chiefly at Florence.
+
+(1293) Gray, in a letter to Mr. Chute, written at this time,
+thus describes Mr. Whithead:
+
+"He is a fine young personage in a coat all over spangles,
+just come over from the tour in Europe to take possession and
+be married.  I desire my hearty congratulations to him, and
+say I wish him more spangles, and more estates, and more
+wives." Works, vol. iii. p. 20.-E.
+
+(1294) A fine singer.
+
+(1295) Mr. Mann hired a large palace of the Manetti family at
+Florence in via di Santo Spirito: foreign ministers in Italy
+affix large shields with the arms of their sovereign over
+their door.
+
+
+
+507 Letter 220
+To the Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Windsor still, Oct. 3, 1746.
+
+My dear Harry,
+You ask me if I have really grown a philosopher.  Really I
+believe not: for I shall refer you to my practice rather than
+to my doctrine, and have really acquired what they only
+pretended to seek, content.  So far, indeed I was a
+philosopher even when I lived in town, for then I was content
+too; and all the difference I can conceive between those two
+opposite doctors was, that Aristippus loved London, and
+Diogenes Windsor; and if your master the Duke, whom I
+sincerely prefer to Alexander, and who certainly can intercept
+more sunshine, would but stand out of my way, which he is
+extremely in, while he lives in the park here,(1296) I should
+love my little tub of forty pounds a-year, more than my palace
+dans la rue des ministers, with all my pictures and bronzes,
+which you ridiculously imagine I have encumbered myself with
+in my solitude.  Solitude it is, as to the tub itself, for no
+soul lives in it with me; though I could easily give you room
+at the butt end of it, and with -vast pleasure; but George
+Montagu, who perhaps is a philosopher too, though I am sure
+not of Pythagoras's silent sect, lives but two barrels off;
+and Asheton, a Christian philosopher of our acquaintance,
+lives -,it the foot of that hill which you mention with a
+melancholy satisfaction that always attends the reflection. A-
+propos, here is an Ode on the very subject, which I desire you
+will please to like excessively:(1297)
+****************
+
+ You will immediately conclude, out of good breeding, that it
+is mine, and that it is charming.  I shall be much obliged to
+you for the first thought, but desire you will retain only the
+second; for it is Mr. Gray's, and not your humble servant's.
+
+(1296) " The Duke of Cumberland is here at his lodge with
+three women, and three aide-de-camps; and the country swarms
+with people.  He goes to races and they make a ring about him
+as at a bear-baiting." Gray to Wharton, Sept. 11. Works, vol.
+iii. p. 10.-E.
+
+(1297) Here follows, in the original Mr. Gray's Ode on a,
+distant prospect of Eton College.  [This, which was the first
+English production of Gray which appeared in print, was
+published by Dodsley in the following year.  Dr. Warton says,
+that " little notice was taken of it, on its first
+publication."-E.
+
+
+
+
+508 Letter 221
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 14, 1746.
+
+You will have been alarmed with the news of another
+battle(1298)  lost in Flanders, where we have no Kings of
+Sardinia.  We make light of it; do not allow it to be a
+battle, but call it "the action near Liege." then, we have
+whittled down our loss extremely, and will not allow a man
+more than three hundred and fifty English slain out of the
+four thousand.  The whole of' it, as It appears to me, is,
+that we gave up eight battalions to avoid fighting; as at
+Newmarket people pay their forfeit when they foresee they
+should lose the race; though, if the whole army had fought,
+and we had lost the day, one might have hoped to have come off
+for eight battalions.  Then they tell you that the French had
+four-and-twenty-pounders, and that they must beat us by the
+superiority of their cannon; so that to me it is grown a
+paradox, to war with a nation who have a mathematical
+certainty of beating you; or else it is a still stranger
+paradox, why you cannot have as large cannon as the French.
+This loss was balanced by a pompous account of the triumphs of
+our invasion of Bretagne; which, in plain terms, I think, is
+reduced to burning two or three villages and reimbarking: at
+least, two or three of the transports are returned with this
+history, and know not what is become of Lestock and the rest
+of the invasion.  The young Pretender is landed in France,
+with thirty Scotch, but in such a wretched condition that his
+Highland Highness had no breeches.(1299)
+
+I have received yours of the 27th of last month, with the
+capitulation of Genoa, and the kind conduct of the Austrians
+to us their allies, so extremely like their behaviour whenever
+they are fortunate. Pray, by the way, has there been any talk
+of my cousin,(1300) the Commodore, in letting slip some
+Spanish ships'!-don't mention it as from me, but there are
+whispers of court-martial on him.  They are all the fashion
+now; if you miss a post to me, I will have you tried by a
+court-martial.  Cope is come off most gloriously, his courage
+ascertained, and even his conduct, which every body had given
+up, justified.  Folkes and Lascelles, two of his generals, are
+come off too; but not so happily in the opinion of the world.
+Oglethorpe's sentence is not yet public, but it is believed
+not to be favourable.  He was always a bully, and is now tried
+for cowardice.  Some little dash of the same sort is likely to
+mingle withe the judgment on il furibondo Matthews; though his
+party rises again a little, and Lestock's acquittal begins to
+pass for a party affair.  In short, we are a wretched people,
+and have seen our best days.
+
+I must have lost a letter, if you really told me of the sale
+of the Duke of Modena's pictures,(1301) as you think you did;
+for when Mr. Chute told it me, it struck me as quite new.
+They are out of town, good souls; and I shall not see them
+this fortnight; for I am here only for two or three days, to
+inquire after the battle, in which not one of my friends were.
+Adieu!
+
+(1298) The battle of Rocoux; lost by the allies on the 11th of
+October.-E.
+
+(1299) About the 18th of September, Prince Charles received
+intelligence that two French frigates had arrived at
+Lochnannagh, to carry him and other fugitives of his party to
+France: accordingly, after numerous wanderings in various
+disguises he embarked, on the 20th of September, attended by
+Lochiel, Colonel Roy Stuart, and about a hundred others of the
+relics of his party; and safely landed at the little port of
+Roscoff, near
+ Morlaix, in Brittany, on the 29th.  " During these
+wanderings," says Sir Walter Scott, in Tales of a Grandfather,
+"the secret of the Adventurer's concealment was intrusted to
+hundreds, of every sex, age, and condition; but no individual
+was found, in a high or low situation, or robbers even , who
+procured their food at the risk of their lives, who thought
+for an instant of obtaining opulence at the expense of
+treachery to the proscribed and miserable fugitive.  Such
+disinterested conduct will reflect honour on the Highlands of
+Scotland while their mountains shall continue to exist." Prose
+Works, vol. xxvi. p. 374.-E.
+
+(1300) George Townshend, eldest son of Charles, Lord Viscount
+Townshend, by Dorothy, his second wife, sister of Sir Robert
+Walpole. (He was subsequently tried by a court-martial for his
+conduct upon this occasion, and honourably acquitted.-D.)
+
+(1301) To the King of Poland.
+
+
+
+
+509 Letter 222
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Windsor, Oct. 24, 1746.
+
+Well, Harry, Scotland is the last place on earth I should have
+thought of for turning any body poet: but I begin to forgive
+it half its treasons in favour of your verses, for I suppose
+you don't think I am the dupe of the highland story that you
+tell me: the only use I shall make of it is to commend the
+lines to you, as if they really were a Scotchman's.  There is
+a melancholy harmony in them that is charming, and a delicacy
+in the thoughts that no Scotchman is capable of, though a
+Scotchwoman(1302 might inspire it.  I beg, both for Cynthia's
+sake and my own, that you would continue your De Tristibus
+till I have an opportunity of seeing your muse, and she of
+rewarding her: Reprens ta musette, berger amoureux!  If
+Cynthia has ever travelled ten miles in fairy-land, she must
+be wondrous content with the person and qualifications of her
+knight, who in future story will be read of thus: Elmedorus
+was tall and perfectly well made, his face oval, and features
+regularly handsome, but not effeminate; his complexion
+sentimentally brown, with not much colour; his teeth fine, and
+forehead agreeably low, round which his black hair curled
+naturally and beautifully.  His eyes were black too, but had
+nothing of fierce or insolent; on the contrary, a certain
+melancholy swimmingness, that described hopeless love rather
+than a natural amorous languish.  His exploits in war, where
+he always fought by the side of the renowned Paladine William
+of England, have endeared his memory to all admirers of true
+chivalry, as the mournful elegies which he poured out among
+the desert rocks of Caledonia,(1303) in honour of the peerless
+lady and his
+heart's idol, the incomparable Cynthia, will for ever preserve
+his name in the flowery annals of poesy.
+
+What a pity it is I was not born in the golden age of Louis
+the Fourteenth, when it was not only the fashion to write
+folios, but to read them too! or rather , it is a pity the
+same fashion don't subsist NOW, when one need not be at the
+trouble of invention, nor of turning the whole Roman history
+into romance for want of proper heroes.  Your campaign in
+Scotland, rolled out and well be-epitheted, would make a
+pompous work, and make one's fortune; at sixpence a number,
+one should have all the damsels within the liberties for
+subscribers: whereas now, if one has a mind to be read, one
+must write metaphysical poems in blank verse, which, though I
+own to be still easier, have not half the imagination of
+romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity.  Only
+think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded
+"Cleopatra and Pharamond," and approve "The Pleasures of the
+Imagination," "The Art of Preserving Health," and "Leonidas!"
+I beg the age's pardon: it has done approving these poems, and
+has forgot them.
+
+Adieu! dear Harry.  Thank you seriously for the poem.  I am
+going to town for the birthday, and shall return hither till
+the Parliament meets; I suppose there is no doubt of our
+meeting then.  Yours ever.
+
+P.S. Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with
+Drummond's history of the five King Jameses, pray look it
+over.(1304)  I have read it, and like it much.  It is wrote in
+imitation of Livy; the style is masculine, and the whole very
+sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes of one reign to the
+then king's loving architecture and
+
+"In trim gardens taking pleasure."
+
+(1302) Caroline Campbell, Countess of Ailesbury.-E.
+
+(1303) Mr. Conway was now in Scotland.
+
+(1304) Drummond of Hawthorne's History of Scotland, from 1423
+to 1542, did not appear until after his death.  This work, in
+which the doctrine of unlimited authority and passive
+obedience is advocated to an extravagant extent, is generally
+considered to have added little to his reputation.  He died in
+December 1649, in his sixty-fourth year.
+Ben Jonson is said to have so much admired the genius of this
+"Scotian Petrarch," as to travel on foot to Scotland, out of
+love and respect for him.-E.
+
+
+
+510 Letter 523
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 3, 1746.
+
+Dear George,
+Do not imagine I have already broken through all my wholesome
+resolutions and country schemes, and that I am given up body
+and soul to London for the winter.  I shall be with you by the
+end of the week; but just now I am under the maiden
+palpitation of an author.  My epilogue will, I believe, be
+spoken to-morrow night;(1305) and I flatter myself I shall
+have no faults to answer for but what are in it, for I have
+kept secret whose it is.  It is now gone to be licensed; but
+as the Lord Chamberlain is mentioned,(1306)' though rather to
+his honour, it is possible it may be refused.
+
+Don't expect news, for I know no more than a newspaper.
+Asheton would have written it if there were any thing to tell
+you.  Is it news that my Lord Rochford is an oaf? He has got a
+set of plate buttons for the birthday clothes, with the Duke's
+head in every one.  Sure my good lady carries her art too far
+to make him so great a dupe. How do all the comets?  Has Miss
+Harriet found out any more ways at solitaire? Has Cloe left
+off evening prayer on account of the damp evenings?  How is
+Miss Rice's cold and coachman?  Is Miss Granville better? Has
+Mrs. Masham made a brave hand of this bad season, and lived
+upon carcases like any vampire? Adieu!  I am just going to see
+Mrs. Muscovy,(1307) and will be sure not to laugh if my old
+lady should talk of Mr. Draper's white skin, and tickle his
+bosom like Queen Bess.
+
+(1305) Rowe's tragedy of Tamerlane was written in compliment
+to William the Third, whose character the author intended to
+display under that of Tamerlane, as he meant to be understood
+to draw that of Louis the Fourteenth in Bajazet.  Tamerlane
+was always acted on the 4th and 5th of November, the
+anniversaries of King William's birth and landing; and this
+year Mr. Walpole had written an epilogue for it, on the
+suppression of the rebellion.-E.
+
+(1306) The Duke of Grafton.
+
+(1307) Mrs. Boscawen, wife of the Hon. George Boscawen, fifth
+son of Viscount Falmouth.-E.
+
+
+
+511 Letter 224
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 4, 1746.
+
+Mr. Chute and I a,,reed not to tell you of any new changes
+till we could tell you more of them, that you might not be
+"put into a taking," as you was last winter with the
+revolution of three days; but I think the present has ended
+with a single fit.  Lord Harrington,(1308) quite on a sudden,
+resigned the seals; it is said, on some treatment not over-
+gracious; but he is no such novice to be shocked with that,
+though I believe it has been rough ever since his resigning
+last year, which he did more boisterously than he is
+accustomed to behave to Majesty.  Others talk of some quarrel
+with his brother secretary, who, in complaisance, is all for
+drums and trumpets.  Lord Chesterfield was immediately named
+his successor; but the Duke of Newcastle has taken the
+northern provinces, as of more business, and consequently
+better suited to his experience and abilities!  I flatter
+myself that this can no way affect you.  Ireland is to be
+offered to Lord Harrington, or the Presidentship; and the Duke
+of Dorset, now President, is to have the other's refusal.  The
+King has endured a great deal with your old complaint; and I
+felt for him, recollecting all you underwent.
+
+You will have seen in the papers all the histories of our
+glorious expeditions(1309) and invasions of France, which have
+put Cressy and Agincourt out of all countenance.  On the first
+view, indeed, one should think that our fleet had been to
+victual; for our chief prizes were cows and geese and turkeys.
+But I rather think that the whole was fitted out by the Royal
+Society, for they came back quite satisfied with having
+discovered a fine bay! Would one believe, that in the year of
+our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-six, we should
+boast of discovering something on the coast of France, as if
+we had found out the Northeast passage, or penetrated into
+some remote part of America? The Guards are come back too, who
+never went: in one Single day they received four several
+different orders!
+
+Matthews is broke at last.  Nobody disputes the justice of the
+sentence; but the legality of it is not quite so
+authenticated.  Besides some great errors in the forms,
+whenever the Admiralty perceived any of the court-martial
+inclined to favour him, they were constantly changed.  Then,
+the expense has been enormous; two hundred thousand pounds!
+chiefly by employing young captains, instead of old half-pay
+officers; and by these means, double commissions.  Then there
+has been a great fracas between the court-martial and
+Willes.(1310)  He, as Chief Justice, sent a summons in the
+ordinary form of law, to Mayerne, to appear as an evidence in
+a trial where a captain had prosecuted Sir Chaloner Ogle for
+horrid tyranny: the ingenious court-martial sat down and drew
+up articles of impeachment, like any House of Commons, against
+the Chief Justice for stopping their proceedings! and the
+Admiralty, still more ingenious, had a mind to complain of him
+to the house! He was charmed to catch them at such
+absurdities--but I believe at last it is all compromised.
+
+I have not heard from you for some time, but I don't pretend
+to complain: you have real occupation; my idleness is for its
+own sake.  The Abb`e Niccolini and Pandolfini are arrived; but
+I have not yet seen them.  Rinuncini cannot bear England--and
+if the Chutes speak their mind, I believe they are not
+captivated yet with any thing they have found: I am more and
+more with them: Mr. Whithed is infinitely improved: and Mr.
+Chute has absolutely more Wit, knowledge, and good-nature,
+than, to their great surprise, ever met together in one
+man.(1311) he has a bigotry to you, that even astonishes me,
+who used to think that I was pretty well in for loving you;
+but he is very often ready to quarrel with me for not thinking
+you all pure gold.  Adieu!
+
+(1308) William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, secretary of
+state.
+
+(1309) The expedition to Quiberon; the troops under General
+St. Clair, the fleet under Admiral Lestock.  The object was to
+surprise Port l'Orient, and destroy the stores and ships of
+the French East India Company, but the result attained was
+only the plunder and burning of a few helpless villages.  The
+fleet and troops returned, however, with little loss.  "The
+truth is," says Tindal, "Lestock was too old and infirm for
+enterprise, and, as is alleged, was under the shameful
+direction of a woman he carried along with him; and neither
+the soldiers nor the sailors seem to have been under any kind
+of discipline."-E.
+
+(1310) John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common
+Pleas(1311) Grey, in a letter to Mr. Chute of the 12th of
+October says, "Mr.  Walpole is full, I assure you, of your
+panegyric.  Never any man had half so much wit as Mr. Chute,
+(which is saying every thing with him, you know,) and Mr.
+Whitehead is the finest young man that was ever imported."
+Works, vol. iii. p. 22.-E.
+
+
+
+513 Letter 225
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Windsor, Nov. 12, 1746.
+
+Here I AM come hither, per saldare; but though the country is
+excellently convenient, from the idleness of it, for beginning
+a letter, yet it is not at all commode for finishing one: the
+same ingredients that fill a basket by the carrier, will not
+fill half a sheet of paper; I could send you a cheese, or a
+hare; but I have not a morsel of news.  Mr. Chute threatened
+me to tell you the distress I was in last week, when I starved
+Niccolini and Pandolfini on a fast-day, when I had thought to
+banquet them sumptuously.  I had luckily given a guinea for
+two pine-apples, which I knew they had never seen in Italy,
+and upon which they revenged themselves for all the meat that
+they dared not touch.  Rinuncini could not come.  How you
+mistook me, my dear' child! I meant simply that you had not
+mentioned his coming; very far from reproving you for giving
+him a letter.  Don't I give letters for you every day to cubs,
+ten times cubber than Rinuncini! and don't you treat them as
+though all their names were Walpole? If you was to send me all
+the uncouth productions of Italy, do you think any of them
+would be so brutal as Sir William Maynard?  I am exactly like
+you; I have no greater pleasure than to make them value your
+recommendation, by showing how much I value it.  Besides, I
+love the Florentines for their own sakes and to indemnify
+them, poor creatures! a little for the Richcourts, the
+Lorraines, and the Austrians.  I have received per mezzo di
+Pucci,(1312) a letter from Marquis Riccardi, with orders to
+consign to the bearer all his treasure in my hands, which I
+shall do immediately with great satisfaction.  There are four
+rings that I should be glad he would sell me; but they are
+such trifles, and he will set such a value on them the moment
+he knows I like them, that it is scarce worth while to make
+the proposal, because I would give but a little for them.
+However, you may hint what plague I have had with his roba,
+and that it will be a gentillezza to sell me these four dabs.
+One is a man's head, small, on cornelian, and intaglio; a fly,
+ditto; an Isis, cameo; and an inscription in Christian Latin:
+the last is literally not worth two sequins.
+
+As to Mr. Townshend, I now know all 'the particulars, and that
+Lord SandWich(1313) was at the bottom of it.  What an
+excellent heart his lordship will have by the time he is
+threescore, if he sets out thus!  The persecution(1314) is on
+account of the poor boy's relation to my father; of whom the
+world may judge pretty clearly already, from the abilities and
+disinterestedness of such of his enemies as have succeeded;
+and from their virtue in taking any opportunity to persecute
+any Of his relations; in which even the public interest of
+their country can weigh nothing, when clashing with their
+malice.  The King of Sar dinia has written the strongest
+letter imaginable to complain of the grievous prejudice the
+Admiralty has don@his affairs by this step.
+
+Don't scold me for not sending you those Lines to
+Eckardt:(1315) I never wrote any thing that I esteemcd less,
+or that was seen so incorrect ; nor can I at all account for
+their having been so much liked,
+ especially as the thoughts were so old and so common.  I was
+hurt at their getting into print.  I enclose you an
+epilogue(1316) that I hae vwritten since, merely for a
+specimen of something more correct.  You know, or have known,
+that Tamerlane is always acted on King William's birthday,
+with an occasional prologue ; this was the epilogue to it, and
+succeeded to flatter me.  Adieu!
+
+(1312) Minister from the Great Duke.
+
+(1313) John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the
+Admiralty.
+
+1314) See letter 221 of the 14th October.
+
+((1315) The Beauties, an Epistle to Eckardt, the painter;
+reprinted in Dodsley's Miscellanieg in Walpole's Works, vol.
+i. p. 19.]
+
+(1316) On the suppression of the rebellion. [See Works, vol.
+i. p. 25.]
+
+
+
+514 Letter 226
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 5, 1746.
+
+We are in such a newsless situation, that I have been some
+time without writing to you; but I now answer one I received
+from you yesterday.  You will excuse me, if I am not quite so
+transported as Mr. Chute is, at the extremity of
+Aquaviva.(1317)  I can't afford to hate people so much at such
+a distance: my aversions find employment within their own
+atmosphere.
+
+Rinuncini returns to you this week, not at all contented with
+England: Niccolini is extremely, and turns his little talent
+to great account; there is nobody of his own standard but
+thinks him a great genius.  The Chutes and I deal extremely
+together; but they abuse me, and tell me I am grown so
+English! lack-a-day! so I am; as folks that have been in the
+Inquisition, and did not choose to broil, come out excellent
+Catholics.
+
+I have been unfortunate in my own family; my nephew, Captain
+Cholmondeley,(1318) has married a player's sister; and I fear
+Lord Malpas(1319) is on the brink of matrimony with another
+girl of no fortune.  Here is a ruined family! their father
+totally undone, and all be has seized for debt!
+
+The Duke is gone to Holland to settle the operations of the
+campaign, but returns before the opening of it.  A great
+reformation has been made this week in the army; the horse are
+broke, and to be turned into dragoons, by which sixty thousand
+pounds a-year will be  saved.  Whatever we do in Flanders, I
+think you need not fear any commotions here, where Jacobitism
+seems to have gasped its last.  Mr. Radcliffe, the last
+Derwentwater's brother, is actually named to the gallows for
+Monday; but the imprudence of Lord Morton,(1320) who has drawn
+himself into the Bastile, makes it doubtful whether the
+execution will be so quick.  The famous orator Henley is taken
+up for treasonable flippancies.(1321)
+
+You know Lord Sandwich is minister at the Hague.  Sir Charles
+Williams, who has resigned the paymastership of the marines,
+is talked of for going to Berlin, but it is not yet done.  The
+Parliament has been most serene, but there is a storm in the
+air: the Prince waits for an opportunity of erecting his
+standard, and a disputed election between him and the
+Grenvilles is likely very soon to furnish the occasion.  We
+are to have another contest about Lord Bath's borough,(1322)
+which Mr. Chute's brother formerly lost, and which his
+colleague, Lu@e Robinson, has carried by a majority of three,
+though his competitor is returned.  Lord Bath wrote to a man
+for a list of all that would be against him: the man placed
+his own and his brother's names at the head of the list.
+
+We have operas, but no company at them; the Prince and Lord
+Middlesex Impresarii.  Plays only are in fashion: at one house
+the best company that perhaps ever were together, quin,
+Garrick, Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Cibber: at the other, Barry,
+a favourite young actor, and the Violette, whose dancing our
+friends don't like; I scold them, but all the answer is,
+"Lord! you are so English!" If I do clap sometimes when they
+don't, I can fairly say with Oedipus,
+
+"My hands are guilty, but my heart is free."
+'
+
+Adieu!
+
+(1317) Cardinal Acquaviva, Protector of Spain, and a great
+promoter of the interests of the Pretender
+
+(1318) Robert, second son of George, Earl of Cholmondeley,
+married Mary, sister of Mrs. Margaret Woffington, the actress.
+He afterwards quitted the army and took orders.  [Besides two
+church livings, he enjoyed the office of auditor of the King's
+revenues in America.  He died in 1804.]
