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The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3

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Title: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3

Author: Horace Walpole


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4773]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4773

Credits: This eBook was produced by Marjorie Fulton


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD — VOLUME 3 ***




This eBook was produced by Marjorie Fulton.



                      The Letters of Horace Walpole,
                              Earl of Orford:

              Including Numerous letters Now First Published
                      From The Original Manuscripts.


                             In Four Volumes.
                                 Vol. III.

                                1759-1769.


                           Contents Of Vol. III.

             [Those Letters now first collected are marked N.]


                                   1759.

1. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 17.-Lord Temple's resignation of
the privy-seal. Lady Carlisle's marriage with Sir William
Musgrave.--25

2. To the Right Hon. William Pitt, Nov. 19.-Congratulations on
the
lustre of his administration--[N.] 26

3. To Sir Horace Mann, Nov. 30.-Sir Edward Hawke's victory over
Conflans. Lord Kinnoul's mission to Portugal--27

4. To the same, Dec. 13.-Regretting his own ignorance of
mathematics and common figures. Victory of Prince Henry--28

5. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 23.-Tumults in Ireland. Story of
Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Shelley--30

6. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, Dec. 23.-"Life of Lord Clarendon."
"Lucan"--31


                                   1760.

7. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan. 7.-Visit to Princess Emily.
Commotions in Ireland--32


8. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Jan. 12.-Apologizing for an
unintentional offence--34

9. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan. 14.-Severity of the weather.
Military preparations. Prince Edward's party. Edwards's "History
of
Birds"--35

10. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 26.-Severity of the winter. Death of
Lady Besborough. Ward's drops--36

11. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan. 28.-Death of Lady Besborough.
Lord
Ferrers's murder of his steward. Visit to the Magdalen. Dr.
Dodd--
37

12. To Sir David Dalrymple. Feb. 3.-Macpherson's fragments or
Erse
poetry. Mary Queen of Scots. Dyer's "Fleece." Pepys's collection
of
ballads. Faction--[N.] 40

13. To Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 3.-Caserta. Character of Mr. Thomas
Pitt. Death of the Duchess of Bolton. Lord George Sackville's
court-martial. Lord Charles Hay. Lord Ferrers's murder of his
steward. Dutch mud-quake--41

14. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, Feb. 4.-"Anecdotes of Painting."
Character of Dr. Hurd. Warburton's "Shakspeare." Edwards's
"Canons
of Criticism"--44

15. To Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 28.-M. Thurot's expedition. Siege of
Carrickfergus. Lord Ferrers--45

16. To the same, March 4.-M. Thurot's expedition. Duke of
Bedford's
Irish administration. General Flobert and Mr. Mallet. Ward's
drops--48

17. To the same, March 26.-Lord George Sackville's
court-martial--
49

18. To George Montagu, Esq. March 27.-Lord George Sackville's
court-martial. Miss Chudleigh's public breakfast--50

19. To Sir David Dalrymple, April 4.-Erse Poetry; Gray's queries
concerning Macpherson. Home's "Siege of Aquileia." "Tristram
Shandy"--[N.] 51

20. To George Montagu, Esq. April 19.-Lord George Sackville's
sentence. Lord Ferrers's trial. Duel between the Duke of Bolton
and
Mr. Stewart--52

21. To Sir Horace Mann, April 20.-Lord George Sackville's
sentence.
Trial of Lord Ferrers--54

22. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, May 3.-Lord Bath's ,Rhapsody."
"Anecdotes of Painting"--55


23. To George Montagu, Esq. May 6.-Execution of Lord Ferrers--56

24. To Sir Horace Mann, May 7,--Execution of Lord Ferrers. Lady
Huntingdon. Death of Lord Charles Hay. King of Prussia's poems.
General Clive--57

25. To Sir David Dalrymple, May 15.-Erse poetry. Lord Lyttelton's
"Dialogues of the Dead." King of Prussia's poems--[N 63

26. To Sir Horace Mann, May 24.-Lord Lyttelton's "Dialogues of
the
Dead." Anecdotes of lord Ferrers--64

27. To the Earl of Strafford, June 7.-Description of Miss
Chudleigh's ball. Death of Lady Anson--66

28. To Sir Horace Mann, June 20.-Siege of Quebec. The house of
Fuentes. Pope's house and garden--68

29. To Sir David Dalrymple, June 20.-Authenticity of the Erse
poems. Lord Lyttelton's "Dialogues of the Dead." Isaac Walton's
"Complete Angler."--[N.] 69

30. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 21.-Story of Sir Robert
Walpole
and his man John. George Townshend's absurdities. "Tant mieux
pour
Elle."--[N.] 70

31. To the same, June 28.-Siege of Quebec raised. Lady
Stormont--72

32. To George Montagu, Esq. July 4:.-Visit to Chaffont. Gray's
taciturnity--73

33. To Sir Horace Mann, July 7.-Siege of Quebec raised--74

34. To George Montagu, Esq. July 19.-Visit to Oxford. Holbein's
portraits. Blenheim. Ditchley. --75

35. To the same, July 20.--76

36. To Sir Horace Mann, Aug. 1.-Wolfe's tomb. Death of Lady
Lincoln. Arrival of General Clive--77

37. To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 7.-Fit of the gout--78

38. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 7-Fit of the gout--79

39. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 12.-Reflections on his
illness--80

40. To the Countess of Ailesbury, Aug. 23.-Visit to Whichnovre.
Advises her ladyship to claim the flitch of bacon--81

41. To Sir Horace Mann, Aug. 28.-Duke of Cumberland's illness--82

42. To George Montagu, Esq, Sept. 1.-Account of his tour to the
north. Whichnovre. Litchfield cathedral. Sheffield. Chatsworth.
Hardwicke. Bess of Hardwicke. Newstead Abbey--83

43. To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 4.-Visit to Hardwicke.
Newstead. Althorpe. Mad dogs. An adventure--87

44. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 19--88

45. To the same, Sept. 30--89

46. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 2.-Marriage of his niece
Charlotte
to Lord Huntingtower--90

47. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 5.-Capture of Montreal. Projected
expedition. Lord Dysart. His niece's marriage. Death of Lady
Coventry--91

48. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 14.-Duke of York's visit to
Strawberry Hill. Intended expedition--92

49. To the same, Oct. 25.-Death of George the Second--95

50. To the Earl of Straford, Oct. 26.-Death of George the
Second--
96

51. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 28.-The new court. Manners of
the
young King. Capture of Berlin--97

52. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 28.-Death of George the Second.
Capitulation of Berlin. Political movements--98

53. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 31.-Conduct of the young
King--99

54. To the same, Nov. 4.-Bequests of the late King. Court and
ministerial changes. George Townshend's challenge to Lord
Albemarle--100

55. To the same, Nov. 13.-Personal conduct of the new King.
Funeral
of George the Second. King of Prussia's victory over Marshal
Daun--
102

56. To the same, Nov. 22.-Appointment of the King's
household--104

57. To the same, Nov. 24.-The King's first visit to the theatre.
Seditious papers. "Anecdotes of Painting." Foote's "Minor."
Voltaire's "Peter the Great"--104

58. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, Nov. 27.-"lucan." "Anecdotes of
Painting"--106

59. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 11.-State of the ministry.
Threatened resignations--106


                                   1761.

60. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, January 3.-State of the arts.
Booksellers. Dr. Hill's works. Architects--107

61. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan. 22.-A party at
Northumberland-house. Account of a play performed at
Holland-house-
-108

62. To the same, Feb. 7.-Ball at Carlton-house. Death of Wortley
Montagu. Miss Ford's letter to Lord Jersey--109

63. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Feb. 8.-Mr. Conway's speech on the
Qualification-bill --110

64. To George Montagu, Esq. March 7.-On Mr. Montagu's being
appointed usher of the black rod in Ireland. Prospect of Peace.
Rumours of the King's marriage. Lord Pembroke's "Treatise on
Horsemanship"--111

65. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, March 7.-Voltaire's letter to Lord
Lyttelton. Colman's "Jealous Wife." "Tristram Shandy." Voltaire's
"Tancred"--111

66. To George Montagu, Esq. March 17.-Changes in the King's
household--112

67. To the same, March 19.-Ministerial resignations and changes.
Militia disturbances. Lord Hardwicke's verses to Lord Lyttelton.
Death of Lady Gower--113

68. To the same, March 21.-Speaker Onslow's retirement--115

69. To the same, March 25.-Feelings and reflections occasioned by
a visit to Houghton. Electioneering at Lynn. Aunt Hammond--115

70. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 10.-Prospect of peace. Death
of
Sir Harry Bellendine--118

71. To Sir David Dalrymple, April 14.-Macpherson's
"Fingal."--[N.)
119

72. To the Countess of Suffolk, April 15.-Election
arrangements.--
[N) 120

73. To George Montagu, Esq. April 16.-Anacreontic upon Sir Harry
Bellendine--121

74. To the same, April 28.-Lady Suffolk.  Account of a fire near
Sackville-street--122

75. To the same, May 5.-Death of Sir William Williams. Gray and
Mason at Strawberry Hill. Conversation with Hogarth--123

76. To the same, May 14.-Jemmy Lumley's battle with Mrs.
Mackenzy.
Party at Bedford-house.  Anecdotes--125

77. To the Countess of Ailesbury, June 13.-Thanks for a
snuff-box.
New opera. Murphy's "All in the Wrong." Lines on the Duchess of
Grafton--126

78. To George Montagu, Esq., June 18.-Mr. Bentley's play of The
Wishes, or Harlequin's mouth opened"--128

79. To the same, July 5.--130

80. To the Earl of Strafford, July 5.-Anecdote of Whitfield and
Lady Huntingdon--130

81. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 14.-Apologies for not having
written. Approaching marriage of the King--131

82. To George Montagu, Esq. July 16.-The King's approaching
marriage. The Queen's household--133

83. To the Countess of Ailesbury, July 20.-Thanks for a present
of
some china. Congratulations on Mr. Conway's escape at the battle
of
Kirkdenckirk--134

84. To the Earl of Strafford, July 2)@.-Battle of
Kirkdenckirk--136

85. To George Montagu, Esq. July 22.-The King's marriage.
Victories. Single-speech Hamilton. "Young Mr. Burke"--136

86. To the Hon. H.  S. Conway, July 23.-Congratulations on the
success of the army. Taking of Pondicherry--138

87. To George Montagu, Esq. July 28.-First night of Mr. Bentley's
play. Singular instance of modesty--138

88. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug.,5.-Tomb of the Earl of
Pembroke.
Wolfe's monument. Rapacity of the chapter of Westminster--140

89. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 20.-offer of a seat at the
coronation. The Queen's arrival--142

90. To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 21.-Arrival of the Queen.
Tripoline ambassador. Disputes about rank and precedence--143

91. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 9.-Arrival of the queen. Her
person and manners--144

92. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 24.-Description of the
coronation--145

93. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 25.-Delays in the treaty of
peace. The coronation--147

94. To the Countess of Ailesbury, Sept. 27.-Pedigrees. The
coronation. The treaty broken off--149

95. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 8.-Resignation of Mr. Pitt--151

96. To the same, Oct. 10.-Mr. Pitt's pension and peerage--152

97. To the Countess of Ailesbury, Oct. 10.-Mr. Pitt's
resignation,
pension, and peerage--153

98. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 12.-Mr. Pitt's pension and
peerage. Ministerial changes--154

99. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 24.-City address to Mr. Pitt.
Glover's "Medea"--156

100. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 26.-Civic agitations. London
address to Mr. Pitt. Differences in the cabinet. State of
parties--
157

101. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 7.-Sir John Cust's nose.
Caricature of Hogarth--159

102. To the same, Nov. 28.-Private ball at court. Marriages.
Political changes--159

103. To the Countess of Ailesbury, Nov. 28.-Politics. Opera.
Burlettas. Private ball at court. Pamphlets on Mr. Pitt. Gray's
"Thyrsis, when we parted"--160

104. To Sir David Dalrymple, Nov. 30.-The best picture of an age
found in genuine letters. One from Anne of Denmark to the Marquis
of Buckingham. Hume's "History." "Hau Kiou Choaan;" a Chinese
history.--[N.] 161

105. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 8.-Hume's "History." "Fingal."
Doubts Of its authenticity. "Cymbeline"--162

106. To Sir David Dalrymple, Dec. 21.-Complaints of printers.
Difficulties of literature.--[N.] 163

107. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 23.-Irish revivification.
Effects
of age. Mistakes of life. Tricks of his printer. Mrs. Dunch's
auction. Losing at loo. Death of Lady Pomfret. Bon-mot of M. de
Choiseul. Lines on Lady Mary Coke's having St. Anthony's fire in
her cheek--164

108. To the same, Dec. 30.-Indifference to politics. Progress of
"Anecdotes of Painting." Death of Jemmy Pelham--165


                                   1762.

(109. To the same, Jan. 26.-Upbraiding for not writing--167


110. To the same, Feb. 2.-Arrival of' Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
Her dress and personal appearance. Mr. Macnaughton's murder of
Miss
Knox. Visit to the Cock-Lane Ghost--168

111. To the same, Feb. 6.-Effects of Hamilton's eloquence--169

112. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 7.-Anecdotes of polite
literature--
170

113. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, Feb. 13.-Lamentation on the
tediousness of engravers, and tricks of printers--171

114. To the Earl of Bute, Feb. 15.-On the Earl's suggesting to
him
a work Similar to Montfaucon's "Monuments de la Monarchie
Fran`caise."--[N.] 171

115. To George Montagu, Esq. Feb. 22.-Violent storms. Elopement
of
Lord Pembroke and Kitty Hunter--173

116. To Dr. Ducarel, Feb. 24.-English Montfaucon. Medals. Errors
in
Vertue and others--174

117. To George Montagu, Esq. Feb. 25.-Lely's picture of Madame
Grammont. Harris's "Hibernica." The recent elopement--175

118. To the Countess of Ailesbury, March 5.-Prospect of Peace.
dresses--176

119. To George Montagu, Esq. March 9.-Epitaph for Lord Cutts--177

120. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, March 20.-"Anecdotes of Painting."
Advice to antiquaries. Bishop of Imola. Resemblance between
Tiberius and Charles the Second. Caution on the care of his
eyesight--178

121. To George Montagu, Esq. March 22.-Capture of Martinico.
Fatal
accident at a concert at Rome--179

122. To the same, April 29.-Death of Lady Charlotte Johnstone.
Efficacy of James's powders. New batch of peers--180

123. To the same, May 14.-Attack of the gout. Visit to Audley
Inn--
181

124. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, May 20.-"Anecdotes of Painting."
Knavery
of his printer--183

125. To George Montagu, Esq. May 25.-Duke of Newcastle's
resignation. Ministerial changes--184

126. To the same, June 1.-Lord Melcomb. Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu.
The Cherokee Indian chiefs. Anecdotes and bon-mots--185

127. To the same, June 8.-Account of Lady Northumberland's
festino.
Bon-mots. Death of Lord Anson--185

128. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 29.-Invitation to Strawberry
Hill--
186

129. To the Countess of Ailesbury, July 31.-Congratulation on the
taking of the Castle of Waldeck--187

130. To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 5.-Revolution in Russia.
Taking
of the Castle of Waldeck--187

131. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Aug. 5.--188

132. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 10.-Great drought. Revolution
in
Russia. Count Biren--189

133. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Aug. 19.-Object in publishing the
"Anecdotes of Painting"--190

134. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 9.-Prospect of peace.
Christening of the Prince of Wales. Fire at Strawberry Hill. "The
North Briton."--191

135. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 24.-Prospect of peace--192

136. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 28.-Negotiations for peace.
Capture of the Havannah--193

137. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Sept. 30.--195

138. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Oct. 1.-Congratulations on
her
son's safe return from the Havannah--196

139. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 4.-Love of fame. Capture of
the
Havannah. State of public feeling--196

140. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 14.-Ministerial changes--197

141. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 29.-Change of the ministry.
State of the opposition. Anticipation of the history of the
present
age--198

142. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Oct. 31.--200

143. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 4.-The Duke of Devonshire's
name
erased out of the council-book--200

144. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Nov. 13.--201

145. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 20.-His illness. Political
squabbles. A scene at Princess Emily's loo. Mr. Pitt--201

146. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Dec. 23.--203


                                   1763.


147. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Feb. 28.-Restoration to health.
Determination to retire from public life. Wilkes and "The North
Briton." Riots at Drury-lane Theatre. George Selwyn and Lord
Dacre's footman--203

148. To George Montagu, Esq. March 29.-Wilkes and "The North
Briton." Dedication to "The Fall of Mortimer." Lord and Lady
Pembroke's reconciliation, A song made in a postchaise--205

149. To the same, April 6.-Illness of Lord Waldegrave. And of Mr.
Thomas Pitt. Mr. Bentley's epistle to Lord Melcomb. Lines by Lady
Temple on Lady Mary Coke. Opposition to the Cider-tax--206

150. To the same, April 8.-Death of lord Waldegrave. Lord Bute's
resignation. New ministry. Quarrel among the Opposition--208

151. To the same, April 14.-Lady Waldegrave. Botched-up
administration. Grants and reversions--210

152. To the same, April 22,-Lady Waldegrave. The new
administration. Lord Pulteney's extravagance. Sir Robert Brown's
parsimony. Lord Bath's vault in Westminster-abbey. Lord Holland.
Charles Townshend--212

153. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 1.-Severity of the weather.
Committal of Wilkes to the Tower--213

154. To Sir David Dalrymple, May 2.-Political revolutions. Mr.
Grenville.--[N.] 215

155. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 6.-Prerogative. Wilkes's
release from the Tower. Dreadful fire at Lady Molesworth's. Lady
M. W. Montagu's Letters--216

156. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, May 16.--217

157. To George Montagu, Esq. May 17.-F`ete at Strawberry Hill.
Madame de Boufflers. Madame Dusson. Miss Pelham's entertainment
at Esher. Mrs. Anne Pitt--218

158. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, May 21.-French and English
vivacity compared. Miss chudleigh's f`ete--221

159. To the same, May 28.-Masquerade at the Duke of
Richmond's--223

160. To George Montagu, Esq. May 30.-Visit to Kimbolton.
Hinchinbrook--223

161. To the same, June 16.--225

162. To the same, July 1.-Improvements at Strawberry Hill--226

163. To Sir David Dalrymple, July 1.-Mr. Grenville.--[N.] 227

164. To the Rev. Mr, Cole, July 1.--228

165. To the same, July 12.--228

166. To George Montagu, Esq. July 23.-Visit to Stamford. Castle
Ashby. Easton Maudit. Boughton. Drayton. Fotheringhay--229

167. To the same, July 25.-Visit to Burleigh. Peterborough.
Huntingdon. Cambridge--231

168. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Aug. 8.--232

169. To Dr. Ducarel, Aug. 8.--232

170. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 9.-Reported marriages. Dupery
of Opera undertakers--232

171. To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 10.-Inclemency of the
weather- -233

172. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 15.-Singular appearance of the
Thames--233

173. To the same, Sept. 3.-Crowds of visitors to see Strawberry.
Comforts of keeping a gallery--235

(174. To the same, Sept. 7. Invitation. Character of Mr. Thomas
Pitt--236

175. To the same, Oct. 3.-Mrs. Crosby's pictures. Death of Mr.
Child. Visit                         to Sir Thomas Reeves--236

176. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Oct. 8.-" Anecdotes of Engravers"--239

177. To the Earl of Hertford, Oct. 18.-Death of the King of
Poland. Expulsion of the Jesuits--239

178. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 12.-Irish politics. Death of
Sir Michael Foster--242

179. To the Earl of Hertford, Nov. 17.-Debates on the King's
Speech. Wilkes at the Cockpit. Privileges of Parliament. "North
Briton." Duel between Martin and Wilkes. "Essay on Woman."
Bon-mots. Lord Sandwich's piety. Wilkes and Churchill. M. de
Guerchy--243

180. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 20.-Political squabbles.
Wilkes's "Essay on Woman"--250

181. To the Earl of Hertford, Nov. 25.-Mr. Conway's voting
against the court. Unpopularity of the ministry. Debates on
privilege. Quarrel between Mr. James Grenville and Mr Rigby. M.
de Guerchy and M. D'Eon--251

182. To the same, Dec. 2.-Dismission of officers. Opera quarrel.
Lord Clive's Jaghire. State of the Opera. Prince de Masserano.
Count de Soleirn. Irish politics--254

183. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Dec. 6.-Thanks for literary
information--256

184. To the Earl of Hertford, Dec. 9.-Transactions between
General Conway and Mr. Grenville. Dismissal of Lord Shelburne and
Colonel Barr`e. Riot at the burning of "The North Briton."
Wilkes's suit against Mr. Wood--257

185. To the same, Dec. 16.-City politics. Unpopularity of the
ministry. Dismissals. Intended assassination of Wilkes. Mrs.
Sheridan's comedy of "The Dupe"--261

186. To the same, Dec. 29.-Debates on privilege. Lord Clive's
jaghire. Anecdotes. The King at Drury-lane. Prize in the lottery.
la Harpe's "Comte de Warwic"--263



                                   1764.

187. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan. 11.-Visit to Lady Suffolk. A
New-year's gift. Lady Temple. Portrait of Lady Suffolk at
seventy-six.--266

188. To the Earl of Hertford, Jan. 22.-Mr. Conway's opposition to
the ministry. Feelings of the government towards his lordship.
Ministerial disunion. State of the opposition. Marriage of Prince
Ferdinand with the Princess Augusta. His reception in England.
Wilkes. Churchill's "Dueller." Ball at Carlisle house.
Proceedings against Wilkes. Dismissals. The Duc de Pecquigny's
quarrel with Lord Garlies.--270

189. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Jan. 31.--277

190. To Sir David Dalrymple,, Jan. 31.-Thanks for corrections of
the "Anecdotes of Painting." London booksellers--[N.) 278

191. To the Earl of Hertford, Feb. 6.-The Cider-bill. Debates on
privilege. Charles Townshend's bon-mot. East India affairs. Duc
de Pecquigny's episode--279

192. To the same, Feb. 15.-Great debates in the House of Commons
on general warrants. Duel between the Duc de Pecquigny and M.
Virette. Formidable condition of the Opposition. City rejoicings.
Expected changes in the ministry--283

193. To Sir David Dalrymple, Feb. 23.-" Anecdotes of Painting."
Complaints of the carelessness of artists and rapacity of
booksellers--[N.] 292

194. To the Earl of Hertford, Feb. 24.-Complaint in the House of
Lords of a book called "Droit le Roy." Wilkes's trials for "The
North Briton" and the "Essay on Woman." Tottering state of the
ministry. Mrs. Anne Pitt's ball--294

195. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, March 3.-Thanks for some prints and
the loan of manuscripts--296

196. To the Earl of Hertford, March 11.-Cambridge University
election for high-steward. Debate on the budget. Lord Bute's
negotiations. The Duchess of Queensbury's ball. Affairs of India.
M. Helvetius--297

197. To the same, March 18.-Death of Lord Malpas and of Lord
Townshend. Lord Clive's jaghire. George Selwyn's accident--300

198. To the same, March 27.-Uncertain state of politics. D'Eon's
publication of the Duc de Nivernois's private letters. Liberty of
the press. Lady Cardigan's ball. Bon-mot of Lady Bell Finch--302

199. To Charles Churchill, Esq.  March 27.-Death of Lord Malpas.
M. de Guerchy. D'Eon's pamphlet. Efficacy of James's powder.
Reappearance of Lord Bute--306

200. To the Earl of Hertford, April 5.-Wilkes's suspected libel
on the Earl. Cambridge University election. Jemmy Twitcher. Lord
Lyttelton's reconciliation with Mr. Pitt. Lord Bath at court.
Bishop Warburton and Helvetius--308

201. To the same, April 12.-Party abuse. Character. Lady Susan
Fox's marriage with O'Brien the actor. East India affairs.
Projected marriages. Expected changes. Confusion at the
India-house--310

202. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, April 12.--313

203. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 19.-On Mr. Conway's
dismissal from all his employments--313

204. To the Earl of Hertford, April 20.-On Mr. Conway's dismissal
from all his employments. Political promotions and changes.
Prosecution of D'Eonn. East India affairs--314

205. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 21.-On Mr. Conway's
dismissal. Offers him half his fortune--316

206. The Hon. H. S. Conway to the Earl of Hertford, April
23.-Giving his brother an account of his total dismissal from the
King's service for his vote in the House of Commons--317

207. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 24.-On Mr. Conway's
dismissal- -320


208. The Hon. H. S. Conway To the Earl of Hertford, May
1.-Conjectures as to the cause of his dismissal--320

209. To George Montagu, Esq. May 10.--322

210. To the Earl of Hertford, May 27.-On the Earl's position, in
consequence of Mr. Conway's dismissal. Promotions and
changes--322

211. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 5.-On Mr. Conway's dismissal.
Answer to the "Address to the Public"--325

212. To the Earl of Hertford, June 8.-Lord Tavistock's courtship
and marriage. The Mecklenburgh Countess. Bon-mot--326

213. To George Montagu, Esq. June 18.-Account of a party at
Strawberry--328

214. To the same, July 16.-"life of Lord Herbert." Lady Temple's
poems--329

215. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 16.-"Lord Herbert's Life"--330

216. To the Rev. Henry Zouch, July 21.-Harte's "Gustavus"--330

217. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 21.-"Life of Lord Herbert"--331

218. To the Earl of Hertford, Aug. 3. Instability of the
ministry. Determination to quit party. Regrets that the Earl did
not espouse mr. Conway's cause. Consequences of Lord Bute's
conduct. The Queen's intended visit to Strawberry. A dinner with
the Duke of Newcastle. Fracas at Tunbridge Wells. on Mr. Conway's
dismission. Walpole's Counter "Address"--332

219. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 16.--337

220. To the Earl of Hertford, Aug. 27.-Death of Mr. Legge.
Seizure of Turk's Island. Visit to Sion. Ministerial changes.
Murder of the Czar Ivan. Mr. Conway's dismission. Generous offer
of the Earl. Farewell to politics. Lord Mansfield's violence
against the press. Conduct of the Duke of Bedford. Overtures to
Mr. Pitt. Recluse life of their Majesties. Court economy.
Dissensions in the house of Grafton. Nancy Parsons. Death of Sir
John Barnard. Conduct of Mr. Grenville--338

221. To the Right Hon. William Pitt, Aug. 29.-"Life of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury"--343

222. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Aug. 29.--343

223. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 1.-Enclosing a reply to
Walpole's "Counter Address." Lady Ailesbury's picture, executed
in worsteds--344


224. To the Rev. Dr. Birch, Sept. 3.-Thanks for an original
picture of Sir William Herbert--345

225. To the Earl of Hertford, Oct. 5.-Madame de Boufflers and
Oliver Cromwell. James the Second's Journal. Illness of the Duke
of Devonshire. Folly of being unhappy--345

226. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 5.-Unfavourable state of
public affairs. Reflections on his birthday--347

227. To the same, Oct. 13.-Death of the Duke of Devonshire. His
bequest to Mr. Conway. Virtue rewarded in this world--348

228. To the same, Oct. 29.-Mourning for the Duke of Devonshire.
Reply of a poor man in Bedlam. Story of Sir Fletcher Norton and
his mother--348

229. To the Earl of Hertford, Nov. 1.-Duke of Devonshire's legacy
to Mr. Conway. Lady Harriot Wentworth's marriage with her
footman. Unpopularity of the court--350

230. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Nov. 8.--352

231. To the Earl of Hertford, Nov. 9.-Announcing his intended
visit to Paris. Adieu to politics--353

232. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Nov. 10.-Thanks for some
pilchards--355

233. To the Earl of Hertford, Nov. 25.-The Opera. Manzoli. Elisi.
Tenducci. D'Eon's flight. Wilkes's outlawry. Churchill's death.
Ministerial changes. Objects of his intended journey to
Paris--356

234. To the same, Dec. 3.-Ministerial changes. Separation in the
house of Grafton. The Duke of Kingston and Miss Chudleigh.
Correspondence between Mr. Legge and Lord Bute. Mr. Dunning's
pamphlet on the "Doctrine of Libels." Mrs. Ann Pitt's ball--358

235. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 16.-State of the town. Mr.
Dunning's pamphlet. "Lord Herbert's Life"--362

236. To the same, Dec. 24.-With a present of some books--364



                                   1765.


237. To the Earl of Hertford, Jan.  10.-Meeting of Parliament.
Debate in the House of Commons on the Address--364

238. To the same, Jan. 20.-Sir William Pynsent's bequest to Mr.
Pitt. Reported death of Lady Hertford. Death of Lady Harcourt.
Conduct of Charles Townshend. Couplet on Charles Yorke--367

239. To the same, Jan. 27.-Debates on the army estimates. Sir
William Pynsent's legacy to Mr. Pitt. Duel between Lord Byron and
Mr. Chaworth. Lady Townshend's arrest. "Castle of Otranto." Mrs.
Griffiths's "Platonic Wife"--370

240. To the same, Feb. 12.-Debates on the American Stamp-act.
Petition of the perriwig-makers. Almack's new assembly-room.
Williams the reprinter of "The North Briton" pilloried. Wretched
condition of The administration.--373

241. To George Montagu, Esq. Feb. 19.-Congratulations on his
health and cheerful spirits. Recommends him to quit his country
solitude. Contemplated visit to Paris. And retirement from
Parliament and political connexions. Runic poetry. Mallet's
"Northern Antiquities." Lord Byron's trial. Antiquarian
Society--376

242. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 28.-Planting and gardening.
Publication of "The Castle of Otranto"--377

243. To the same, March 9.-Origin of "The Castle of Otranto."
Caution to his friend respecting his MSS. Consequences of the
Droit d'Aubaine. Dr. Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry." Old Ballads. Rosamond's Bower. Ambition and Content--378

244. To Monsieur Elie de Beaumont, March 18.-"The Castle of
Otranto." Madame de Beaumont's "Letters of the Marquis de
Roselle." Churchill and Dryden. Effects of Richardson's
novels--381

245. To the Earl of Hertford, March 26.-Count de Guerchy's
pretended conspiracy to murder M. D'Eon. The King's illness.
Count de Caraman. "Siege of Calais." Duc de Choiseul's reply to
Mademoiselle Clairon. French admiration of Garrick. Quin in
Falstaff. Old Johnson. Mrs. Porter. Cibber and O'Brien, Mrs.
Clive. Garrick's chief characters. The wolf of the Gevaudan.
Favourable reception of "The Castle of Otranto." Bon-mot. Strait
of Thermopylae--382

246. To George Montagu, Esq. April 5.-"Siege of Calais."
Bon-mots. Quin and Bishop Warburton. Prerogative.
Preferments--384

247. To the Earl of Hertford, April 7.-The King's rapid recovery.
Fire at Gunnersbury. Count Schouvaloff. Count de Caraman. Mrs.
Anne Pitt. Mr. Pitt the, first curiosity of foreigners. French
encroachments. Parliament. Poor bill. A late dinner--385

248. To the same, April 18.-The King's recovery. Proceedings on
the Regency-bill. Enmity between Lord Bute and Mr. Grenville.
Rumoured changes. State of parties. Lord Byron's acquittal. The
Duke of Cumberland's illness. Daffy's Elixir. Poor-bill. lord
Hinchinbrook's marriage--388

249. To Sir David Dalrymple, April 21.-"The Castle of Otranto."
Old Ballads. Consolations of authorship--[N.] 391

To the Earl of Hertford, May 5.-Proceedings in the House of Lords
on the Regency-bill--391

251. To the same, May 12.-Proceedings in the House of Commons on
the Regency bill. The Princess Dowager excluded from the
Regency--395

252. To the same, May 20.-The King forbids the Parliament to be
prorogued. The Duke of Cumberland ordered to form a new
administration. Failure of the Duke's negotiation with Mr. Pitt.
Ministerial resignations. Humiliations of the Crown. Riots.
Attack on Bedford-house. General spirit of mutiny and
dissatisfaction.
Extraordinary conduct of Mr. Pitt. Second tumult at
Bedford-house.
The King compelled to take back his ministers. Reconciliation
between Lord Temple and George Grenville. Mr. Conway restored to
the King's favour. Extravagant terms dictated by the ministers to
the King. Stuart Mackenzie's removal. Ministerial changes and
squabbles--399

253. To George Montagu, Esq. May 26.-Proceedings on the
Regency-bill. Ministerial squabbles and changes. Mr. Bentley's'
poem. Danger of writing political panegyrics or satires. Lines on
the Fountain Tree in the Canary Islands--405

254. To the same, June 10.-A party at Strawberry. General
Schouvaloff. Felicity of being a private man. Ingratitude of
sycophants--407

255. To the right Hon. Lady Hervey, June 11.-Apology for not
writing. Regrets at being carried backward.,; and forwards to
balls and suppers. Resolutions of growing old and staid at
fourscore--408

256. To George Montagu, Esq.-Contradicting a report of his
dangerous illness--409

257. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 3.-Progress of his illness.
Effects of the gout. Dreams and reveries. Madame de Bentheim--410

258. To the Countess of Suffolk, July 3,-State of his health.
Lady Blandford--[N.] 411

259. To the same, July 9.--The new ministry, Conduct of Charles
Townshend.--(N) 411

260. To George Montagu, Esq. July 11.-Change of the ministry. The
Rockingham administration--412

261. To the same, July 28.-Reflections on loss of youth. Entrance
into old age through the gate Of infirmity. A month's confinement
to a sick bed a stinging lesson. Whiggism--413

262. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 23.-Death of Lady Barbara
Montagu. Old friends and new faces. A strange story. Motives for
revisiting Paris. The French reformation. Churches and convents.
Adieu to politics--414

263. To the same, Aug. 31.-Dropping off and separation of
friends. Pleasant anticipations from his visit to Paris. Revival
of old ideas. Stupefying effects of richardson's novels on the
Frenchmnation--416

264. To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 3.-Motives of his journey to
Paris. Death of the Emperor of Germany. "My last sally into the
world"--418

265. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Sept. 3.-Thanks for letters
of introduction. Modern French literature--419

266. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Sept. 5.-Inviting him to visit Paris--
420

267. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 11.-Journey to Amiens.
Meeting with Lady mary Coke. Boulogne. Duchess of Douglas. A
droll way of being chief mourner. A French absurdity.
Walnut-trees. Clermont. The Duc de Fitz-James. Arrival at
Paris--421


268. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Sept. 14.-Salutary effects OF
his journey. French gravity. Parisian dirt. French Opera. Italian
comedy Chantilly. Illness of the Dauphin. Mr. David Hume the mode
at Paris. Mesdames de Monaco, d'Egmont, and de Brionne. Nymphs of
the theatres--423

269. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Sept. 18.-Advice respecting his
journey to Paris--424

270. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 22.-Ingratitude. Amusements.
French society. Mode of living. Music. Stage. Le Kain. The
Dumenil. Grandval. Italian comedy. Harlequin. Freethinking.
Conversation. Their savans. Admiration of Richardson and Hume.
Dress and equipages. Parliaments and clergy. Effects of company
--425

271. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Oct. 3.-H`otel de Carnavalet.
Madame Geoffrin. His own defects the sole cause of his not
enjoying Paris. Duc de Nivernois. Colonel Drumgold. Duchesse de
Coss`e. Presentations at Versailles. The King and Queen. The
Mesdames. The Dauphin and Dauphiness. Wild beast of the Gevaudan.
Mr. hans Stanley--427

272. To John Chute, Esq. Oct. 3.-French manners. Their authors.
Style of conversations. English and French manners contrasted.
Presentation at Versailles. Duc de Berri. Count de Provence.
Count d'Artois. Duc and Duchesse de Praslin. Duc and Duchesse de
Choiseul. Duc de Richelieu--429

273. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 6.-French society. A supper
at Madame du Deffand's. President Henault. Walpole's blunders
against French grammar. Sir James Macdonald's mimicry of Mr.
David Hume. Mr. Elliot's imitation of Mr. Pitt. Presentation to
the Royal Family. Dinner at the Duc de Praslin's with the corps
diplomatique. Visit to the State Paper Office. M. de Marigny's
pictures. Mada mede Bentheim. Duc de Duras. Wilkes at Paris--431

274. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Oct. 13.-Attack of the gout.
Cupid and death. Allan Ramsay the painter. Madame Geoffrin.
Common sense. Duc de Nivernois. Lady Mary Chabot. Politics--434

275. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 16.-Illness at Paris. Visit
from Wilkes. The Dumenil. Grandval. President Henault--436

276. To the Countess of Suffolk, Oct. 16.-Fontainbleau. Duc de
Richelieu. Lady Mary Chabot. Lady Browne. Visit to Mrs. Hayes.
Joys of the gout--[N.-) 437

277. To Thomas Brand, Esq. Oct. 19.-Laughter out of fashion at
Paris. "God and the King to be Pulled down." Admiration of whist
and Richardson. Freethinking. Wilkes, Sterne, and Foote at Paris.
Lord Ossory. Mesdames de Rochefort, Monaco, and Mirepoix. The
Mar`echalle d'Estr`ees--438

278. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 29.-Probable death of the
Dauphin. Description of the Philosophers. Their object the
destruction of regal power.--440

279. To Mr. Gray, Nov. 19.-State of his health. Infallible
specific for the gout. Picture of Paris. French society. The
Philosophers. Dumenil. Preville. Visit to the Chartreuse--441

280. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Nov. 21.-Recovery from a fit
of the gout. "Le nouveau Richelieu." Indifference to politics.
Squabbles about the French Parliaments. Bigotry. Logogriphe by
Madame du Deffand--444

281. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 21.-A simile. Sameness of llife
at Paris. Invites him to transplant himself to Roehampton.
Reflections on coming old age. Object of all impostors.
Rabelais-- 445

282. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Nov. 28.-Thanks for her
introductions. Duchesse d'Aiguillon. French women of quality.
Duchesse de Nivernois. "L'Orpheline Legu`egu`ee." Count
Grammont's picture--447

283. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Nov. 29.-Tea-drinking. Dissuades
him from going to Italy. Advice for his political conduct.
"L'Orpheline Legu`ee." Count Caylus's auction. Portrait of Count
Grammont. French painters--448

284. To the Hon. H. S. Conway. Dec. 5.-The Dauphin. French
politics. M. de Maurepas. Marshal Richelieu. French parliaments--
450

285. To the Countess of Suffolk, Dec. 5.-Fret)ch society. The
Comtesse d'Egmont. The Dauphin--[N.] 451



                                   1766.

286. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Jan. 2.-Comtesse d'Egmont.
Severity of the Frost. Dread of being thought charming.
Rousseau's visit to England. Great parts. Charles Townshend--452

287. To John Chute, Esq. Jan.-Severity of the weather. Ill-
accordance of the French manners and climate. Presentation to the
Comtesse de la Marche. Douceur in the society of the Parisiennes
of fashion. Charlatanerie of the Savans and Philosophes. Count
St. Germain. Rousseau in England. Walpole's pretended letter of
the King of Prussia to Rousseau--453

288. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan, 5.-Robin Hood reform`e and
Little John. Dreams of life superior to its realities. Politics.
Lord Temple and George Grenville. Goody Newcastle. Helvetius's
"Esprit" and Voltaire's "Pucelle"--455

289. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Jan. 11.-A supper at the
Duchesse d'Aiguillon's. Picture of the Duchesse de Choiseul.
Madame Geoffrin. Verses on Madame Forcalquier speaking English.
The Italians. The gout preferable to all other disorders--457

290. To The Hon. H. S. Conway, Jan. 12.-Regrets on leaving Paris.
Honours and distinctions. Invitation from Madame de Brionne.
Pretended letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau--458

291. To the Rev. mr. Cole, Jan. 18.-Severity of the weather.
Cathedral of Amiens. The Sainte Chapelle. Rousseau in England.
King of Prussia's letter--460

292. To Mr. Gray, Jan. 25.-State of his health. "Making oneself
tender." Change in French manners. Their religious opinions. The
Parliaments. The men dull and empty. Wit, softness, and good
sense of the women. Picture of Madame Geoffrin. madame du
Deffand. M. Pontdeveyle. Madame de Mirepoix. Anecdote of M. de
Maurepas. Madame de Boufflers. Madame de Rochefort. Familiarities
under the veil of friendship. Duc de Nivernois. Madame de Gisors.
Duchesse de Choiseul. Duchesse de Grammont. Mar`echale de
Luxembourg. Pretended letter to Rousseau. Walpole at the head of
the fashion. Carried to the Princess de Talmond--461

293. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, Feb. 3.-Madame de Geoffrin's
secret mission to Poland. The Comtesse d'Egmont--468

294. To George Montagu, Esq. Feb. 4.-Madame Roland. Marriages.
Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul--469

295. To the Same, Feb. 23.-French Parliaments --470

296. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 28.-Pretended letter to Rousseau.
A French horse-race--470

297. To George Montagu, Esq. March 3.-Preparations for leaving
Paris. Defeat of George Grenville. Repeal of the American
Stamp-act. Lit de justice. Remonstrances of the Parliaments--471

298. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, March 10.-Watchings and
revellings. A supper at the Mar`echale de Luxembourg's. Funeral
sermon on the Dauphin. The Abb`e Coyer's pamphlet on
Preaching--472

299. To George Montagu, Esq. March 12.-Colman and Garrick. Mrs.
Clive--474

300. To the same, March 21.-Madame Roland. A French woman's first
visit to Paris contrasted with his own. The Princess of Talmond's
pug-dogs. A commission--474

301. To the same, April 3.-Visit to Livry. The Abb`e de Malherbe.
Madame de S`evign`e's Sacred pavilion. Old trees--475

302. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 6.-Insurrection at Madrid on
the attempt of the Court to introduce the French dress in
Spain--476

303. To the same, April 8.-Further particulars of the
insurrection at Madrid. Change in the French ministry. Lettres de
cachet. Insurrections at Bordeaux and Toulouse--478

304. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, May 10.-Return to England--479

305. To the same, May 13.-Apology for accidentally opening one of
his letters--479

306. To George Montagu, Esq. May 25.-Ministerial appointments.
Duke of Richmond. Lord North. Death of Lord Grandison. Lady
Townshend turned Roman Catholic. Mrs. Clive's bon-mot--480

307. To the same, June 20.-Anstey's New Bath Guide. Swift's
Correspondence, and Journal to Stella. Bon-mot of George Selwyn.
Pun of the King of France--481


308. To the Right Hon. Lady Hervey, June 28.-Madame du Deffand's
present of a snuff-box,   with a portrait of Madame de S`evign`e.
Translation of a tale from the "Dictionnaire d'Anecdotes."--482

309. To George Montagu, Esq. July 10.-Expected change in the
ministry. The King's letter to Mr. Pitt--485

310. To the same, July 21.-Change of the ministry. Ode on the
occasion--485

311. To David Hume, Esq. July 26.-Quarrel between David Hume, and
Rousseau--486

312. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Sept. 18.-Contradicting a newspaper
report of his illness--487

313. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 18.--488

314. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 2.-Journey to Bath. Great
dislike of the place. The new buildings. Lord Chatham--488

315. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 5.-Recovery. Tired to death of
Bath. Lord Chatham. Watering places--489

316. To John Chute, Esq. Oct. 10.-Visit to Wesley's meeting.
Hymns to ballad tunes. Style of Wesley's preaching. Countess of
Buchan. Lord Chatham--489

317. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 18.-Reasons for leaving Bath.
Inefficacy of the waters. "Good hours"--490

318. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 18.-Lord Chatham wishes him
to second the Address on the King's Speech. Life at Bath. Motives
for leaving the place. Old age. Dread of ridicule--491

319. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 22.-Satisfaction at his return
to Strawberry Hill. Visit to Bristol. Its buildings. Abbey church
of Bath. Batheaston--492

320. To Sir David Dalrymple, (Lord Hailes,) Nov. 5.-Thanks for
his "Memorials and Letters." Folly of burying in oblivion the
faults and crimes of princes--[N.] 494

321. To David Hume, Esq. Nov. 6.-On his quarrel with Rousseau.
Folly of literary squabbles--494

322. To the same, Nov. 11.-The same subject. Omissions by
D'Alembert in a published letter of Walpole's. Picture of modern
philosophers--496

323. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 12.-Politics. Ministerial
negotiations. Deaths and marriages. Caleb Whitefoord's
Cross-readings from the newspapers--499


324. To the same, Dec. 16.-Thanks for a present of venison--500



                                   1767.

325. To George Montagu, Esq. Jan. 13.-Death of his servant Louis.
Quarrel of Hume and Rousseau. High tide--501

326. To Dr. Ducarel, April 25.-Thanks for his "Anglo Norman
Antiquities"--501

327. To the Earl of Strafford, July 29.-Death and character of
Lady Suffolk--502

328. To George Montagu, Esq. July 31.-State of the ministry.
Intended trip to Paris. Death of Lady Suffolk. Lord Lyttelton's
"Henry the Second." Lean people. Mrs. Clive--503

329. To the same, Aug. 7.-Motives for revisiting Paris--503

330. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 9.-Death and character of
Charles Townshend. State of the ministry. Lord Chatham. Dinner at
the Duc de Choiseul's--[N.] 504

331. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Oct. 24.-Return to England--505

332. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 1.-General Conway's refusal of
the appointment to secretary of state. Old Pulteney--506

333. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Dec. 19.-Intended retirement from
Parliament. State of his health. Roman Catholic religion--506



                                   1768.

334. To Sir David Dalrymple, Jan. 17.-Advice on sending a young
artist to Italy. "Historic Doubts." Coronation roll of Richard
the Third --[N.] 507

335. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Feb. 1.-On Sending a copy of his
"Historic Doubts"--508

336. To Sir David Dalrymple, Feb. 2.-On sending him his "Historic
Doubts." Rapid sale of the first impression--(N.] 509

337. To Mr. Gray, Feb. 18.-New edition of Gray's poems. On his
own writings. King of Prussia. Lord Clarendon's "History."
"Historic Doubts." Disculpation of Richard the Third. "Turned of
fifty." Garrick's prologues and epilogues. Boswell's "Corsica."
General Paoli--509

338. To the same, Feb. 26.-"Historic Doubts." Guthrie's answer
thereto. Thanks for notes on the "Noble, Authors"--512

339. To George Montagu, Esq. March 12.-Reflections on his
retirement from Parliament. Guthrie's answer to the "Historic
Doubts." Sterne's Sentimental Journey." Gray's "Odes"--514

340. To the same, April 15.-Wit as temporary as dress and
manners. Fate of George Selwyn's bon-mots. Completion of his
tragedy of "The Mysterious Mother." Mrs. Pritchard. Garrick.
President Henault's tragedy of "Corn    elie"--516

341. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, April 16.--Rous's rolls of the Earls
of Warwick. Projects a History of the Streets of London. St.
Foix's Rues de Paris. The Methodists. Whitfield's funeral sermon
on Gibson the forger--517

342. To the same, June 6.-History of Ely cathedral. Cardinal
Lewis de Luxembourg. Cardinal Morton. Painted glass--519

343. To George Montagu, Esq. June 15.-Inclemency of the weather.
English summers. Description of the climate by our poets.
Hot-house of St. Stephen's chapel. Indifference to parties. The
country going to ruin--520

344. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 16.-Wilkes and liberty.
Ministerial changes. Conduct of the Duke of Grafton. Distressed
state of the country. Lord Chatham. Foote's "Devil upon Two
Sticks." Subject of "The Mysterious Mother"--[N.] 521

345. To Monsieur de Voltaire, June 21.-On his soliciting a copy
of the "Historic Doubts." Reply to Voltaire's criticisms on
Shakspeare--523

346. To the Earl of Strafford, June 25.-Wilkes and Number 45. The
King of Denmark. Lady Rockingham and the Methodist Pope Joan
Huntingdon. Brentford election--524

347. To Monsieur de Voltaire, July 27.-Reply to Voltaire's
vindication of his criticism on Shakspeare. Story of M. de
jumonville. "Historic Doubts"--525

348. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 9.-Lord Botetourt. New
Archbishop of Canterbury. King of Denmark. Augustus Hervey's
divorce from the Chudleigh. Gray appointed professor of modern
history. Efficacy of ice-water--527

349. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 13.-Arrival of the King of
Denmark. His person and manners. His suite--529

350. To the Earl of Strafford, Aug. 16.-Personal description of
the King of Denmark. His cold reception at Court. the first
favourite, Count Holke. His prime minister, Count Bernsdorff--529


351. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 25.-Disturbance in America.
Coffee-house politicians. King of Denmark. Lady Bel
Stanhope--(N.] 531

352. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Aug. 30.-Thanks for some prints and
some notices. Improvements at Strawberry. Mr. Granger's
"Catalogue of English Heads." Dr. Robertson's writings. Scotch
puffing--532

353. To the Earl of Strafford, Oct. 10.-Health and sickness.
quiet of his present illness contrasted with the inquiries after
him when his friends were coming into power--534

354. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 10.-Benefits from bootikins and
water-drinking. Elections--535

355. To the same, Nov. 15.-Separation of old friends in old age.
Moroseness of retirement. Evils of solitude. Death of the Duke of
Newcastle, and of Lady Hervey--535

356. To the same, Dec. 1.-Arlington-street. Reconciliation
between Lord Chatham, Earl Temple, and Mr. George Grenville.
Wilkes and the House of Commons--536



                                   1769.

357. To George Montagu, Esq. March 26.-City riot. Brentford
election. Wilkes and Luttrell. Marriages--538

358. To the same, April 15.-Temperance the best physician. Easy
mode of preserving the teeth. Advice on wine drinking. Middlesex
election. Wilkes and the House of Commons--539

359. To the same, May 11.-Grand festino at Strawberry. Ridotto al
fresco at Vauxhall--540

360. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, May 27.-Granger's Catalogue of Prints
and Lives down to the Revolution. Intended visit to Paris.
Gough's British Topography--541

361. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, June 14.-Proposed painted window for
Ely cathedral. Bishop Mawson. Granger's dedication. Shenstone's
Letters. His unhappy passion for fame. The Leasowes. Instructions
on domestic privacy--542

362. To the same, June 26.-Intended visit to Ely. English
summers. Advice to quit Marshland. Joscelin de Louvain--545

363. To the Earl of Strafford, July 3.-Disinterestedness and
length of their friendship. Three years' absence of summer.
Emptiness of London. City politics. Angling. Methuselah--546

364. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 7.-Lord Chatham at the King's
levee--547

365. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, July 15.-Return from Ely. East window
of the cathedral. Bishop Luda's tomb--548

366. To the same, Aug. 12.-Thanks for some prints. Advice
respecting a History of Gothic Architecture. Tyson's "History of
Fashions and Dresses"--549

367. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 18.-Calais. Complaint of his
friend's long silence. Journey to Paris--551

368. To John Chute, Esq. Aug. 30.-Journey to Paris. Lord Dacre
and Dr. Pomme. Account of Madame du Deffand. Madame du Barry.
French theatre. Hamlet. The Dumenil. Voltaire's tragedy of "Les
Gu`ebres"- -552

(369. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 7.-Character of Madame du
Deffand. Uncertainty of life. A five-and-thirty years'
friendship. Visit to the Abbess of Panthemont--553

370. To the Earl of Strafford, Sept. 8.-Affected admiration of
the French government. Lettres de cachet. Students in
legislature. French treatment Of trees--555

371. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 17.-Visit to Versailles,
Madame du Barry. The Dauphin. Count de Provence. Count d'Artois.
The King. Visit to St. Cyr. Madame de Maintenon. Madame de
Cambise. Trait of Madame de Mailly --557

372. To the same, Oct. 13.-Return to England. Congratulations on
his friend's being appointed Lord North's private secretary--560

373. To the same, Oct. 16.-Return to Strawberry. His tragedy of
"The Mysterious Mother." Bad taste of the public. Garrick's
prologues and epilogues. French chalk and dirt contrasted with
English neatness and greenth--560

374. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Nov. 14.-Lord Temple's dinner with
the Lord Mayor. Tottering position of the Duc de Choiseul. "Trip
to the Jubilee." Literature and politics of the day. Milton's
prose writings. Heroes and orators--561

375. To George Montagu, Esq. Dec. 14.-Condolence on the death of
Mrs. Trevor. Loss of friends and connexions. Cumberland's comedy
of "The Brothers." Alderman Backwell--562

376. To the Rev. Mr. Cole, Dec. 21.-Thanks for communications.
Mr. Tyson's etchings. Madame du Deffand--[N.] 563




Letter 1 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Nov. 17, 1759. (page 25)

I rejoice over your brother's honours, though I certainly had no
hand in them.  He probably received his staff from the board of
trade.  If any part of the consequences could be placed to
partiality for me, it would be the prevention of your coming to
town, which I wished.  My lady Cutts(1) is indubitably your own
grandmother: the Trevors would once have had it, but by some
misunderstanding the old Cowslade refused it.  Mr. Chute has
twenty more corroborating circumstances, but this one is
sufficient.

Fred. Montagu told me of the pedigree.  I shall take care of all
your commissions.  Felicitate yourself on having got from me the
two landscapes; that source is stopped.  Not that Mr. M`untz is
eloped to finish the conquest of America, nor promoted by Mr.
Secretary's zeal for my friends, nor because the ghost of Mrs.
Leneve has appeared to me, and ordered me to drive Hannah and
Ishmael into the wilderness.  A cause much more familiar to me
has separated US--nothing but a tolerable quantity of ingratitude
on his side, both to me and Mr. Bentley.  The story is rather too
long for a letter: the substance was most extreme impertinence to
me, concluded by an abusive letter against Mr. Bentley, who sent
him from starving on seven pictures for a guinea to One hundred
pounds a year, my house, table, and utmost countenance.  In
short, I turned his head, and was forced to turn him out of
doors.  You shall see the documents, as it is the fashion to call
proof papers.  Poets and painters imagine they confer the Honour
when they are protected, and they set down impertinence to the
article of their own virtue, when you dare to begin to think that
an ode or a picture is not a patent for all manner of insolence.

My Lord Temple, as vain as if he was descended from the stroller
Pindar, or had made up card-matches at the siege of Genoa, has
resigned the privy seal, because he has not the garter.(2)  You
cannot imagine what an absolute prince I feel myself with knowing
that nobody can force me to give the garter to M`untz.

My Lady Carlisle is going to marry a Sir William Musgrave, who is
but three-and-twenty; but, in consideration of the match, and of
her having years to spare, she has made him a present of ten, and
calls them three-and-thirty.  I have seen the new Lady Stanhope.
I assure you her face will introduce no plebeian charms into the
faces of the Stanhopes, Adieu!

(1) Lady Cutts was the mother of Mrs. Montagu, by her second
husband, John Trevor, Esq. and grandmother of George Montagu.-E.

(2) See vol. ii. p. 522, letter 344.



Letter 2 TO THE RIGHT HON.  WILLIAM PITT.(3)
Arlington Street, Nov. 19, 1759. (page 26)

Sir,
On coming to town, I did myself the honour of waiting on you and
Lady Hester Pitt: and though I think myself extremely
distinguished by your obliging note, I shall be sorry for having
given you the trouble of writing it, if it did not lend me a very
pardonable opportunity of saying what I much wished to express,
but thought myself too private a person, and of too little
consequence, to take the liberty to say.  In short, Sir, I was
eager to congratulate you on the lustre you have thrown on this
country; I wished to thank you for the security you have fixed to
me of enjoying the happiness I do enjoy.  You have placed England
in a situation in which it never saw itself--a task the more
difficult, as you had not to improve, but recover.

In a trifling book, written two or three years ago,(4) I said
(speaking of the name in the world the most venerable to me),
"sixteen unfortunate and inglorious years since his removal have
already written his eulogium." It is but justice to you, Sir, to
add, that that period ended when your administration began.

Sir, do not take this for flattery: there is nothing in your
power to give that I would accept; nay, there is nothing I could
envy, but what I believe you would scarce offer me--your glory.
This may seem very vain and insolent: but consider, Sir, what a
monarch is a man who wants nothing!  consider how he looks down
on one who is only the most illustrious man in England! But Sir,
freedoms apart, insignificant as I am, probably it must be some
satisfaction to a great mind like yours to receive incense, when
you are sure there is no flattery blended with it; and what must
any Englishman be that could give you a moment's satisfaction and
would hesitate?

Adieu! Sir.  I am unambitious, I am uninterested, but I am vain.
You have, by your notice, uncanvassed, unexpected, and at a
period when you certainly could have the least temptation to
stoop down to me, flattered me in the most agreeable manner.  If
there could arrive the moment when you could be nobody, and I any
body, you cannot imagine how grateful I would be.  In the mean
time, permit me to be, as I have been ever since I had the honour
of knowing you, Sir, your most obedient humble servant.

(3) Now first collected.

(4) His "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors."-E.



Letter 3 To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Nov. 30th of the Great Year. (page 27)

here is a victory more than I promised you!  For these thirteen
days we have been in the utmost impatience for news.  The Brest
fleet had got out; Duff, with three ships, was in the utmost
danger--Ireland ached--Sir Edward Hawke had notice in ten hours,
and sailed after Conflans--Saunders arrived the next moment from
Quebec, heard it, and sailed after Hawke, without landing his
glory.  No express arrived, storms blow; we knew not what to
think.  This morning at four we heard that, on the 20th, Sir
Edward Hawke came in sight of the French, who were pursuing Duff.
The fight began at half an hour past two--that is, the French
began to fly, making a running fight.  Conflans tried to save
himself behind the rocks of Belleisle, but was forced to burn his
ship of eighty guns and twelve hundred men.  The Formidable, of
eighty, and one thousand men, is taken; we burned the Hero of
seventy-four, eight hundred and fifteen men.  The Thes`ee and
Superbe of seventy-four and seventy, and of eight hundred and
fifteen and eight hundred men, were sunk in the action, and the
crews lost.  Eight of their ships are driven up the Vilaine,
after having thrown over their guns; they have moored two
frigates to defend the entrance, but Hawke hopes to destroy them.
Our loss is a scratch, one lieutenant and thirty-nine men killed,
and two hundred and two wounded.  The Resolution of seventy-four
guns, and the Essex of sixty-four, are lost, but the crews saved;
they, it is supposed, perished by the tempest, which raged all
the time, for

"We rode in the whirlwind and directed the storm."

Sir Edward heard guns of distress in the night, but could not
tell whether of friend or foe, nor could assist them.(5)

Thus we wind up this wonderful year! Who that died three years
ago and could revive, would believe it! Think, that from
Petersburgh to the Cape of Good Hope, from China to California,

De Paris `a Perou,

there are not five thousand Frenchmen in the world that have
behaved well!  Monsieur Thurot is piddling somewhere on the coast
of Scotland, but I think our sixteen years of fears of invasion
are over--after sixteen victories.  if we take Paris, I don't
design to go thither before spring.  My Lord Kinnoul is going to
Lisbon to ask pardon for Boscawen's beating De la Clue in their
House; it will be a proud supplication, with another victory in
bank.(6)  Adieu!  I would not profane this letter with a word of
any thing else for the world.

(5) This was Hawke's famous victory, for which he received the
thanks of Parliament, and a pension of two thousand pounds
a-year.  In 1765, he was created a peer.-D.

(6) The object of Lord Kinnoul's mission to the court of Portugal
was to remove the misunderstanding between the two crowns, in
consequence of Admiral Boscawen's having destroyed some French
ships under the Portuguese fort in the bay of Lagos.-E.



Letter 4 TO SIR HORACE MANN.
Arlington Street, Dec. 13, 1759. (page 28)

That ever you should pitch upon me for a mechanic or geometric
commission!  How my own ignorance has laughed at me since I read
your letter!  I say, your letter, for as to Dr. Perelli's, I know
no more of a Latin term in mathematics than Mrs. Goldsworthy(7)
had an idea of verbs.  I will tell you an early anecdote in my
own life, and you shall judge.  When I first went to Cambridge, I
was to learn mathematics of the famous blind professor Sanderson.
I had not frequented him a fortnight, before he said to me,
"Young man, it is cheating you to take your money: believe me,
you never can learn these things; you have no capacity for
them."- I can smile now, but I cried then with mortification.
The next step, in order to comfort myself, was not to believe him
: I could not conceive that I had not talents for any thing in
the world.  I took, at my own expense, a private instructor,(8)
who came to me once a-day for a year.  Nay, I took infinite
pains, but had so little capacity, and so little attention, (as I
have always had to any thing that did not immediately strike my
inclination) that after mastering              any proposition,
when the man came the next day, it was as new to me as if I had
never heard of it ; in short, even to common figures, I am the
dullest dunce alive.  I have often said it of myself, and it is
true, that nothing that has not a proper Dame of a man or
           a woman to it, affixes any idea upon my mind.  I could
remember who was King Ethelbald's great aunt, and not be sure
whether she lived in the year 500 or 1500. I don't know whether I
ever told you, that when you sent me the seven gallons of drams,
and they were carried to Mr. Fox by mistake for Florence wine, I
pressed @im to keep as much as he liked: for, said I, I have seen
the bill of lading, and there is a vast quantity.  He asked how
much?  I answered seventy gallons; so little idea I have of
quantity.  I will tell you one more story of myself, and you will
comprehend what sort of a head I have!  Mrs. Leneve said to me
one day, "There is a vast waste of coals in your house ; you
should make the servants take off the fires at night."  I
recollected this as I was going to bed, and, out of economy, put
my fire out with a bottle of Bristol water!  However, as I
certainly will neglect nothing to oblige you, I went to Sisson
and gave him the letter.  He has undertaken both the engine and
the drawing, and has promised the utmost care in both.  The
latter, he says, must be very large, and that it will take some
time to have it performed very accurately.  He has promised me
both in six or seven weeks.  But another time, don't imagine,
because I can bespeak an enamelled bauble, that I am fit to be
entrusted with the direction of the machine at Marli.  It is not
to save myself trouble, for I think nothing so for you, but
I would have you have credit, and I should be afraid of
dishonouring you.