+
+(1319) George, eldest son of Lord Cholmondeley, married, in
+January 1747, Miss Edwards.  (She was the, daughter and
+heiress of Sir Francis Edwards, Bart. of Grete, in
+Shropshire.-D.)
+
+(1320) James Douglas, ninth Earl of Morton.-D.
+
+(1321) He was, a few days after, admitted to bail.-E.
+
+(1322) Heydon.
+
+
+
+515 Letter 227
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Christmas-day, 1746.
+
+We are in great expectation of farther news from Genoa, which
+the last accounts left in the greatest confusion, and I think
+in the hands of the Genoese;,(1323) a circumstance that may
+chance to unravel all the fine schemes in Provence! Marshal
+Bathiani, at the Hague, treated this revolt as a trifle; but
+all the letters by last post make it a reconquest.  The Dutch
+do all the Duke asks: we talk of an army of 140,000 men in
+Flanders next campaign.  I don't know how the Prince of Orange
+relishes his brother-in-law's dignities and success.
+
+Old Lovat has been brought to the bar of the House of Lords:
+he is far from having those abilities for which he has been so
+cried up.  He saw Mr. Pelham at a distance and called to him,
+and asked him if it were worth while to make all this fuss to
+take off a gray head fourscore years old?  In his defence he
+complained of his estate being seized and kept from him.  Lord
+Granville took up this complaint very strongly, and insisted
+on having it inquired into.  Lord Bath went farther, and, as
+some people think, intended the Duke; but I believe he only
+aimed at the Duke of Newcastle, who was so alarmed with this
+motion, that he kept the House above a quarter of an hour in
+suspense, till he could send for Stone,(1324) and consult what
+he should do.  They made a rule to order the old creature the
+profits of his estate till his conviction.  He is to put in
+his answer the 13th of January.
+
+Lord Lincoln is cofferer at last, in the room of Waller,(1325)
+who is dismissed.  Sir Charles Williams has kissed hands, and
+sets out for Dresden in a month: he has hopes of Turin, but I
+think Villettes is firm.  Don't mention this.
+
+Did I ever talk to you of a Mr. Davis, a Norfolk gentleman,
+who has taken to painting? He has copied the Dominichin, the
+third picture he ever copied in his life: how well, you may
+judge; for Mr. Chute, who, I believe you think, understands
+pictures if any body does, happened to come in, just as Mr.
+Davis brought his copy hither.  "Here," said I, "Mr. Chute,
+here is your Dominichin come to town to be copied." He
+literally did not know it; which made me very happy for Mr.
+Davis, who has given me this charming picture.  Do but figure
+to yourself a man of fifty years old, who was scarce ever out
+of the county of Norfolk, but when his hounds led him; who
+never saw a tolerable picture till those at Houghton four
+years ago who plays and composes as well as he paints, and who
+has no more of the Norfolk dialect than a Florentine!  He is
+the most decent, sensible man you ever saw.
+
+Rinuncini is gone: Niccolini sups continually with the Prince
+of Wales, and learns the Constitution!  Pandolfini is put
+to-bed, like children, to be out of the way.  Adieu!
+
+
+P. S. My Lady O. who has entirely settled her affairs with my
+brother, talks of going abroad again, not being able to live
+here on fifteen hundred pounds a-year--many an old 'lady, and
+uglier too, lives very comfortably upon less.  After I had
+writ this, your brother brought me another letter with a
+confirmation of all we had heard about Genoa.  You may be easy
+about the change of provinces,(1326) which has not been made
+as was designed.  Echo Mons`u Chute
+
+>From Mr. Chute.
+
+Mr. Walpole gives me a side, and I catch hold of it to tell
+you that I parted this minute with your charming brother, who
+has been in the council with me about your grand affair:(1327)
+it is determined now to be presented to the King by way of
+memorial; and to-morrow we meet again to draw it up: Mr. Stone
+has graciously signified that this is a very proper
+opportunity - one should think he must know.
+
+Oh! I must tell you: I was here last night, and saw my Lord
+Walpole,(1328) for the first time, but such a youth! I declare
+to you, I was quite astonished at his sense and cleverness; it
+is impossible to describe it; it was just what would have made
+you as happy to observe as it did me: he is not yet seventeen,
+and is to continue a year longer at Eton, upon his own desire.
+Alas! how few have I seen of my countrymen half so formed even
+at their return from their travels! I hope you will have him
+at Florence One day or other; he will pay you amply for the
+Pigwiggins, and------
+
+Mr. Walpole is quite right in all he tells you of the miracle
+worked by St. Davis, which certainly merits the credit of
+deceiving far better judges of painting than I; who am no
+judge of any thing but you, whom I pretend to understand
+better than any body living and am, therefore, my dear sir,
+etc. etc. etc.  J. C.
+
+(1323) This circumstance is thus alluded to in a letter of Sir
+Horace Mann's, dated Dec. 20th, 1746.  "The affairs of Genoa
+are in such a horrid situation, that one is frightened out of
+one's senses.  The accounts of them are so confused, that one
+does not know what to make of them; but it is certain that the
+mob is quite master of the town and of every thing in it.
+They have sacked several houses, particularly that of the
+Doge, and five or six others, belonging to those who were the
+principal authors of the alliance which the Republic made with
+France and Spain."-D.
+
+(1324) Andrew Stone, secretary to the Duke of Newcastle, and
+afterwards sub-governor to George, Prince of Wales.
+
+(1325) Edmund Waller, of Beaconsfield.
+
+(1326) Meaning a change in the secretaries of state.  There
+were at this time two, one of whom was called the Secretary of
+State for the Northern Province, and the other the Secretary
+of State for the Southern Province.-D.
+
+(1327) Of Mr. Mann's arrears.
+
+(1328) George, only son of Robert, second Earl of Orford, whom
+he succeeded in the title.
+
+
+
+517 Letter 228
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 1747.
+
+The Prince has formally declared a new Opposition which is
+never to subside till he is King (s'entendent that he does not
+carry his point sooner.) He began it pretty handsomely the
+other day with 143 to 184, which has frightened the ministry
+like a bomb.  This new party wants nothing but heads; though
+not having any, to be sure the struggle is the fairer.  Lord
+Baltimore(1329) takes the lead; he is the best and honestest
+man in the world, with a good deal of jumbled knowledge; but
+not capable of conducting a party. However, the next day, the
+Prince, to reward him, and to punish Lord Archibald Himllton,
+who voted with the ministry, told Lord Baltimore that he would
+not give him the trouble of waiting any more as Lord of the
+Bedchamber.  but would make him Cofferer.  Lord B. thanked
+him, but desired that it might not be done in a way
+disagreeable to Lord Archibald, who was then Cofferer. The
+Prince sent for Lord Archibald, and told him he would either
+make him Comptroller, or give him a pension of twelve hundred
+pounds a-year; the latter of' which the old soul accepted, and
+went away content; but returned in an hour with a letter from
+his wife,(1330) to say, that as his Royal Highness was angry
+with her husband, it was not proper for either of them to take
+their pensions.  It is excellent! When she was dismissed
+herself, she accepted the twelve hundred pounds, and now will
+not let her husband, though he had accepted.  It must mortify
+the Prince wondrously to have four-and-twenty hundred pounds
+a-year thrown back into an exchequer that never yet
+overflowed!
+
+I am a little piqued at Marquis Riccardi's refusing me such a,
+trifle as the four rings, after all the trouble I have had
+with his trumpery!  I think I cannot help telling him, that
+Lord Carlisle and Lord Duncannon, Who heard of his collection
+from Niccolini, have seen it; and are willing, at a reasonable
+price, to take it between them: if you let me know the lowest,
+and in money that I understand, not his equivocal pistoles, I
+will allow so much to Florence civilities, as still to help
+him off with his goods, though he does not deserve it; as
+selling me four rings could not have affected the general
+purchase.  I pity your Princess Strozzi(1331) but cannot
+possibly hunt after her chattels: Riccardi has cured me of
+Italian merchandise, by forcing it upon me.'
+
+Your account of your former friend's neglect of you does not
+at all surprise me: there is an inveteracy, a darkness, a
+design and cunning in his character that stamp him for a very
+unamiable young man: it is uncommon for a heart to be so
+tainted so early My cousin's(1332) affair is entirely owing to
+him;(1333) nor can I account for the pursuit of such
+unprovoked revenge.
+
+I never heard of the advertisement that you mention to have
+received from Sir James Grey,(1334) nor believe it was ever in
+the House of Commons; I must have heard of it.  I hear as
+little of Lady O. who never appears; nor do I know if she sees
+Niccolini: he lives much with Lady Pomfret (who has married
+her third daughter),(1335) and a good deal with the Prince.
+
+Adieu! I have answered your letter, and have nothing more to
+put into mine.
+
+(1329) Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had been a Lord of the
+Admiralty, on the change of the ministry in 1742.  He died
+soon after the Prince, in 1751.
+
+(1330) Jane, sister of the Earl of Abercorn, and wife of Lord
+Archibald Hamilton, great-uncle of Duke Hamilton: she had been
+mistress of the robes, etc. to the Princess of Wales, and the
+supposed mistress of the Prince.  She died at Paris, in
+December 1752.
+
+(1331) She had been robbed of some of the most valuable gems
+of the famous Strozzi collection.
+
+(1332) The Hon.  George Townshend.  See what is said of him in
+a letter (221) of Oct. 14, 1746, and note 1300.-D.
+
+(1333) It appeared afterwards that the person here mentioned,
+after having behaved very bravely, gave so perplexed an
+account of his own conduct, that the Admiralty thought it
+necessary to have it examined; but the inquiry proved much to
+his honour.
+
+(1334) "Sir James Gray has sent me the copy of an
+advertisement, the publisher of which, he says, had been
+examined before the House of Commons, Lost or mislaid an ivory
+table-book, containing various queries vastly strong." Letter
+of Sir H. Mann, of Jan.  10th, 1747.  It probably related to
+the trial of the rebel Lords.-D.
+
+(1335) Lady Henrietta Fermor, second wife of Mr. Conyers.
+
+
+
+519 Letter 229
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 23, 1747.
+
+Why, you do nothing but get fevers! I believe you try to dry
+your Wet-brown-paperness, till you scorch it.  Or do you play
+off fevers against the Princess's coliques?  Remember, hers
+are only for the support of her dignity, and that is what I
+never allowed you to have: you must(1336) have twenty unlawful
+children, and then be twenty years in devotion, and have
+twenty unchristian appetites and passions all the while,
+before you may think of getting into a cradle with
+`epuisements and have a Monsieur Forzoni(1337) to burn the
+wings of boisterous gnats-pray be more robust-do you hear!
+
+One would think you had been describing our Opera, not your
+own; we have just set out with one in what they call, the
+French manner, but about as like it, as my Lady Pomfret's hash
+of plural persons and singular verbs or infinitive moods was
+to Italian.  They sing to jigs, and dance to church music -.
+Phaeton is run away with by horses that go a foot's-pace, like
+the Electress's(1338) coach, with such long traces, that the
+postilion was in one street and the coachman in another;--then
+comes Jupiter with a farthing-candle to light a squib and a
+half, and that they call fire-works.  Reginello, the first
+man, is so old and so tall, that he seems to have been growing
+ever since the invention of operas.  The first woman has had
+her mouth let out to show a fine set of teeth, but it lets out
+too much bad voice at the same time.(1339)  Lord Middlesex,
+for his great prudence in having provided such very tractable
+steeds to Prince Phaeton's car, is going to be Master of the
+Horse to the Prince of Wales; and for his excellent economy in
+never paying the performers, is likely to continue in the
+treasury.  The two courts grow again: and the old question of
+settling the 50,000 pounds a-year talked of.  The Tories don't
+list kindly under this new Opposition; though last week we had
+a warm day on a motion for inquiring into useless places and
+quarterings.  Mr. Pitt was so well advised as to acquit my
+father pretty amply, in speaking Of the Secret Committee.  My
+uncle Horace thanked him in a speech, and my brother Ned has
+been to visit him-Tant d'empressement, I think, rather shows
+an eagerness to catch any opportunity of paying court to him;
+for I do not see the so vast merit in owning now for his
+interest, what for his honour he should have owned five years
+ago.  This motion was spirited up by Lord Bath, who is raving
+again, upon losing the borough of Heydon: from which last week
+we threw his brother-in-law Gumley, and instated Luke
+Robinson, the old sufferer for my father, and the colleague of
+Mr. Chute's brother; an incident that will not heighten your
+indifference, any more than it did mine.
+
+Lord Kildare is married to the charming Lady Emily Lennox, who
+went the very next day to see her sister Lady Caroline Fox, to
+the great mortification of the haughty Duchess-mother.  They
+have not given her a shilling, but the King endows her, by
+making Lord Kildare a Viscount Sterling:(1340) and they talk
+of giving him a Pinchbeck-dukedom too, to keep him always
+first peer of Ireland.(1341)  Sir Everard Falkener is married
+to Miss Churchill, and my sister is brought to bed of a son.
+
+Panciatici is arrived, extremely darkened in his person and
+enlivened in his manner.  He was much in fashion at the Hague,
+but I don't know if he will succeed so well here: for in such
+great cities as this, you know people affect not to think
+themselves honoured by foreigners; and though we don't quite
+barbarize them as the French do, they are toujours des
+etrangers.  Mr. Chute thinks we have to the full all the
+politeness that can make a nation brutes to the rest of the
+world.  He had an excellent adventure the other day with Lord
+Holderness, whom he met at a party it Lady Betty Germains; but
+who could not possibly fatigue himself to recollect that they
+had ever met before in their lives.  Towards the end of dinner
+Lady Betty mentioned remembering a grandmother of Mr. Chute
+who was a peeress: immediately the Earl grew as fond of him as
+if they had walked together at a coronation.  He told me
+another good story last night of Lord Hervey,(1342) who was
+going with them from the Opera, and was so familiar as to beg
+they would not call him my Lord and your Lordship.  The
+freedom proceeded; when on a sudden, he turned to Mr. Whithed,
+and with a distressed friendly voice, said, "Now have you no
+peerage that can come to you by any woman?"
+
+Adieu! my dear Sir; I have no news to tell you.  Here is
+another letter of Niccolini that has lain in my standish this
+fortnight.
+
+(1336) All the succeeding paragraph alludes to Princess Craon.
+
+(1337) Her gentleman usher.
+
+(1338) The Electress Palatine Dowager, the last of the house
+of Medici; she lived at Florence.
+
+(1339) The drama of Fetonte was written by Vaneschi.  "The
+best apologies for the absurdities of an Italian opera, in a
+country where the language is little understood, are," says
+Dr. Burney, "good music and exquisite singing: unluckily,
+neither the composition nor performance of Phaeton had the
+siren power of enchanting men so much, as to stimulate
+attention at the expense of reason." Hist. of Music, Vol. iv.
+p. 456.-E.
+
+(1340) Meaning an English viscount.  He was created Viscount
+Leinster, of Taplow, in Bucks, Feb. 21st, 1747.-D.
+
+(1341) In 1761 his lordship was advanced to the Marquisate of
+Kildare, and in 1766 created Duke of Leinster.  By Lady Emily
+Lennox the Duke had seventeen children.-E.
+
+(1342) George, eldest son of John, Lord Hervey, and afterwards
+Earl of Bristol, and minister at Turin and Madrid.
+
+
+
+521 Letter  230
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 20, 1747.
+
+I have been living at old Lovat's trial, and was willing to
+have it over before I talked to you of it.  It lasted seven
+days: the evidence was as strong as possible; and after all he
+had denounced, he made no defence.  The
+Solicitor-General,(1343) who was one of the managers for the
+House of Commons, shone extremely; the Attorney-General
+,(1344) who is a much greater lawyer, is cold and tedious.
+The old creature's behaviour has been foolish, and at last,
+indecent.  I see little of parts in him, nor attribute much to
+that cunning for which he is so famous: it might catch wild
+Highlanders; but the art of dissimulation and flattery is so
+refined and improved, that it is of little use where it is not
+very delicate.  His character seems a mixture of tyranny and
+pride in his villainy.  I must make you a little acquainted
+with him.  In his own domain he governed despotically, either
+burning or plundering the lands and houses of his open
+enemies, or taking off his secret ones by the assistance of
+his cook, who was his poisoner in chief.  He had two servants
+who married without his consent; he said, "You shall have
+enough of each other," and stowed them in a dungeon, that had
+been a well for three weeks.  When he came to the Tower, he
+told them, that if he were not so old and infirm, they would
+find it difficult to keep him there.  They told him they had
+kept much younger: "Yes," said he, "but they were
+inexperienced: they had not broke so many gaols as I have." At
+his own house he used to say, that for thirty years of his
+life he never saw a gallows but it made his neck ache.  His
+last act was to shift his treason upon his eldest son, whom he
+forced into the rebellion.  He told Williamson, the Lieutenant
+of the Tower, "We will hang my eldest son, and then my second
+shall marry your niece." He has a sort of ready humour at
+repartee, not very well adapted to his situation.  One day
+that Williamson complained that he could not sleep, he was so
+haunted with rats, he replied, "What do you say, that you are
+so haunted with Reitc yeq?" The first day, as he was brought
+to his trial, a woman looked into the coach, and said, "You
+ugly old dog, don't you think that you will have that
+frightful head cut off?" He replied, You ugly old -, I believe
+I shall." At his trial he affected great weakness and
+infirmities, but often broke into passions; particularly at
+the first witness, who was his vassal: he asked him how he
+dared to come thither! The man replied, to satisfy his
+conscience.  Murray, the Pretender's secretary, was the chief
+evidence, who, in the course of his information, mentioned
+Lord Traquair's having conversed with Lord Barrymore, Sir
+Watkin Williams, and Sir John Cotton, on the Pretender's
+affairs, but that they were shy.  He was proceeding to name
+others, but was stopped by Lord Talbot, and the court
+acquiesced--I think very indecently.  It is imagined the
+Duchess of Norfolk would have come next upon the stage.  The
+two Knights were present, as was Macleod, against whom a
+bitter letter from Lovat was read, accusing him of breach of
+faith; and afterwards Lovat summoned him to answer some
+questions he had to ask; but did not.  it is much expected
+that Lord Traquair, who is a great coward, will give ample
+information of the whole plot.  When Sir Everard Falkener had
+been examined(1345) against Lovat, the Lord High Steward asked
+the latter if he had any thing to say to Sir Everard? he
+replied, "No; but that he was his humble servant, and wished
+him joy of his young wife."  The two last days he behaved
+ridiculously, joking, and making every body laugh even at the
+sentence.  He said to Lord Ilchester, who sat near the bar,
+"Je meUrs pour ma patrie, et ne m'en soucie gueres."  When he
+withdrew, he said, "Adieu! my lords, we shall never meet again
+in the same place."(1346)  He says he will be hanged; for that
+his neck is so short and bended, that he should be struck in
+the shoulders.  I did not think it possible to feel so little
+as I did at so melancholy a spectacle, but tyranny and
+villainy wound up by buffoonery took off all edge of concern-.
+The foreigners were much struck; Niccolini seemed a great deal
+shocked, but he comforts himself with the knowledge he thinks
+he has gained of the English constitution.
+
+Don't thank Riccardi for me: I don't feel obliged for his
+immoderate demand, but expect very soon to return him his
+goods; for I have no notion that the two Lords, who are to see
+them next week, will rise near his price.  We have nothing
+like news: all the world has been entirely taken up with the
+trial. -Here is a letter from Mr. Whithed to Lord Hobart.  Mr.
+Chute would have written to-Day, if I had not; but will next
+post.  Adieu!
+
+(1343) William Murray.
+
+(1344) Sir Dudley Ryder; afterwards Lord Chief Justice.
+
+(1345) He was secretary to the Duke, whom he had attended into
+Scotland during the rebellion.
+
+(1346) Lord Byron has put nearly the same words into the mouth
+of Israel Bertuccio, in his tragedy of Marino Falicro.-E.
+
+
+
+522 Letter 131
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 10, 1747.
+
+I deferred writing to you as long as they deferred the
+execution of old Lovat, because I had a mind to send you some
+account of his death, as I had of his trial.  He was beheaded
+yesterday, and died extremely well, without passion,
+affectation, buffoonery, or timidity: his behaviour was
+natural and intrepid.  He professed himself a Jansenist; made
+no speech, but sat down a little while in a chair on the
+scaffold, and talked to the people round him.  He said, "he
+was glad to suffer for his country, dulce est pro patria mori;
+that he did not know how, but he had always loved it, nescio
+qua natale solum, etc.; that he had never swerved from his
+principles; that this was the character of his family, who had
+been gentlemen for five hundred years."  He lay down quietly,
+gave the sign soon, and was despatched at a blow. I believe it
+will strike some terror into the Highlands, when they hear
+there is any power great enough to bring so potent a tyrant to
+the block.  A scaffold fell down, and killed several persons;
+one, a man that had rid post from Salisbury the day before to
+see the ceremony; and a woman was taken up dead with a live
+child in her arms.  The body(1347) is sent into Scotland: the
+day was cold, and before It set out, the coachman drove the
+hearse about the court, before my Lord Traquair's dungeon,
+which could be no agreeable sight: it might to Lord Cromartie,
+who is above the chair.(1348)  Mr. Chute was at the execution
+with the Italians, who were more entertained than shocked:
+Panciatici told me, "It was a triste spectacle, mais qu'il ne
+laissoit d'`etre beau."  Niccolini has treasured it up among
+his insights into the English constitution.  We have some
+chance of a Peer's trial that has nothing to do with the
+rebellion.  A servant of a college has been killed at Oxford,
+and a verdict of wilful murder by persons unknown, brought in
+by the coroner's inquest.  These persons unknown are supposed
+to be Lord Abergavenny,(1349) Lord Charles Scot,(1350) and two
+more, who had played tricks with the poor fellow that night,
+while he was drunk, and the next morning he was found with his
+skull fractured, at the foot of the first Lord's staircase.
+One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the
+melancholy event of their sport.
+
+I shall not be able till the next letter to tell you about
+Riccardi's gems: Lord Duncannon has been in the country; but
+he and Lord Carlisle are to come to me next Sunday, and
+determine.
+
+Mr. Chute gave you some account of the Independents:(1351) the
+committee have made a foolish affair of it, and cannot furnish
+a report.  Had it extended to three years ago, Lord Sandwich
+and Grenville(1352) of the admiralty would have made an
+admirable figure as dictators of some of the most Jacobite
+healths that ever were invented.  Lord Doneraile, who is made
+comptroller to the Prince, went to the committee, (whither all
+members have a right to go, though not to vote, as it is
+select, not secret,) and plagued Lyttelton to death, with
+pressing him to inquire into the healths of the year '43.  The
+ministry are now trembling at home, with fear of losing the
+Scotch bills for humbling the Highland chiefs: they have
+whittled them down almost to nothing, in complaisance to the
+Duke of Argyll: and at last he deserts them.  Abroad they are
+in panics for Holland, where the French have at once besieged
+two towns, that must fall into their hands, though we have
+plumed ourselves so much on the Duke's being at the head of a
+hundred and fifteen thousand men.
+
+There has been an excellent civil war in the house of Finch:
+our friend, Lady Charlotte,(1353( presented a daughter of John
+Finch, (him who was stabbed by Sally Salisbury,(1354)) his
+offspring by Mrs. Younger,(1355) whom he since married.  The
+King, Prince, and Princess received her: her aunt, Lady
+Bel,(1356) forbad Lady Charlotte to present her to Princess
+Emily, whether, however, she carried her in defiance.  Lady
+Bel called it publishing a bastard at court, and would not
+present her--think on the poor girl!  Lady Charlotte, with
+spirit, presented her herself.  Mr. W. Finch stepped up to his
+other sister, the Marchioness of Rockingham,(1357) and
+whispered her with his composed civility, that he knew it was
+a plot of her and Lady Bel to make Lady Charlotte miscarry.
+The sable dame (who, it is said, is the blackest of the
+family, because she swept the chimney) replied, "This is not a
+place to be indecent, and therefore I shall only tell you that
+you are a rascal and a villain, and that if ever you dare to
+put your head into my house, I will kick you down stairs
+myself."  Politesse Anglaise!  lord Winchilsea (who, with his
+brother Edward, is embroiled with both sides) came in, and
+informed every body of any circumstances that tended to make
+both parties in the wrong.  I am impatient to hear how this
+operates between my Lady Pomfret and her friend, Lady Bel.
+Don't you remember how the Countess used to lug a half-length
+picture of the latter behind her post-chaise all over Italy,
+and have a new frame made for it in every town where she
+stopped? and have you forgot their correspondence, that poor
+lady Charlotte was daily and hourly employed to transcribe
+into a great book, with the proper names in red ink?  I have
+but just room to tell you that the King is perfectly well, and
+that the Pretender's son was sent from Spain as soon as he
+arrived there.  Thank you for the news of Mr. Townshend.
+Adieu!
+
+(1347) It was countermanded, and buried in the Tower.
+
+(1348) Lord Cromartie had been pardoned.-D.
+
+(1349) George Neville, fifteenth Lord and first Earl of
+Abergavenny.  Died 1785.-D.
+
+(1350) Lord Charles Scott, second son of Francis, Duke of
+Buccleuch
+.  He died at Oxford during the year 1747.-D.
+
+(1351) An innkeeper in Piccadilly, who had been beaten by
+them, gave information against them for treasonable practices,
+and a committee of the House of Commons, headed by Sir W.
+Yonge and Lord Coke, was appointed to inquire into the matter.
+[The informant's name was Williams, keeper of the White Horse
+in Piccadilly.  Being observed, at the anniversary dinner of
+the independent electors of Westminster, to make memorandums
+with a pencil, he was severely cuffed, and kicked out of the
+company.  The alleged treasonable practices consisted in
+certain Offensive toasts.  On the King's health being drunk,
+every man held a glass of water in his left hand, and waved a
+glass of wine over it with the right.]
+
+(1352) George Grenville, afterwards prime minister.-D.
+
+(1353) Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Thomas, Earl
+of Pomfret, and second wife of William Finch, vice-chamberlain
+to the King; formerly ambassador in Holland, and brother of
+Daniel, Earl of Winchilsea.
+
+(1354) Sally Salisbury, alias Pridden, a woman of the town,
+stabbed the Hon. John Finch, in a bagnio, in the neighbourhood
+of Covent-garden; but he did not die of the wound.-D.
+
+(1355) Elizabeth Younger.  Her daughter, by the Hon.  John
+Finch, married John Mason, Esq. of Greenwich.-D.
+
+(1356) Lady Isabella Finch, lady of the bedchamber to the
+Princesses Emily and Caroline.
+
+(1357) Lady mary Finch, fifth daughter of Daniel, sixth Earl
+of Winchilsea; married in 1716 to the Hon.  Thomas Wentworth,
+afterwards created Marquis of Rockingham.-E.
+
+
+
+525 Letter 232
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Arlington Street, April 16, 1747.
+
+Dear Harry,
+We are all skyrockets and bonfires tonight for your last
+year's victory;(1359) but if you have a mind to perpetuate
+yourselves in the calendar, you must take care to refresh your
+conquests.  I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs as
+I passed through the villages made me make very quaint
+reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity.  I
+observed how the Duke's head had succeeded almost universally
+to Admiral Vernon's, as his had left but few traces of the
+Duke of Ormond's.  I pondered these things in my heart, and
+said unto myself, Surely all glory is but as a sign!
+
+You have heard that old lovat's tragedy is over: it has been
+succeeded by a little farce, containing the humours of the
+Duke of Newcastle and his man Stone.  The first event was a
+squabble between his grace and the Sheriff about holding up
+the head on the scaffold--a custom that has been disused, and
+which the Sheriff would not comply with, as he received no
+order in writing.  Since that, the Duke has burst ten yards of
+breeches strings(1360) about the body, which was to be sent
+into Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers
+to rise to attend the most trivial burial.  The Duke, who is
+always at least as much frightened at doing right as at doing
+wrong, was three days before he got courage enough to order
+the burying in the Tower.  I must tell you an excessive good
+story of George Selwyn -. Some women were scolding him for
+going to see the execution, and asked him, how he could be
+such a barbarian to see the head cut off?  "Nay," says he, "if
+that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I
+went to see it sewed on again." When he was at the
+undertaker's, as soon as they had stitched him together, and
+were going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord
+Chancellor's voice, said "My Lord lovat, your lordship may
+rise."  My Lady Townshend has picked up a little stable-boy in
+the Tower, which the warders have put upon her for a natural
+son of Lord Kilmarnock's, and taken him into her own house.
+You need not tell Mr. T. this from me.
+
+We have had a great and fine day in the House on the second
+reading the bill for taking away the heritable Jurisdictions
+in Scotland.  Lyttelton made the finest oration imaginable;
+the Solicitor General, the new Advocate,(1361) and Hume
+Campbell, particularly the last. spoke excessively well for
+it, and Oswald against it.  The majority was 233 against 102.
+Pitt was not there; the Duchess of Queensberry had ordered him
+to have the gout.
+
+I will give you a commission once more, to tell Lord
+Bury(1362) that he has quite dropped me: if I thought he would
+take me up again, I would write to him; a message would
+encourage me.  Adieu!
+
+(1359) The battle of Culloden.
+
+(1360) Alluding to a trick of the Duke of Newcastle's.
+
+(1361) William Grant, Lord Advocate of Scotland.
+
+(1362) George Keppel, eldest son of William, Earl of
+Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title in 1755.  He was
+now, together with Mr. Conway, aide-de-camp to the Duke of
+Cumberland.
+
+
+
+526 Letter 233
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, May 5, 1747.
+
+It is impossible for me to tell you more of the new
+Stadtholder(1363) than you must have heard from all quarters.
+Hitherto his existence has been of no service to his country.
+Hulst, which we had heard was relieved, has surrendered.  The
+Duke was in it privately, just before it was taken, with only
+two aide-de-camps, and has found means to withdraw our three
+regiments.  We begin to own now that the French are superior:
+I never believed they were not, or that we had taken the field
+before them; for the moment we had taken it, we heard of
+Marshal Saxe having detached fifteen thousand men to form
+sieges.  There is a print published in Holland of the Devil
+weighing the Count de Saxe and Count lowendahl in a pair of
+scales, with this inscription:
+
+Tous deux vaillants,
+Tous deux galants,
+Tous deux constants,
+
+Tous deux galiards,
+Tous deux paliards,
+Tous deux b`atards,(1364)
+
+Tous deux sans foi.
+Tous deux sans loi.
+Tous deux `a moi.
+
+We are taken up with the Scotch bills for weakening clanships
+and taking away heritable Jurisdictions.  I have left them
+sitting on it to-day, but was pleased with a period of Nugent.
+"These jurisdictions are grievous, but nobody complains of
+them; therefore, what? therefore, they are excessively
+grievous." We had a good-natured bill moved to-day by Sir
+William Yonge, to allow council to prisoners on impeachments
+for treason, as they have on indictments.  It hurt every body
+at old Lovat's trial, all guilty as he was, to see an old
+wretch worried by the first lawyers in England, without any
+assistance but his own unpractised defence.  It had not the
+least opposition; yet this was a point struggled for in King
+William's reign, as a privilege and dignity inherent in the
+Commons, that the accused by them should have no assistance of
+council.  how reasonable, that men, chosen by their
+fellow-subjects for the defence of their fellow-subjects,
+should have rights detrimental to the good of the people whom
+they are to protect! Thank God! we are a better-natured age,
+and have relinquished this savage privilege with a good grace!
+
+Lord Cowper(1365) has resigned the bedchamber, on the
+Beef-eaters being given to Lord Falmouth.  The latter, who is
+powerful in elections, insisted on having it: the other had
+nothing but a promise from the King, which the ministry had
+already twice forced him to break.
+
+Mr. Fox gave a great ball last week at Holland House. which he
+has taken for a long term, and where he is making great
+improvements.  It is a brave old house, and belonged to the
+gallant Earl of Holland, the lover of Charles the First's
+Queen.  His motto has puzzled every body; it is Ditior est qui
+se.  I was allowed to hit off an interpretation, which yet one
+can hardly reconcile to his gallantry, nor can I decently
+repeat it to you.  While I am writing, the Prince is going
+over the way to Lord Middlesex's, where there is a ball in
+mask to-night for the royal children.
+
+The two Lords have seen and refused Marquis Riccardi's gems: I
+shall deliver them to Pucci; but am so simple (you will laugh
+at me) as to keep the four I liked: that is, I will submit to
+give him fifty pounds for them, if he will let me choose one
+ring more; for I will at least have it to call them at ten
+guineas apiece.  If he consents, I will remit the money to
+you, or pay it to Pucei, as he likes.  If not, I return them
+with the rest of the car,,o.  I can choose no ring for which I
+would give five guineas.
+
+I have received yours of April 25th, since I came home.  You
+will scold me for being so careless about the Pretender's son;
+but I am determined not to take up his idea again, till he is
+at least on this side Derby.  Do excuse me; but when he could
+not get to London, with all the advantages which the ministry
+had smoothed for him, how can he ever meet more concurring
+circumstances?  If my lady'S(1366) return has no better
+foundation than Niccolini's authority, I assure you you may
+believe as little of it as you please.  If he knows no more of
+her, than he does of every thing else that he pretends to
+know, as I am persuaded he does not, knowledge cannot possibly
+be thinner spread.  He has been a progress to add more matter
+to the mass, that he already don't understand.  Adieu!
+
+(1363) The Prince of Orange had just been raised to that
+dignity in a tumultuary manner.
+
+(1364) The Count de Saxe was a natural son of Augustus the
+Second, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and of the
+Countess Konigsmark.  The Count de LOWendahl was not a
+"b`atard" himself; but his father, Woldemar, Baron of
+Lowendahl, was the son of the Count of Gildoniew, who was the
+natural son of Frederick the Third, King of Denmark.-D.
+
+(1365) William, second Earl Cowper, son of the Chancellor.  He
+died in 1764.-D.
+
+(1366) Lady Orford.-D.
+
+
+
+527 Letter 234
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, May 19th, 1747,
+
+As you will receive the Gazette at the same time with this
+letter, I shall leave you to that for the particulars of the
+great naval victory that Anson has gained over the French off
+Cape Finisterre.(1367)  It is a very big event, and by far one
+of the most considerable that has happened during this war.
+By it he has defeated two expeditions at once; for the fleet
+he has demolished was to have split, part for the recovery of
+Cape Breton, part for the East Indies.  He has always been
+most remarkably fortunate: Captain Granville, the youngest of
+the brothers, was as unlucky: he was killed by the cannon that
+was fired as a signal for their striking.(1368)  He is
+extremely commended: I am not partial to the family; but it is
+but justice to mention, that when he took a great prize some
+time ago, after a thousand actions of generosity to his
+officers and crew, he cleared sixteen thousand pounds, of
+which he gave his sister ten.  The King is in great spirits.
+The French fought exceedingly well.
+
+I have no other event to tell you, but the promotion of a new
+brother of yours.  I condole with you, for they have literally
+sent one Dayrolies(1369) resident to Holland, under Lord
+Sandwich,
+
+--Minum partes tractare secundas.
+
+This curious minister has always been a led-captain to the
+Dukes of Grafton and Richmond; used to be sent to auctions for
+them, and to walk in the Park with their daughters, and once
+went dry nurse to Holland with them.  He has belonged, too, a
+good deal to my Lord Chesterfield, to whom, I believe, he owes
+this new honour; as he had before made him black-rod in
+Ireland, and gave the ingenious reason, that he had a black
+face.  I believe he has made him a minister, as one year, at
+Tunbridge, he had a mind to make a wit of Jacky Barnard, and
+had the impertinent vanity to imagine that his authority was
+sufficient.
+
+Your brother has gone over the way with Mr. Whithed, to choose
+some of Lord Cholmondeley's pictures for his debt; they are
+all given up to the creditors, who yet scarce receive forty
+per cent. of their money.
+
+It is wrong to send so short a letter as this so far, I know;
+but what can one do? After the first fine shower, I will send
+you a much longer.  Adieu!
+
+(1367) Upon this occasion Admiral Anson took six French men-of
+war and four of their East Indiamen, and sunk or destroyed the
+rest of their fleet.-D.
+
+(1368) Thomas Grenville, youngest brother of Richard, Earl
+Temple.  As soon as he was struck by the cannon-ball, he
+exclaimed, gallantly, "well! it is better to die thus, than to
+be tried by a court-martial!"  [His uncle Lord Cobham, erected
+a column to his memory in the gardens at Stowe.]
+
+(1369) ,,b Solomon Dayrolles, Esq.  There are many letters
+addressed to him in Lord Chesterfield's Miscellaneous
+Correspondence.-D.
+
+
+
+528 Letter 235
+To Sir Horace Mann
+Arlington Street, June 5, 1747.
+
+Don't be more frightened at hearing the Parliament is to be
+dissolved in a fortnight, than you are obliged to be as a good
+minister.  Since this Parliament has not brought over the
+Pretender, I trust the death of it will not.  You will want to
+know the reason of this sudden step: several are given, as the
+impossibility of making either peace or war, till they are
+secure of a new majority; but I believe the true motive is to
+disappoint the Prince, who was not ready with his elections.
+In general, people seem to like the measure, except the
+Speaker, who is very pompous about it, and speaks
+constitutional paragraphs.  There are rumours of changes to
+attend its exit.  People imagine Lord Chesterfield(1370) is to
+quit, but I know no other grounds for this belief, than that
+they conclude the Duke of Newcastle must be jealous of him by
+this time. Lord Sandwich is looked upon as his successor,
+Whenever it shall happen.  He is now here, to look after his
+Huntingdonshire boroughs.  We talk nothing but
+elections-however, it is better than talking them for a year
+together.  Mine for Callington (for I would not come in for
+Lynn, which I have left to Prince Pigwiggin(1371)) is so easy,
+that I shall have no trouble, not even the dignity of being
+carried in triumph, like the lost sheep, on a porter's
+shoulders but may retire to a little new farm that I have
+taken just out of Twickenham.  The house is so small, that I
+can send it you in a letter to look at: the prospect is as
+delightful as possible, commanding the river, the town, and
+Richmond Park; and being situated on a hill descends to the
+Thames through two or three little meadows, where I have some
+Turkish sheep and two cows, all studied in their colours for
+becoming the view.  This little rural bijou was Mrs.
+Chenevix's, the toy-woman `a la mode, who in every dry season
+is to furnish me with the best rain-water from Paris, and now
+and then with some Dresden-china cows, who are to figure like
+wooden classics in a library: so I shall grow as much a
+shepherd as any swain in the Astrea.
+
+Admiral Anson(1372) is made a baron, and Admiral Warren(1373)
+Knight of the Bath-so is Niccolini to be-when the King
+dies.(1374)  His Majesty and his son were last night at the
+masquerade at Ranelagh, where there was so little company,
+that I was afraid they would be forced to walk about together.
+
+I have been desired to write to you for two scagliola tables;
+will you get them? I will thank you, an pay you too.
+
+You will hardly believe that I intend to send you this for a
+letter, but I do.  Mr. Chute said he would write to you
+to-day, so mine goes as page to his.  Adieu!
+
+(1370) He was now secretary of state, which office he did not
+resign till Feb. 1748.-D.
+
+(1371) Eldest son of Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+(1372) George Anson, created Lord Anson of Soberton.  He is
+well known for his voyages round the world, as well as for his
+naval successes.  He was long first lord of the admiralty; but
+did not distinguish himself as a statesman.  He died suddenly,
+while walking in his garden at Moor Park in Hertfordshire,
+June 6th, 1762.-D.
+
+(1373) Sir Peter Warren was the second in command in the
+victory off Cape Finisterre.-D.
+
+(1374) The Abb`e Niccolini was in much favour with the Prince
+of Wales.-D.
+
+
+
+530 Letter 236
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Twickenham, June 8, 1747.
+
+You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and
+have left my tub at Windsor.  It is a little plaything-house
+that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest
+bauble you ever saw.  It is set in enamelled meadows, with
+filigree hedges:
+
+"A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd,
+And little finches wave their wings in gold"
+
+Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me
+continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as
+barons of the exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill
+and Ham Walks bound my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is
+between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.  Dowagers (-As
+plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is
+just now skimming under my window by a most poetical
+moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as
+Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind;
+but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after
+they had been cooped up together forty days.  The Chenevixes
+had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is
+what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three
+maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame
+telescope without any glasses.  Lord John Sackville
+predeceased me here, and instituted certain games called
+cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in
+honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.
+
+You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with
+my tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all this
+tranquillity, while a Parliament is bursting about my ears.
+You know it is going to be dissolved: I am told, you are taken
+care of, though I don't know where, nor whether any body that
+chooses you will quarrel with me because he does choose you,
+as that little bug the Marquis of Rockingham did; one of the
+calamities of my life which I have bore as abominably well as
+I do most about which I don't care.  They say the Prince has
+taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which
+he won't carry:--he had much better have saved it to buy the
+Parliament after it is chosen.  A new set of peers are in
+embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of the House of
+Lords.
+
+I make no remarks on your campaign,(1375) because, as you say,
+you do nothing at all; which, though very proper nutriment for
+a thinking head, does not do quite so well to write upon.  If
+any one of you can but contrive to be shot upon your post, it
+is all we desire, shall look upon it as a great curiosity, and
+will take care to set up a monument to the person so slain; as
+we are doing by vote to Captain Cornwall, who was killed at
+the beginning Of the action in the Mediterranean four years
+ago.(1376)  In the present dearth of glory, he is canonized;
+though, poor man! he had been tried twice the year before for
+cowardice.(1377)
+
+I could tell you much election news, none else; though not
+being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be
+sure one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give
+you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, or
+name the returning-officer instead of the candidate.  In
+general, I believe, it is much as usual-those sold in detail
+that afterwards will be sold in the representation--the
+ministers bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own-
+-the name of well-wishers to the present establishment, and
+patriots outbidding ministers that they may make the better
+market of their own patriotism:-in short, all England, under
+some flame or other, is just now to be bought and sold;
+though, whenever we become posterity and forefathers, we shall
+be in high repute for wisdom and virtue.  My
+great-great-grandchildren will figure me with a white beard
+down to my girdle; and Mr. Pitt's will believe him unspotted
+enough to have walked over nine hundred hot ploughshares,
+without hurting the sole of his foot.  How merry my ghost will
+be, and shake its ears to hear itself quoted as a person of
+consummate prudence! Adieu, dear Harry! Yours ever.
+
+(1375) Mr Conway was in Flanders with the Duke of Cumberland.
+
+(1376) The House of Commons, on the 28th of May, had agreed to
+erect a monument in Westminster Abbey to the memory of Captain
+Cornwall, of the Marlborough; who was slain while bravely
+defending his ship.  The monument, designed and executed bye
+Taylor, was completed in 1755. --E.
+
+(1377) And honourably acquitted on both occasions.-E.
+
+
+
+531 Letter 237
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, June 26, 1747.
+
+You can have no idea of the emptiness of London, and of the
+tumult every where else.  To-day many elections begin.  The
+sums of money disbursed within this month would give any body
+a very faint idea of the poverty of this undone country!  I
+think the expense and contest is greater now we are said to be
+all of a mind, than when parties ran highest.  Indeed, I
+ascribe part of the solitude in town to privilege being at an
+end; though many of us can afford to bribe so high, it is not
+so easy to pay debts.  Here am I, as Lord Cornbury(1378) says,
+sitting for a borough, while every body else stands for one.
+He diverted me extremely the other day with the application of
+a story to the King's speech.  It says, the reason for
+dissolving the Parliament is its being so near
+dissolution:(1379) Lord Cornbury said it put him in mind of a
+gaoler in Oxfordshire who was remarkably humane to his
+prisoners; one day he said to one of them, "My good friend,
+you know you are to be hanged on Friday se'nnight; I want
+extremely to go to London; would you be so kind as to be
+hanged next Friday?"
+
+Pigwiggin is come over, more Pigwiggin than ever!  He
+entertained me with the horrid ugly figures that he saw at the
+Prince of Orange's court; think of his saying ugly figures!
+He is to be chosen for Lynn,-whither I would not go, because I
+must have gone; I go to Callington again, whither I don't go.
+My brother chooses Lord luxborough(1380) for Castlerising.
+Would you know the connexion?  This Lord keeps Mrs. Horton the
+player; we keep Miss Norsa the player: Rich the harlequin is
+an intimate of all; and to cement the harlequinity, somebody's
+brother (excuse me if I am not perfect in such genealogy) is
+to marry the Jewess's sister.  This coup de th`eatre procured
+Knight his Irish coronet, and has now stuffed him into
+Castlerising, about which my brother has quarrelled with me,
+for not looking upon it, as, what he called, a family-borough.
+Excuse this ridiculous detail; it serves to introduce the
+account of the new peers, for Sir Jacob Bouverie, a
+considerable Jacobite, who is made Viscount Folkestone, bought
+his ermine at twelve thousand pound a-yard of the Duchess of
+Kendal(1381) d'aujourd'hui.  Sir Harry Liddel is Baron
+Ravensworth, and Duncombe Baron Feversham; Archer and Rolle
+have only changed their Mr.ships for Lordships.  Lord
+Middlesex has lost one of his Lordships, that of the Treasury;
+is succeeded by the second Grenville, and he by Ellis,(1382)
+at the admiralty.  Lord Ashburnham had made a magnificent
+summer suit to wait, but Lord Cowper at last does not resign
+the bedchamber.  I intend to laugh over this disgrazia with
+the Chuteheds, when they return triumphant from Hampshire,
+where Whitehed has no enemy.  A-propos to enemies! I believe
+the battle in Flanders is compromised, for one never hears of
+it.
+
+The Duchess of Queensberry(1383) has at last been at court, a
+point she has been intriguing these two years.  Nobody gave in
+to it.  At last she snatched at the opportunity of her son
+being obliged to the King for a regiment in the Dutch service,
+and would not let him go to thank, till they sent for her too.
+Niccolini, who is next to her in absurdity and importance, is
+gone electioneering with Doddington.
+
+I expect Pucci every day to finish my trouble with Riccardi; I
+shall take any ring, though he has taken care I shall not take
+another tolerable one.  If you will pay him, which I fancy
+will be the shortest way to prevent any fripponnerie, I will
+put the money into your brother's hands.
+
+
+My eagle(1384) is arrived-my eagle tout court, for I hear
+nothing of the pedestal: the bird itself was sent home in a
+store-ship; I was happy that they did not reserve the statue,
+and send its footstool.  It is a glorious fowl! I admire it,
+and every body admires it as much as it deserves.  There never
+was so much spirit and fire preserved, with so much labour and
+finishing.  It stands fronting the Vespasian: there are no two
+such morsels in England!
+
+Have you a mind for an example of English bizarrerie?  there
+is a Fleming here, who carves exquisitely in ivory, one
+Verskovis; he has done much for me, and where I have
+recommended him; but he is starving, and returning to Rome, to
+carve for-the English, for whom, when he was there before, he
+could not work fast enough.(1385)
+
+I know nothing, nor ever heard of the Mills's and Davisons;
+and know less than nothing Of whether they are employed from
+hence.  There is nobody in town of whom to inquire; if there
+were, they would ask me for what borough these men were to
+stand, and wonder that I could name people from any other
+motive.  Adieu!
+
+(1378) Henry Hyde, only son of the last Earl of Clarendon.  He
+died before his father.
+
+(1379) King's words are, "As this Parliament would necessarily
+determine in a short time, I have judged it expedient speedily
+to call a new one."-E.