There! there is the King of Prussia has turned all our war and
                    peace topsy-turvy ! If Mr. Pitt Will conquer
Germany too, he must go and do it himself.  Fourteen thousand
soldiers and nine generals taken, as it were, in a partridge net!
and what is worse, I have not heard yet that the monarch owns his
rashness.(9)  As often as he does, indeed, he is apt to repair
it.   You know I have always dreaded Daun--one cannot make a
blunder but he profits of it-and this ' just at the moment that
we heard of nothing but new bankruptcy in France.  I want to know
what a kingdom is to do when it is forced to run away?

14th.--Oh! I interrupt my reflections--there is another bit of a
victory!  Prince Henry, who has already succeeded to his
brother's                     crown, as king of the fashion, has
beaten a parcel of Wirternberghers and taken four battalions.
Daun is gone into Bohemia, and Dresden is still to be ours.  The
French are gone into winter quarters--thank God!  What weather is
here to be lying on the ground!  Men should be statues, or will
be so, if they go through it.  Hawke is enjoying himself in
Quiberon Bay, but I believe has done no more execution.  Dr. Hay
says it will soon be as shameful to beat a Frenchman as to beat a
woman.  Indeed, one is
forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear of
missing one.  We talk of a con(,,ress at Breda, and some think
Lord Temple will go thither: if he does, I shall really believe
it will be peace; and a good one, as it will then be of Mr.
Pitt's making.

I was much pleased that the watch succeeded so triumphantly, and
beat the French watches, though they were two to one.  For the
Fugitive pieces: the Inscription for the Column(10)  was written
when I was with you at Florence, though I don't wonder that you
have forgotten it after so many yeirs.       I would not have it
talked of, for I find some grave personages are offended -with
the liberties I have taken with so imperial a head.  What could
provoke them to give a column Christian burial?  Adieu!

(7) Wife of the English consul at Leghorn, where, when she was
learning Italian by grammar, she said, "Oh! give me a language in
which there are no verbs!" concluding, as she had not learnt her
own language by grammar, that there were no verbs in English.

(8) Dr. Treviger.

(9) It was not Frederick's fault; he was not there ; but that of
General Finek, who had placed himself so injudiciously, that he
was obliged to capitulate to the Austrians with fourteen thousand
men.

(10) The inscription for the neglected Column in St. Mark's Place
at Florence.-E.



Letter 5 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 23, 1759. (page 30)


How do you do?  are you thawed again?  how have you borne the
country in this bitter weather?  I have not been here these three
weeks till to-day, and was delighted to find it so pleasant, and
to meet a comfortable southeast wind, the fairest of all winds,
in spite of the scandal that lies on the east; though it is the
west that is parent of all ugliness.  The frost was succeeded by
such fogs, that I could not find my way out of London.

Has your brother told you of the violences in Ireland?  There
wanted nothing but a Massaniello to overturn the government; and
luckily for the government and for Rigby, he, who was made for
Massaniello, happened to be first minister there.  Tumults, and
insurrections, and oppositions,

"Like arts and sciences, have travelled west."

Pray make the general collect authentic accounts of those civil
wars against he returns--you know where they will find their
place, and that you are one of the very few that will profit of
them.  I will grind and dispense to you all the corn you bring to
my mill.

We good-humoured souls vote eight millions with as few questions,
as if the whole House of Commons was at the club at Arthur's; and
we live upon distant news, as if London was York or Bristol.
There is nothing domestic, but that Lord George Lennox, being
refused Lord Ancram's consent, set out for Edinburgh with Lady
Louisa Kerr, the day before yesterday; and Lord Buckingham is
going to be married to our Miss Pitt of Twickenham, daughter of
that strange woman who had a mind to be my wife, and who sent Mr.
Raftor to know why I did not marry her.  I replied, "Because I
was not sure that the two husbands, that she had at once, were
both dead."  Apropos to my wedding, Prince Edward asked me at the
Opera, t'other night, when I was to marry Lady Mary Coke: I
answered, as soon as I got a regiment; which, you know, is now
the fashionable way.

The kingdom of beauty is in as great disorder as the kingdom of
Ireland.  My Lady Pembroke looks like a ghost-poor Lady Coventry
is going to be one; and the Duchess of Hamilton is so altered I
did not know her.  Indeed, she is bid with child, and so big,
that as my Lady Northumberland says, it is plain she has a camel
in her belly, and my Lord Edgecumbe says, it is as true it did
not go through the eye of a needle.  That Countess has been laid
up with a hurt in her leg; Lady Rebecca Paulett pushed her on the
birthnight against a bench: the Duchess of Grafton asked if it
was true that Lady Rebecca kicked her?  "Kick me, Madam! When did
you ever hear of a Percy that took a kick?"

I can tell you another anecdote of that house, that will not
divert you less.  Lord March making them a visit this summer at
Alnwick Castle, my lord received him at the gate, and said, "I
believe, my lord, this is the first time that ever a Douglas and
a Percy met here in friendship." Think of this from a Smithson to
a true Douglas!

I don't trouble my head about any connexion; any news into the
country I know is welcome, though it comes out higlepigledy, just
as it happens to be packed up.  The cry in Ireland has been
against Lord Hilsborough, supposing him to mediate an union of
the two islands; George Selwyn, seeing him set t'other night
between my Lady Harrington and Lord Barrington, said, "Who can
say that my Lord Hilsborough is not an enemy to an union?"

I will tell you one more story, and then good night.  Lord
Lyttelton(11) was at Covent Garden; Beard came on: the former
said, "How comes Beard here? what made him leave Drury Lane?"
Mr. Shelley, who sat next him, replied, "Why, don't you know he
has been such a fool as to go and marry a Miss Rich?  He has
married Rich's daughter."  My lord coloured; Shelley found out
what he had said, and ran away.

I forgot to tell you, that you need be in no disturbance about
M`untz's pictures; they were a present I made you.  Good night!

(11) Lord Lyttelton married a daughter of Sir Robert Rich.



Letter 6 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 23, 1759. (page 31)

Sir,
I own I am pleased, for your sake as well as my own, at hearing
from you again.  I felt sorry at thinking that you was displeased
with the frankness and sincerity of my last.  You have shown me
that I made a wrong judgment of you, and I willingly correct it.

You are extremely obliging in giving yourself the least trouble
to make collections for me.  I have received so much assistance
and information from you, that I am sure I cannot have a more
useful friend.  For the Catalogue, I forgot it, as in the course
of things I suppose it is forgot.  For the Lives of English
Artists I am going immediately to begin it, and shall then fling
it into the treasury of the world, for the amusement of the world
for a day, and then for the service of any body who shall happen
hereafter to peep into the dusty drawer where it shall repose.

For my Lord Clarendon's new work(12) of which you ask me, I am
charmed with it.  It entertains me more almost than any book I
ever read.  I was told there was little in it that had not
already got abroad, or was not known by any other channels.  If
that is true, I own I am so scanty an historian as to have been
ignorant of many of the facts but sure, at least, the
circumstances productive of, or concomitant on several of them,
set them in very new lights.  The deductions and stating of
arguments are uncommonly fine.  His language I find much
censured--in truth, it is sometimes involved, particularly in the
indistinct usage of he and him.  But in my opinion his style is
not so much inferior to the former History as it seems.  But this
I take to be the case; when the former part appeared, the world
was not accustomed to a good style as it is now.  I question if
the History of the Rebellion had been published but this summer,
whether it would be thought so fine in point of style as it has
generally been reckoned.  For his veracity, alas! I am sorry to
say, there is more than one passage in the new work which puts
one a little upon one's guard in lending him implicit credit.
When he says that Charles I. and his queen were a pattern of
conjugal affection, it makes one stare.  Charles was so, I verily
believe; but can any man in his historical senses believe, that
my Lord Clarendon did not know that, though the Queen was a
pattern of affection, it was by no means of the conjugal
kind.(13)  Then the subterfuges my Lord Clarendon uses to avoid
avowing that Charles II. was a Papist, are certainly no grounds
for corroborating his veracity.(14)  In short, I don't believe
him when he does not speak truth; but he has spoken so much
truth, that it is easy to see when he does not.

Lucan is in poor forwardness.  I have been plagued with a
succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth
book.  It will scarce appear before next winter.  Adieu! Sir.  I
have received so much pleasure and benefit from your
correspondence, that I should be sorry to lose it.  I will not
deserve to lose it, but endeavour to be, as you will give me
leave to be, your, etc.

(12) The life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, etc.  Dr. Johnson, in
the sixty-fifth number of the Idler, has also celebrated the
appearance of this interesting and valuable work.-C.

(13) Mr. Walpole had early taken up this opinion; witness that
gross line in his dull epistle to Aston, written in 1740, "The
lustful Henrietta's Romish shade;" but we believe that no good
authority for this imputation can be produced: there is strong
evidence the other way: and if we were even to stand on mere
authority, we should prefer that of Lord Clarendon to the
scandalous rumours of troublesome times, which were, we believe,
the only guides of Mr. Walpole.-C.

(14) Nor for impugning it; for, the very fact, brought to light
in later times, of Charles's having, with great secrecy and
mystery, reconciled himself to the church of Rome on his
deathbed, proves that up to that extreme hour he was not a
Papist.-C.



Letter 7 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Jan. 7, 1760. (page 32)

You must wonder I have not written to you a long time; a person
of my consequence! I am now almost ready to say, We, instead of I
In short, I live amongst royalty--considering the plenty, that is
no great wonder.  All the world lives with them, and they with
all the world.  Princes and Princesses open shops in every corner
of the town, and the whole town deals with them.  As I have gone
to one, I chose to frequent all, that I night not be particular,
and seem to have views; and yet it went so much against me, that
I came to town on purpose a month ago for the Duke's levee, and
had engaged brand to go with me, and then could not bring myself
to it.  At last, I went to him and the Princess Emily yesterday.
It was well I had not flattered myself with being still in my
bloom; I am grown so old since they saw me, that neither of them
knew me.  When they were told, he just spoke to me (I forgive
him; he is not out of my debt, even with that) - she was
exceedingly gracious, and commended Strawberry to the skies.
TO-night, I was asked to their party at Norfolk House.  These
parties are wonderfully select and dignified one might sooner be
a knight of Malta than qualified for them; I don't know how the
Duchess of Devonshire, Mr. Fox, and I, were forgiven some of our
ancestors.  There were two tables at loo, two at whist, and a
quadrille.  I was commanded to the Duke's loo; he was sat down:
not to make him wait, I threw my hat upon the marble table, and
broke four pieces off a great crystal chandelier.  I stick to my
etiquette, and treat them with great respect; not as I do my
friend, the Duke of York.  But don't let us talk any more of
Princes.  My Lucan appears to-morrow; I must say it is a noble
volume.  Shall I send it you--or won't you come and fetch it?

There is nothing new of public, but the violent commotions in
Ireland,(15) whither the Duke of Bedford still persists in going.
AEolus to quell a storm!

I am in great concern for my old friend, poor Lady Harry
Beauclerc; her lord dropped down dead two nights ago, as he was
sitting with her and all their children.  Admiral Boscawen is
dead by this time.(16)  Mrs. Osborne and I are not much
afflicted; Lady Jane Coke too is dead, exceedingly rich; I have
not heard her will yet.

If you don't come to town soon, I give you warning, I will be a
lord of the bedchamber, or a gentleman usher.  If you will, I
will be nothing but what I have been so many years-my own and
yours ever.

(15) Walpole, in his Memoires, vol. ii. p. 401, gives a
particular account of these commotions.  Gray, in a letter to Dr.
Wharton, of the 23d of January, says, "They placed an old woman
on the throne, and called for pipes and tobacco; made my Lord
Chief Justice administer an oath (which they dictated) to my Lord
Chancellor; beat the Bishop of Killaloe black and blue; at
foot-ball with Chenevix, the old refugee Bishop of Waterford;
rolled my Lord Farnham in the kennel; pulled Sir Thomas
Prendergast by the nose (naturally large) till it was the size of
a cauliflower-; and would have hanged Rigby if he had not got out
of a window.  At last the guard was obliged to move (with orders
not to fire), but the mob threw dirt at them.  then the horse
broke in upon them, cutting and slashing, and took seventeen
prisoners.  The notion that had possessed the crowd was, that a
union was to be voted between the two nations, and they should
have no more parliaments there." Works, vol. iii. p. 233.-E.

(16) This distinguished admiral survived till January 1761.-E.

(17) Daughter of lord Torrington, and sister of the unfortunate
Admiral Byng.  She was married to the son of sir John Osborn of
Chicksand Priory.-E.



 Letter 8 To The Right Hon. Lady Hervey.
     Jan. 12, 1760. (page 34)

I am very sorry your ladyship could doubt a moment on the cause
of my concern yesterday.  I saw you much displeased at what I had
said; and felt so innocent of the least intention of offending
you, that I could not help being struck at my own ill-fortune,
and wit[) the sensation raised by finding you mix great goodness
with great severity.

I am naturally very impatient under praise; I have reflected
enough on myself to know I don't deserve it; and with this
consciousness you ought to forgive me, Madam, if I dreaded that
the person Whose esteem I valued the most in the world, should
think, that I was fond of what I know is not my due.  I meant to
express this apprehension as respectfully as I could, but my
words failed me-a misfortune not too common to me, who am apt to
say too much, not too little!  Perhaps it is that very quality
which your ladyship calls wit, and I call tinsel, for which I
dread being praised.  I wish to recommend myself to you by more
essential merits-and if I can only make you laugh, it will be
very apt to make me as much concerned as I was yesterday.  For
people to whose approbation I am indifferent, I don't care
whether they commend or condemn me for my wit; in the former case
they Will not make me admire myself for it, in the latter they
can't make me think but what I have thought already.  But for the
few whose friendship I wish, I would fain have them see, that
under all the idleness of my spirits there are some very serious
qualities, such as warmth, gratitude, and sincerity, which @ill
returns may render useless or may make me lock up in my breast,
but which will remain there while I have a being.

having drawn you this picture of myself, Madam, a subject I have
to say so much upon, will not your good-nature apply it as it
deserves, to what passed yesterday?  Won't you believe that my
concern flowed from being disappointed at having offended one
whom I ought by so many ties to try to please, and whom, if I
ever meant any thing, I had meaned to please? I intended you
should see how much I despise wit, if I have any, and that you
should know my heart was void of vanity and full of gratitude.
They -are very few I desire should know so much; but my passions
act too promptly and too naturally, as you saw, when I am with
those I really love, to be capable of any disguise.  Forgive me,
Madam, this tedious detail but of all people living, I cannot
bear that you should have a doubt about me.




Letter 9 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Jan. 14, 1760. (page 35)

How do you contrive to exist on your mountain in this rude
season!  Sure you must be become a snowball! As I was not in
England in forty-one, I had no notion of such cold.  The streets
are abandoned; nothing appears in them: the Thames is almost as
solid.  Then think what a campaign must be in such a season! Our
army was under arms for fourteen hours on the twenty-third,
expecting the French and several of the men were frozen when they
should have dismounted.  What milksops the Marlboroughs and
Ttirennes, the Blakes and the Van Tromps appear now, who whipped
into winter quarters and into port, the moment their noses looked
blue.  Sir Cloudesly Shovel said that an admiral would deserve to
be broke, who kept great ships out after the end of September,
and to be shot if after October.  There is Hawke(18) in the bay
weathering this winter, after conquering in a storm.  For my
part, I scarce venture to make a campaign in the Opera-house; for
if I once begin to freeze, I shall be frozen through in a moment.
I am amazed, with such weather, such ravages, and distress, that
there is any thing left in Germany, but money; for thither half
the treasure of Europe goes: England, France, Russia, and all the
Empress can squeeze from Italy and Hungary, all is sent thither,
and yet the wretched people have not subsistence.  A pound of
bread sells at Dresden for eleven-pence.  We are going to send
many more troops thither; and it Is so much the fashion to raise
regiments, that I wish there were such a neutral kind of beings
in England as abb`es, that one might have an excuse for not
growing military mad, when one has turned the heroic corner of
one's age.  I am ashamed of being a young rake, when my seniors
are covering their gray toupees with helmets and feathers, and
accoutering their pot-bellies with cuirasses and martial
masquerade habits.  Yet rake I am, and abominably so, for a
person that begins to wrinkle reverently.  I have sat up twice
this week till between two and three with the Duchess of Grafton,
at loo, who, by the way, has got a pam-child this morning; and on
Saturday night I supped with Prince Edward at my Lady Rochford's,
and we stayed till half an hour past three.  My favour with that
Highness continues, or rather increases.  He makes every body
make suppers for him to meet me, for I still hold out against
going to court.  In short, if he were twenty years older, or I
could make myself twenty years younger, I might carry him to
Camden-house, and be as impertinent as ever my Lady Churchill
was; but, as I dread being ridiculous, I shall give my Lord Bute
no uneasiness.  My Lady Maynard, who divides the favour of this
tiny court with me,- supped with us.  Did you know she sings
French ballads very prettily? Lord Rochford played on the guitar,
and the Prince sung; there were my two nieces, and Lord
Waldegrave, Lord Huntingdon, and Mr. Morrison the groom, and the
evening was pleasant; but I had a much more agreeable supper last
night at Mrs. Clive's, with Miss West, my niece Cholmondeley, and
Murphy, the writing actor, who is very good company, and two or
three more.  Mrs. Cholmondeley is very lively; you know how
entertaining the Clive is, and Miss West is an absolute original.

There is nothing new, but a very dull pamphlet, written by Lord
Bath, and his chaplain Douglas, called a Letter to Two Great Men.
It is a plan for the peace, and much adopted by the city, and
much admired by all who are too humble to judge for themselves.

I was much diverted the other morning with another volume on
birds, by Edwards, who has published four or five.  The poor man,
who is grown very old and devout, begs God to take from him the
love of natural philosophy; and having observed some heterodox
proceedings among bantam cocks, he proposes that all schools of
girls and boys should be promiscuous, lest, if separated, they
should learn wayward passions.  But what struck me most were his
dedications, the last was to God; this is to Lord Bute, as if he
was determined to make his fortune in one world or the other.

Pray read Fontaine's fable of the lion grown old; don't it put
you in mind of any thing? No! not when his shaggy majesty has
borne the insults of the tiger and the horse, etc. and the ass
comes last, kicks out his only remaining fang, and asks for a
blue bridle?  Apropos, I will tell you the turn Charles Townshend
gave to this fable.  "My lord," said he, "has quite mistaken the
thing; he soars too high at first: people often miscarry by not
proceeding by degrees; he went and at once asked for my Lord
Carlisle's garter-if he would have been contented to ask first
for my Lady Carlisle's garter, I don't know but he would have
obtained it." ' Adieu!

(18) Sir Edward Hawke had defeated the French fleet, commanded by
Admiral Conflans, in the beginning of this winter. [A graphical
description of this victory is given by Walpole in his Memoires.
"It was," he says, "the 20th of November: the shortness of the
day prevented the total demolition of the enemy; but neither
darkness, nor a dreadful tempest that ensued, could call off Sir
Edward from pursuing his blow.  The roaring of the element was
redoubled by the thunder from our ships; and both concurred, in
that scene of horror, to put a period to the navy and hopes of
France."--E.]



Letter 10 To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Jan. 20, 1760. (page 36)

I am come hither in the bleakest of all winters, not to air and
exercise, but to look after my gold-fish and orange-trees.  We
import all the delights of hot countries, but as we cannot
propagate their climate too, such a season as this is mighty apt
to murder rarities.  And it is this very winter that has been
used for the invention of a campaign in Germany! where all fuel
is so destroyed that they have no fire but out of the mouth of a
cannon.  If I were writing to an Italian as well as into Italy,
one might string concetti for an hour, and describe how heroes
are frozen on their horses till they become their own statues.
But seriously, does not all this rigour of warfare throw back an
air of effeminacy on the Duke of Marlborough and the brave of
ancient days, who only went to fight as one goes out of town in
spring, and who came back to London with the first frost'@ Our
generals are not yet arrived, though the Duke de Broglio's last
miscarriage seems to determine that there shall at last be such a
thing as winter quarters; but Daun and the King of Prussia are
still choosing King and Queen in the field.