+
+(1380) Robert Knight, eldest son of the famous cashier of the
+South Sea Company. (Created Lord Luxborough in Ireland 1746,
+and Earl of Catherlough in 1763.  He died in 1772.-D.)
+
+(1381) Lady Yarmouth, the mistress of George II.-D.
+
+(1382) Right Honourable Welbore Ellis.-D.
+
+(1383) She had quarrelled with the court, in consequence of
+the refusal to permit Gray's sequel to the Beggar's Opera,
+called "Polly," to be acted.-D.
+
+(1384) The eagle found in the gardens of Boccapadugli within
+the precincts of Caracalla's baths, at Rome, in the year 1742;
+one of the finest pieces of Greek sculpture in the world.  See
+Walpole's Works, vol. ii. p. 463, and Gray's Ode on the
+Progress of Poesy.-E.
+
+(1385) Verskovis is also mentioned by Walpole in his Anecdotes of
+Painting.  he had a son, who to the art of carving in ivory,
+added painting, but died young, in 1749, before his father.
+The latter did not survive above a year.-E.
+
+
+
+533 Letter 238
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, July 2, 1747.
+
+Dear George,
+Though we have no great reason to triumph, as we have
+certainly been defeated,(1386) yet the French have as
+certainly bought their victory dear: indeed, what would be
+very dear to us, is not so much to them.  However, their least
+loss is twelve thousand men; as our least loss is five
+thousand.  The truth of the whole is, that the Duke was
+determined to fight at all events, which the French, who
+determined not to fight but at great odds, took advantage of.
+His Royal Highness's valour has shone extremely, but at the
+expense of his judgment.  Harry Conway, whom nature always
+designed for a hero of romance, and who is d`eplac`e in
+ordinary life, did wonders; but was overpowered and flung
+down, when one French hussar held him by the hair, while
+another was going to stab him: at that instant, an English
+sergeant with a soldier came up, and killed the latter; but
+was instantly killed himself; the soldier attacked the other,
+and Mr. Conway escaped; but was afterwards taken prisoner; is
+since released on parole, and may come home to console his
+fair widow,,(1387) whose brother, Harry Campbell, is certainly
+killed, to the great concern of all widows who want
+consolation.  The French have lost the Prince of Monaco, the
+Comte de Bavi`ere, natural brother to the last Emperor, and
+many officers of great rank.  The French King saw the whole
+through a spying-glass, from Hampstead Hill, environed with
+twenty thousand men.' Our Guards did shamefully, and many
+officers.  The King had a line from Huske in Zealand on the
+Friday night, to tell him we were defeated; of his son not a
+word - judge of his anxiety till three o'clock on Saturday!
+Lord Sandwich had a letter in his pocket all the while, and
+kept it there, which said the Duke was well.
+
+
+We flourish at sea, have taken great part of the Domingo
+fleet, and I suppose shall have more lords.  The Countess
+touched twelve thousand for Sir Jacob Bouverie's coronet.
+
+I know nothing of my own election, but suppose it is over; as
+little of Rigby's, and conclude it lost.  For franks, I
+suppose they don't begin till the whole is complete.  My
+compliments to your brothers and sisters.
+
+(1386) The Battle of Laffelt, in which the Duke of Cumberland
+was defeated.-E.
+
+(1387) Caroline, widow of the Earl of Ailesbury, sister of
+Henry Campbell, here mentioned, and of John, Duke of
+Argyle.-E.
+
+(1388) The King of France'    in allusion to the engagement,
+is said to have observed, that "the British not only paid all,
+but fought all." In his letter to the Queen, he also
+characterized the Austrians as "benevolent" spectators of the
+battle.  See M`emoires de Richelieu, t. vii.  P. 111.-E.
+
+
+
+534 Letter 239
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 3, 1747.
+
+You would think it strange not to hear from me after a battle
+though the printed relation is so particular, that I could
+only repeat what that contains.  The sum total is, that we
+would fight. which the French did not intend; we gave them, or
+did not take, the advantage of situation; they attacked: what
+part of our army was engaged did wonders, for the Dutch ran
+away, and we had contrived to post the Austrians in such a
+manner, that they could not assist us:(1388) we were
+overpowered by numbers, though the centre was first broke by
+the retreating Dutch; and though we retired, we killed twelve
+thousand of the enemy, and lost six ourselves.  The Duke was
+very near taken, having through his short sight, mistaken a
+body of French for his own people. He behaved as bravely as
+usual; but his prowess is so well established, that it grows
+time for him to exert other qualities of a general.
+
+We shine at sea; two-and-forty sail of the Domingo fleet have
+fallen into our hands, and we expect more.  The ministry are
+as successful in their elections: both Westminster and
+Middlesex have elected court candidates, and the city of
+London is taking the same step, the first time of many years
+that the two latter have been Whig; but the non-subscribing at
+the time of the rebellion, has been most successfully played
+off upon the Jacobites; of which stamp great part of England
+was till-the Pretender came.  This would seem a paradox in any
+other country, but contradictions are here the only rule of
+action.  Adieu!
+
+(1389) The Duke of Cumberland, in a letter to Lord
+Chesterfield of the 3d of July, says, "The great misfortune of
+our position was that our right wing was so strongly posted,
+that they could neither be attacked nor make a diversion; for
+I am assured that Marshal Bathiani would have done all in his
+power to sustain me, or attack the enemy."-E.
+
+
+
+535 Letter 240
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, July 28, 1747.
+
+This is merely one of my letters of course, for I have nothing
+to tell you.  You will hear that Bergen-op-zoom still holds
+out, and is the first place that has not said yes, the moment
+the French asked it the question.  The Prince of Waldeck has
+resigned, on some private disgust with the Duke.  Mr. Chute
+received a letter from you yesterday, with the account of the
+deliverance of Genoa, which had reached us before, and had
+surprised nobody.  But when you wrote, you did not know of the
+great victory obtained by eleven battalions of PiedmOntese
+over six-and-forty of the French, and of the lucky but brave
+death of their commander, the Chevalier de Belleisle.  He is a
+great loss to the French, none to Count Saxe; an irreparable
+one to his own brother. whom, by the force of his parts, he
+had pushed so high, at the same time always declining to raise
+himself, lest he should eclipse the Marshal, who seems now to
+have missed the ministry by his Italian scheme, as he did
+before by his ill success in Germany.  We talk of nothing but
+peace: I hope we shall not make as bad an one as we have made
+a war, though one is the natural consequence of the other.
+
+We have at last discovered the pedestal for my glorious eagle,
+at the bottom of the store-ship; but I shall not have it out
+of the Custom-house till the end of this week.  The lower part
+of the eagle's beak(1390) has been broke off and lost.  I wish
+you would have the head only of your Gesse cast, and send it
+me, to have the original restored from it.
+
+The commission for the scagliola tables was given me without
+any dimensions; I suppose there is a common size.  If the
+original friar(1391) can make them, I shall be glad: if not, I
+fancy the person would not care to wait so long as you
+mention, for what would be less handsome than mine.
+
+I am almost ashamed to send you this summer letter; but nobody
+is in town; even election news are all over.  Adieu!'
+
+(1390) "Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie
+The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye," Gray.-E.
+
+(1391) Scagliola is a composition, which was made only at
+Florence by Father Hugford, an Irish friar.
+
+
+
+536 Letter 241
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Sept. 1, 1747.
+
+Your two last are of August 1st and 22d.  I fear my last to
+you was of July 28th.  I have no excuse, but having nothing to
+tell you, and having been in the country.  Bergen-op-zoom
+still holds out; the French having lost great numbers before
+it, though at first, at least, it was not at all
+well-defended.  Nothing else is talked of, and opinions differ
+so much about the event, that I don't pretend to guess what it
+will be.  It appears now that if the Dutch had made but decent
+defences of all the other towns, France would have made but
+slow progress in the conquest of Flanders, and Wanted many
+thousand men that now threaten Europe.
+
+There are not ten people in London besides the Chuteheds and
+me; the White one is going into Hampshire; I hope to have the
+other a little with me at Twickenham, whither I go to-morrow
+for the rest of the season.
+
+I don't know what to say to you about Mr. Mill; I can learn
+nothing about him: my connexions with any thing ministerial
+are little as possible; and were they bigger, the very
+commission, that you apprehend, would be a reason to' make
+them keep it secret from you, on whose account alone, they
+would know I inquired.  I cannot bring myself to believe that
+he is employed from hence; and I am always so cautious of
+meddling about you, for fear of risking you in any light, that
+I am the unfittest person in the world to give you any
+satisfaction on this head: however, I shall continue to try.
+
+I never heard any thing so unreasonable as the Pope's request
+to that Cardinal Guadagni;(1392) but I suppose they will make
+him comply.
+
+You will, I think, like Sir James Grey; he is very civil and
+good-humoured, and sensible.  Lord _(1393) is the two former;
+but, alas he is returned little wiser than he went.
+
+Is there a bill of exchange sent to your brother? or may not I
+pay him without?  it is fifty pounds and three zechins, is it
+not?  Thank you.
+
+Pandolfini is gone with Count Harrache; Panciatici goes next
+week: I believe he intended staying longer; but either the
+finances fail, or he does not know how to dispose of these two
+empty months alone; for Niccolini is gone with the Prince to
+Cliefden.  I have a notion the latter would never leave
+England, if he could but bring himself to change his religion;
+or, which he would like as well, if he could persuade the
+Prince to change his.  Good night!
+
+(1392) This relates to a request made by the Pope to Cardinal
+Guadagni, to resign a piece of preferment which he was in
+possession of.-D.
+
+(1393) So in the MS.-D.
+
+
+
+537 Letter 242
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 1, 1747.
+
+Dear George,
+I wish I could have answered your invitation from the
+Tigress's with my own person, but it was impossible.  I wish
+your farmer would answer invitations with the persons of more
+hens and fewer cocks; for I am raising a breed, and not
+recruits.  The time before he sent two to one, and he has done
+so again.  I had a letter from Mr. Conway, who is piteously
+going into prison again, our great secretary has let the time
+Slip for executing the cartel, and the French have reclaimed
+their prisoners.  The Duke is coming back.  I fear his candles
+are gone to bed to Admiral Vernon's!  He has been ill; they
+say his head has been more affected than his body.  Marshal
+Saxe sent him Cardinal Polignac's Anti-Lucretius(1393) to send
+to Lord Chesterfield.  If he won't let him be a general, at
+least 'tis hard to reduce him to a courier.
+
+When I saw you at Kyk in de Pot, I forgot to tell you that
+seven more volumes of the Journals are delivering: there's
+employment for Moreland.  I go back to Kyk in de Pot tomorrow.
+Did you dislike it so much that you could not bring yourself
+to persuade your brother to try it with you for a day or two!
+I shall be there till the birthday, if you will come.
+
+George Selwyn says, people send to Lord Pembroke to know how
+the bridge rested.  You know George never thinks but `a la
+t`ete tranch`ee: he came to town t'other day to have a tooth
+drawn, and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief
+for the signal.  My compliments to your family.
+
+(1393) In 1757, Anti-Lucretius was rendered into English by
+Dobson; for whose translation of Paradise Lost into Latin
+verse, Auditor Benson, who erected a monument to Milton in
+Westminster Abbey, gave him one thousand pounds.  In 1767, a
+translation of the first book of the Cardinal's poem was
+published by the father of the Right Honourable George
+Canning.-E.
+
+
+
+537 Letter 243
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Oct. 2, 1747.
+
+I am glad the Chuteheds are as idle as I am for then you will
+believe it is nothing but idleness.  I don't know that it is
+absolutely so; I rather flatter myself that it is want of
+materials that has made me silent, I fear, above these five
+weeks.  Literally nothing has happened but the treachery at
+Bergen-Op-zoom,(1394) and of that all the world knows at least
+as much as I do.  The Duke is coming home, and both armies are
+going into quarters, at least for the present: the French, I
+suppose, will be in motion again with the first frosts.
+Holland seems gone!-How long England will remain after it,
+Providence and the French must determine! This is too ample a
+subject to write but little upon, and too obvious to require
+much.
+
+The Chuteheds have been extremely good, and visited and stayed
+with me at Twickenham-I am sorry I must, at your expense, be
+happy.  If I were to say all I think of Mr. Chute's immense
+honesty, his sense, his wit, his knowledge, and his humanity,
+you would think I was writing a dedication.  I am happy in
+him: I don't make up to him for you, for he loves nothing a
+quarter so well; but I try to make him regret you less-do you
+forgive me? Now I am commending your friends, I reproach
+myself with never having told you how much I love your brother
+Gal.(1395)  you yourself have not more constant
+good-humour-indeed he has not such trials with illness as you
+have, you patient soul! but he is like you, and much to my
+fancy.  Now I live a good deal at Twickenham, I see more of
+him, and like to see more of him: you know I don't throw my
+liking about the street.
+
+Your Opera must be fine, and that at Naples glorious: they say
+we are to have one, but I doubt it.  Lady Middlesex is
+breeding-the child will be well-born; the Sackville is the
+worst blood it is supposed to swell with.  Lord Holderness has
+lost his son.  Lady Charlotte Finch, when she saw company on
+her lying-in, had two toilets spread in her bedchamber with
+her own and Mr. Finch's dressing plate.  This was certainly a
+stroke of vulgarity, that my Lady Pomfret copied from some
+festino in Italy.
+
+Lord Bath and his Countess and his son(1396) have been making
+a tour: at Lord Leicester's(1397) they forgot to give any
+thing to the servants that showed the house; upon
+recollection-and deliberation, they sent back a man and horse
+six miles with-half a crown! What loads of money they are
+saving for the French!
+
+Adieu! my dear child-perhaps you don't know that I , "cast
+many a Southern look"(1398) towards Florence-I think within
+this half-year I have thought more of making you a visit, than
+in any half-year since I left you.  I don't know whether the
+difficulties will ever be surmounted, but you cannot imagine
+how few they are: I scarce think they are in the plural
+number.
+
+(1394) In the letter to Sir Thomas Robinson of the 7th of
+November, Sir Everard Fawkener says, "The capture of
+Bergen-op-zoom is a subject to make one mad, if any thing had
+been done; but the ordinary forms of duty, which never fail in
+times of the greatest security, were now, in this critical
+time, neglected in the most scandalous manner."  Hence it was
+surmised that the place was surrendered through treachery.
+See Coxe's Pelham, vol. i. p. 361.-E.
+
+(1395) Galfridus Mann, twin-brother of Horace Mann.
+
+(1396) William, Viscount Pulteney, only son of Lord Bath.  He
+died in his father's lifetime.-D.
+
+(1397) Holkham.
+
+(1398) Shakspeare, Henry IV.-,, "Cast many a northern look to
+see his father bring up his powers."
+
+
+
+539 Letter 244
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 10, 1747.
+
+I came to town but last week; but on looking over the dates of
+my letters, I find I am six weeks in arrear to you.  This is a
+period that ought to make me blush, and beyond what I think I
+was ever guilty - but I have not a tittle to tell you; that
+is, nothing little enough has happened, nor big enough, except
+Admiral Hawke's(1399) great victory and for that I must have
+transcribed the gazettes.
+
+The Parliament met this morning, the House extremely full, and
+many new faces.  We have done nothing, but choose a Speaker,
+and, in choosing him, flattered Mr. Onslow, who is rechosen.
+In about ten days one shall be able to judge of the complexion
+of the winter; but there is not likely to be much opposition.
+The Duke was Coming, but is gone back to Breda for a few days.
+When he does return, it will be only for three weeks.  He is
+to watch the French and the negotiations for peace, which are
+to be opened-I believe not in earnest.
+
+Whithed has made his entrance into Parliament; I don't expect
+he will like it.  The first session is very tiresome with
+elections, and without opposition there will be little spirit.
+
+Lady Middlesex has popped out her child before its time; it is
+put into spirits, and my Lord very loyally, cries over it.
+Lady Gower carried a niece to Leicester-fields(1400) the other
+day, to present her; the girl trembled-she pushed her: "What
+are you so afraid of? Don't you see that musical clock? Can
+you be afraid of a man that has a musical clock?"
+
+Don't call this a letter; I don't call it one; it only comes
+to make my letter's excuses.  Adieu!
+
+(1399) Admiral Edward Hawke, afterwards created Lord Hawke,
+for his eminent naval services.  On the ]5th July 1747, he met
+a large fleet of French merchant-vessels going from the ports
+of France to the West Indies. and guarded by a strong force of
+ships of war.  He completely routed them, and took six ships
+of war. -It was in his despatch to the Admiralty on this
+occasion, that he made use of the Following remarkable
+expression: "As the enemy's ships were large, they took a
+great deal of drubbing."-D.
+
+(1400) Where the Prince of Wales held his court.  Lady Gower
+was Mary Tufton, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Thanet, and widow
+of Anthony Gray, Earl of Harold, who became, in 1736, third
+wife of John, second Lord Gower.-D.
+
+
+
+539 Letter 245
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Nov. 24, 1747.
+
+You say so many kind things to me in your letter of Nov. 7th,
+on my talking of a journey to Florence, that I am sorry I
+mentioned it to you.  I did it to show you that my silence is
+far from proceeding from any forgetfulness of you; and as I
+really think continually of such a journey, I name it now and
+then; though I don't find how to accomplish it.  In short, my
+affairs are not so independent of every body, but that they
+require my attending to them to make them go smoothly; and
+unless I could get them into another situation, it is not
+possible for me to leave them. Some part of my fortune is in
+my Lord O.'s(1401) hands; and if I were out of the way of
+giving him trouble, he has not generosity enough to do any
+thing that would be convenient for me.  I will say no more on
+this subject, because it is not a pleasant one; nor would I
+have said this, but to convince you that I did not mention
+returning to Florence out of gaiet`e de coeur.  I never was
+happy but there; have a million of times repented returning to
+England, where I never was happy, nor expect to be.
+
+For Mr. Chute's silence, next to myself, I can answer for him:
+He always loves you, and I am persuaded wishes nothing more
+than himself at Florence.  I did hint to him your kind thought
+about Venice, because, as I saw no daylight to it, it could
+not disappoint him; and because I knew how sensible he would
+be to this mark of your friendship.  There is not a glimmering
+prospect of our sending a minister to Berlin; if we did, it
+would be a person of far greater consideration than Sir James
+Grey; and even if he went thither, there are no means of
+procuring his succession for Mr. Chute.  My dear child, you
+know little of England, if you think such and so quiet merit
+as his likely to meet friends here.  Great assurance, or great
+quality, are the only recommendations.  My father was abused
+for employing low people with parts-that complaint is totally
+removed.
+
+You reproach me with telling you nothing of Bergen-op-zoom;
+seriously, I know nothing but what was in the papers; and in
+general, on those great public events, I must transcribe the
+gazette, if you will have me talk to you.  You will have seen
+by the King's speech that a congress is appointed at
+Aix-la-Chapelle, but nobody expects any effect from it.
+Except Mr. Pelham, the ministry in general are for the war;
+and, what is comical, the Prince and the Opposition are so
+too.  We have had but one division yet in the House, which was
+on the Duke of Newcastle's interfering in the Seaford
+election.  The numbers were, 247 for the court, against 96.
+But I think it very probable that, in a little time, a
+stronger opposition will be formed, for the Prince has got
+some new and very able speakers; particularly a young Mr.
+Potter,(1402) son of the last Archbishop, who promises very
+greatly; the world is already matching him against Mr. Pitt.
+
+I sent Niccolini the letter; and here is another from him.  I
+have not seen him this winter, nor heard of him: he is of very
+little consequence, when there is any thing else that is.
+
+
+I have lately had Lady Mary Wortley's Eclogues(1403)
+published; but they don't please, though so excessively good.
+I say so confidently, for Mr. Chute agrees with me: he says,
+for the epistle to Arthur Gray,(1404) scarce any woman could
+have written it, and no man; for a man who had had experience
+enough to paint such sentiments so well, would not have had
+warmth enough left.  Do you know any thing of Lady Mary? her
+adventurer son(1405) is come into Parliament, but has not
+opened.  Adieu! my dear child: nous nous reverrons un jour!
+
+(1401) Lord Orford, the eldest brother of Horace Walpole.-D.
+
+
+(1402) Thomas, second son of Dr. Potter, Archbishop of
+Canterbury, was appointed secretary to the Princess of Wales,
+in which post he remained till the death of the Prince: he
+made two celebrated speeches on the Seaford election, and on
+the contest between Aylesbury and Buckingham for the summer
+assizes; but did not long support the character here given of
+him. [In 1757, he was made joint vice-treasurer of Ireland,
+and died in June 1759.  Several letters, addressed by him to
+Mr. Pitt, will be found in the first volume of the Chatham
+Correspondence.)
+
+(1403) Some of those Eclogues had been printed long before:
+they were now published, with other of her poems, by Dodsley,
+in quarto, and soon after, with others, reprinted in his
+Miscellany. [They will be found in Lord Wharncliffe's edition
+of Lady Mary's Works, vol. iii. p. 350.]
+
+(1404) The epistle was from Arthur Grey, the footman, and
+addressed to Mrs. Murray, after his condemnation for
+attempting to commit violence.  The man was tried for the
+offence in 1721, and transported.  See Works, vol. i. p. 71,
+and vol. iii. p. 402, where the epistle is printed.-E.
+
+(1405) Edward Wortley Montagu, after a variety of adventures
+in various characters, was taken up -,it Paris with Mr.
+Teaffe, another member of Parliament, and imprisoned in Fort
+L`eveque, for cheating and robbing a Jew.  (Mr.  Montagu was
+confined in the Grand Chatelet from the 31st of October till
+the 2nd of November.  For his own account of the affair, see
+Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 629.]
+
+
+
+541 Letter 246
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 12, 1748.
+
+I have just received a letter from you of the 19th of last
+month, in which you tell me you was just going to complain of
+me, when you received one from me: I fear I am again as much
+to blame, as far as not having written; but if I had, it would
+only be to repeat what you say would be sufficient, but what I
+flatter myself I need not repeat.  The town has been quite
+empty; and the Parliament which met but yesterday, has been
+adjourned these three weeks.  Except elections, and such
+tiresome squabbles, I don't believe it will produce any thing:
+it is all harmony.  From Holland we every day hear bad news,
+which, though we don't believe-at the present, we agree it is
+always likely to be true by tomorrow.  Yet, with no prospect
+of success, and scarce with a possibility of beginning another
+campaign, we are as martial as ever: I don't know whether it
+is, because we think a bad peace worse than a bad war, or that
+we don't look upon misfortunes and defeats abroad as enough
+our own, and are willing to taste of both at home.  We are in
+no present apprehension from domestic disturbances, nor, in my
+private opinion, do I believe the French will attempt us, till
+it is for themselves.  They need not be at the trouble of
+sending us Stuarts; that ingenious house could not have done
+the work of France more effectually than the Pelhams and the
+patriots have.
+
+I will tell you a secret: there is a transaction going on to
+send Sir Charles Williams to Turin; he has asked it. and it is
+pushed.  In my private opinion, I don't believe
+Villettes(1406) will be easily overpowered; though I wish it,
+from loving Sir Charles and from thinking meanly of the other;
+but talents are no passports.  Sir Everard Falkener(1407) is
+going to Berlin.  General Sinclair is presently to succeed
+Wentworth: he is Scotchissime, in all the latitude of the
+word, and not very able; he made a poor business of it at Port
+l'Orient.
+
+Lord Coke(1408) has demolished himself very fast: I mean his
+character: you know he was married but last spring; he is
+always drunk, has lost immense sums at play, and seldom goes
+home to his wife till early in the morning.  The world is
+vehement on her side; and not only her family, but his own,
+give him up.  At present, matters are patching up by the
+mediation of my brother, but I think can never go on: she
+married him extremely against her will, and he is at least an
+out-pensioner of Bedlam: his mother's family have many of them
+been mad.
+
+I thank you, I have received the eagle's head: the bill is
+broken off individually in the same spot with the original;
+but, as the piece is not lost, I believe it will serve.
+
+I should never have expected you to turn Lorrain:(1409) is
+your Madame de Givrecourt a successor(1410) of my sister? I
+think you hint so.  Where is the Princess, that you are so
+reduced?  Adieu! my dear child.  I don't say a kind word to
+you, because you seem to think it necessary, for assuring you
+of the impossibility of my ever forgetting, or loving you
+less.
+
+(1406) Minister at Turin, and afterwards in Switzerland.
+
+(1407) He had been ambassador at Constantinople: he was not
+sent to Berlin, but was secretary to the Duke, and one of the
+general postmasters.
+
+(1408) Edward, only son of Thomas, Earl of Leicester, married
+Mary, youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll, from whom he
+was parted.  He died in 1752.
+
+(1409) The Emperor kept a Lorrain regiment at Florence; but
+there was little intercourse between the two nations.
+
+(1410) With Count Richcourt.
+
+
+
+542 Letter 247
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Jan. 26, 1748.
+
+I have again talked over with our Chute the affair of Venice;
+besides seeing no practicability in it, we think you will not
+believe that Sir James Grey will be so simple as to leave
+Venice, whither with difficulty he obtained to be sent, when
+you hear that Mr. Legge(1411) has actually kissed hands, and
+sets out on Friday for 'Berlin, as envoy extraordinary and
+plenipotentiary.  We thought Sir Everard Falkener Sure; but
+this has come forth very unexpectedly. Legge is certainly a
+wiser choice'-, nobody has better parts; and if art and
+industry can obtain success, I know no one would use more: but
+I don't think that the King of Prussia,' with half parts and
+much cunning, is so likely to be the dupe of more parts and as
+much cunning-, as the people with whom Legge has so
+prosperously pushed his fortune.  My father was fond of him to
+the greatest degree of partiality, till he endeavoured to have
+a nearer tie than flattery gave him, by trying to marry Lady
+Mary: after that my lord could never bear his name.  Since
+that. he has wiggled himself in with the Pelhams, by being the
+warmest friend and servant of their new allies, and is the
+first favourite of the little Duke of Bedford.  Mr.
+Villiers(1412) was desired to go to Berlin, but refused and
+proposed himself for the treasury, till they could find
+something else for him.  They laughed at this; but he is as
+fit for one employment as the other.  We have a stronger
+reason than any I have mentioned against going to Venice;
+which is, the excuse it might give to the Vine,(1413) to
+forget we were in being; an excuse which his hatred of our
+preferment would easily make him embrace, as more becoming a
+good Christian brother!
+
+The ministry are triumphant in their Parliament: there have
+been great debates on the new taxes, but no division: the
+House is now sitting on the Wareham election, espousing George
+Pitt's uncle,(1414 one of the most active Jacobites, but of
+the coalition and in place, against Drax,(1415) a great
+favourite of the Prince, but who has already lost one question
+on this election by a hundred.
+
+Admiral Vernon has just published a series of letters to
+himself(1416) among which are several of Lord Bath, written in
+the height of his opposition: there is one in particular, to
+congratulate Vernon on taking Portobello, wherein this great
+Virtuous patriot advises him to do nothing more,(1417)
+assuring him that his inactivity would all be imputed to my
+father.  One does not hear that Lord Bath has called him to
+any account for this publication, though as villainous to
+these correspondents as one of them was in writing such a
+letter; or as the Admiral himself was, who used to betray all
+his instructions to this enemy of the government.  Nobody can
+tell why he has published these letters now, unless to get
+money.  What ample revenge every year gives my father against
+his patriot enemies! Had he never deserved well
+himself',posterity must still have the greatest opinion of
+him, when they see on what rascal foundations were built all
+the pretences to virtue which were set up in opposition to
+him! Pultney counselling the Admiral who was entrusted with
+the war not to pursue it, that its mismanagement might be
+imputed to the minister; the Admiral communicating his orders
+to such an enemy of his country! This enemy triumphant,
+seizing honours and employments for himself and friends, which
+he had @ avowedly disclaimed; other friends, whom he had
+neglected, pursuing him for gratifying his
+ambition-accomplishing his ruin, and prostituting themselves
+even more than he had done! all of them blowing up a
+rebellion, by every art that could blacken the King in the
+eyes of the nation, and some of them promoting the trials and
+sitting in judgment on the wretches whom they had misled and
+deserted!  How black a picture! what odious portraits, when
+time shall write the proper names under them!
+
+As famous as you think your Mr. Mill, I can find nobody who
+ever heard his name.  Projectors make little noise here; and
+even any one who only has made a noise, is forgotten as soon
+as out of sight.  The knaves and fools of the day are too
+numerous to leave room to talk of yesterday.  The pains that
+people, who have a mind to be named, are forced to take to be
+very particular, would convince you how difficult it is to
+make a lasting impression on such a town as this.  Ministers,
+authors, wits, fools, patriots, prostitutes, scarce bear a
+second edition.  Lord Bolingbroke, Sarah Malcolm,(1418) and
+old Marlborough. are never mentioned but by elderly folks to
+their grandchildren, who had never heard of them.  What would
+last Pannoni's(1419) a twelvemonth is forgotten here ]it
+twelve hours.  Good night!
+
+(1411) Henry fourth son of the Earl of Dartmouth, was made
+secretary of the treasury by Sir Robert Walpole; and was
+afterwards surveyor of the roads, a lord of the admiralty, a
+lord of the treasury, treasurer of the navy, and chancellor of
+the exchequer.  He had been bred to the sea, and was for a
+little time minister at Berlin.  The Duke of Newcastle, in a
+letter to Mr. Pitt, of the 18th of January, says, " I have
+thought of a person, to whom the King has this day readily
+agreed.  It is Mr. Harry Legge.  There, is capacity,
+integrity, quality, rank and address." See Chatham
+Correspondence, vol. i. p. 27.-E.
+
+(1412) Coxe, in his Memoirs of lord Walpole, says, that Mr.
+Legge, though a man of great talents for business, "was unfit
+for a foreign mission, and of a character ill suited to the
+temper of that powerful casuist, whose extraordinary dogmas
+were supported by 140,000 of the most effectual but convincing
+arguments in the world." Vol. ii.  II. 304.-E.
+
+(1413) Thomas Villiers, brother of the Earl of Jersey, had
+been minister It Dresden, and was afterwards a lord of the
+admiralty.
+
+(1414) Anthony Chute, of the Vine, in Hampshire, elder brother
+of J. Chute; died in 1754.
+
+(1415) John Pitt, one of the lords of trade.
+
+1416) Henry Drax, the Prince's secretary.  He died in 1755.
+
+(1417) The publication was entitled " Letters to an Honest
+Sailor."  Walpole's inference is not borne out by the letter
+itself.  Pulteney's words; are, "Pursue your stroke, but venture
+not losing the honour of it by too much intrepidity.  Should you
+make no more progress than you have done, no one could blame
+you but those persons only who ought to have sent some land-
+forces with you, and did not.  To their slackness it will be
+very justly imputed by all mankind, should you make no further
+progress till Lord Cathcart joins you."-E.
+
+(1418) A washerwoman at the Temple, executed for three
+murders. (She was executed in March 1733, opposite Mitre
+Court, in Fleet Street.  A portrait of her is given in the
+Gentleman's Magazine for that year.  So great was the public
+expectation for her confession, that the manuscript of it was
+sold for twenty pounds.-E.)
+
+(1419) The coffee-house at Florence.
+
+
+
+544 Letter 248
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Feb. 16, 1748.
+
+I am going to tell you nothing but what Mr. Chute has told you
+already,-that my Lord Chesterfield has resigned the seals,
+that the Duke of Newcastle has change] his province, and that
+the Duke of Bedford is the new secretary of state.  I think
+you need be under no apprehension from this change; I should
+be frightened enough if you had the least reason, but I am
+quite at ease.  Lord Chesterfield, who I believe had no
+quarrel but with his partner, is gone to Bath; and his
+youngest brother, John Stanhope,(1420) comes into the
+admiralty, where Sandwich is now first lord.  There seems to
+be some hitch in Legge's embassy; I believe we were overhasty.
+Proposals of peace were expected to be laid before Parliament,
+but that talk is vanished.  The Duke of Newcastle, who is
+going greater lengths in every thing for which he overturned
+Lord Granville, is all military; and makes more courts than
+one by this disposition.  The Duke goes to Holland this week,
+and I hear we are going to raise another million.  There are
+prodigious discontents in the army: the town got a list of a
+hundred and fifty officers who desired at once to resign, but
+I believe this was exaggerated.  We are great and very exact
+disciplinarians; our partialities are very strong, especially
+on the side of aversions, and none of these articles tally
+exactly with English tempers.  Lord Robert Bertie(1421)
+received a reprimand the other day by an aide-de-camp for
+blowing his nose as he relieved the guard under a
+window;(1422) where very exact notice is constantly taken of
+very small circumstances.
+
+We divert ourselves extremely this winter; plays, balls,
+masquerades, and pharaoh are all in fashion.  The Duchess of
+Bedford has given a great ball, to which the King came with
+thirty masks.  The Duchess of Queensberry is to give him a
+masquerade.  Operas are the only consumptive entertainment.
+There was a new comedy last Saturday, which succeeds, called
+The Foundling.  I like the old Conscious lovers better, and
+that not much.  The story is the same, only that the Bevil of
+the new piece is in more hurry, and consequently more natural.
+It Is extremely well acted by Garrick and Barry, Mrs. Cibber
+and Mrs. Woffington.  My sister was brought to bed last night
+of another boy.  Sir C. Williams, I hear, grows more likely to
+go to Turin: you will have a more agreeable correspondent than
+your present voluminous brother.(1423)  Adieu!
+
+(1420) John Stanhope, third son of Philip, third Earl of
+Chesterfield, successively M. P. for Nottingham and Dorhy.  He
+died in 1748.-D.
+
+(1421) Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert, first Duke
+of Ancaster, by his second wife.  He became a general in the
+army and colonel of the second regiment of Guards, and was
+also a lord of the bedchamber and a member of parliament.  He
+died in 1732.-D.
+
+(1422) The Duke's.
+
+(1423) Mr. Villettes.
+
+
+
+545 Letter 249
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, March 11, 1748.
+
+I have had nothing lately to tell you but illnesses and
+distempers: there is what they call a miliary fever raging,
+which has taken off a great many people, It was scarce known
+till within these seven or eight years, but apparently
+increases every spring and autumn.  They don't know how to
+treat it, but think that they have discovered that bleeding is
+bad for it.  The young Duke of Bridgewater(1424) is dead of
+it. The Marquis of Powis(1425) is dead too, I don't know of
+what: but though a Roman Catholic, he has left his whole
+fortune to Lord herbert, the next male of his family, but a
+very distant relation.  It is twelve thousand pounds a-year,
+with a very rich mine upon it; there is a debt, but the money
+and personal estate will pay it.  After Lord Herbert(1426) and
+his brother, who are both unmarried, the estate is to go to
+the daughter of Lord Waldegrave's sister, by her first
+husband, who was the Marquis's brother.
+
+In defiance of all these deaths, we are all diversions; Lady
+Keith(1427) and a company of Scotch nobility have formed a
+theatre, and have acted The Revenge several times; I can't say
+excellently: the Prince and Princess were at it last night.
+The Duchess of Queensberry gives a masquerade tonight, in
+hopes of drawing the King to it; but he will not go.  I do;
+but must own it is wondrous foolish to dress one's self out in
+a becoming dress in cold blood.  There has been a new comedy
+called The Foundling;(1428) far from good, but it took.  Lord
+Hobart and some more young men made a party to damn it, merely
+for the love of damnation.  The Templars espoused the play,
+and went around with syringes charged with stinking oil, and
+with sticking plaisters; but it did not come to action.
+Garrick was impertinent, and the pretty men gave over their
+plot the moment they grew to be in the right.
+
+I must now notify to you the approaching espousals of the most
+illustrious Prince Pigwiggin with Lady Rachel Cavendish, third
+daughter of the Duke of Devonshire: the victim does not
+dislike it! my uncle makes great settlements; and the Duke is
+to get a peerage for Pigwiggin upon the foot that the father
+cannot be spared out of the House of Commons!  Can you bear
+this old buffoon making himself of consequence, and imitating
+my father!
+
+The Princess of Orange has got a son, and we have taken a
+convoy that was going to Bergen-op-zoom; two trifling
+occurrences that are most pompously exaggerated, when The
+whole of both is, that the Dutch, who before sold themselves
+to France, will now grow excellent patriots when they have a
+master entailed upon them; and we shall run ourselves more
+into danger, on having got all advantage which the French
+don't feel.
+
+Violent animosities are sprung up in the House of Commons upon
+a sort of private affair between the Chief Justice Willes and
+the Grenvilles, who have engaged the ministry in an
+extraordinary step, of fixing the assizes at Buckingham by act
+of parliament in their favour.  We have had three long days
+upon it in our House, and it is not yet over; but though they
+will carry it both there and in the lords, it is by a far
+smaller majority than any they have had in this
+Parliament.(1429)  The other day, Dr. Lee and Mr. Potter had
+made two very strong speeches @-against Mr. Pelham on this
+subject; he rose with the greatest emotion, fell into the most
+ridiculous passion, was near crying, and not knowing how to
+return it on the two fell upon the Chief Justice (who was not
+present), and accused him of ingratitude.  The eldest Willes
+got up extremely moved, but with great propriety and
+cleverness told Mr. Pelham that his father had no obligation
+to any man now in the ministry; that he had been obliged to
+one of' the greatest Ministers that ever was, who is now no
+more; that the person who accused his father of ingratitude
+was now leagued with the very men who had ruined that
+minister, to whom he (Mr.  Pelham) owed his advancement, and
+without whom he would have been nothing!" This was
+dangers!-not a word of reply.
+
+I had begun my letter before the masquerade, but had not time
+to finish it: there Were not above one hundred persons; the
+dresses pretty; the Duchess as mad as you remember her.  She
+had stuck up orders about dancing, as you see in public
+bowling-greens; turned half the company out at twelve; kept
+those she liked to supper; and, in short, contrived to do an
+agreeable thing in the rudest manner imaginable; besides
+having dressed her husband in a Scotch plaid, which just now
+is One of the things in the world that is reckoned most
+offensive; but you know we are all mad, so good night!
+
+(1424) John Egerton, second Duke of Bridgewater, eldest
+surviving son of Scroop, the first Duke, by his second wife,
+Lady Rachel Russell. He was succeeded by his younger brother
+Francis; upon whose death, in 1803, the dukedom of Bridgewater
+became extinct.-D.
+
+(1425) William Herbert, second Marquis of Powis, upon whose
+death the title became extinct.  His father, William, the
+First Marquis, was created Duke of Powis and Marquis of
+Montgomery, by James the Second, after his abdication, which
+titles were in consequence never allowed.-]).
+
+(1426) Henry Arthur Herbert, Lord Herbert, afterwards created
+Earl of Powis, married the young lady on whom the estate was
+entailed: his brother died unmarried.
+
+(1427) Caroline, eldest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll,
+married the eldest son of the Duke of Buccleuch, who dying
+before his father, she afterwards married Charles Townshend,
+second son of the Lord Viscount Townshend. (She was created
+Baroness Greenwich in 1767.-D.
+
+(1428) By Edward Moore.  It met with tolerable success during
+its run, but on the first night of its appearance the
+character of Faddle gave considerable disgust, and was much
+curtailed in the ensuing representation.-E.
+
+(1429) The bill passed the Commons on the 15th of March, by
+155 to 108.  For the debate thereon, see Parliamentary
+History, vol. xiv. p. 206.-E.
+
+
+
+547 Letter 250
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, April 29, 1748.
+
+I know I have not writ to you the Lord knows when, but I
+waited for something to tell you, and I have now what there
+was not much reason to expect.  The preliminaries to the peace
+are actually signed"(1430) by the English, Dutch, and French:
+the Queen,(1431) who would remain the only sufferer, though
+vastly less than she could expect, protests against this
+treaty, and the Sardinian minister has refused to sign too,
+till further orders.  Spain is not mentioned, but France
+answers for them, and that they shall give us a new assiento.
+The armistice is for six weeks, with an exception to
+Maestricht; upon which the Duke sent Lord George Sackville to
+Marshal Saxe to tell him that, as they are so near being
+friends, he shall not endeavour to raise the siege and spill
+more blood, but hopes the marshal will give the garrison good
+terms, as they have behaved so bravely.  The conditions
+settled are a general restitution on all sides, as Modena to
+its Duke, Flanders to the Queen, the Dutch towns to the Dutch,
+Cape Breton to France, and Final to the Genoese; but the
+Sardinian to have the cessions made to him by the Queen, who,
+you see, is to be made observe the treaty of Worms, though we
+do not.  Parma and Placentia are to be given to Don Philip;
+Dunkirk to remain as it is, on the land-side; but to be
+Utrecht'd(1432) again to the sea.  The Pretender to be
+renounced, with all his descendants, male and female, even in
+stronger terms than by the quadruple alliance; and the
+cessation of arms to take place in all other parts of the
+world, as in the year 1712.  The contracting powers agree to
+think of means of making the other powers come into this
+treaty, in case they refuse.
+
+This is the substance; and wonderful it is what can make the
+French give us such terms, or why they have lost so much blood
+and treasure to so little purpose! for they have destroyed
+very little of the fortifications in Flanders.  Monsieur de
+St. Severin told Lord Sandwich, that he had full powers to
+sign now, but that the same courier that should carry our
+refusal, was to call at Namur and Bergen-op-zoom, where are
+mines under all the works, which were immediately to be blown
+up.  There is no accounting for this, but from the King'S
+aversion to go to the army, and to Marshal Saxe's fear of
+losing his power with the loss of a battle.  He told Count
+Flemming, the Saxon minister, who asked him if the French were
+in earnest in their offer of peace, "Il est vrai, nous
+demandons la paix comme des l`aches, et ne pouvons pas
+l'obtenir."
+
+Stocks rise; the ministry are in spirits, and ;e s'en faut but
+we shall admire this peace as our own doing!  I believe two
+reasons that greatly advanced it are, the King's wanting to go
+to Hanover, and the Duke's wanting to go into a salivation.
+
+We had last night the most magnificent masquerade that ever
+was seen: it was by Subscription at the Haymarket: every body
+who subscribed five guineas had four tickets.  There were
+about seven hundred people, all in chosen and very fine
+dresses.  The supper was in two rooms, besides those for the
+King and Prince, who, with the foreign ministers, had tickets
+given them.
+
+You don't tell me whether the seal of which you sent me the
+impression, is to be sold: I think it fine, but not equal to
+the price which you say was paid for it.  What is it? Homer or
+Pindar?
+
+I am very miserable at the little prospect you have of success
+in your own affair: I think the person(1433) you employed has
+used you scandalously. I would have you write to my uncle; but
+my applying to him would be far from doing you service.  Poor
+Mr. Chute has
+got so bad a cold that he could not go last night to the
+masquerade.  Adieu! my dear child! there is nothing -well that
+I don't wish you, but my wishes are very ineffectual!
+
+(1430) The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.-D.
+
+(1431) Of Hungary.-D.
+
+(1432) That is, the works destroyed, as they were after the
+treaty of Utrecht.-D.
+
+(1433) Mr. Stone, the Duke of Newcastle's private
+secretary.-E.
+
+
+
+549 Letter 251
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+May 18, 1748.
+
+Here I am with the poor Chutehed,(1434) who has put on a shoe
+but to-day for the first time.  He sits at the receipt of
+custom, and one passes most part, of the day here; the other
+part I have the misfortune to pass en Pigwiggin.  The ceremony
+of dining is not over yet: I cannot say that either the Prince
+or the Princess look the comelier for what has happened.  The
+town says, my Lady Anson(1435) has no chance for looking
+different from what she did before she was married: and they
+have a story of a gentleman going to the Chancellor to assure
+him, that if he gave his daughter to the Admiral, he would be
+obliged hereafter to pronounce a sentence of dissolution of
+the marriage.  The Chancellor replied, that his daughter had
+been taught to think of the union of the soul, not of the
+body: the gentleman then made the same confidence to the
+Chancelloress, and received much such an answer: that her
+daughter had been bred to submit herself to the will of God.
+I don't at all give you all this for true; but there is an
+ugly circumstance in his voyages of his not having the
+curiosity to see a beautiful captive, that he took on board a
+Spanish ship.  There is no record of Scipio's having been in
+Doctors' Commons.  I have been reading these voyages, and find
+them very silly and contradictory.  He sets out with telling
+you, that he had no soldiers sent with him but old invalids
+without legs or arms; and then in the middle of' the book
+there is a whole chapter to tell you what they would have done
+if they had set out two months sooner, and that was no less
+than conquering Peru and Mexico -with this disabled army.  At
+the end there is an account of the neglect he received from
+the Viceroy of Canton, till he and forty of his sailors put
+out a great fire in that city, which the Chinese and five
+hundred firemen could not do, which he says proceeded from
+their awkwardness; a new character of the Chinese! He was then
+admitted to an audience, and found two hundred men at the gate
+of the city, and ten thousand in the square before the palace,
+all new dressed for the purpose.  This is about as true as his
+predecessor Gulliver * -* * out the fire at Lilliput.  The
+King is still wind-bound; the fashionable bon mot is, that the
+Duke of Newcastle has tied a stone about his neck and sent him
+to sea.  The city grows furious about the peace; there is one
+or two very uncouth Hanover articles, besides a persuasion of
+a pension to the Pretender, which is so very ignominious, that
+I don't know how to persuade myself it is true.  The Duke of
+Argyle has made them give him three places for life of a
+thousand and twelve hundred a-year for three of his court, to
+compensate for their making a man president of the session
+against his inclination.  the Princess of Wales has got a
+confirmed jaundice, but they reckon her much better.  Sir
+Harry Calthrop is gone mad: he walked down Pall Mall t'other
+day with his red riband tied about his hair said he was going
+to the King, and would not submit to be blooded till they told
+him the King commanded it.
+
+I went yesterday to see Marshal Wade's house, which is selling
+by auction: it is worse contrived on the inside than is
+conceivable, all to humour the beauty of the front.  My Lord
+Chesterfield said, that to be sure he could not live in it,
+but intended to take the house over against it to look at it.
+It is literally true, that all the direction he gave my Lord
+Burlington was to have a place for a cartoon of Rubens that he
+bought in Flanders; but my lord found it necessary to have so
+many correspondent doors, that there was no room at last for
+the picture; and the Marshal was forced to sell the picture to
+my father: it is now at Houghton.(1436)
+
+As Windsor is so charming, and particularly as you have got so
+agreeable a new neighbour at Frogmore, to be sure you cannot
+wish to have the prohibition taken off on your coming to
+Strawberry Hill.  However, as I am an admirable Christian, and
+as you seem to repent of your errors, I will give you leave to
+be so happy as to come to me when you like, though I would
+advise it to be after you have been at Roel,(1437) winch you
+would not be able to bear after my paradise.  I have told you
+a vast deal of something or other, which you will scarce be
+able to read; for now Mr. Chute has the gout, he keeps himself
+very low and lives upon very thin ink.  My compliments to all
+your people.  Yours ever.
+
+(1434) John Chute, Esq. of the Vine of Hampshire.
+
+(1435) Lord Anson married, on the 25th of April, Lady
+Elizabeth Yorke, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's eldest daughter,
+an ingenious woman and a poetess.  She died without issue in
+1760.-E.
+
+(1436) Walpole gives the following account of this picture, in
+his description of Houghton:- "Meleager and Atalanta, a
+cartoon, by Rubens, larger than life; brought out of Flanders
+by Wade: it being designed for tapestry, all the weapons are
+in the left hand of the figure.  For the story, see Ovid's
+Metamorphoses, lib. 3. When General Wade built his house in
+Burlington Garden, Lord Burlington gave the design for it."-E
+
+(1437) A house of Mr. Montagu's in Gloucestershire.