There is a horrid scene of distress in the family of Cavendish;
the Duke's sister,(19) Lady Besborough, died this morning of the
same fever and sore throat of which she lost four children four
years ago.  It looks as if it was a plague fixed in the walls of
their house: it broke out again among their servants, and carried
off two, a year and a half after the children.  About ten days
ago Lord Besborough was seized with it, and escaped with
difficulty; then the eldest daughter had it, though slightly: my
lady, attending them, is dead of it in three days.  It is the
same sore throat which carried off Mr. Pelham's two only sons,
two daughters, and a daughter of the Duke of Rutland, at once.
The physicians, I think, don't know what to make of it.

I am sorry you and your friend Count Lorenzi(20) are such
political foes, but I am much more concerned for the return of
your headaches.  I don't know what to say about Ward's(21)
medicine, because the cures he does in that complaint are
performed by him in person.  He rubs his hand with some
preparation and holds it upon your forehead, from which several
have found instant relief.  If you please, I will consult him
whether he will send you any preparation for it; but you must
first send me the exact symptoms and circumstances of your
disorder and constitution, for I would not for the world venture
to transmit to you a blind remedy for an unexamined complaint.

You cannot figure a duller season: the weather bitter, no party,
little money, half the world playing the fool in the country with
the militia, others raising regiments or with their regiments; in
short, the end of a war and of a reign furnish few episodes.
Operas are more in their decline than ever.  Adieu!

(19) Caroline, eldest daughter of William third Duke of
Devonshire, and wife of William Ponsonby, Earl of Besborough.

(20) Minister of France at Florence, though a Florentine.

(21) Ward, the empiric, whose pill and drop were supposed, at
this time, to have a surprising effect.  He is immortalized by
Pope-

"See Ward by batter'd beaux invited over."

There is a curious statue of him in marble at the Society of
Arts, in full dress, and a flowing wig.-D.



Letter 11 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Jan. 28, 1760. (page 37)

I shall almost frighten you from coming to London, for whether
you have the constitution of a horse or a man, you will be
equally in danger.  All the horses in town are laid up with sore
throats and colds, and are so hoarse you cannot hear them speak,
I, with all my immortality, have been -half killed; that violent
bitter weather was too much for me; I have had a nervous fever
these six or seven weeks every night, and have taken bark enough
to have made a rind for Daphne; nay, have even stayed at home two
days; but I think my eternity begins to bud again.  I am quite of
Dr. Garth's mind, who, when any body commended a hard frost to
him, used to reply, "Yes, Sir, 'fore Gad, very fine weather, Sir,
very wholesome weather, Sir; kills trees, Sir; very good for man,
Sir." There has been cruel havoc among the ladies; my Lady Granby
is dead; and the famous Polly, Duchess of Bolton, and my Lady
Besborough.  I have no great reason to lament the last, and yet
the circumstances of her death, and the horror of it to her
family, make one shudder.  It was the same sore throat and fever
that carried off four of their children a few years ago.  My lord
now fell ill of it, very ill, and the eldest daughter slightly:
my lady caught it, attending her husband, and concealed it as
long as she could.  When at last the physician insisted on her
keeping her bed, she said, as she went into her room, "Then, Lord
have mercy on me! I shall never come out of it again," and died
in three days.  Lord Besborough grew outrageously impatient at
not seeing her, and would have forced into her room, when she had
been dead about four days.  They were obliged to tell him the
truth: never was an answer that expressed so much horror! he
said, "And how many children have I left?"not knowing how far
this calamity might have reached.  Poor Lady Coventry is near
completing this black list.

You have heard, I suppose, a horrid story of another kind, of
Lord Ferrers murdering his steward in the most barbarous and
deliberate manner.  He sent away all his servants but one, and,
like that heroic murderess Queen Christina, carried the poor man
through a gallery and several rooms, locking them after him, and
then bid the man kneel down, for he was determined to kill him.
The poor creature flung himself at his feet, but in vain; was
shot, and lived twelve hours.  Mad as this action was from the
consequences, there was no frenzy in his behaviour; he got drunk,
and, at intervals, talked of it coolly; but did not attempt to
escape, till the colliers beset his house, and were determined to
take him alive or dead.  He is now in the gaol at Leicester, and
will soon be removed to the Tower, then to Westminster Hall, and
I suppose to Tower Hill; unless, as Lord Talbot prophesied in the
House of Lords, "Not being thought mad enough to be shut up, till
he had killed somebody, he will then be thought too mad to be
executed;" but Lord Talbot was no more honoured in his vocation,
than other prophets are in their own country.

As you seem amused with my entertainments, I will tell you how I
passed yesterday.  A party was made to go to the Magdalen-house.
We met at Northumberland-house at five, and set off in four
coaches.  Prince Edward, Colonel Brudenel his groom, Lady
Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lady Carlisle, Miss Pelham, Lady
Hertford, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Huntingdon. old Bowman, and I.
This new convent is beyond Goodman's-fields, and I assure you
would content any Catholic alive.  We were received by--oh!
first, a vast mob, for princes are not so common at that end of
the town as at this.  Lord Hertford, at the head of the governors
with their white staves, met us at the door, and led the Prince
directly into the chapel, where, before the altar, was an
arm-chair for him, with a blue damask cushion, a prie-Dieu, and a
footstool of black cloth with gold nails.  We set on forms near
him.  There were Lord and Lady Dartmouth in the odour of
devotion, and many city ladies.  The chapel is small and low, but
neat, hung with Gothic paper, and tablets of benefactions.  At
the west end were enclosed the sisterhood, above an hundred and
thirty, all in grayish brown stuffs, broad handkerchiefs, and
flat straw hats, with a blue riband, pulled quite over their
faces.  As soon as we entered the chapel, the organ played, and
the Magdalens sung a hymn in parts; you cannot imagine how well,
The chapel was dressed with orange and myrtle, and there wanted
nothing but a little incense to drive away the devil-or to invite
him.  Prayers then began, psalms, and a sermon: the latter by a
young clergyman, one Dodd,(22) who contributed to the Popish idea
one had imbibed, by haranguing entirely in the French style, and
very eloquently and touchingly.  He apostrophized the lost sheep,
who sobbed and cried from their souls; so did my Lady Hertford
and Fanny Pelham, till I believe the city dames took them both
for Jane Shores.  The confessor then turned to the audience, and
addressed himself to his Royal Highness, whom he called most
illustrious Prince, beseeching his protection.  In short, it was
a very pleasing performance, and I got the most illustrious to
desire it might be printed.  We had another hymn, and then were
conducted to the parloir, where the governors kissed the Prince's
hand, and then the lady abbess, or matron, brought us tea.  From
thence we went to the refectory, where all the nuns, without
their hats, were ranged at long tables, ready for supper.  A few
were handsome, many who seemed to have no title to their
profession, and two or three of twelve years old; but all
recovered, and looking healthy.  I was struck and pleased with
the modesty of two of them, who swooned away with the confusion
of being stared at.  We were then shown their work, which is
making linen, and bead-work; they earn ten pounds a-week.  One
circumstance diverted me, but amidst all this decorum, I kept it
to myself.  The wands of the governors are white, but twisted at
top with black and white, which put me in mind of Jacob's rods,
that he placed before the cattle to make them breed.  My Lord
Hertford would never have forgiven me, if I had joked on this; so
I kept my countenance very demurely, nor even inquired, whether
among the pensioners there were any novices from Mrs. Naylor's.

The court-martial on Lord George Sackville is appointed: General
Onslow is to be Speaker of it.  Adieu! till I see you; I am glad
it will be so soon.

(22) The unfortunate Dr. Dodd, who suffered at Tyburn, in June
1770, for forgery.-E.



Letter 12 To Sir David Dalrymple.(23)
Strawberry Hill, Feb. 3, 1760. (page 40)

I am much obliged to you, Sir! for the Irish poetry.(24)  they
are poetry, and resemble that of the East; that is, they contain
natural images and natural sentiment elevated, before rules were
invented to make poetry difficult and dull.  The transitions are
as sudden as those in Pindar, but not so libertine; for they
start into new thoughts on the subject, without wandering from
it.' I like particularly the expression of calling Echo, "Son of
the Rock."  The Monody is much the best.

I (cannot say I am surprised to hear that the controversy on the
Queen of Scots is likely to continue.  Did not somebody write a
defence of Nero, and yet none of his descendants remained to
pretend to the empire? If Dr. Robertson could have said more, I
am sorry it will be forced from him.  He had better have said it
voluntarily.  You will forgive me for thinking his subject did
not demand it.  Among the very few objections to his charming
work, one was, that he seemed to excuse that Queen more than was
allowable, from the very papers he has printed in his Appendix;
and some have thought, that though he could not disculpate her,
he has diverted indignation from her, by his art in raising up
pity for her and resentment against her persecutress, and by much
overloading the demerits of Lord Darnley.  For my part, Dr.
Mackenzie, or any body else, may write what they please against
me: I meaned to speak my mind, not to write controversy-trash
seldom read but by the two opponents who write it.  Yet were I
inclined to reply, like Dr. Robertson, I could say a little more.
You have mentioned, Sir, Mr. Dyer's Fleece.  I own I think it a
very insipid poem.(25)  His Ruins of Rome had great picturesque
spirit, and his Grongar Hill was beautiful.  His Fleece I could
never get through; and from thence I suppose never heard of Dr.
Mackenzie.

Your idea of a collection of ballads for the cause of liberty is
very public-spirited.  I wish, Sir, I could say I thought it
would answer your view.  Liberty, like other good and bad
principles, can never be taught the people but when it is taught
them by faction.  The mob will never sing lilibullero but in
opposition to some other mob.  However, if you pursue the
thought, there is an entire treasure of that kind in the library
of Maudlin College, Cambridge.  It was collected by Pepys,
secretary of the admiralty, and dates from the battle of
Agincourt.  Give me leave to say, Sir, that it is very
comfortable to me to find gentlemen of your virtue and parts
attentive to what is so little the object of public attention
now.  The extinction of faction, that happiness to which we owe
so much of our glory and success, may not be without some
inconveniences.  A free nation, perhaps, especially when arms are
become so essential to our existence as a free people, may want a
little opposition: as it is a check that has preserved us so
long, one cannot wholly think it dangerous; and though I would
not be one to tap new resistance to a government with which I
have no fault to find, yet it may not be unlucky hereafter, if
those who do not wish so well to it, would a little show
themselves.  They are not strong enough to hurt; they may be of
service by keeping ministers in awe.  But all this is
speculation, and flowed from the ideas excited in me by your
letter, that is full of benevolence both to public and private.
Adieu! Sir; believe that nobody has more esteem for you than is
raised by each letter.

(23) Now first collected.

(24) "Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of
Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic, or Erse Language," the
production of James Macpherson; the first presentation to the
world of that literary novelty, which was afterwards to excite so
much discussion and dissension in the literary world.-E.

(25) Dr. Johnson was pretty much of Walpole's opinion.  "Of The
Fleece," he says, "which never became popular, and is now
universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to call it
to attention.  The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such
discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to
couple the serpent with the fowl."-E.



Letter 13 To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Feb. 3, 1760 (page 41)

herculaneum is arrived; Caserta(26) is arrived: what magnificence
You Send me!  My dear Sir, I can but thank you, and thank you--
oh! yes, I can do more; greedy creature, I can put you in mind,
that you must take care to send me the subsequent volumes of
Herculaneum as they appear, if ever they do appear, which I
suppose is doubtful now that King Carlos(27) is gone to Spain.
One thing pray observe, that I don't beg these scarce books of
you, as a bribe to spur me on to obtain for you your
extra-extraordinaries.  Mr. Chute and I admire Caserta; and he at
least is no villanous judge of architecture; some of our English
travellers abuse it; but there are far from striking faults: the
general idea seems borrowed from Inigo Jones's Whitehall, though
without the glaring uglinesses, which I believe have been lent to
Inigo; those plans, I think, were supplied by Lord Burlington,
Kent, and others, to very imperfect sketches of the author.  Is
Caserta finished and furnished? Were not the treasures of
Herculaneum to be deposited there?

I am in the vein of drawing upon your benevolence, and shall
proceed.  Young Mr. Pitt,(28) nephew of the Pitt, is setting out
for Lisbon with Lord Kinnoul, and will proceed through Granada to
Italy, with his friend Lord Strathmore;(29) not the son, I
believe, of that poor mad Lady Strathmore(30) whom you remember
at Florence.  The latter is much commended; I don't know him: Mr.
Pitt is not only a most ingenious Young man, but a most amiable
one: he has already acted in the most noble style-I don't mean
that he took a quarter of Quebec, or invaded a bit of France, or
has spoken in the House of Commons better than DemostheneS'S
nephew: but he has an odious father, and has insisted on glorious
cuttings off of entails on himself, that his father's debts might
be paid and his sisters provided for.  My own lawyer,(31) who
knew nothing of my being acquainted with him, spoke to me of him
in raptures--no small merit in a lawyer to comprehend virtue in
cutting off an entail when it was not to cheat; but indeed this
lawyer was recommended to me by your dear brother --no wonder he
is honest.  You will now conceive that a letter I have given Mr.
Pitt is not a mere matter of form, but an earnest suit to you to
know one you will like so much.  I should indeed have given it
him, were it only to furnish you with an opportunity of
ingratiating yourself with Mr. Pitt's nephew: but I address him
to your heart.  Well! but I have heard of another honest lawyer!
The famous Polly, Duchess of Bolton,(32) is dead, having, after a
life of merit, relapsed into her Pollyhood.  Two years ago, at
Tunbridge, she picked up an Irish surgeon.  When she was dying,
this fellow sent for a lawyer to make her will, but the man,
finding who was to be her heir, instead of her children, refused
to draw it.  The Court of Chancery did furnish one other, not
quite so scrupulous, and her three sons have but a thousand
pounds apiece; the surgeon about nine thousand.

I think there is some glimmering of peace!  God send the world
some repose from its woes! The King of Prussia has writ to
Belleisle to desire the King of France will make peace for him:
no injudicious step, as the distress of France will make them
glad to oblige him.  We have no other news, but that Lord George
Sackville has at last obtained a court-martial.  I doubt much
whether he will find his account in it.  One thing I know I
dislike-a German aide-de-camp is to be an evidence! Lord George
has paid the highest compliment to Mr. Conway's virtue.  Being
told, as an unlucky circumstance for him, that Mr. Conway was to
be one of his judges, (but It is not so,) he replied, there was
no man in England he should so soon desire of that number.  And
it is no mere compliment, for Lord George has excepted against
another of them--but he knew whatever provocation he may have
given to Mr. Conway, whatever rivalship there has been between
them, nothing could bias the integrity of the latter.  There is
going to be another court-martial on a mad Lord Charles Hay,(33)
who has foolishly demanded it; but it will not occupy the
attention of the world like Lord George's.  There will soon be
another trial of another sort on another madman, an Earl Ferrers,
who has murdered his steward.  He was separated by Parliament
from his wife, a very pretty woman, whom he married with no
fortune, for the most groundless barbarity, and now killed his
steward for having been evidence for her; but his story and
person are too wretched and despicable to give you the detail.
He will be dignified by a solemn trial in Westminster-hall.

Don't you like the impertinence of the Dutch? They have lately
had a mudquake, and giving themselves terrafirma airs, call it an
earthquake!  Don't you like much more our noble national charity?
Above two thousand pounds has been raised in London alone,
besides what is collected in the country, for the French
prisoners, abandoned by their monarch.  Must not it make the
Romans blush in their Appian-way, who dragged their prisoners in
triumph?  What adds to this benevolence is, that we cannot
contribute to the subsistence of our own prisoners in France;
they conceal where they keep them, and use them cruelly to make
them enlist.  We abound in great charities: the distress of war
seems to heighten rather than diminish them.  There is a new one,
not quite so certain of its answering, erected for those wretched
women, called abroad les filles repenties.  I was there the other
night, and fancied myself in a convent.

The Marquis of Buckingham and Earl Temple are to have the two
vacant garters to-morrow.  Adieu!

Arlington Street, 6th.

I am this minute come to town, and find yours of Jan. 12.  Pray,
my dear child, don't compliment me any more upon my learning;
there is nobody so superficial.  Except a little history, a
little poetry, a little painting, and some divinity, I know
nothing.  How should I?  I, who have always lived in the big busy
world; who lie abed all the morning, calling it morning as long
as you please; who sup in company; who have played at pharaoh
half my life, and now at loo till two and three in the morning;
who have always loved pleasure haunted auctions--in short, who
don't know so much astronomy as would carry me to Knightsbridge,
nor more physic than a physician, nor in short any thing that is
called science.  If it were not that I lay up a little provision
in summer, like the ant, I should be as ignorant as all the
people I live with.  How I have LAUGHED when some of the
magazines have called me the learned gentleman!  Pray don't be
like THE Magazines.

I see by your letter that you despair of peace; I almost do:
there is but a gruff sort of answer from the woman of' Russia
to-day in the papers; but how should there be peace?  If We are
victorious, what is the King of Prussia?  Will the distress of
France move the Queen of Hungary?  When we do make peace, how few
will it content!  The war was made for America, but the peace
will be made for Germany; and whatever geographers may pretend,
Crown-point lies somewhere in Westphalia.  Again adieu! I don't
like your rheumatism, and much less your plague.

(26) Prints of the palace of Caserta.

(27) Don Carlos, King of Naples, who succeeded his half-brother
Ferdinand in the crown of Spain.  An interesting picture of the
court of the King of the Two Sicilies at the time of his leaving
Naples, will be found in the Chatham Correspondence, in a letter
from Mr. Stanier Porten to Mr. Pitt.  See vol. ii. p. 31.-E.

(28) Thomas, only son of Thomas Pitt of boconnock, eldest brother
of the famous William Pitt.  [Afterwards Lord Camelford.  (Gray,
in a letter to Dr. Wharton, of the 23d of January, says, "Mr.
Pitt (not the great, but the little one, my acquaintance) is
setting out on his travels. He goes with my Lord Kinnoul to
Lisbon; then (by sea still) to Cates; then up the Guadalquiver to
Seville and Cordova, and so perhaps to Toledo, but certainly to
Grenada; and, after breathing the perfumed air of Andalusia, and
contemplating the remains of Moorish magnificence, re-embarks at
Gibraltar or Malaga, and sails to Genoa.  Sure an extraordinary
good way of passing a few winter months, and better than dragging
through Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, to the same place."  A
copy of Mr. Thomas Pitt's manuscript Diary of his tour to Spain
and Portugal is in the possession of Mr. Bentley, the proprietor
of this Correspondence.-E.]

(29) John Lyon, ninth Earl of Strathmore.  He married in 1767
Miss Bowes, the great heiress, whose disgraceful adventures are
so well known.-D.

(30) Lady Strathmore, rushing between her husband and a
gentleman, with whom he had quarrelled and was fighting, and
trying to hold the former, the other stabbed him in her -arms, on
which she went mad, though not enough to be confined.

(31) His name was Dagge.


(32) Miss Fenton, the first Polly of the Beggar's Opera.  Charles
Duke of Bolton took her off the stage, had children by her, and
afterwards married her.

(33) Lord Charles Hay, brother of the Marquis of Tweedale.





Letter 14 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Strawberry Hill, February 4th, 1760. (page 44)

Sir,
I deferred answering your last, as I was in hopes of BEING able
to send you a SHEET or two of my new work, but I find so many
difficulties and so much darkness attending the beginning, that I
can scarce say I have begun.  I can only say in general, that I
do not propose to go further back than I have sure footing; that
is, I shall commence with what Vertue had collected from our
records, which, with regard to painting, do not date before Henry
III.; and then from him there is a gap to Henry VII.  I shall
supply that with a little chronology of intervening paintings,
THOUGH, hitherto, I can find none of the two first Edwards.  From
Henry VIII. there will be a regular succession of painters, short
lives of whom I am enabled by Vertue's MSS. to write, and I shall
connect them historically.  I by no means Mean to touch on
foreign Artists, unless they came over hither; but they are
essential, for we had scarce any others tolerable.  I propose to
begin with the anecdotes of painting only, because, in that
branch, my materials are by far most considerable.  If I shall be
able to publish this part, perhaps it may induce persons of
curiosity and knowledge to assist me in the darker parts of the
story touching our architects, statuaries, and engravers.  But it
is from the same kind friendship which has assisted me so
liberally already, that I expect to draw most information; need I
specify, Sir, that I mean yours, when the various hints in your
last letter speak so plainly for me?