+
+
+
+550 Letter 252
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Arlington Street, May 26, 1748.
+
+Good-by to YOU!  I am going to my Roel too.  I was there
+yesterday to dine, and it looked so delightful, think what you
+will, that I shall go there to-morrow to settle, and shall
+leave this odious town to the * * *, to the regency, and the
+dowagers; to my lady Townshend, who is not going to Windsor,
+to old Cobham, who is not going out of the world yet, and to
+the Duchess of Richmond, who does not -,go out with her
+twenty-fifth pregnancy: I shall leave too more disagreeable
+Ranelagh, which is so crowded, that going there t'other night
+in a string of coaches we had a stop of six-and-thirty
+Minutes.  Princess Emily, finding no marriage articles for her
+settled at the congress, has at last determined to be old and
+out of danger; and has accordingly ventured to Ranelagh to the
+great improvement of the pleasures of the place.  The Prince
+has given a silver cup to be rowed for, which carried every
+body up the Thames. and afterwards there was a great ball at
+Carlton house. There have two good events happened at that
+court: the town was alarmed t'other morning by the firing of
+guns, which proved to be only from a large merchantman come
+into the river.  The city construed it into the King's return,
+and the peace broke; but Chancellor Bootle and the Bishop of
+Oxford, who loves a tabour next to promoting the cause of it,
+concluded the Princess was brought to bed, and went to court
+upon it.  Bootle, finding the Princess dressed, said, "I have
+always heard, Madam, that women in your country have very easy
+labours; but I could not have believed it was so well as I
+see." The other story is of Prince Edward.  The King, before
+he went away, sent Stainberg to examine the Prince's children
+in their learning.  The Baron told Prince Edward, that he
+should tell the King, what great proficiency his Highness had
+made in his Latin, but that he wished he would be a little
+more perfect in his German grammar, and that would be of
+signal use to him.  The child squinted at him, and said,
+"German grammar! why any dull child can learn that." There, I
+have told you royalties enough!
+
+My Pigwiggin dinners are all over, for which I truly say
+grace.  I have had difficulties to keep my countenance at the
+wonderful clumsiness and uncouth nicknames that the Duke has
+for all his offspring: Mrs. Hopefull, Mrs. Tiddle, Puss, Cat,
+and Toe, sound so strange in the middle of a most formal
+banquet! The day the peace was signed, his grace could find
+nobody to communicate joy with him: he drove home, and bawled
+out of the chariot to Lady Rachael, "Cat! Cat!" She ran down,
+staring over the balustrade; he cried, "Cat! Cat! the peace is
+made, and you must be very glad, for I am very glad."
+
+I send you the only new pamphlet worth reading, and this is
+more the matter than the manner.  My compliments to all your
+tribe.  Adieu!
+
+P. S. The divine Asheton has got an ague, which he says
+prevents his coming amongst us.
+
+
+
+551 Letter 253
+To sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, June 7, 1748.
+
+Don't reproach me in your own Mind for not writing, but
+reproach the world for doing nothing; for making peace as
+slowly as they made war.  When any body commits an event, I am
+ready enough to tell it you; but I have always declared
+against inventing news; when I do, I will set up a newspaper.
+
+The Duke of Newcastle is not gone; he has kissed hands, and
+talks of going this week: the time presses, and he has not
+above three days left to fall dangerously ill.  There are a
+thousand wagers laid against his going: he has hired a
+transport, for the yacht s not big enough to convey all the
+tables and chairs and conveniences that he trails along with
+him, and which he seems to think don't grow out of England.  I
+don't know how he proposes to lug them through Holland and
+Germany, though any objections that the map can make to his
+progress don't count, for he is literally so ignorant, that
+when one goes to take leave of him, he asks your commands into
+the north, concluding that Hanover is north of Great Britain,
+because it is in the northern province, which he has just
+taken: you will scarce believe this, but upon my honour it is
+true.
+
+The preliminaries wait the accession of Spain, before they can
+ripen into peace. Niccolini goes to Aix-la-Chapelle, and will
+be much disappointed if his advice is not asked there: he
+talks of being at Florence in October.
+
+Sir William Stanhope has just given a great ball to Lady
+Petersham, to whom he takes extremely, since his daughter
+married herself to Mr. Ellis,(1438) and as the Petershams are
+relations, they propose to be his heirs.  The Chuteheds agreed
+with me, that the house, which is most magnificently
+furnished, all the ornaments designed by Kent, and the whole
+festino, puts us more in mind of Florence, than any thing we
+had seen here.  There were silver-pharaoh and whist for the
+ladies that did not dance, deep basset and quinze for the men;
+the supper very fine.
+
+I am now returning to my villa, where I have been making some
+alterations: you shall hear from me from Strawberry Hill,
+which I have found out in my lease is the old name of my
+house; so pray, never call it Twickenham again.  I like to be
+there better than I have liked being any where since I came to
+England.  I sigh after Florence, and wind up all my prospects
+with the thought of returning there.  I have days when I even
+set about contriving a scheme for going to you, and though I
+don't love to put you upon expecting me, I cannot help telling
+you, that I wish more than ever to be with you again.  I can
+truly say, that I never was happy but at Florence, and you
+must allow that it is very natural to wish to be happy once
+more.  Adieu!
+
+(1438) The Right Hon.  Welbore Ellis, afterwards created Lord
+Mendip.  His first wife was Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir
+William Stanhope, K. B. She died in 1761.-D.
+
+
+
+553 Letter 254
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1439)
+Strawberry Hill, June 27th, 1748.
+
+Dear Harry,
+I have full as little matter for writing as you can find in a
+camp.  I do not call myself farmer or country gentleman; for
+though I have all the ingredients to compose those characters,
+yet, like the ten pieces of card in the trick you found out, I
+don't know how to put them together.  But, in short, planting
+and fowls and cows and sheep are my whole business, and as
+little amusing to relate to anybody else as the events of a
+stillborn campaign.  If I write to any body, I am forced to
+live upon what news I hoarded before I came out of town;
+and the first article of that, as I believe it is in every
+body's gazette, must be about my Lord Coke.  They say, that
+since he has been at Sunning Hill with Lady Mary,(1440 she has
+made him a declaration in form, that she hates him, that she
+always did, and that she always will.  This seems to have been
+a very unnecessary notification.  However, as you know his
+part is to be extremely in love, he is very miserable upon it;
+and relating his woes at White's, probably at seven in the
+morning, he was advised to put an end to all this history and
+shoot himself-an advice
+they would not have given him if he were not insolvent.  He
+has promised to consider of it.
+
+The night before I left London, I called at the Duchess of
+Richmond's, who has stayed at home with the apprehension of a
+miscarriage.  The porter told me there was no drawing-room
+till Thursday.  In short, he did tell me what amounted to as
+much, that her grace did not see company till Thursday, then
+she should see every body: no excuse, that she was gone out or
+not well.  I did not stay till Thursday to kiss hands, but
+went away to Vauxhall: as I was coming out, I was overtaken by
+a great light, and retired under the trees of Marble Hall to
+see what it should be.  There came a long procession of Prince
+Lobkowitz's footmen in very rich new liveries, the two last
+bearing torches; and after them the Prince himself', in a new
+sky-blue watered tabby Coat, with gold buttonholes and a
+magnificent gold waistcoat fringed, leading Madame
+ambassadrice de Venise in a green sack with a straw hat,
+attended by my Lady Tyrawley, Wall, the private
+ Spanish agent, the two Miss Molyneux's, and some other men.
+They went into one of the Prince of Wales's barges, had
+another barge filled with violins and hautboys, and an open
+boat with drums and trumpets. This was one of the f`etes des
+adieux.  The nymph weeps all the morning and says she is sure
+she shall be poisoned by her husband's relations when she
+returns for her behaviour with this Prince.
+
+I have no other news, but that Mr. Fitzpatrick has married his
+Sukey Young, and is very impatient to have the Duchess of
+Bedford come to town to visit her new relation.
+
+Is not my Lady Ailesbury(1442) weary of her travels? Pray make
+her my compliments,-unless she has made you any such
+declaration as Lady Mary Coke's.  I am delighted with your
+description of the bedchamber of the House of Orange, as I did
+not see it; but the sight itself must have been very odious,
+as the hero and heroine are so extremely ugly.  I shall give
+it my Lady Townshend as a new topic of matrimonial satire.
+
+Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary have been with me two or three
+days, and are now gone to Sunning.  I only tell you this, to
+hint that my house will hold a married pair; indeed, it is not
+quite large enough for people who lie, like the patriarchs,
+with their whole genealogy, and men-servants, and
+maid-servants, and oxes, and asses, in the same chamber with
+them.  Adieu! do let this be the last letter, and come home.
+
+(1440) Now first printed.
+
+(1441) See ant`e, p. 498 (Letter 215).-E.
+
+(1442) On the 19th of the preceding December, Mr. Conway had
+married Caroline, widow of Charles Bruce, Earl of Ailesbury,
+and only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell,
+afterwards fourth Duke of Argyle.-E.
+
+
+
+
+554 Letter 255
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Mistley, July 14, 1748.
+
+
+I would by no means resent your silence while you was at Pisa,
+if it were not very convenient; but I cannot resist 'the
+opportunity of taking it ill, when it serves to excuse my
+being much more to blame; and therefore, pray mind, I am very
+angry, and have not written, because you had quite left me
+off-and if I say nothing from hence,(1443) do not imagine it
+is because I am at a gentleman's house whom you don't know,
+and threescore miles from London, and because I have been but
+three days in London for above this month: I could say a great
+deal if I pleased, but I am very angry, and will not.  I know
+several pieces of politics from Ipswich that would let you
+into the whole secret of the peace; and a quarrel at Denham
+assembly, that is capable of involving all Europe in a new
+war-nay, I know that Admiral Vernon(1444) knows of what you
+say has happened in the West Indies, and of which nobody else
+in England knows a word-but please to remember that you have
+been at the baths, and don't deserve that I should tell you a
+tittle-nor will I. In revenge, I will tell you some- thing
+that happened to me four months ago, and which I would not
+tell you now. if I had not forgot to tell it you when it
+happened-nay, I don't tell it you now for yourself, only that
+you may tell it the Princess: I truly and seriously this
+winter won and was paid a milleleva at pharaoh; literally
+received a thousand and twenty-three sixpences for one: an
+event that never happened in the annals of pharaoh, but to
+Charles II.'s Queen Dowager, as the Princess herself informed
+me: ever since I have treated myself as Queen Dowager, and
+have some thoughts of being drawn so.
+
+There are no good anecdotes yet arrived of the Duke of
+Newcastle's travels, except that at a review which the Duke
+made for him, as he passed through the army, he hurried about
+with his glass up to his eye, crying, "Finest troops! finest
+troops! greatest General!" then broke through the ranks when
+he spied any Sussex man, kissed him in all his
+accoutrements,-my dear Tom such an one! chattered of Lewes
+races; then back to the Duke with "Finest troops! greatest
+General!"-and in short was a much better show than any review.
+
+The Duke is expected over immediately; I don't know if to
+stay, or why he comes-I mean, I do know, but am angry, and
+will not tell.
+
+I have seen Sir James Grey, who speaks of you with great
+affection, and recommends himself extremely to me by it, when
+I am not angry with you; but I cannot possibly be reconciled
+till I have finished this letter, for I have nothing but this
+quarrel to talk of, and I think I have worn that out-so adieu!
+you odious, shocking, abominable monster!
+
+(1443) Mistley near Manningtree, in Essex, the seat of Richard
+Rigby, Esq.
+
+
+(1444) He lived near Ipswich.
+
+
+
+555 Letter 256
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Strawberry Hill, ---
+
+I beg you will let me know whether the peace has arrived in
+Italy, or if you have heard any thing of it; for in this part
+of the world nobody can tell what has become of it.  They say
+the Empress Queen has stopped it; that she will not take back
+the towns in Flanders, which she says she knows are very
+convenient for us, but of no kind of use to her, and that she
+chooses to keep what she has got in Italy.  However, we are
+determined to have peace at any rate, and the conditions must
+jumble themselves together as they can.  These are the
+politics of Twickenham, my metropolis; and, to tell you the
+truth, I believe pretty near as good as you can have any
+where.
+
+As to my own history, the scene is at present a little gloomy:
+my Lord Orford is in an extreme bad state of health, not to
+say a dangerous state: my uncle(1445) ' is going off in the
+same way my father did.  I don't pretend to any great feelings
+of affection for two men, because they are dying, for whom it
+is known I had little before, my brother especially having
+been as much my enemy as it was in his power to be; but I
+cannot with indifference see the family torn to pieces, and
+falling into such ruin as I foresee; for should my brother die
+soon, leaving so great a debt, so small an estate to pay it
+off, two great places(1446)
+sinking, and a wild boy of nineteen to succeed, there would be
+an end to the glory of Houghton, which had my father
+proportioned more to his fortune, would probably have a longer
+duration.  This is an unpleasant topic to you who feel for
+us-however, I should not talk of it to one who would not feel.
+Your brother Gal. and I had a very grave conversation
+yesterday morning on this head; he thinks so like you, so
+reasonably and with so much good nature, that I seem to be
+only finishing a discourse that I have already had with you.
+As my fears about Houghton are great, I am a little pleased to
+have finished a slight memorial(1447) of It, a description of
+the pictures, of which I have just printed an hundred, to give
+to particular people: I will send you one, and shall beg Dr.
+Cocchi to accept another.
+
+If I could let myself wish to see you in England, it would be
+to see you here: the little improvements I am making have
+really turned Strawberry Hill into a charming villa: Mr.
+Chute, I hope, will tell you how pleasant it is; I mean
+literally tell you, for we have a glimmering of' a Venetian
+prospect; he is just going from hence to town by water, down
+our Brenta.
+
+You never say a word to me from the Princess, nor any of my
+old friends: I keep up our intimacy in my own mind; for I will
+not part with the idea of seeing Florence again.  Whenever I
+am displeased here, the thoughts of that journey are my
+resource; just as cross would-be devout people, when they have
+quarrelled with this world, begin packing up for the other.
+Adieu!
+
+(1445) Lord Orford did not die till 1751, and old Horace
+Walpole not till 1757.-D.
+
+(1446) Auditor of the exchequer and Master of the buck-hounds.
+
+
+
+
+(1447) "Aedes Walpolianae, or a Description of the Pictures at
+Houghton Hall, in Norfolk," first printed in 1747, and again
+in 1752.
+
+
+
+556 Letter 257
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Mistley, July 25, 1748.
+
+Dear George,
+I have wished you with me extremely: you would have liked what
+I have seen.  I have been to make a visit of two or three days
+to Nugent, and was carried to see the last remains of the
+glory of the old Aubrey de Veres, Earls of Oxford.  They were
+once masters of' almost this entire county, but quite reduced
+even before the extinction of their house: the last Earl's son
+died at a miserable cottage, that I was shown at a distance;
+and I think another of the sisters, besides Lady Mary Vere,
+was forced to live upon her beauty.
+
+Henningham Castle, where Harry the Seventh(1448) was so
+sumptuously banqueted, and imposed that villainous fine for
+his entertainment, is now shrunk to one vast curious tower,
+that stands on a spacious mount raised on a high hill with a
+large fosse.  It commands a fine prospect, and belongs to Mr.
+Ashurst, a rich citizen, who has built a trumpery new house
+close to it.  In the parish church is a fine square monument
+of black marble of one of the Earls; and there are three more
+tombs of the family at Earl's Colne, some miles from the
+castle.  I could see but little of them, as it was very late,
+except that one of the Countesses has a headdress exactly like
+the description of Mount Parnassus, with two tops.  I suppose
+you have heard much of Gosfield, Nugent's seat.  It is
+extremely in fashion, but did not answer to me, though there
+are fine things about it; but being situated in a country that
+is quite blocked up with hills upon hills, and even too much
+wood, it has not an inch of prospect.  The park is to be
+sixteen hundred acres, and is bounded with a wood of five
+miles round; and the lake, which is very beautiful, is of
+seventy acres, directly in a line with the house, at the
+bottom of a fine lawn, and broke with very pretty groves, that
+fall down a Slope into it.  The house is vast, built round a
+very old court that has never been fine; the old windows and
+gateway left, and the old gallery, which is a bad narrow room,
+and hung with all the late patriots, but so ill done, that
+they look like caricatures done to expose them, since they
+have so much disgraced the virtues they pretended to.  The
+rest of the house is all modernized, but in patches, and in
+the bad taste that came between the charming venerable Gothic
+and pure architecture.  There is a great deal of good
+furniture, but no one room very fine - no tolerable pictures.
+Her dressing-room is very pretty, and furnished with white
+damask, china, japan, loads of easy chairs, bad pictures, and
+some pretty enamels.  But what charmed me more than all I had
+seen, is the library chimney, which has existed from the
+foundation of the house; over it is an alto-relievo in wood,
+far from being ill done, of the battle of Bosworth Field.  It
+is all white, except the helmets and trappings, which are
+gilt, and the shields, which are properly blazoned with the
+arms of all the chiefs engaged.  You would adore it.
+
+We passed our time very agreeably; both Nugent and his wife
+are very good-humoured, and easy in their house to a degree.
+There was nobody else but the Marquis of Tweedale; his new
+Marchioness,(1451) who is infinitely good-humoured and good
+company, and sang a thousand French songs mighty prettily; a
+sister of Nugent's, who does not figure; and a Mrs.
+Elliot,(1452) sister to Mrs. Nugent, who crossed over and
+figured in with Nugent: I mean she has turned Catholic, as he
+has Protestant.  She has built herself a very pretty small
+house in the path-, and is only a daily visiter.  Nugent was
+extremely communicative of his own labours; repeated us an ode
+of ten thousand stanzas to abuse Messieurs de la Gallerie, and
+reid me a whole tragedy, which has really a great many @
+pretty things in it; not indeed equal to his glorious ode on
+religion and liberty, but with many of those absurdities which
+are so blended with his parts.  We were overturned coming
+back, but, thank YOU, we were not it all hurt, and have been
+to-day to see a large house and a pretty park, belonging to a
+Mr. Williams; it is to be sold.  You have seen in the papers
+that Dr.  Bloxholme is dead.  He cut his throat.  He always
+was nervous and vapoured; and so good-natured, that he left
+off his practice from not being able to bear seeing so many
+melancholy objects.  I remember him with as much wit as ever I
+knew; there was a pretty correspondence of Latin odes that
+passed between him and Hodges.
+
+You will be diverted to hear that the Duchess of Newcastle was
+received at Calais by Locheil's regiment under arms, who did
+duty himself while she stayed.  The Duke of Grafton is going
+to Scarborough; don't you love that endless back-stairs
+policy? and at his time of life!  This fit of ill health is
+arrived on the Prince's going to shoot for a fortnight at
+Thetford, and his grace is afraid of not being civil enough or
+too civil.
+
+Since I wrote my letter I have been fishing in Rapin for any
+Particulars relating to the Veres, and have already found that
+Robert de Vere,(1453) the great Duke of Ireland, and favourite
+of Richard the Second, is buried at Earl's COlnE, and probably
+under one of the tombs I saw there; I long to be certain that
+the lady with the strange coiffure is Lancerona, the joiner's
+daughter, that he married after divorcing a princess of the
+blood for her.  I have found, too, that King Stephen's Queen
+died at Henningham, a castle belonging to Alberic de
+Vere:,(1454) in short, I am just now Vere mad, and extremely
+mortified to have Lancerona and lady Vere Beauclerk's,
+Portuguese grandmother blended with this brave old blood.
+Adieu! I go to town the day after to-morrow, and immediately
+from thence to Strawberry Hill.  Yours ever.
+
+(1448) See Hume's History of England, vol. iii. p. 399. ["The
+Earl of Oxford, his favourite general, having splendidly
+entertained him at his castle of Henningham, was desirous of
+making a parade of his magnificence at the departure of his
+royal guest; and ordered all his retainers, with their
+liveries and badges, to be drawn up in two lines, that their
+appearance might be the more gallant and splendid.  'My lord,'
+said the King, 'I have heard much of your hospitality; but the
+truth far exceeds the report: these handsome gentlemen and
+yeomen whom I see on both sides of me are no doubt your menial
+servants.' The Earl smiled, and confessed that his fortune was
+too narrow for such magnificence.  'They are most of them,'
+subjoined he, 'my retainers, who are come to do service at
+this time, when they know I am honoured with your Majesty's
+presence.'  The King started a little, and said, 'By my faith!
+my lord, I thank you for your good cheer, but I must not allow
+my laws to be broken in my sight: my attorney must speak with
+you.' Oxford is said to have paid no less than fifteen
+thousand marks, as a compensation for his offence.")
+
+(1449) Daughter of the Earl of Granville.
+
+(1450) Harriot, wife of Richard Elliot, Esq., father of the
+first Lord St. Germains, and a daughter of Mr. Secretary
+Craggs.  For a copy of verses addressed by Mr. Pitt to this
+lady, see the Chatham Correspondence, Vol. iv. j. 373.-E.
+
+(1451))  Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the favourite of
+Richard the Second; who created him Marquis of Dublin and Duke
+of Ireland, and transferred to him by patent
+ the entire sovereignty of that island for life.
+
+(1452) Alberic de Vere was an Earl in the reign of Edward the
+Confessor.
+
+
+(1453) Daughter of Thomas Chambers, Esq., and married to Lord
+Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans by
+his wife Diana, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
+
+
+
+558 Letter 258
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Strawberry Hill, Aug. 11, 1748.
+
+I am arrived at great knowledge in the annals of the house of
+Vere but though I have twisted and twined their genealogy and
+my own a thousand ways, I cannot discover, as I wished to do,
+that I am descended from them any how but from one of their
+Christian names the name of Horace having travelled from them
+into Norfolk by the marriage of a daughter of Horace Lord Vere
+of Tilbury with a Sir Roger Townshend, whose family baptised
+some of us with it.  But I have made a really curious
+discovery! the lady with the strange dress at Earl's Colne,
+which I mentioned to you, is certainly Lancerona, the
+Portuguese-for I have found in Rapin, from one of the old
+chronicles, that Anne of Bohemia, to whom she had been Maid of
+Honour, introduced the fashion of piked horns, or high heads,
+which is the very attire on this tomb, and ascertains it to
+belong to Robert de Vere, the great Earl of Oxford, made Duke
+of Ireland by Richard II., who, after the banishment of this
+Minister, and his death at Louvain, occasioned by a boar at a
+hunting match, caused the body to be brought over, would have
+the coffin opened once more to see his favourite, and attended
+it himself in high procession to its interment at Earl's
+Colne.  I don't know whether the "Craftsman" some years ago
+would not have found out that we were descended from this
+Vere, at least from his name and ministry: my comfort is, that
+Lancerona was Earl Robert's second wife.  But in this search I
+have crossed upon another descent, which I am taking great
+pains to verify (I don't mean a pun)., and that is a
+probability of my being descended from Chaucer, whose
+daughter, the Lady Alice, before her espousals with Thomas
+Montagute,'Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards with William de
+la Pole, the great Duke of Suffolk, (another famous
+favourite), was married to a Sir John Philips, who I hope to
+find was of Picton Castle, and had children by her; but I have
+not yet brought these matters to a consistency.  mr. Chute is
+persuaded I shall, for he says any body with two or three
+hundred years of pedigree may find themselves descended from
+whom they please; and thank my stars and my good cousin, the
+present Sir John] Philips,(1454) I have a sufficient pedigree
+to work upon; for he drew us up one by which Ego et rex mems
+are derived hand in hand from Cadwallader, and the English
+baronetage says from the Emperor Maximus (by the Philips's,
+who are Welsh, s'entend).  These Veres have thrown me into a
+deal of this old study: t'other night I was reading to Mrs.