It is a pleasure to have any body one esteems agree with one's
own sentiments, as you do strongly with mine about Mr. Hurd.(34)
It is impossible not to own that he has sense and great
knowledge--but sure he is a most disagreeable writer!  He loads
his thoughts with so many words, and those couched in so hard a
style, and so void of all veracity, that I have no patience to
read him.  In one point. in the dialogues you mention, he is
perfectly ridiculous.  He takes infinite pains to make the world
believe, upon his word, that they are the genuine productions of
the speakers, and yet does not give himself the least trouble to
counterfeit the style of any one of them.  What was so easy as to
imitate Burnet? In his other work, the notes on Horace, he is
still more absurd.  He cries up Warburton's preposterous notes on
Shakspeare, which would have died of their own folly, though Mr.
Edwards had not put them to death with the keenest wit in the
world.(35)  But what signifies any sense, when it takes Warburton
for a pattern, who, with much greater parts, has not been able to
save himself from, or rather has affectedly involved himself in
numberless absurdities?--who proved Moses's legation by the sixth
book of Virgil;--a miracle (Julian's Earthquake), by proving it
was none;--and who explained a recent poet (Pope) by metaphysical
notes, ten times more obscure than the text!  As if writing were
come to perfection, Warburton and Hurd are going back again; and
since commentators, obscurity, paradoxes, and visions have been
so long exploded, ay, and pedantry too, they seem to think that
they shall have merit by reviving what was happily forgotten -,
and yet these men have their followers, by that balance which
compensates to one for what he misses from another.  When an
author writes clearly, he is imitated; and when obscurely, he is
admired.  Adieu!

(34) Who died Bishop of Worcester in 1808.  He was the author of
many works, most of which are now little read, although they had
a great vogue in their day.  There is a great deal of justice in
Mr. Walpole's criticism of him and his patron.-C.

(35) In the "Canons of Criticism."--E.



Letter 15 To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Feb. 28, 1760. (page 45)

The next time you see Marshal Botta, and are to act King of Great
Britain, France, and Ireland, you must abate about an hundredth
thousandth part of the dignity of your crown.  You are no more
monarch of all Ireland, than King O'Neil, or King Macdermoch is.
Louis XV. is sovereign of France, Navarre, and Carrickfergus.
You will be mistaken if you think the peace is made, and that we
cede this Hibernian town, in order to recover Minorca, or to keep
Quebec and Louisbourg.  To be sure, it is natural you should
think so: how should so victorious and heroic nation cease to
enjoy any of its possessions, but to save Christian blood? Oh! I
know, you will suppose there has been another insurrection, and
that it is King John(36) of Bedford, and not King George of
Brunswick, that has lost this town.  Why, I own you are a great
politician, and see things in a moment-and no wonder, considering
how long you have been employed in negotiations; but for once all
your sagacity is mistaken.  Indeed, considering the total
destruction of the maritime force of France, and that the great
mechanics and mathematicians of this age have not invented a
flying bridge to fling over the sea and land from the coast of
France to the north of Ireland, it was not easy to conceive how
the French should conquer Carrickfergus--and yet they have.  But
how I run on! not reflecting that by this time the old Pretender
must have hobbled through Florence on his way to Ireland, to take
possession of this scrap of his recovered domains; but I may as
well tell you at once, for to be sure you and the loyal body of
English in Tuscany will slip over all this exordium to come to
the account of so extraordinary a revolution.  Well, here it is.
Last week Monsieur Thurot--oh! now you are au fait!--Monsieur
Thurot, as I was saying, landed last week in the isle of Islay,
the capital province belonging to a great Scotch King,(37) who is
so good as generally to pass the winter with his friends here in
London.  Monsieur Thurot had three ships, the crews of which
burnt two ships belonging to King George, and a house belonging
to his friend the King of Argyll--pray don't mistake; by his
friend(38) I mein King George's, not Thurot's friend.  When they
had finished this campaign, they sailed to Carrickfergus, a
poorish town, situated in the heart of the Protestant cantons.
They immediately made a moderate demand of about twenty articles
of provisions, promising to pay for them; for you know it is the
way of modern invasions(39) to make them cost as much as possible
to oneself, and as little to those one invades.  If this was not
complied with, they threatened to burn the town, and then march
to Belfast, which is much richer.  We were sensible of this civil
proceedings and not to be behindhand, agreed to it; but somehow
or other this capitulation was broken; on which a detachment (the
whole invasion consists of one thousand men) attack the place.
We shut the gates, but after the battle of Quebec it is
impossible that so great a people should attend to such trifles
as locks and bolts, accordingly there were none--and as if there
were no gates neither, the two armies fired through them--if this
is a blunder, remember I am describing an Irish war.  I forgot to
give you the numbers of the Irish army.  It consisted but Of
seventy-two, under lieut.-colonel Jennings, a wonderful brave
man--too brave, in short, to be very judicious.  Unluckily our
ammunition was soon spent, for it is not above a year that there
have been any apprehensions for Ireland, and as all that part of
the country are most protestantly loyal, it was not thought
necessary to arm people who would fight till they die for their
religion.  When the artillery was silenced, the garrison thought
the best way of saving the town was by flinging it at the heads
of the besiegers; accordingly they poured volleys of brickbats at
the French, whose commander, Monsieur Flobert, was mortally
knocked down, and his troops began to give way.  However, General
Jennings thought it most prudent to retreat to the castle, and
the French again advanced.  Four or five raw recruits still
bravely kept the gates, when the garrison, finding no more
gunpowder in the castle than they had had in the town, and not
near so good a brick-kiln, sent to desire to surrender.  General
Thurot accordingly made them prisoners of war, and plundered the
town.

END OF THE SIEGE OF CARRICKFERGUS.

You will perhaps ask what preparations have been made to recover
this loss.  The, viceroy immediately despatched General
Fitzwilliam with four regiments of foot and three of horse
against the invaders, appointing to overtake them in person at
Newry; but -@is I believe he left Bladen's Caesar, and Bland's
Military Discipline behind him in England, which he used to study
in the camp at Blandford, I fear he will not have his campaign
equipage ready soon enough.  My Lord Anson too has sent nine
ships, though indeed he does not think they will arrive time
enough.  Your part, my dear Sir, will be very easy: you will only
have to say that it is nothing, while it lasts; and the moment it
is over, you must say it was an embarkation of ten thousand men.
I will punctually let you know how to vary your dialect.  Mr.
Pitt is in bed very ill with the gout.

Lord George Sackville was put under arrest to-day.  His trial
comes on to-morrow, but I believe will be postponed, as the
court-martial will consult the judges, whether a man who is not
in the army, may be tried as an officer.  The judges will answer
yes, for how can a point that is not common sense, not be common
law!

Lord Ferrers is in the Tower; so you see the good-natured people
of England will not want their favourite amusement, executions-
-not to mention, that it will be very hard if the Irish war don't
furnish some little diversion.

My Lord Northampton frequently asks me about you.  Oh! I had
forgot, there is a dreadful Mr. Dering come over, who to show
that he has not been spoiled by his travels, got drunk the first
day he appeared, and put me horridly out of countenance about my
correspondence with you--for mercy's sake take care how you
communicate my letters to such cubs.  I will send you no more
invasions, if you read them to bears and bear-leaders.
Seriously, my dear child, I don't mean to reprove you; I know
your partiality to me, and your unbounded benignity to every
thing English; but I sweat sometimes, when I find that I have
been corresponding for two or three months with young Derings.
For clerks and postmasters, I can't help it, and besides, they
never tell one they have seen One's letters; but I beg you will
at most tell them my news, but without my name, or my words.
Adieu!  If I bridle you, believe that I know that it is only your
heart that runs away with you.

(36) John Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

(37) Archibald Earl of Islay and Duke of Argyle.

(38) The Duke of argyle had been suspected of temporizing in the
last rebellion.

(39) Alluding to our expensive invasions on the coast of France.



Letter 16 To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 4, 1760. (page 48)

never was any romance of such short duration as Monsieur
Thurot's!  Instead of the waiting for the viceroy's army, and
staying to see whether it had any ammunition, or was only armed
with brickbats `a la Carrickfergienne, he re-embarked on the
28th, taking along with him the mayor and three others--I
suppose, as proofs of his conquest.  The Duke of Bedford had sent
notice of' the invasion to Kinsale, where lay three or four of
our best frigates.  They instantly sailed, and came up with the
flying invaders in the Irish Channel.  You will see the short
detail of the action in the Gazette; but, as the letter was
written by Captain Elliot himself, you will not see there, that
he with half the number of Thurot's crew, boarded the latter's
vessel.  Thurot was killed, and his pigmy navy all taken and
carried into the Isle of Man.  It is an entertaining episode; but
think what would have happened, if the whole of the plan had
taken place -it the destined time.  The negligence of the Duke of
Bedford's administration has appeared so gross, that one may
believe his very kingdom would have been lost, if Conflans had
not been beat.  You will see, by the deposition of Ensign hall,
published in all our papers, that the account of the siege of
Carrickfergus, which I sent you in my last, was not half so
ridiculous as the reality--because, as that deponent said, I was
furnished with no papers but my memory.  The General Flobert, I
am told, you may remember at Florence; he was then very mad, and
was to have fought Mallet.--but was banished from Tuscany.  Some
years since he was in England; and met Mallet at lord
Chesterfield's, but without acknowledging one another.  The next
day Flobert asked the Earl if Mallet had mentioned him?--No-"Il a
donc," said Flobert, "beaucoup de retenue, car surement ce qu'il
pourroit dire de moi, ne seroit pas `a mon avantage."--it was
pretty, and they say he is now grown an agreeable and rational
man.

The judges have given their opinion that the court-martial on
lord George Sackville is legal; so I suppose it will proceed on
Thursday.

I receive yours of the 16th of last month: I wish you had given
me any account of your headaches that I could show to Ward.  He
will no more comprehend nervous, than the physicians do who use
the word.  Send me an exact description; if he can do you no
good, at least it will be a satisfaction to me to have consulted
him.  I wish, my dear child, that what you say at the end of your
letter, of appointments and honours, was not as chronical as your
headaches-that is a thing you may long complain of-indeed there I
can consult nobody.  I have no dealings with either our
state-doctors or statequacks.  I only know that the political
ones are so like the medicinal ones, that after the doctors had
talked nonsense for years, while we daily grew worse, the quacks
ventured boldly, and have done us wonderful good.  I should not
dislike to have you state your case to the latter, though I
cannot advise it, for the regular physicians are daintily
jealous; nor could I carry it, for when they know I would take
none of their medicines myself, they would not much attend to me
consulting them for others, nor would it be decent, nor should I
care to be seen in their shop.  Adieu!

P. S. There are some big news from the East Indies.  I don't know
what, except that the hero Clive has taken Mazulipatam and the
Great Mogul's grandmother.  I suppose she will be brought over
and put in the Tower with the Shahgoest, the strange Indian beast
that Mr. Pitt gave to the King this winter.



.Letter 17 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, March 26, 1760. (page 49)

I have a good mind to have Mr. Sisson tried by a court-martial,
in order to clear my own character for punctuality.  It is time
immemorial since he promised me the machine and the drawing in
six weeks.  After above half of time immemorial was elapsed, he
came and begged for ten guineas.  Your brother and I called one
another to a council of war, and at last gave it him nemine
contradicente.  The moment your hurrying letter arrived, I issued
out a warrant and took Sisson up, who, after all his promises,
was guilty by his own confession, of not having begun the
drawing.  However, after scolding him black and blue, I have got
it from him, have consigned it to your brother James, and you
will receive it, I trust, along With this.  I hope too time
enough for the purposes it is to serve, and correct; if it is
not, I shall be very sorry.  You shall have the machine as soon
as possible, but that must go by sea.

I shall execute your commission about Stoschino(40) much better;
he need not fear my receiving him well, if he has virt`u to
sell,--I am only afraid, in that case, of receiving him too well.
You know what a dupe I am when I like any thing.

I shall handle your brother James as roughly as I did Sisson--six
months without writing to you!  Sure he must turn black in the
face, if he has a drop of brotherly ink in his veins.  As to your
other brother,(41) he is so strange a man, that is, so common a
one;, that I am not surprised at any thing he does or does not
do.

Bless your stars that you are not here, to be worn out with the
details of lord George's court-martial! One hears of nothing
else.  It has already lasted much longer than could be conceived,
and now the end of it is still at a tolerable distance.  The
colour of it is more favourable for him than it looked at first.
Prince Ferdinand's narrative has proved to set out with a heap of
lies.  There is an old gentleman(42) of the same family who has
spared no indecency to give weight to them--but, you know,
general officers are men of strict honour, and nothing can bias
them.  Lord Charles Hay's court-martial is dissolved, by the
death of one of the members--and as no German interest is
concerned to ruin him, it probably will not be re-assumed.  Lord
Ferrers's trial is fixed for the 16th of next month.  Adieu!

P. S. Don't mention it from me, but if you have a mind you may
make your court to my Lady Orford, by announcing the ancient
barony of Clinton, which is fallen to her, by the death of the
last incumbentess.(43)

(40) Nephew of Baron Stosch, a well-known virtuoso and antiquary,
who died at Florence.

(41) Edward Louisa Mann, the eldest brother.


(42) George the Second.

(43) Mrs. Fortescue, sister of Hugh last Lord Clinton.



Letter 18 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, March 27, 1760. (page 50)

I should have thought that you might have learnt by this time,
that when a tradesman promises any thing on Monday, Or Saturday,
or any particular day of the week, he means any Monday or any
Saturday of any week, as nurses quiet children and their own
consciences by the refined salvo of to-morrow is a new day.  When
Mr. Smith's Saturday and the frame do arrive, I will pay the one
and send you the other.

Lord George's trial is not near being finished.  By its draggling
beyond the term of the old Mutiny-bill, they were forced to make
out a new warrant: this lost two days, as all the depositions
were forced to be read over again to, and resworn by, the
witnesses; then there will be a contest, whether Sloper(44) shall
re-establish his own credit by pawning it farther.  Lord Ferrers
comes on the stage on the sixteenth of next month.

I breakfasted the day before yesterday at Elia laelia
Chudleigh's.  There was a concert for Prince Edward's birthday,
and at three, a vast cold collation, and all the town.  The house
is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery.
Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables,
stands, boxes, riding on One another's backs, and loaded with
terrenes, filigree, figures, and every thing upon earth.  Every
favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden china.
There is a glass-case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis
lazuli, cameos, toothpick-cases, and all kinds of trinkets,
things that she told me were her playthings; another cupboard,
full of the finest japan, and candlesticks and vases of rock
crystal, ready to be thrown down, in every corner.  But of all
curiosities, are the conveniences in every bedchamber: great
mahogany projections, with brass handles, cocks, etc.  I could
not help saying, it was the loosest family I ever saw.  Adieu!

(44) Lieutenant-colonel Sloper, of Bland's dragoons.




Letter 19 To Sir.  David Dalrymple.(45)
Strawberry Hill, April 4, 1760. (page 51)

Sir,
As I have very little at present to trouble you with myself, I
should have deferred writing, till a better opportunity, if it
were not to satisfy the curiosity of a friend; a friend whom you,
Sir, will be glad to have made curious, as you originally pointed
him out as a likely person to be charmed with the old Irish
poetry you sent me.  It is Mr. Gray, who is an enthusiast about
those poems, and begs me to put the following queries to you;
which I will do in his own words, and I may say truly, Poeta
loquitur.

"I am so charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I
cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther
about them, and should wish to see a few lines of the original,
that I may form some slight idea of the language, the measure,
and the rhythm.

"Is there any thing known of the author or authors, and of what
antiquity are they supposed to be?

"Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all
approaching to it?

"I have been often told, that the poem called Hardykanute (which
I always admired and still admire) was the work of somebody that
lived a few years ago.(46)  This I do not at all believe, though
it has evidently been retouched in places by some modern hand;
but, however, I am authorized by this report to ask, whether the
two poems in question are certainly antique and genuine.  I make
this inquiry in quality of an antiquary, and am not otherwise
concerned about it; for if I were sure that any one now living in
Scotland had written them, to divert himself and laugh at the
credulity of the world, I would undertake a journey into the
Highlands only for the pleasure of seeing him."

You see, Sir, how easily you may make our greatest southern bard
travel northward to visit a brother.  young translator had
nothing to do but to own a forgery, and Mr. Gray is ready to pack
up his lyre, saddle Pegasus, and set out directly.  But
seriously, he,' Mr. Mason, my Lord Lyttelton, and one or two
more, whose taste the world allows, are in love with your Erse
elegies - I cannot say in general they are so much admired--but
Mr. Gray alone is worth satisfying.

The "Siege of Aquileia," of which you ask, pleased less than Mr.
Home's other plays.(47)  In my own opinion, Douglas far exceeds
both the other.  Mr. Home seems to have a beautiful talent for
painting genuine nature and the manners of his country.  There
was so little nature in the manners of both Greeks and Romans,
that I do not wonder at his success being less brilliant when he
tried those subjects; and, to say the truth, one is a little
weary of them.  At present, nothing is talked of, nothing
admired, but what I cannot help calling a very insipid and
tedious performance: it is a kind Of novel, called "The Life and
Opinions of Tristram Shandy;" the great humour of which consists
in the whole narration always going backwards.  I cannot conceive
a man saying that it would be droll to write a book in that
manner, but have no notion of his persevering in executing it.
It makes one smile two or three times at the beginnings but in
recompense makes one yawn for two hours.  The characters are
tolerably kept up, but the humour is for ever attempted and
missed.  The best thing in it is a Sermon, oddly coupled with a
good deal of bawdy, and both the composition of a clergyman.  The
man's head, indeed, was a little turned before, now topsy-turvy
with his success and fame.(48)  Dodsley has given him six hundred
and fifty pounds for the second edition and two more volumes
(which I suppose will reach backwards to his
great-great-grandfather); Lord Falconberg, a donative of one
hundred and sixty pounds a-year; and Bishop Warburton gave him a
purse of gold and this compliment (which happened to be a
contradiction), "that it was quite an original composition, and
in the true Cervantic vein:" the only copy that ever was an
original, except in painting, where they all pretend to be so.
Warburton, however, not content with this, recommended the book
to the bench of bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the author,
was the English Rabelais.  They had never heard of such a writer.
Adieu!

(45) Now first collected.

(46) It was written by Mrs. Halket of Wardlaw.  Mr. Lockhart
stated, that on the blank leaf of his copy of Allan Ramsay's
"Evergreen," Sir Walter Scott has written "Hardyknute was the
first poem that I ever learnt, the last that I shall forget."-E.

(47) It came out at Drury-Lane, but met with small success.-E.

(48) Gray, in a letter to Wharton, of the 22d of April, says,
"Tristram Shandy is an object of admiration, the man as well as
the book.  One is invited to dinner, where he dines, a fortnight
beforehand.  His portrait is done by Reynolds, and now
engraving."  He adds, in another letter, "There is much good fun
in Tristram, and humour sometimes hit and sometimes missed.  Have
you read his Sermons (with his own comic figure at the head of
them)?  They are in the style, I think, most proper for the
pulpit, and show a very strong imagination and a sensible heart:
but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and
ready to throw his periwig in the face of his audience."-E.



Letter 20 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, April 19, 1760. (page 52)

Well, this big week is over! Lord George's sentence, after all
the communications of how terrible it was, is ended in
proclaiming him unfit for the King's service.  Very moderate, in
comparison of what was intended and desired, and truly not very
severe, considering what was proved.  The other trial, Lord
Ferrers's, lasted three days.  You have seen the pomp and
awfulness of such doings, so I will not describe it to you.  The
judge and criminal were far inferior to those you have seen.  For
the Lord High Steward(49) he neither had any dignity nor affected
any; nay, he held it all so cheap, that he said at his own table
t'other day, "I will not send for Garrick and learn to act a
part."  At first I thought Lord Ferrers shocked, but in general
he behaved rationally and coolly; though it was a strange
contradiction to see a man trying by his own sense, to prove
himself out of his senses.  It was more shocking to see his two
brothers brought to prove the lunacy in their own blood; in order
to save their brother's life.  Both are almost as ill-looking men
as the Earl; one of them is a clergyman, suspended by the Bishop
of London for being a Methodist; the other a wild vagabond, whom
they call in the country, ragged and dangerous.  After Lord
Ferrers was condemned, he made an excuse for pleading madness, to
which he said he was forced by his family.  He is respited till
Monday-fortnight, and will then be hanged, I believe in the
Tower; and, to the mortification of the peerage, is to be
anatomized, conformably to the late act for murder.  Many peers
were absent; Lord Foley and Lord Jersey attended only the first
day; and Lord Huntingdon, and my nephew Orford (in compliment to
his mother), as related to the prisoner, withdrew without voting.
But never was a criminal more literally tried by his peers, for
the three persons, who interested themselves most in the
examination, were at least as mad as he; Lord Ravensworth, Lord
Talbot, and Lord Fortescue.  Indeed, the first was almost
frantic.  The seats of the peeresses were not near full, and most
of the beauties absent; the Duchess of Hamilton and my niece
Waldegrave, you know, lie in; but, to the amazement of every
body, Lady Coventry was there; and what surprised me much more,
looked as well as ever.  I sat next but one to her, and should
not have asked if she had been ill--yet they are positive she has
few weeks to live.  She and Lord Bolingbroke seemed to have
different thoughts, and were acting over all the old comedy of
eyes.  I sat in Lord Lincoln's gallery; you and I know the
convenience of it; I thought it no great favour to ask, and he
very obligingly sent me a ticket immediately, and ordered me to
be placed in one of the best boxes.  Lady Augusta was in the same
gallery; the Duke of York and his young brothers were in the
Prince of Wales's box, who was not there, no more than the
Princess, Princess Emily, nor the Duke.  It was an agreeable
humanity in my friend--the Duke of York; he would not take his
seat in the House before the trial, that he might not vote in it.
There are so many young peers, that the show was fine even in
that respect; the Duke of Richmond was the finest figure; the
Duke of Marlborough, with the best countenance in the world,
looked clumsy in his robes; he had new ones, having given away
his father's to the valet de chambre.  There were others not at
all so indifferent about the antiquity of theirs; Lord
Huntingdon's, Lord Abergavenny's, and Lord Castlehaven's scarcely
hung on their backs; the former they pretend were used at the
trial of the Queen of Scots.  But all these honours were a little
defaced by seeing Lord Temple, as lord privy seal, walk at the
head of the peerage.  Who, at the last trials, would have
believed a prophecy, that the three first men at the next should
be Henley the lawyer, Bishop Secker, and Dick Grenville.