+Leneve and Mrs. Pigot,(1455) who has been here a few days, the
+description in Hall's Chronicle of the meeting of Harry VIII.
+and Francis I. which is so delightfully painted in your
+Windsor.  We came to a paragraph, which I must transcribe; for
+though it means nothing in the world, it is so ridiculously
+worded in the old English that it made us laugh for three
+days.!
+
+and the wer twoo kinges served with a banket and after mirthe,
+had communication in the banket time, and there sheweth the
+one the other their pleasure.
+
+Would not one swear that old Hal showed all that is showed in
+the Tower? I am now in the act of expecting the house of
+Pritchard,(1456) Dame Clive,(1457) and Mrs. Metheglin to
+dinner.  I promise you the Clive, and I will not show one
+another our pleasure during the banket time nor afterwards.
+In the evening, we go to a play at Kingston, where the places
+are two pence a head.  Our great company at Richmond and
+Twickenham has been torn to pieces by civil dissensions, but
+they continue acting.  Mr. Lee, the ape of Garrick, not liking
+his part, refused to play it, and had the confidence to go
+into the pit as spectator.  The actress, whose benefit was in
+agitation, made her complaints to the audience, who obliged
+him to mount the stage; but since that he has retired from the
+company.  I am sorry he was such a coxcomb, for he was the
+best. . . .
+
+You say, why won't I go to Lady Mary's?(1458)  I say, why
+won't you go to the Talbots? Mary is busied about many things,
+is dancing the hays between three houses; but I will go with
+you for a day or two to the Talbots if you like it. and you
+shall come hither to fetch me. I have been to see Mr.
+Hamilton's, near Cobham, where he has really made a fine place
+out of a most cursed hill.  Esher(1459) I have seen again
+twice, and prefer it to all villas, even to Southcote's--Kent
+is Kentissing there.  I have been laughing too at Claremont
+house; the gardens are improved since I saw them: do you know
+that the pineapples are literally sent to Hanover by couriers!
+I am serious.  Since the Duke of Newcastle went, and upon the
+news of the Duke of Somerset's illness, he has transmitted his
+commands through the King, and by him through the Bedford to
+the University of Cambridge to forbid their electing any body,
+but the most ridiculous person they could elect, his grace of
+Newcastle.  The Prince hearing this, has written to them, that
+having heard his Majesty's commands, he should by no means
+oppose them.  This is sensible: but how do the two secretaries
+answer such a violent act of authority?  Nolkojumskoi(1460)
+has let down his dignity and his discipline, and invites
+continually all officers that are members of parliament.
+Doddington's sentence of expulsion is sealed: Lyttelton is to
+have his place (the second time he has tripped up his heels);
+Lord Barrington is to go to the treasury, and Dick Edgecumbe
+into the admiralty.
+
+Rigby is gone from hence to Sir William Stanhope's to the
+Aylesbury races, where the Grenvilles and Peggy Banks design
+to appear and avow their triumph.  Gray has been here a few
+days, and is transported with your story of Madame Bentley's
+diving, and her white man, and in short with all your stories.
+Room for cuckolds--here comes my company--
+
+Aug. 15?.
+
+I had not time to finish my letter last night, for we did not
+return from the dismal play, which was in a barn at Kingston,
+till twelve o'clock at night.  Our dinner passed off very
+well; the Clive was very good company; you know how much she
+admires Asheton's preaching.  She says, she is always vastly
+good for two or three days after his sermons;' but by the time
+that Thursday comes, all their effect is worn out.  I never
+saw more proper decent behaviour than Mrs. Pritchard's, and I
+assure you even Mr. Treasurer Pritchard was far better than I
+expected.  Yours ever, Chaucerides.
+
+(1454) The grandmother of the Hon. Horace Walpole was daughter
+of sir Erasmus Philips, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire.
+
+(1455) Niece of Mrs. Leneve, and first wife of Admiral Hugh
+Pigot.-E.
+
+(1456/1457) Two celebrated actresses.
+
+(1458) lady Mary Churchill.
+
+(1459) The favourite seat of the Right Honourable Henry
+Pelham, which he embellished under the direction of Kent.  It
+is pleasingly mentioned by Pope, in his Epilogue to the
+Imitations of the Satires of Horace:-
+
+"Pleas'd let me own, in Esher's peaceful grove,
+Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love,
+The scene, the master, opening to my view,
+I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew."-E
+.
+
+(1460) A cant name for the Duke of Cumberland.
+
+
+
+561 Letter 259
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1748.
+
+Dear Harry,
+Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as
+little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders.  I
+can't say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they
+have long full- bottomed hoods which cover as little
+entertainment to the full.
+
+There's General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady
+Dowager Ferrers! Why, do you think I can extract more out of
+them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood?(1461)  Your old
+women dress, go to the Duke's levee, see that the soldiers
+cock their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their
+led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what
+they never did in their youth.  Change hats for head-clothes,
+the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and
+the life is the very same.  In short, these are the people I
+live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of
+more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not,
+I give you my word, from the least negligence.  My present and
+sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great
+progress, and talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except
+that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my
+botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious
+West-Indian flowering shrub.  Then the deliberation with which
+trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural
+impatience.  I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we
+are come to so little perfection in gardening.  I am persuaded
+that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to
+remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to
+transplant tulip-roots.  I have even begun a treatise or
+panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all
+arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the
+great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers-One Of the
+improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not
+make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so
+common as it will be.  I shall talk of a secret for roasting a
+wild-boar and a whole pack of hounds alive, without hurting
+them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and
+for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle's grandson, if he can
+ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds.  Then
+the delightfulness of having whole groves of hummingbirds,
+tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses
+to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys,
+which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert
+posterity would laugh in one's face for staring at, while they
+are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the
+principles of which we have not the least conception!  If ever
+this book should come forth, I must expect to have all the
+learned in arms against me, who measure all knowledge
+backward: some of them have discovered symptoms of all arts in
+Homer; and Pineda(1462) had so much faith in the
+accomplishments of his ancestors, that he believed Adam
+understood all sciences but politics.  But as these great
+champions for our forefathers are dead, and Boileau not alive
+to hitch me into a verse with Perrault, I am determined to
+admire the learning of posterity, especially being convinced
+that half our present knowledge sprung from discovering the
+errors of what had formerly been called so.  I don't think I
+shall ever make any great discoveries myself, and therefore
+shall be content to propose them to my descendants, like my
+Lord Bacon, who, as Dr. Shaw says very prettily in his preface
+to Boyle, , had the art of inventing arts:" or rather like a
+Marquis of Worcester, of whom I have seen a little book which
+he calls A Century of Inventions where he has set down a
+hundred machines to do impossibilities with, and not a single
+direction how to make the machines themselves.(1463)
+
+If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I
+intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which
+being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of
+trouble.  The dedication, with your leave, shall be addressed
+to your son that is coming, or, with my Lady Ailesbury's
+leave, to your ninth son, who Will be unborn nearer to the
+time I 'am writing of; always provided that she does not bring
+three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.
+
+Well! I have here set you the example of' writing nonsense
+when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you
+don't keep up the correspondence on the same foot.  Adieu!
+
+(1461) General Honeywood, governor of Portsmouth.
+
+(1462) Pineda was a Spanish Jesuit, and a professor of
+theology.  He died in 1637, after writing voluminous
+commentaries upon several books of the Holy Scriptures,
+besides an universal history of the church.
+
+(1463) Walpole, in his "Royal and Noble Authors," designates
+the Marquis as a "fantastic protector and fanatic," and
+describes the " Century of Inventions" as "an amazing piece of
+folly;" and Hume, who does not even know the title of the
+book, boldly pronounces it "a ridiculous compound of lies,
+chimeras, and impossibilities." In 18@5, however, an edition
+of this curious and very amusing little work was published],
+with historical and explanatory notes, by Mr. C. F.
+Partington; who clearly proves, that the Marquis was the
+person, either in this or any Other country, who gave the
+first idea of the steam engine.-E.
+
+
+
+563 Letter 260
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept, 3, 1748.
+
+All my sins to Mrs. Talbot you are to expiate; I am here quite
+alone, and want nothing but your fetching to go to her.  I
+have been in town for a day, just to see Lord Bury who is come
+over with the Duke; they return next Thursday.  The Duke is
+fatter, and it is now not denied that he has entirely lost the
+sight of one eye.  This did not surprise me so much as a bon
+mot of his.  Gumley, who you know is grown Methodist, came to
+tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde Park, near
+the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the Duke replied,
+he hoped it was not by the new light.  This nonsensical new
+light is extremely in fashion, and I shall not be surprised if
+we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age.
+Whitfield preaches continually at my Lady Huntingdon's,(1464)
+at Chelsea; my Lord Chesterfield, my Lord Bath, my Lady
+Townshend, my Lady Thanet, and others, have been to hear
+him.(1465)  What will you lay that, next winter, he is not run
+after, instead of Garrick?
+
+I am just come from the play at Richmond, where I found the
+Duchess of Argyle and Lady Betty Campbell, and their court.
+We had a new actress, a Miss Clough; an extremely fine tall
+figure, and very handsome: she spoke very justly, and with
+spirit.  Garrick is to produce her next winter; and a Miss
+Charlotte Ramsey, a poetess and deplorable actress.  Garrick,
+Barry, and some more of the players, were there to see these
+new comedians; it is to be their seminary.
+
+Since I came home I have been disturbed with a strange,
+foolish woman, that lives at the great corner house yonder;
+she is an attorney's wife, and much given to the bottle.  By
+the time she- has finished that and daylight, she grows afraid
+of thieves, and makes the servants fire minute guns out of the
+garret windows.  I remember persuading Mrs. Kerwood that there
+was a great smell of thieves, and this drunken dame seems
+literally to smell it.  The divine Asheton, whom I suppose you
+will have seen when you receive this, will give you an account
+of the astonishment we were in last night at hearing guns; I
+began to think that the Duke had brought some of his defeats
+from Flanders.
+
+I am going to tell you a long story, but you will please to
+remember that I don't intend to tell it well; therefore, if
+you discover any beauties in the relation where I never
+intended them, don't conclude, as you did in your last, that I
+know they are there.  If I had not a great command of my pen,
+and could not force it to write whatever nonsense I had heard
+last, you would be enough to pervert all one's letters, and
+put one upon keeping up one's character; but as I write merely
+to satisfy you, I shall take no care but not to write well: I
+hate letters that are called good letters.
+
+You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that
+was called Handsome Tracy?  he was walking in the Park with
+some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was
+very pretty: they followed them; but the girls ran away, and
+the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There
+are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He
+followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to
+dog them: the porter hunted them-he the porter.  The girls ran
+all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the
+porter came up with them.  He told the pretty one she must go
+with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out
+of breath, and exceedingly in love.  He insisted on knowing
+where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much
+disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and
+Tracy with them.  He there made her discover her family, a
+butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the
+next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four
+love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds
+a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre.
+Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker's wife, who told her
+that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if
+she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers.
+"Ay," says she, "but if I should, and should lose him by it."
+However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for
+virtue: and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park,
+she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck
+close to the letter of her reputation.  She would do nothing
+she would go nowhere.  At last, as an instance of prodigious
+compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a
+dinner as a butterwoman's daughter could give him, he should
+be welcome.  Away they walked to Craven Street: the mother
+borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the
+eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen
+committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of
+May-fair.  The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get
+up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way
+who perhaps would, and who did.  The mother borrowed a pair of
+sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day
+they went to their own palace.  In two or three days the scene
+grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he
+could bear it no longer.  "Bear! bear what?"--"Why, to be
+teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a butterwoman's
+daughter.  I am determined to go to France, and will leave you
+a handsome allowance."--"Leave me! why you don't fancy you
+shall leave me? I will go with you."--"What, you love me
+then?"--"No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan't
+go without me."  And they are gone! If you know any body that
+proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in
+a more commodious method.
+
+I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray;
+he is the worst company in the world.  From a melancholy turn.
+living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never
+converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and
+formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself
+is not agreeable.'(1466)
+
+There are still two months to London; if you could discover
+your own mind for any three or four days of that space, I will
+either go with you to the Tigers or be glad to see you here;
+but I positively will ask you neither one nor t'other any
+more.  I have raised seven-and-twenty bantams from the
+patriarchs you sent me.  Adieu!
+
+(1464) Daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers.
+
+
+(1465) Lord Bolingbroke, in a letter to the Earl of Marchmont
+of the 1st of November, says,
+"I hope you heard from me by myself, as well of me by Mr.
+Whitfield.  This apostolical person preached some time ago at
+Lady Huntingdon's, and I should have been curious to hear him.
+Nothing kept me from going, but an imagination that there was
+to be a select auditory.  That saint, our friend Chesterfield,
+was there; and I hear from him an extreme good account of the
+sermon." Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.-E.
+
+(1466) Dr. Beattie says, in a letter to Sir W. Forbes, "Gray's
+letters very much resemble what his conversation was: he had
+none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet; and though on
+those and all other subjects he spoke to me with the utmost
+freedom, and without any reserve, he was in general company
+much more silent than one could have wished."-E.
+
+
+
+ 565 Letter 261
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1748.
+
+I have two letters of yours to account for, and nothing to
+plead but my old insolvency.  Oh! yes, I have to scold you,
+which you find is an inexhaustible fund with me.  You sent me
+your d`em`el`e(1467) with the whole city of Florence, and
+charged me to keep it secret-and the first person I saw was my
+Lord Hobart, who was full of the account he had received from
+you.  You might as well have told a woman an improper secret,
+and expected to have it kept! but you may be very easy, for
+unless it reaches my Lady Pomfret or my Lady Orford, I dare
+say it will never get back to Florence; and for those two
+ladies, I don't think it likely that they should hear it, for
+the first is in a manner retired from the world, and the world
+is retired from the second.  Now I have vented my anger, I am
+seriously sorry for you, to be exposed to the impertinence of
+those silly Florentine women: they deserve a worse term than
+silly, since they pretend to any characters.  How could you
+act with so much temper? If they had treated me in this
+manner, I should have avowed ten times more than they
+pretended you had done; but you are an absolute minister!
+
+I am much obliged to Prince Beauvau for remembering me, and
+should be extremely pleased to show him all manner of
+attentions here: you know I profess great attachment to that
+family for their civilities to me.  But how gracious the
+Princess has been to you!  I am quite jealous of her dining
+with you: I remember what a rout there was to get her for half
+of half a quarter of an hour to your assembly.
+
+The Bishop of London is dead; having luckily for his family,
+as it proves, refused the archbishopric.*1468)  We owe him the
+justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he
+always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and
+without any resentment or ingratitude.
+
+Your brothers are coming to dine with me; your brother Gal. is
+extremely a favourite with me: I took to him for his
+resemblance to you, but am grown to love him upon his own
+fund.
+
+The peace is still in a cloud: according to custom, we have
+hurried on our complaisance before our new friends were at all
+ready with theirs.  There was a great Regency(1469) kept in
+town, to take off the prohibition of commerce with Spain: when
+they were met, somebody asked if Spain was ready to take off
+theirs?  "Oh, Lord! we never thought of that!"  They sent for
+Wall,(1470) and asked him if his court would take the same
+step with us?  He said, "he believed they might, but he had no
+orders about it."  However, we proceeded, and hitherto are
+bit.
+
+Adieu! by the first opportunity I shelf send you the two books
+of Houghton, for yourself and Dr. Cocchi.  My Lord Orford is
+much mended: my uncle has no prospect of ever removing from
+his couch.
+
+(1467) A Madame Ubaldini having raised a scandalous story of
+two persons whom she saw together in Mr. Mann's garden at one
+of his assemblies, and a scurrilous sonnet having been made
+upon the occasion, the Florentine ladies for some time
+pretended that it would hurt their characters to come any more
+to his assembly.
+
+(1468) Dr. Edmund Gibson had been very intimate with Sir
+Robert Walpole, and was designed by him for archbishop after
+the death of Wake; but setting himself at the head of the
+clergy against the Quaker bill, he broke with Sir Robert and
+lost the archbishoprick which was given to Potter; but on his
+death, the succeeding ministry offered it to Dr. Gibson. [The
+Doctor declined it, on account of his advanced age and
+increasing infirmities.  He died on the 6th of February,
+1748.)
+
+(1469) This means a meeting of the persons composing the
+Regency during the King's absence in Hanover.-D.
+
+(1470) General Wall, the Spanish ambassador.
+
+
+
+566 Letter 262
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1748.
+
+I shall write you a very short letter, for I don't know what
+business we have to be corresponding when we might be
+together.  I really wish to see you, for you know I am
+convinced of what you say to me.  It is few people I ask to
+come hither, and if possible, still fewer that I wish to see
+here.  The disinterestedness of your friendship for me has
+always appeared, and is the only sort that for the future I
+will ever accept, and consequently I never expect any more
+friends.  As to trying to make any by obligations, I have had
+such woful success, that, for fear of thinking still worse
+than I do of the world, I will never try more.  But you are
+abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton:
+have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I
+mean, since it was my brother's: I did not expect to prevail
+with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not
+only will never do a dirty thing, but you won't even venture
+the appearance of it.  I have often applied to you in my own
+mind a very pretty passage that I remember in a letter of
+Chillingworth; "you would not do that for preferment that you
+would not do but for preferment." You oblige me much in what
+you say about my nephews, and make me happy in the character
+you have heard of Lord Malpas;(1471) I am extremely inclined
+to believe he deserves it.  I am as sorry to hear what a
+companion lord Walpole has got: there has been a good deal of
+noise about him, but I had laughed at it, having traced the
+worst reports to his gracious mother, who is now sacrificing
+the character of her son to her aversion for her husband.  If
+we lived under the Jewish dispensation, how I should tremble
+at my brother's leaving no children by her, and its coming to
+my turn to raise him up issue!
+
+Since I gave you the account of the Duchess of Ireland's piked
+horns among the tombs of the Veres, I have found a long
+account in Bayle of the friar, who, as I remember to have read
+somewhere, preached so vehemently against that fashion: it was
+called Hennin, and the monk's name was Thomas Conecte.  He was
+afterwards burnt at Rome for censuring the lives of the
+clergy.  As our histories say that Anne of Bohemia introduced
+the fashion here, it is probable that the French learnt it
+from us, and were either long before they caught it, Or long
+in retaining the mode; for the Duke of Ireland died in 1389,
+and Connect was burnt at Rome in 1434.  There were, indeed,
+several years between his preaching down Hennins and his
+death, but probably not near five-and-forty years, and half
+that term was a long duration for so outrageous a fashion.
+But I have found a still more entertaining fashion in another
+place in Bayle which was, the women wearing looking-glasses
+upon their bellies': I don't conceive for what use.  Adieu!
+don't write any more, but come.
+
+(1471) Eldest son of George, third Earl of Cholmondoley, and
+grandson of Sir Robert Walpole.
+
+
+
+567 Letter 263
+To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
+Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1748.
+
+Dear harry,
+I am sorry our wishes clash so much.  Besides that I have no
+natural inclination for the Parliament, it will particularly
+disturb me now in the middle of all my planting; for which
+reason I have never inquired when it will meet, and cannot
+help you to guess--but I should think not hastily-for I
+believe the peace, at least the evacuations, are not in so
+prosperous a way as to be ready to make any figure in the
+King's speech.  But I speak from a distance; it may all be
+very toward: our ministers enjoy the consciousness of their
+wisdom, as the good do of their virtue, and take no pains to
+make it shine before men.  In the mean time, we have several
+collateral emoluments from the pacification: all our
+milliners, tailors, tavern keepers, and young gentlemen are
+tiding to France for our improvement in luxury; and as I
+foresee we shall be told on their return that we have lived in
+a total state of blindness for these six years. and gone
+absolutely retrograde to all true taste in every particular, I
+have already begun to practise walking on my head, and doing
+every thing the wrong way.  Then Charles Frederick has turned
+all his virt`u into fireworks, and, by his influence at the
+ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation
+of the peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing
+memory.  It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred
+hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all
+set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be
+wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and
+fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal.  I wish you
+could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed
+over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still
+hoarser on the superiority that his firework will have over
+the Roman naumachia.
+
+I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas(1472) at Hampton
+Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute
+receive a message that the Duchess of Montagu(1473) is
+extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady
+Cardigan's(1474) account, whom I grow every day more in love
+with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from
+improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived
+much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my
+practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really
+estimable qualities: such a dignity in her way of thinking; so
+little idea of any thing mean or ridiculous, and such proper
+contempt for both! Adieu! I must go dress for dinner, and you
+perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.
+
+(1472) Daughter of the first Earl of Albemarle, and wife of
+General Thomas.-E.
+
+(1473) She was mother to Lady Cardigan, and daughter to the
+great Duke of Marlborough.
+
+(1474) Lady Mary Montagu, third daughter of John, Duke of
+Montagu, and wife of George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan,
+afterwards created Duke of Montagu.
+
+
+
+568 Letter 264
+To George Montagu, Esq.
+Strawberry Hill, Oct. 20, 1748.
+
+You are very formal to send me a ceremonious letter of thanks;
+you see I am less punctilious, for having nothing to tell you,
+I did not answer your letter.  I have been in the empty town
+for a day: Mrs.
+ Muscovy and I cannot devise where you have planted Jasmine; I
+am all plantation, and sprout away like any chaste nymph in
+the Metamorphosis.
+
+They say the old Monarch at Hanover has got a new mistress; I
+fear he ought to have got * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
+Now I talk of getting, Mr. Fox has got the ten thousand pound
+prize; and the Violette, as it is said, Coventry for a
+husband.  It is certain that at the fine masquerade he was
+following her, as she was under the Countess's arm, who,
+pulling off her glove, moved her wedding-ring up and down her
+finger, which it seems was to signify that no other terms
+would be accepted.  It is the year for contraband marriages,
+though I do not find Fanny Murray's is certain.  I liked her
+spirit in an instance I heard t'other night: she was
+complaining of want of money; Sir Robert Atkins immediately
+gave her a twenty pound note; she said, "D-n your twenty
+pound! what does it signify?" clapped it between two pieces of
+bread and butter, and ate it. Adieu! nothing should make me
+leave off so shortly but that my gardener waits for me, and
+you must allow that he is to be preferred to all the world.
+
+
+
+
+569 Letter 265
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Strawberry Hill, October 24, 1748.
+
+I have laughed heartily at your adventure of Milord Richard
+Onslow;(1475) it is an admirable adventure!  I am not sure
+that Riccardi's absurdity was not the best part of it.  Here
+were the Rinuncinis, the Panciaticis, and Pandolfinis? were
+they as ignorant too? What a brave topic it would have been
+for Niccolini, if he had been returned, to display all his
+knowledge of England!
+
+Your brothers are just returned from Houghton, where they
+found my brother extremely recovered: my uncle too, I hear, is
+better; but I think that an impossible recovery.(1476)  Lord
+Walpole is setting out on his travels; I shall be impatient to
+have him in Florence; I flatter myself you will like him: I,
+who am not troubled with partiality to my family, admire him
+much.  Your brother has got the two books of Houghton, and
+will send them by the first Opportunity: I am by no means
+satisfied with then; they are full of' faults, and the two
+portraits wretchedly unlike.
+
+The peace is signed between us, France, and Holland, but does
+not give the least joy; the stocks do not rise, and the
+merchants are unsatisfied; they say France will sacrifice us
+to Spain, which has not yet signed: in short, there has not
+been the least symptom of public rejoicing; but the government
+is to give a magnificent firework.
+
+I believe there are no news, but I am here all alone,
+planting.  The Parliament does not meet till the 29th of next
+month: I shall go to town but two or three days before that.
+The Bishop of Salisbury,(1477) who refused Canterbury, accepts
+London, upon a near prospect of some fat fines.  Old Tom
+Walker(1478) is dead, and has left vast wealth and good
+places; but have not heard where either are to go.  Adieu!  I
+am very paragraphical, and you see have nothing to say.
+
+(1475) One Daniel Bets, a Dutchman or Fleming, who called
+himself my Lord Richard Onslow, and pretended to be the
+Speaker's son, having forged letters of credit Ind drawn money
+from several bankers, came to Florence, and was received as an
+Englishman of quality by Marquis Riccardi, who could not be
+convinced by Mr. Mann of the imposture till the adventurer ran
+away on foot to Rome in the night.
+
+(1476) Yet he did in great measure recover by the use of soap
+and limewater.
+
+(1477) Dr. Sherlock.
+
+(1478) He was surveyor of the roads; had been a kind of
+toad-eater to Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Godolphin; was a
+great frequenter of Newmarket, and a notorious usurer.  His
+reputed wealth is stated, in the Gentleman's Magazine, at
+three hundred thousand pounds.]
+
+
+
+570 Letter 266
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1748.
+
+Our King is returned and our parliament met: we expected
+nothing but harmony and tranquillity, and love of the peace;
+but the very first day opened with a black cloud, that
+threatens a stormy session.  To the great surprise of the
+ministry, the Tories appear in intimate league with the
+Prince's party, and both agreed in warm and passionate
+expressions on the treaty: we shall not have the discussion
+till after Christmas.  My uncle, who is extremely mended by
+soap, and the hopes of a peerage is come up, and the very
+first day broke out in a volley of treaties: though he is
+altered, you would be astonished at his spirits.
+
+We talk much of the Chancellor's(1479) resigning the seals,
+from weariness of the fatigue, and being made president of the
+council, with other consequent changes, which I will write you
+if they happen; but as this has already been a discourse of
+six months, I don't give it you for certain.
+
+Mr. Chute, to whom alone I communicated Niccolini's
+banishment, though it is now talked of from the Duke of
+Bedford's office, says "he is sorry the Abb`e is banished for
+the only thing which he ever saw to commend in him,-his
+abusing the Tuscan ministry." I must tell you another
+admirable bon mot of Mr. Chute, now I am mentioning him.
+Passing by the door of Mrs. Edwards, who died of drams, be saw
+the motto which the undertakers had placed to her escutcheon,
+Mors janua vitae, he said "it ought to have been Mors aqua
+vita."
+
+The burlettas are begun; I think, not decisively liked or
+condemned yet: their success is certainly not rapid, though
+Pertici is excessively admired.  Garrick says he is the best
+comedian he ever saw: but the women are execrable, not a
+pleasing note amongst them.  Lord Middlesex has stood a trial
+with Monticelli for arrears of salary, in Westminster-hall,
+and even let his own handwriting be proved against him! You
+may imagine he was cast.  Hume Campbell, lord Marchmont's
+brother, a favourite advocate, and whom the ministry have
+pensioned out of the Opposition into silence, was his council,
+and protested, striking his breast, that he had never set his
+foot but once into an opera-house in his life.  This
+affectation 'of British patriotism is excellently ridiculous
+in a man so known: I have often heard my father say, that of
+all the men he ever ](new, Lord Marchmont and Hume Campbell
+were the most abandoned in their professions to him on their
+coming into the world: he was hindered from accepting their
+services by the present Duke of Argyll, of whose faction they
+were not.  They then flung themselves into the Opposition,
+where they both have made great figures, till the elder was
+shut out of Parliament by his father's death, and the younger
+being very foolishly dismissed from being solicitor to the
+Prince, in favour of Mr. Bathurst, accepted a pension from the
+court, and seldom comes into the House, and has lately taken
+to live on roots and study astronomy.(1480)  Lord Marchmont,
+you know, was one of Pope's heroes, had a place in Scotland on
+Lord Chesterfield's coming into the ministry, though he had
+not power to bring him into the sixteen: and was very near
+losing his place last winter, on being Supposed the author of
+the famous apology for Lord Chesterfield's resignation.  This
+is the history of these Scotch brothers, which I have told you
+for want of news.
+
+Two Oxford scholars are condemned to two years' imprisonment
+for treason;(1481) and their vice-chancellor, for winking at
+it, is soon to be tried.  What do you say to the young
+Pretender's persisting to stay in France? It will not be easy
+to persuade me that it is without the approbation of that
+court.  Adieu!
+
+(1479) Lord Hardwicke.-D.
+
+(1480) In the preceding March, Lord Marchmont had married a
+second wife.@, Miss Crampton.  The circumstances attending
+this marriage are thus related by David Hume, in a letter to
+Mr. Oswald, dated January 29, 1748:-" Lord Marchmont has had
+the most extraordinary adventure in the world.  About three
+weeks ago he was at the play, when he espied in one of the
+boxes a fair virgin, whose looks, airs, and manners had such a
+wonderful effect upon him, as was visible by every bystander.
+His raptures were so undisguised, his looks so expressive of
+passion, his inquiries so earnest, that every person took
+notice of it.  He soon was told that her name was Crampton, a
+linendraper's daughter, who had been bankrupt last year.  He
+wrote next morning to her father, desiring to visit his
+daughter on honourable terms, and in a few days she will be
+the Countess of Marchmont.  Could you ever suspect the
+ambitious, the severe, the bustling, the impetuous, the
+violent Marchmont of becoming so tender and gentle a swain-an
+Orondates!"-E.
+
+(1481) In drinking the Pretender's health, and using seditious
+expressions against the King.  They were also sentenced "to
+walk round Westminster-hall with a label affixed to Their
+foreheads, denoting their crime and sentence, and to ask
+pardon of the several courts;" which they accordingly
+performed.-E.
+
+
+
+571 Letter 267
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Arlington Street, Dec. 15, 1748.
+
+I conclude your Italy talks of nothing but the young
+Pretender's imprisonment at Vincennes. I don't know whether he
+be a Stuart, but I am sure, by his extravagance he has proved
+himself' of English extraction! What a mercy that we had not
+him here! with a temper so, impetuous and obstinate, as to
+provoke a French government when in their power, what would he
+have done with an English Government in his power?(1482)  An
+account came yesterday that he, with his Sheridan and a Mr.
+Stafford (who was a creature of my Lord Bath,) are transmitted
+to Pont de Beauvoisin, under a solemn promise never to return
+into France (I suppose unless they send for him).  It is said
+that a Mr. Dun, who married Alderman Parsons's eldest
+daughter, is in the Bastile for having struck the officer when
+the young man was arrested.
+
+Old Somerset(1483) is at last dead, and the Duke of Newcastle
+Chancellor of Bainbridge, to his heart's content.  Somerset
+tendered his pride even beyond his hate; for he has left the
+present Duke all the furniture of his palaces, and forbore to
+charge the estate, according to a power he had, with
+five-and-thirty thousand pounds.  To his Duchess,(1484) who
+has endured such a long slavery with him, he has left nothing
+but one thousand pounds and a small farm, besides her
+jointure; giving the whole of his unsettled estate, which is
+about six thousand pounds a-year, equally between his two
+daughters, and leaving it absolutely in their own powers now,
+though neither are of age; and to Lady Frances, the eldest, he
+has additionally given the fine house built by Inigo Jones, in
+Lincoln's-inn-fields, (which he had bought of the Duke of
+Ancaster for the Duchess,) hoping that his daughter will let
+her mother live with her.  To Sir Thomas Bootle he has given
+half a borough, and a whole one,(1485) to his grandson Sir
+Charles Windham,(1486) with an estate that cost him fourteen
+thousand pounds.  To Mr. Obrien,(1487) Sir Charles Windham's
+brother, a single thousand; and to Miss Windham an hundred
+a-year, which he gave her annually at Christmas, and is just
+Such a legacy as you would give to a housekeeper to prevent
+her from going to service again.  She is to be married
+immediately to the second Grenville;(1488) they have waited
+for a larger legacy.  The famous settlement(1489) is found,
+which gives Sir Charles Windham about twelve thousand pounds
+a-year of the Percy estate after the present Duke's death; the
+other five, with the barony of Percy, must go to Lady Betty
+Smithson.(1490)  I don't know whether you ever heard that, in
+Lord Grenville's administration, he had prevailed with the
+King to grant the earldom of Northumberland to Sir Charles;
+Lord Hertford represented against it; at last the King said he
+would give it to whoever they would make it appear was to have
+the Percy estate; but old Somerset refused to let any body see
+his writings, and so the affair dropped, every body believing
+that there was no such settlement.
+
+John Stanhope of the admiralty is dead, and Lord Chesterfield
+gets thirty thousand pounds for life: I hear Mr. Villiers is
+most likely to succeed to that board.  You know all the
+Stanhopes are a family aux bon-mots: I must tell you one of
+this John.  He was sitting by an old Mr. Curzon, a nasty
+wretch, and very covetous: his nose wanted blowing, and
+continued to want it: at last Mr. Stanhope, with the greatest
+good-breeding, said, "Indeed, Sir, if you don't wipe your
+nose, you will lose that drop."
+
+I am extremely pleased with Monsieur de Mirepoix's(1491) being
+named for this embassy; and I beg you will desire Princess
+Craon to recommend me to Madame, for I would be particularly
+acquainted with her as she is their daughter.  Hogarth has run
+a great risk since the peace; he went to France, and was so
+imprudent as to be taking a sketch of the drawbridge at
+Calais.  He was seized and carried to the governor, where he
+was forced to prove his vocation by producing several
+caricatures of the French; particularly a scene(1492) of the
+shore, with an immense piece of beef landing for the
+lion-d'argent, the English inn at Calais, and several hungry
+friars following it.(1493)  They were much diverted with his
+drawings, and dismissed him.
+
+Mr. Chute lives at the herald's office in your service, and
+yesterday got particularly acquainted with your
+great-great-grandmother.  I says, by her character, she would
+be extremely shocked at your wet-brown-paperness, and that she
+was particularly famous for breaking her own pads.  Adieu!
+
+(1482) At the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the French court
+proposed to establish Prince Charles at Fribourg in
+Switzerland, with the title of Prince of Wales, a company of
+guards, and a sufficient pension; but he placed a romantic
+point of Honour in 'braving 'the orders from Hanover,' as he
+called them, and positively refused to depart from Paris.
+Threats, entreaties, arguments, were tried on him in vain.  He
+withstood even a letter obtained from his father at Rome, and
+commanding his departure.  He still nourished some secret
+expectation, that King Louis would not venture to use force
+against a kinsman; but he found himself deceived.  As he went
+to the Opera on the evening of the 11th of December, his coach
+was stopped by a party of French guards, himself seized, bound
+hand and foot, and conveyed, with a single attendant, to the
+state-prison of Vincennes, where he was thrust into a dungeon
+seven feet wide and eight feet long.  After this public
+insult, he was carried to Pont de Beauvoisin, on the frontier
+of Savoy, and there restored to his wandering and desolate
+freedom." lord Mahon, vol .iii. p. 552.-E.
+
+(1483) The proud Duke of Somerset.-D.
+
+(1484) Charlotte Finch, sister of the Earl of Winchilsea and
+Nottingham, second wife of Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset;
+by whom she had two daughters, Lady Frances, married to the
+Marquis of Granby, and lady Charlotte to Lord Guernsey, eldest
+son of the Earl of Aylesford.
+
+(1485) Midhurst, in Sussex.-D.
+
+(1486) Afterwards Earl of Egremont.-D.
+
+(1487) Afterwards created Earl of Thomond in Ireland.-D.
+
+(1488) George Grenville.  issue of that marriage were the late
+Marquis of Buckingham, the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville,
+and Lord Grenville; besides several daughters.-D.
+
+(1489) The Duke's first wife was the heiress of the house of
+Northumberland - she made a settlement of her estate, in case
+her sons died without heirs male, on the children of her
+daughters.  Her eldest daughter, Catherine, married Sir
+William Windham, whose son, Sir Charles, by the death of Lord
+Beauchamp, only son of Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and
+afterwards Duke of Somerset, succeeded to the greatest part of
+the Percy estate, preferably to Elizabeth, daughter of the
+same Algernon, who was married to Sir Hugh Smithson.
+
+(1490) Elizabeth daughter of Algernon, last Duke of Somerset
+of the younger branch.  She was married to Sir Hugh Smithson,
+Bart. who became successively Earl and Duke of
+NorthUmberland.-D.
+
+(1491) The Marquis de Mirepoix, marshal of France, and
+ambassador to England.  His wife was a woman of ability, and
+was long in great favour with Louis the Fifteenth and his
+successive mistresses.-D.
+
+(1492) He engraved and published it on his return.
+
+(1493) Hogarth's well known print, entitled
+"The Roast Beef of Old England."  The original picture is in
+the possession of the Earl of Charlemont, in Dublin.-D.
+
+
+
+574 Letter 268
+To Sir Horace Mann.
+Strawberry Hill, Dec. 26, 1748.
+
+Did you ever know a more absolute country-gentleman?  Here am
+I come down to what you call keep my Christmas! indeed it is
+not in all the forms; I have stuck no laurel and holly in my
+windows, I eat no turkey and chine, I have no tenants to
+invite, I have not brought a single soul With me.  The weather
+is excessively stormy, but has been so warm, and so entirely
+free from frost the whole winter, that not only several of' my
+honeysuckles are come out, but I have literally a blossom upon
+a nectarine-tree, which I believe was never seen in this
+climate before on the 26th of December.  I am extremely busy
+here planting; I have got four more acres, which makes my
+territory prodigious in a situation where land is so scarce,
+and villas as abundant as formerly at Tivoli and Baiae.  I
+have now about fourteen acres, and am making a terrace the
+whole breadth of my garden on the brow of a natural hill, With
+meadows at the foot, and commanding the river, the village,
+Richmond-hill, and the park, and part of Kingston-but I hope
+never to show it you.  What you hint at in your last, increase
+of character, I should be extremely against your stirring in
+now: the whole system of embassies is in confusion, and more
+candidates than employments.  I would have yours pass, as it
+is, for settled.  If you were to be talked especially for a
+higher character at Florence, one don't know whom the
+-,additional dignity might tempt.  Hereafter, perhaps, it
+might be practicable for you, but I would by no means advise
+your soliciting it at present.  Sir Charles Williams is the
+great obstacle to all arrangement: Mr. Fox makes a point of
+his going to Turin; the ministry, Who do not love him, are not
+for his going any where.  Mr. Villiers is talked of for
+Vienna, though just made a lord of the admiralty.  There were
+so many competitors, that at last Mr. Pelham said he would
+carry in two names to the King, and he should choose (a great
+indulgence!) Sir Peter Warren and Villiers were carried in;
+the King chose the latter.  I believe there is a little of
+Lord Granville in this, and in a Mr. Hooper, who was turned
+out with the last ministry, and is now made a commissioner of
+the customs: the pretence is, to vacate a seat in Parliament
+for Sir Thomas Robinson, who is made a lord of trade; a scurvy
+reward after making the peace.  Mr. Villiers, you know, has
+been much gazetted, and had his letters to the King of Prussia
+printed; but he is a very silly fellow.  I met him the other
+day at Lord Granville's, where, on the subject of a new play,
+he began to give the Earl an account of CoriolanUS, with
+reflections on his history.  Lord Granville at last grew
+impatient, and said, "Well! well! it is an old story; it may
+not be true." As we went out together, I said, "I like the
+approach to this house."'(1494)  "Yes,"said Villiers, "and I
+love to be in it; for I never come here but I hear something I
+did not know before." Last year, I asked him to attend a
+controverted election in which I was interested; he told me he
+would with all his heart, but that he had resolved not to vote
+in elections for the first session, for that he owned he could
+not understand them--not understand them!
+
+Lord St. John(1495) is dead; he had a place in the
+custom-house of 1200 pounds a year, which his father had
+bought of the Duchess of Kendal for two lives, for 4000
+pounds.  Mr. Pelham has got it for Lord Lincoln and his child.
+
+I told you in my last a great deal about old Somerset's will:
+they have since found 150,000 which goes, too, between the two
+daughters.  It had been feared that he would leave nothing to
+the youngest; two or three years ago, he waked after dinner
+and found himself upon the floor; she used to watch him, had
+left him, and he had fallen from his couch.  He forbade every
+body to speak to her, but yet to treat her with respect as his
+daughter.  She went about the house for a year, without any
+body daring openly to utter a syllable to her; and it was
+never known that he had forgiven her.  His whole stupid life
+was a series of pride and tyranny.
+
+There have been great contests in the Privy Council about the
+trial of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford: the Duke of' Bedford
+and Lord Gower pressed it extremely.  The latter asked the
+Attorney-General(1496) his opinion, who told him the evidence
+did not appear strong enough: Lord Gower said, "Mr. Attorney,
+you Seem to be very lukewarm for your party." He replied, "My
+lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, nor ever was but Of
+one party." There is a scheme for vesting in the King the
+nomination of' the Chancellor of that University,(1497) who
+has much power--and much noise it would make! The Lord
+Chancellor is to be High Steward of Cambridge, in succession
+to the Duke of Newcastle.
+
+The families of Devonshire and Chesterfield have received a
+great blow at Derby, where, on the death of John Stanhope,
+they set up another of the name.  One Mr. Rivett, the Duke's
+chief friend and manager. stood himself, and carried it by a
+majority of seventy-one.  Lord Chesterfield had sent down
+credit for ten thousand pounds.  The Cavendish's. however, are
+very happy, for Lady Hartington(1498) has produced a
+son.(1499)
+
+I asked a very intelligent person if there could be any
+foundation for the story of Niccolini's banishment taking its
+rise from complaints of our court: he answered very sensibly,
+that even if our court had complained, -which was most
+unlikely, it was not at all probable that the court of Vienna
+would have paid any regard to it.  There is another paragraph
+in your same letter in which I must set you right: you talk Of
+the sudden change of my opinion about Lord Walpole:(1500) I
+never had but one opinion about him, and that was always most
+favourable: nor can I imagine what occasioned your mistake,
+unless my calling him a wild boy, where I talked of the
+consequences of his father's death.  I meant nothing in the
+world by wild, but the thoughtlessness of a boy of nineteen,
+who comes to the possession of a peerage and an estate.  My
+partiality, I am sure, could never let me say any thing else
+of him.
+
+Mr. Chute's sister is dead.  When I came from town Mr. Whithed
+had heard nothing of her will - she had about four thousand
+pounds.  The brother is so capricious a monster, that we
+almost hope she has not given the whole to our friend.
+
+You will be diverted with a story I am going to tell You; it
+is very long, and so is my letter already; but you perceive I
+am in the country and have nothing to hurry me.  There is
+about town a Sir William Burdett,*1501) a man of a very good
+family, but most infamous character.  He formerly was at Paris
+with a Mrs. Penn, a Quaker's wife, whom he there bequeathed to
+the public, and was afterwards a sharper at Brussels, and
+lately came to England to discover a plot for poisoning the
+Prince of Orange, in which I believe he was poisoner, poison,
+and informer all himself.  In short, to give you his character
+at once, there is a wager entered in the bet-book at White's
+(a MS. of which I may one day or other give you an account),
+that the first baronet that will be hanged is this Sir William
+Burdett.  About two months ago he met at St. James's, a Lord
+Castledurrow,(1502) a young Irishman, and no genius as you
+will find, and entered into conversation with him: the Lord,
+seeing a gentleman, fine, polite, and acquainted with every
+body, invited him to dinner for next day, and a Captain
+Rodney,(1503) a young seaman, who has made a fortune by very
+gallant behaviour during the war.  At dinner it came out, that
+neither the Lord nor the Captain had ever been at any
+Pelham-levees.  "Good God!" said Sir William, "that must not
+be so any longer; I beg I may carry you to both the Duke and
+Mr. Pelham: I flatter myself I am very well with both." The
+appointment was made for the next Wednesday and Friday; in the
+mean time, he invited the two young men to dine with him the
+next day.  When they came, he presented them to a lady,
+dressed foreign, as a princess of the house of' Brandenburg:
+she had a toadeater, and there was another man, who gave
+himself for a count.  After dinner Sir William looked at his
+watch, and said, "J-s! it is not so late as I thought by an
+hour; Princess, will your Highness say how we shall divert
+ourselves till it is time to go to the play!"  "Oh!" said she,
+"for my part you know I abominate every thing but pharaoh." "I
+am very sorry, Madam," replied he, very gravely, "but I don't
+know whom your Highness will get to tally to you; you know I
+am ruined by dealing'."  "Oh!" says she, "the Count will deal
+to us."  "I would with all my soul." said the Count, "but I
+protest I have no money about me."  She insisted: at last the
+Count said, "Since your Highness commands us peremptorily, I
+believe Sir William has four or five hundred pounds of mine,
+that I am to pay away in the city to-morrow: if he will be so
+good as to step to his bureau for that Sum, I will make a bank
+of it." Mr. Rodney owns he was a little astonished at seeing
+the Count shuffle with the faces of the cards upwards; but
+concluding that Sir 'William Burdett, at whose house he was,
+was a relation or particular friend of Lord Castledurrow, he
+was unwilling to affront my lord.  In short, my lord and he
+lost about a hundred and fifty apiece, and it was settled that
+they should meet for payment the next morning at breakfast at
+Ranelagh, In the mean time Lord C. had the curiosity to
+inquire a little int the character of his new friend the
+Baronet; and being au fait, he went up to him at Ranelagh and
+apostrophized him; "Sir William, here is the sum I think I
+lost last night; since that I have heard that you are a
+professed pickpocket, and therefore desire to have no further
+acquaintance with you." Sir William bowed, took the money and
+no notice; but as they were going away, he followed Lord
+Castledurrow and said, "Good God, my lord, my equipage is not
+come; will you be so good as to set me down at
+Buckingham-gate?" and without staying for an answer, whipped
+into the chariot and came to town with him.  If you don't
+admire the coolness of this impudence, I shall wonder.  Adieu!
+I have written till I can scarce write my name.(1504)
+
+(1494) Lord Granville's house in Arlington Street was the
+lowest in the street on the side of the Green-park-D.
+
+(1495) John, second Viscount St. John, the only surviving son
+of Henry, first Viscount St. John, by his second wife,
+Angelica Magdalene, daughter of George Pillesary,
+treasurer-general of the marines in France, He was half-
+brother of the celebrated Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, who was
+the only son of the said Henry, first Viscount St. John, by
+his first wife Mary, second daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of
+Warwick.  John, second Viscount St. John, was the direct
+ancestor of the present Viscount Bolingbroke and St. John.-D.
+
+(1496) Sir Dudley Ryder.
+
+(1497) In consequence of the University's always electing
+Jacobites to that office.-D.
+
+(1498) Lady Charlotte Boyle, second daughter of Richard, Earl
+of Burlington and Cork, and wife of William, Marquis of
+Hartington.
+
+(1499) William Cavendish, afterwards fifth Duke of Devonshire,
+and Knight of the Garter.  He died in 1811.-D.
+
+(1500) George, third Earl of Orford.
+
+(1501) Sir William Vigors Burdett, of Dunmore, in the county
+of Carlow.-E.
+
+(1502) Henry Flower, Lord Castledurrow, and afterwards created
+Viscount Ashbrook.
+
+(1503) George Brydges Rodney.  He had distinguished himself in
+Lord Hawke's victory, In 1761 he took the French island of
+Martinique.  In 1779 he met and defeated the Spanish fleet
+commanded by Don Juan de Langara, and relieved the garrison of
+gibraltar, which was closely besieged; and in 1789, he
+obtained his celebrated victory over the French fleet
+commanded by Count de Grasse.  For this latter service he was
+created a peer, by the title of Baron Rodney, of Rodney Stoke
+in the county of Somerset.  He died May 24, 1792.
+
+The letter which immediately followed this miscarried.
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
+by Horace Walpole
+******This file should be named lthw110.txt or lthw110.zip******
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1
+by Horace Walpole
+
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