The day before the trial, the Duke of Bolton fought a duel at
Marylebone with Stewart who lately stood for Hampshire; the
latter was wounded in the arm, and the former fell down.(50)
Adieu!

(49) Robert Henley, afterwards Earl of Northington.-E.

(50) "Here has just been a duel between the Duke of Bolton and
Mr. Stewart, a candidate for the county of Hampshire at the late
election: what the quarrel was I do not know; but, they met near
Marylebone, and the Duke, in making a pass, overreached himself,
fell down, and hurt his knee.  The other bid him get up, but he
could not; then he bid him ask his life, but he would not; so he
let him alone, and that's all.  Mr. Stewart was slightly
wounded." Gray, vol. iii. p. 238.-E.



Letter 21 To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, April 20, 1760. (page 54)

The history of Lord George Sackville, which has interested us so
much and so long, is at last at an end-,gently enough,
considering who were his parties, and what has been proved.  He
is declared unfit to serve the King in a military capacity-but I
think this is not the last we shall hear of Whatever were his
deficiencies in the day of battle, he has at least showed no want
of spirit, either in pushing on his trial or during it.  His
judgment in both was perhaps a little more equivocal.  He had a
formal message that he must abide the event whatever it should
be.  He accepted that issue, and during the course of the
examination, attacked judge, prosecutor and evidence.  Indeed, a
man cannot be said to want spirit, who could show so much in his
circumstances.(51)  I think, without much heroism, I could sooner
have led up the cavalry to the charge, than have gone to
Whitehall to be worried as he was; nay, I should have thought
with less danger of my life.  But he is a peculiar man; and I
repeat it, we have hot heard the last of him.  You will find that
by serving the King he understands in a very literal sense; and
there is a young gentleman(52) who it is believed intends those
words shall not have a more extensive one.

We have had another trial this week, still more solemn, though
less interesting, and with more serious determination: I mean
that of Lord Ferrers.  I have formerly described this solemnity
to you.  The behaviour, character, and appearance of the
criminal, by no means corresponded to the dignity of the show.
His figure is bad and villanous, his crime shocking.  He would
not plead guilty, and yet had nothing to plead; and at last to
humour his family, pleaded madness against his inclination: it
was moving to see two of his brothers brought to depose the
lunacy in their blood.  After he was condemned, he excused
himself for having used that plea.  He is to be hanged in a
fortnight, I believe, in the Tower, and his body to be delivered
to the surgeons, according to the tenour of the new act of
parliament for murder.  His mother was to present a petition for
his life to the King to-day.  There were near an hundred and
forty peers present; my Lord Keeper was lord high steward, but
was not at all too dignified a personage to sit on such a
criminal: indeed he gave himself no trouble to figure.  I will
send you both trials as soon as they are published.  It is
astonishing with what order these shows are conducted.  Neither
within the hall nor without was there the least disturbance,(53)
though the one so full, and the whole way from Charing-cross to
the House of Lords was lined with crowds.  The foreigners were
struck with the awfulness of the proceeding-it is new to their
ideas, to see such deliberate justice, and such dignity of
nobility, mixed with no respect for birth in the catastrophe, and
still more humiliated by anatomizing the criminal.

I am glad you received safe my history of Thurot: as the accounts
were authentic, they must have been useful and amusing to you.  I
don't expect more invasions, but I fear our correspondence will
still have martial events to trade in, though there are such
Christian professions going about the world.  I don't believe
their Pacific Majesties will waive a campaign, for which they are
all prepared, and by the issue of which they will all hope to
improve their terms.

You know we have got a new Duke of York(54) and were to have had
several new peers, but hitherto it has stopped at him and the
lord keeper.  Adieu!

P. S. I must not forget to recommend to you a friend of Mr.
Chute, who will ere long be at Florence, in his way to Naples for
his health.  It is Mr. Morrice, clerk of the green cloth, heir of
Sir William Morrice, and of vast wealth.  I gave a letter lately
for a young gentleman whom I never saw, and consequently not
meaning to incumber you with him, I did not mention him
particularly in my familiar letters.

(51) Gray, in a letter of the 22d, gives the following account of
the result of this trial.  "The old Pundles that sat on Lord
George Sackville have at last hammered out their sentence.  He is
declared disobedient, and unfit for all military command.  What
he will do with himself, nobody guesses.  The unembarrassed
countenance, the looks of revenge, contempt, and superiority that
he bestowed on his accusers were the admiration of all, but his
usual talent and art did not appear; in short, his cause would
not support him.  You may think, perhaps, he intends to go abroad
and hide his head; au contraire, all the world visits him on his
condemnation." Works, vol. iii. p. 239.-E.

(52) George Prince of Wales.

(53) "I was not present," says Gray, "but Mason was in the Duke
of Ancaster's gallery.  and in the greatest danger; for the cell
underneath him (to which the prisoner retires) was on fire during
the trial, and the Duke, with the workmen, by sawing away some
timbers, and other assistance, contrived to put it out without
any alarm to the Court." Works, vol. iii. p. 240.-E.

(54) Prince Edward, second son of Frederic Prince of Wales.-D.



Letter 22 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Strawberry Hill, May 3, 1760. (page 55)

Indeed, Sir, you have been misinformed; I had not the least hand
in the answer to my Lord Bath's Rhapsody: it is true the
booksellers sold it as mine, and it was believed so till people
had 'read it, because my name and that of Pulteney had been apt
to answer one another, and because that war was dirtily revived
by the latter in his libel; but the deceit soon vanished; the
answer a appeared to have much more knowledge of the subject than
I have, and a good deal more temper than I should probably have
exerted, if I had thought it worth while to proceed to an answer;
but though my Lord Bath is unwilling to enter lists in which he
has suffered so much shame, I am by no means fond of entering
them; nor was there any honour to be acquired, either from the
contest or the combatant.

My history of artists proceeds very leisurely; I find the subject
dry and uninteresting, and the materials scarce worth arranging:
yet I think I shall execute my purpose, at least as far as
relates to painters.  It is a work I can scribble at any time,
and on which I shall bestow little pains; things that are so soon
forgotten should not take one up too much.  I had consulted Mr.
Lethinkai, who told me he had communicated to Mr. Vertue what
observations he had made.  I believe they were scanty, for I find
small materials relating to architects among his manuscripts.
Adieu!



Letter 23 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, May 6, 1760. (page 56)

The extraordinary history of Lord Ferrers is closed: he was
executed yesterday.  Madness, that in other countries is a
disorder, is here a systematic character; it does not hinder
people from forming a plan of conduct, and from even dying
agreeably to it.  You remember how the last Ratcliffe died with
the utmost propriety; so did this horrid lunatic, coolly and
sensibly.  His own and his wife's relations had asserted that he
would tremble at last.  No such thing; he shamed heroes.  He bore
the solemnity of a pompous and tedious procession of above two
hours, from the Tower to Tyburn, with as much tranquillity as if
he was only going to his own burial, not to his own execution.
He even talked on indifferent subjects in the passage; and if the
sheriff and the chaplains had not thought that they had parts to
act, too, and had not consequently engaged him in most particular
conversation, he did not seem to think it necessary to talk on
the occasion; he went in his wedding-clothes, marking the only
remaining impression on -his mind.  The ceremony he was in a
hurry to have over: he was stopped at the gallows by the vast
crowd, but got out of his coach as soon as he could, and was but
seven minutes on the scaffold, which was hung with black, and
prepared by the undertaker of his family at their expense.  There
was a new contrivance for sinking the stage under him, which did
not play well; and he suffered a little by the delay, but was
dead in four minutes.  The mob was decent, and admired him, and
almost pitied him; so they would Lord George, whose execution
they are so angry at missing.  I suppose every highwayman will
now preserve the blue handkerchief he has about his neck when he
is married, that he may die like a lord.  With all his madness,
he was not mad enough to be struck with his aunt Huntingdon's
sermons.  The Methodists have nothing to brag of his conversion,
though Whitfield prayed for him and preached about him.  Even
Tyburn has been above their reach.  I have not heard that Lady
Fanny dabbled with his soul; but I believe she is prudent enough
to confine her missionary zeal to subjects where the body may be
her perquisite.

When am I likely to see you? The delightful rain is come--we look
and smell charmingly.  Adieu!



Letter 24 To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, May 7, 1760. (page 57)

What will your Italians say to a peer of England, an earl of one
of the best of families, tried for murdering his servant, with
the utmost dignity and solemnity, and then hanged at the common
place of execution for highwaymen, and afterwards anatomized?
This must seem a little odd to them, especially as they have not
lately had a Sixtus Quinttis.  I have hitherto spoken of Lord
Ferrers to you as a mad beast, a mad assassin, a low wretch,
about whom I had no curiosity.  If I now am going to give you a
minute account of him, don't think me so far part of an English
mob, as to fall in love with a criminal merely because I have had
the pleasure of his execution.  I certainly did not see it, nor
should have been struck with more intrepidity--I never adored
heroes, whether in a cart or a triumphal car--but there has been
Such wonderful coolness and sense in all this man's last
behaviour, that it has made me quite inquisitive about him --not
at all pity him.  I only reflect, what I have often thought, how
little connexion there is between any man's sense and his
sensibility--so much so, that instead of Lord Ferrers having any
ascendant over his passions, I am disposed to think, that his
drunkenness, which was supposed to heighten his ferocity, has
rather been a lucky circumstance-what might not a creature of
such capacity, and who stuck at nothing, have done, if his
abilities had not been drowned in brandy? I will go back a little
into his history.  His misfortunes, as he called them, were dated
from his marriage, though he has been guilty of horrid excesses
unconnected with Matrimony, and is even believed to have killed a
groom -,,,he died a year after receiving a cruel beating from
him.  His wife, a very pretty woman, was sister of Sir William
Meredith,(55) had no fortune, and he says, trepanned him into
marriage, having met him drunk at an assembly in the country, and
kept him so till the ceremony was over.  As he always kept
himself so afterwards, one need not impute it to her.  In every
other respect, and one scarce knows how to blame her for wishing
to be a countess, her behaviour was unexceptionable.(56)  He had
a mistress before and two or three children, and her he took
again after the separation from his wife.  He was fond of both
and used both ill: his wife so ill, always carrying pistols to
bed, and threatening to kill her before morning, beating her, and
jealous without provocation, that she got separated from him by
act of Parliament, which appointed receivers of his estate in
order to secure her allowance.  This he could not bear.  However,
he named his steward for one, but afterwards finding out that
this Johnson had paid her fifty pounds without his knowledge, and
suspecting him of being in the confederacy against him, he
determined, when he failed of opportunities of murdering his
wife, to kill the steward, which he effected as you have heard.
The shocking circumstances attending the murder, I did not tell
you-indeed, while he was alive, I scarce liked to speak my
opinion even to you; for though I felt nothing for him, I thought
it wrong to propagate any notions that might interfere with
mercy, if he could be then thought deserving it--and not knowing
into what hands my letter might pass before it reached yours, I
chose to be silent, though nobody could conceive greater horror
than I did for him at his trial.  Having shot the steward at
three in the afternoon, he persecuted him till one in the
morning, threatening again to murder him, attempting to tear off
his bandages, and terrifying him till in that misery he was glad
to obtain leave to be removed to his own house; and when the earl
heard the poor creature was dead, he said he gloried in having
killed him.  You cannot conceive the shock this evidence gave the
court-many of the lords were standing to look at him-at once they
turned from him with detestation.  I had heard that on the former
affair in the House of Lords, he had behaved with great
shrewdness--no such thing appeared at his trial.  It is now
pretended, that his being forced by his family against his
inclination to plead madness, prevented his exerting his parts-
-but he has not acted in any thing as if his family had influence
over him--consequently his reverting to much good sense leaves
the whole inexplicable.  The very night he received sentence, he
played at picquet with the warders and would play for money, and
would have continued to play every evening, but they refuse.
Lord Cornwallis, governor of the Tower, shortened his allowance
of wine after his conviction, agreeably to the late strict acts
on murder.  This he much disliked, and at last pressed his
brother the clergyman to intercede that at least he might have
more porter; for, said he, what I have is not a draught.  His
brother represented against it, but at last consenting (and he
did obtain it)--then said the earl, "Now is as good a time as any
to take leave of you--adieu!"  A minute journal of his whole
behaviour has been kept, to see if there was any madness in it.
Dr. Munro since the trial has made -,in affidavit of his lunacy.
The Washingtons were certainly a very frantic race, and I have no
doubt of madness in him, but not of a pardonable sort.  Two
petitions from his mother and all his family were presented to
the King, who said, as the House of Lords had unanimously found
him guilty, he would not interfere.  Last week my lord keeper
very good-naturedly got out of a gouty bed to present another:
the King would not hear him.  "Sir," said the keeper, "I don't
come to petition for mercy or respite; but that the four thousand
pounds which Lord Ferrers has in India bonds may be permitted to
go according to his disposition of it to his mistress' children,
and the family of the murdered man."  "With all my heart," said
the King, "I have no objection; but I will have no message
carried to him from me."  However, this grace was notified to him
and gave him great satisfaction: but unfortunately it now appears
to be law, that it is forfeited to the sheriff of the county
where the fact was committed; though when my Lord Hardwicke was
told that he had disposed of it, he said, to be sure he may
before conviction.

Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester,(57) offered his service to him:
he thanked the Bishop, but said, as his own brother was a
clergyman, he chose to have him.  Yet he had another relation who
has been much more busy about his repentance.  I don't know
whether you have ever heard that one of the singular characters
here is a Countess of Huntingdon,(58) aunt of Lord Ferrers.  She
is the Saint Theresa of the Methodists.  Judge how violent
bigotry must be in such mad blood!  The Earl, by no means
disposed to be a convert, let her visit him, and often sent for
her, as it was more company; but he grew sick of her, and
complained that she was enough to provoke any body.  She made her
suffragan, Whitfield, pray for and preach about him, and that
impertinent fellow told his enthusiasts in his sermon, that my
Lord's heart was stone.  The earl wanted much to see his
mistress: my Lord Cornwallis, as simple an old woman as my Lady
Huntingdon herself, consulted her whether he should permit it.
"Oh! by no means; it would be letting him die in adultery!"  In
one thing she was more sensible.  He resolved not to take leave
of his children, four girls, but on the scaffold, and then to
read to them a paper he had drawn up, very bitter on the family
of Meredith, and on the House of Lords for -the first
transaction.  This my Lady Huntingdon persuaded him to drop, and
he took leave of his children the day before.  He wrote two
letters in the preceding week to Lord Cornwallis on some of these
requests - they were cool and rational, and concluded with
desiring him not to mind the absurd requests of his (Lord
Ferrers's) family in his behalf.  On the last morning he dressed
himself in his wedding clothes, and said, he thought this, at
least, as good an occasion of putting them on as that for which
they were first made.  He wore them to Tyburn.  This marked the
strong impression on his mind.  His mother wrote to his wife in a
weak angry Style, telling her to intercede for him as her duty,
and to swear to his madness.  But this was not so easy; in all
her cause before the lords, she had persisted that he was not
mad.

Sir William Meredith, and even Lady Huntingdon had prophesied
that his courage would fail him at last, and had so much
foundation, that it is certain Lord Ferrers had often been beat:-
-but the Methodists were to get no honour by him.  His courage
rose where it was most likely to fail,-an unlucky circumstance to
prophets, especially when they have had the prudence to have all
kind of probability on their side.  Even an awful procession of
above two hours, with that mixture of pageantry, shame, and
ignominy, nay, and of delay, could not dismount his resolution.
He set out from the Tower at nine, amidst crowds, thousands.
First went a string of constables; then one of the sheriffs, in
his chariot and six, the horses dressed with ribands; next Lord
Ferrers, in his own landau and six, his coachman crying all the
way; guards at each side; the other sheriffs chariot followed
empty, with a mourning coach-and-six, a hearse, and the Horse
Guards.  Observe, that the empty chariot was that of the other
sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and who was
Vaillant, the French bookseller in the Strand.  How will you
decipher all these strange circumstances to Florentines? A
bookseller in robes and in mourning, sitting as a magistrate by
the side of the Earl; and in the evening, every -body going to
Vaillant's shop to hear the particulars.  I wrote to him '. as he
serves me, for the account: but he intends to print it, and I
will send it you with some other things, and the trial.  Lord
Ferrers at first talked on indifferent matters, and observing the
prodigious confluence of people, (the blind was drawn up on his
side,) he said,--"But they never saw a lord hanged, and perhaps
will never see another;" One of the dragoons was thrown by his
horse's leg entangling in the hind wheel: Lord Ferrers expressed
much concern, and said, "I hope there will be no death to-day but
mine," and was pleased when Vaillant told him the man was not
hurt.  Vaillant made excuses to him on his office.  "On the
contrary," said the Earl, "I am much obliged to you.  I feared
the disagreeableness of the duty might make you depute your
under-sheriff.  As you are so good as to execute it yourself, I
am persuaded the dreadful apparatus will be conducted with more
expedition." The chaplain of the Tower, who sat backwards, then
thought it his turn to speak, and began to talk on religion; but
Lord Ferrers received it impatiently.  However, the chaplain
persevered, and said, he wished to bring his lordship to some
confession or acknowledgment of contrition for a crime so
repugnant to the laws of God and man, and wished him to endeavour
to do whatever could be done in so short a time.  The Earl
replied, "He had done every thing he proposed to do with regard
to God and man; and as to discourses on religion, you and I,
Sir," said he to the clergyman, "shall probably not agree on that
subject.  The passage is very short: you will not have time to
convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot be ended before we
arrive."  The clergyman still insisted, and urged, that. at
least, the world would expect some satisfaction.  Lord Ferrers
replied, with some impatience, "Sir, what have I to do with the
world?  I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has
thought proper to take from me--what do I care now what the world
thinks of me? But, Sir, since you do desire some confession, I
will confess one thing to you; I do believe there is a God.  As
to modes of worship, we had better not talk on them.  I always
thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong, to publish his notions on
religion: I will not fall into the same error."  The chaplain,
seeing sensibly that it was in vain to make any more attempts,
contented himself with representing to him, that it would be
expected from one of his calling, and that even decency required,
that some prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his
leave, at least to repeat the Lord's Prayer there.  Lord Ferrers
replied, "I always thought it a good prayer; you may use it if
you please."

While these discourses were passing, the procession was stopped
by the crowd.  The Earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine
and water.  The Sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to
refuse him.  By late regulations they were enjoined not to let
prisoners drink from the place of imprisonment to that of
execution, as great indecencies had been formerly committed by
the lower species of criminals getting drunk; "And though," said
he, "my Lord, I might think myself excusable in overlooking this
order out of regard to a person of your lordship's rank, yet
there is another reason which, I am sure, will weigh with
you;-your Lordship is sensible of the greatness of the crowd; we
must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would be so great,
that it would delay the expedition which your Lordship seems so
much to desire."  He replied, he was satisfied, adding, "Then I
must be content with this," and took some pigtail tobacco out of
his pocket.  As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach;
it was from his mistress, to tell him, it was impossible, from
the crowd, for her to get up to the spot where he had appointed
her to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a
hackney-coach of such a number.  He begged Vaillant to order his
officers to try to get the hackney-coach up to his, "My Lord,"
said Vaillant, you have behaved so well hitherto, that I think it
is pity to venture unmanning yourself."  He was struck, and was
satisfied without seeing her.  As they drew nigh, he said, "I
perceive we are almost arrived; it is time to do what little more
I have to do;" and then taking out his watch, gave it to
Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his gratitude
for his kind behaviour, adding, "It is scarce worth Your
acceptance; but I have nothing else; it is a stop-watch, and a
pretty accurate one."  He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and
took out as much for the executioner.  Then giving Vaillant a
pocket-book, he begged him to deliver it to Mrs. Clifford his
mistress, with what it contained, and with his most tender
regards, saying, "The key of it is to the watch, but I am
persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it."  He destined
the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and
with the same tender regards.

When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by
the conflux of people; but as soon as the door was opened, he
stepped out readily and mounted the scaffold: it was hung with
black, by the undertaker, and at the expense of his family.
Under the gallows was a new invented stage, to be struck from
under him.  He showed no kind of fear or discomposure, only just
looking at the gallows with a slight motion of dissatisfaction.
He said little, kneeled for a moment to the prayer, said, "Lord
have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors," and immediately
mounted the upper stage.  He had come pinioned with a black sash,
and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face covered,
but was persuaded to both.  When the rope was put round his neck,
he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly, and was
but seven minutes from leaving the coach, to the signal given for
striking the stage.  As the machine was new, they were not ready
at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had
time, by their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner
pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was
soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes.  He desired not
to be stripped and exposed, and Vaillant promised him, though his
clothes must be taken off, that his shirt should not.  This
decency ended with him: the sheriffs fell to eating and drinking
on the scaffold, ran and helped up one of their friends to drink
with them, as he was still hanging, which he did for above an
hour, and then was conveyed back with the same pomp to Surgeons'
Hall, to be dissected.  The executioners fought for the rope, and
the one who lost it cried.  The mob tore off the black cloth as
relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and
admiration, as they well might; for sure no exit was ever made
with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation.

If I have tired you by this long narrative, you feel differently
from me. The man, the manners of the country, the justice of so
great and curious a nation, all to me seem striking, and must, I
believe, do more so to you, who have been absent long enough to
read of your own country as history.

I have run into so much paper, that I am ashamed at going on, but
having a bit left, I must say a few more words.  The other
prisoner, from whom the mob had promised themselves more
entertainment, is gone into the country, having been forbid the
court, with some barbarous additions to the sentence, as you Will
see in the papers.  It was notified, too, to the second
court,(59) who have had the prudence to countenance him no
longer.  The third prisoner, and second madman, Lord Charles Hay,
is luckily dead, and has saved much trouble.

Have you seen the works of the philosopher of Sans Souci, or
rather of the man who is no philosopher, and who had more Souci
than any man now in Europe?  How contemptible they are! Miserable
poetry; not a new thought, nor an old one newly expressed.(60)  I
say nothing of the folly of publishing his aversion to the
English, at the very time they are ruining themselves for him;
nor of the greater folly of his irreligion.  The epistle to Keith
is puerile and shocking.  He is not so sensible as Lord Ferrers,
who did not think such sentiments ought to be published.  His
Majesty could not resist the vanity of showing how disengaged he
can be even at this time.

I am going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who
is going to visit Italy.  He is a very first-rate artist, and by
far our best.  Pray countenance him, though you will not approve
his politics.(61)  I believe Albano(62)) is his Loretto.

I shall finish this vast volume with a very good story, though
not so authentic as my sheriff's.  It is said that General
Clive's father has been with Mr. Pitt, to notify, that if the
government will send his son four hundred thousand pounds, and a
certain number of ships, the heaven-born general knows of a part
of India, where such treasures are buried, that he will engage,
to send over enough. to pay the national debt.  "Oh!" said the
minister, "that is too much; fifty millions would be sufficient."
Clive insisted on the hundred millions,--Pitt, that half would do
as well. "Lord, Sir!" said the old man, "consider, if your
administration lasts, the national debt will soon be two hundred
millions."  Good night for a twelvemonth!

(55) Sir William Meredith, Bart. of Hanbury, in Cheshire.  The
title is now extinct.-D.

(56) She afterwards married Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of
the Duke of Argyle, and was an excellent woman. (She was
unfortunately burned to death at Lord Frederick's seat, Combe
Bank, in Kent.-D.)

(57) Zachariah Pearce, translated from the see of Bangor in 1756.
He was an excellent man, and later in life, in the year 1768,
finding himself growing infirm, he presented to the world the
rare instance of disinterestedness, of wishing to relinquish all
his pieces of preferment.  These consisted of the deanery of
Westminster and bishopric of Rochester.  The deanery he gave up,
but was not allowed to do so by the bishopric, which was said, as
a peerage, to be inalienable.-D.

(58) Lady Selina Shirley, daughter of an Earl of Ferrers.
(Selina Shirley, second daughter and coheiress of Washington Earl
Ferrers, and widow of Theophilus Hastings, ninth Earl of
Huntingdon.  She was the peculiar patroness of enthusiasts of all
sorts in religion.-D.)

(59) The Prince of Wales's.

(60) "The town are reading the King of Prussia's poetry, and I
have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am.
It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe
recocta of our worst freethinkers tossed up in German-French
rhyme."  Gray, vol. iii. p. 241.

(61) Strange was a confirmed Jacobite.

(62) The residence of the Pretender.



Letter 25 To Sir David Dalrymple.(63)
Arlington Street, May 15, 1760. (page 63)

Sir,
I am extremely sensible of your obliging kindness in sending me
for Mr. Gray the account of Erse poetry, even at a time when you
were so much out of order.  That indisposition I hope is entirely
removed, and your health perfectly reestablished.  Mr. Gray is
very thankful for the information.(64)

I have lately bought, intending it for Dr. Robertson, a Spanish
MS. called "Annals del Emperador Carlos V. Autor, Francisco Lopez
de Gornara."  As I am utterly ignorant of the Spanish tongue, I
do not know whether there is the least merit in my purchase.  It
is not very long; if you will tell me how to convey it, I will
send it to him.

We have nothing new but some Dialogues of the Dead by Lord
Lyttelton.  I cannot say they are very lively or striking.  The
best I think, relates to your country, and is written with a very
good design: an intention of removing all prejudices and disUnion
between the two parts of our island.  I cannot tell you how the
book is liked in general, for it appears but this moment.

You have seen, to be sure, the King of Prussia's Poems.  If he
intended to raise the glory of his military capacity by
depressing his literary talents, he could not, I think,. have
succeeded better.  One would think a man had been accustomed to
nothing but the magnificence of vast armies, and to the tumult of
drums and trumpets. who is incapable of seeing that God is as
great in the most minute parts of creation as in the most
enormous.  His Majesty does not seem to admire a mite, unless it
is magnified by a Brobdignag microscope!  While he is struggling
with the force of three empires, he fancies that it adds to his
glory to be unbent enough to contend for laurels with the
triflers of a French Parnassus! Adieu! Sir.

(63) Now first collected.

(64) The following is Gray's description of these poems, in a
letter to Wharton.--"I am gone mad about them.  They are said to
be translations (literal and in prose) from the Erse tongue, done
by one Macpherson, a young clergyman in the Highlands.  He means
to publish a collection he has of these specimens of antiquity;
but what plagues me is, I cannot come at any certainty on that
head.  I was so struck, so extasi`e, with their infinite beauty,
that I writ into Scotland to make a thousand inquiries.  The
letters I have in return are ill-wrote, ill-reasoned,
unsatisfactory, calculated (one would imagine) to deceive one,
and yet not cunning enough to do it cleverly: in short, the whole
external evidence would make one believe these fragments (for so
he calls them, though nothing can be more entire) counterfeit;
but the internal is so strong on the other side, that I am
resolved to believe them genuine, spite of the devil and the
kirk.  It is impossible to convince me, that they were invented
by the same man that writes me these letters.  On the other hand,
it is almost as hard to suppose, if they are original, that he
should be able to translate them so admirably.  In short, this
man is the very demon of poetry, or he has lighted on a treasure
hid for ages."  In another letter, be says,--"As to their
authenticity, I have many enquiries, and have lately procured a
letter from Mr. David Hume, the historian, which is more
satisfactory than any thing I have yet met with on that subject.
He says, 'Certain it is, that these poems are in every body's
mouth in the Highlands, have been handed down from father to son,
and are of an age beyond all memory and tradition.'" Works vol.
iii. pp. 249, 257.-E.



Letter 26 To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1760. (page 64)

Well! at last Sisson's machine sets out-but, my dear Sir, how you
still talk of him!  You seem to think him as grave and learned as
a professor of Bologna--why, he is an errant, low, indigent
mechanic, and however Dr. Perelli found him out, is a shuffling
knave, and I fear, no fitter to execute his orders than to write
the letter you expect.  Then there was my ignorance and your
brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account.  For the
drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it
already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to
that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from
him.  I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It
costs, the stars know what!  The whole charge comes to upwards of
threescore pounds!  He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so
necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote me a most
impertinent letter for his money.  I dreaded at first undertaking
a commission for which I was so unqualified, and though I have
done all I could, I fear you and your friend will be but ill
satisfied.

Along with the machine I have sent you some new books; Lord
George's trial, Lord Ferrers's, and the account of him; a
fashionable thing called Tristram Shandy, and my Lord Lyttelton's
new Dialogues of the Dead, or rather Dead Dialogues; and
something less valuable still than any of these, but which I
flatter myself you will not despise; it is my own print, done
from a picture that is reckoned very like--you must allow for the
difference that twenty years since you saw me have made.  That
wonderful creature Lord Ferrers, of whom I told you so much in my
last, and with whom I am not going to plague you much more, made
one of his keepers read Hamlet to him the night before his death
after he was in bed-paid all his bills in the morning, as if
leaving an inn, and half an hour before the sheriffs fetched him,
corrected some verses he had written in the Tower in imitation of
the Duke of Buckingham's epitaph, dublus sed ron improbus
vin.(65)  What a noble author have I here to add to my Catalogue!
For the other noble author, Lord Lyttelton, you will find his
work paltry enough; the style, a mixture of bombast, poetry, and
vulcarisms.  Nothing new in the composition, except making people
talk out of character is so.  Then he loves changing sides so
much, that he makes Lord Falkland and Hampden cross over and
figure in like people in a country dance; not to mention their
guardian angels, who deserve to be hanged for murder.  He is
angry too at Swift, Lucian, and Rabelais, as if they had laughed
at him of all men living, and he seems to wish that one would
read the last's Dissertation 1 on Hippocrates instead of his
History of Pantagruel.  But I blame him most, when he was
satirizing too free writers, for praising the King of Prussia's
poetry, to which any thing of Bayle is harmless.  I like best the
Dialogue between the Duke of argyll and the Earl of Angus, and
the character of his own first wife under that of Penelope.  I
need not tell you that Pericles is Mr. Pitt.

I have had much conversation with your brother James, and intend
to have more with your eldest, about your nephew. He is a sweet
boy, and has all the goodness of dear Gal. and dear you in his
countenance.  They have sent him to Cambridge under that
interested hog the Bishop of Chester,(66) and propose to keep him
there three years.  Their apprehension seems to be of his growing
a fine gentleman.  I could not help saying, "Why, is he not to be
one?"  My wish is to have him with you--what an opportunity of
his learning the world and business under such a tutor and such a
parent!  but they think he will dress and run into diversions.  I
tried to convince them that of all spots upon earth dress is
least necessary at Florence, and where one can least divert
oneself.  I am answered with the necessity of Latin and
mathematics-the one soon forgot, the other never got to any
purpose.  I cannot bear his losing the advantage of being brought
up by you, with all the advantages of such a situation, and where
he May learn in perfection living languages, never attained after
twenty.  I am so earnest on this, for I doat on him for dear
Gal.'s sake, that I will insist to rudeness on his remaining at
Cambridge but two years; and before that time you shall write to
second My motions.

The Parliament is up, and news are gone out of town: I expect
none but what we receive from Germany.  As to the Pretender, his
life or death makes no impression here when a real King is so
soon forgot, how should an imaginary one be remembered?  Besides,
since Jacobites have found the way to St. James's, it is grown so
much the fashion to worship Kings, that people don't send their
adorations so far as Rome.  He at Kensington is likely long to
outlast his old rival.  The spring is far from warm, yet he wears
a silk coat and has left off fires.

Thank you for the entertaining history of the Pope and the
Genoese.  I am flounced again into building--a round tower,
gallery, cloister, and chapel, all starting up--if I am forced to
run away by ruining myself, I will come to Florence, steal your
nephew, and bring him with me.  Adieu!

(65) The following verses are said to have been found in Lord
Ferrers's apartment in the Tower:

"In doubt I lived, in doubt I die,
Yet stand Prepared the vast abyss to try.
And undismay'd expect eternity!"-E.

(66) Dr. Edmund Keene, brother of Sir Benjamin, and afterwards
Bishop of Ely.



Letter 27 To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, June 7, 1760. (page 66)

My dear lord,
When at my time of day one can think a ball worth going to London
for on purpose, you will not wonder that I am childish enough to
write an account of it.  I could give a better reason, your
bidding me send you any news; but I scorn a good reason when I am
idle enough to do any thing for a bad one.  You had heard, before
you left London, of Miss Chudleigh's intended loyalty on the
Prince's birthday.  Poor thing, I fear she has thrown away above
a quarter's salary! It was magnificent and well-understood--no
crowd--and though a sultry night, one was not a moment
incommoded.  The court was illuminated on the whole summit of the
wall with a battlement of lamps; smaller ones on every step, and
a figure of lanterns on the outside of the house.  The
virgin-mistress began the ball with the Duke of York, who was
dressed in a pale blue watered tabby, which, as I told him, if he
danced much, would soon be tabby all over, like the man's
advertisement,(67) but nobody did dance much.  There was a new
Miss Bishop from Sir Cecil's endless hoard of beauty daughters,
who is still prettier than her sisters.  The new Spanish embassy
was there--alas!  Sir Cecil Bishop has never been in Spain!
Monsieur de Fuentes is a halfpenny print of my Lord Huntingdon.
His wife homely, but seems good-humoured and civil.  The son does
not degenerate from such high-born ugliness; the daughter-in-law
was sick, and they say is not ugly, and has as good set of teeth
as one can have, when one has but two and those black.  They seem
to have no curiosity, sit where they are placed, and ask no
questions about so strange a country.  Indeed, the ambassadress
could see nothing; for Doddington(68) stood before her the whole
time, sweating Spanish at her, of which it was evident, by her
civil nods without answers, she did understand a word.  She
speaks bad French, danced a bad minuet, and went away--though
there was a miraculous draught of fishes for their supper, for it
was a fast-day--but being the octave of their f`ete-dieu, they
dared not even fast plentifully.  Miss Chudleigh desired the
gamblers would go up into the garrets--"Nay, they are not
garrets-it is only the roof of the house hollowed for upper
servants-but I have no upper servants."  Every body ran up: there
is a low gallery with bookcases, and four chambers practised
under the pent of the roof, each hung with the finest Indian
pictures on different colours, and with Chinese chairs of the
same colours.  Vases of flowers in each for nosegays, and in one
retired nook a most critical couch!

The lord of the Festival(69) was there, and seemed neither
ashamed nor vain of the expense of his pleasures.  At supper she
offered him Tokay, and told him she believed he would find it
good.  The supper was in two rooms and very fine, and on the
sideboards, and even on the chairs, were pyramids and troughs of
strawberries and cherries you would have thought she was kept by
Vertumnus.  Last night my Lady Northumberland lighted up her
garden for the Spaniards: I was not there, having excused myself
for a headache, which I had not, but ought to have caught the
night before.  Mr. Doddington entertained these Fuentes's at
Hammersmith; and to the shame of our nation, while they were
drinking tea in the summer-house, some gentlemen, ay, my lord,
gentlemen, went into the river and showed the ambassadress and
her daughter more than ever they expected to see of England.

I dare say you are sorry for poor Lady Anson.  She was
exceedingly good-humoured, and did a thousand good-natured and
generous actions.  I tell you nothing of the rupture of Lord
Halifax's match, of which you must have heard so much; but you
will like a bon-mot upon it.  They say, the hundreds of Drury
have got the better of the thousands of Drury.(70)  The pretty
Countess(71) is still alive, was I thought actually dying on
Tuesday night, and I think will go off very soon.  I think there
will soon be a peace: my only reason is, that every body seems so
backward at making war.  Adieu! my dear lord!

(67) A staymaker of the time, who advertised in the newspapers
that he made stays at such a price, "tabby all over."

(68) Dodington had been minister in Spain.

(69) The Duke of Kingston.

(70) Lord Halifax kept an actress belonging to Drury Lane
Theatre; and the marriage broken off was with a daughter of Sir
Thomas Drury, an heiress.-E.

(71) The Countess of Coventry.  She survived till the 1st of
October.-E.



Letter 28 To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, June 20, 1760. (page 68)

Who the deuce was thinking of Quebec? America was like a book one
has read and done with; or at least, if one looked at the book,
one just recollected that there was a supplement promised, to
contain a chapter on Montreal, the starving and surrender of it-
-but here are we on a sudden reading our book backwards.  An
account came two days ago that the French on their march to
besiege Quebec, had been attacked by General Murray, who got into
a mistake and a morass, attacked two bodies that were joined,
when he hoped to come up with one of them before the junction,
was enclosed, embogged,'and defeated.  By the list of officers
killed and wounded, I believe there has been a rueful slaughter-
-the place, too, I suppose will be retaken.  The year 1760 is not
the year 1759.  Added to the war we have a kind of plague too, an
epidemic fever and sore throat: Lady Anson is dead of it; Lord
Bute and two of his daughters were in great danger; my Lady
Waldegrave has had it, and I am mourning for Mrs. Thomas
Walpole,(72) who died of it--you may imagine I don't come much to
town; I had some business here to-day, particularly with Dagge,
whom I have sent for to talk about Sophia;(73) he will be here
presently, and then I will let you know what he says.

The embassy and House of Fuentes are arrived-many feasts and
parties have been made for them, but they do not like those out
of town, and have excused themselves rather ungraciously. They
were invited to a ball last Monday at Wanstead, but did not go:
yet I don't know where they can see such magnificence.  The
approach, the coaches, the crowds of spectators to see the
company arrive, the grandeur of the fa`cade and apartments, were
a charming sight; but the town is so empty that that great house
appeared so too. He, you know, is all attention, generosity, and
good breeding.

I must tell you a private wo that has happened to me in my
neighbourhood--Sir William Stanhope bought Pope's house and
garden.  The former was so small and bad, one could not avoid
pardoning his hollowing out that fragment of the rock Parnassus
into habitable chambers--but would you believe it, he has cut
down the sacred groves themselves! In short, it was a little bit
of ground of five acres, inclosed with three lanes, and seeing
nothing.  Pope had twisted and twirled, and rhymed and harmonized
this, till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening
beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick
impenetrable woods.  Sir William, by advice of his
son-in-law,(74) Mr. Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves,
wriggled a winding-gravel walk through them with an edging of
shrubs, in what they call the modern taste, and in short, has
designed the three lanes to walk in again--and now is forced to
shut them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could
walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went by
with a pipe in his mouth.

It is a little unlucky for the Pretender to be dying just as the
Pope seems to design to take Corsica into his hands, and might
give it to so faithful a son of the church.

I have heard nothing yet of Stosch.

Presently.
Mr. Dagge has disappointed me, and I am obliged to go out of
town, but I have writ to him to press the affair, and will press
it, as it is owing to his negligence.  Mr. Chute, to whom I
spoke, says he told Dagge he was ready to be a trustee, and
pressed him to get it concluded.

(72) Daughter of Sir Gerard Vanneck.

(73) Natural daughter of Mr. Whitehed, mentioned in preceding
letters, by a Florentine woman.

(74) Welbore Ellis, afterwards*Lord Mendip, married the only
daughter of Sir William Stanhope; in right of whom he afterwards
enjoyed Pope's villa at Twickenham.-E.



Letter 29 To Sir David Dalrymple.(75)
June 20th, 1760. (page 69)

I am obliged to you, Sir, for the volume of Erse poetry - all of
it has merit; but I am sorry not to see in it the six
descriptions of night, with which you favoured me before, and
which I like as much as any of the pieces.  I can, however, by no
means agree with the publisher, that they seem to be parts of an
heroic poem; nothing to me can be more unlike.  I should as soon
take all the epitaphs in Westminster Abbey, and say it was an
epic poem on the History of England.  The greatest part are
evidently elegies; and though I should not expect a bard to write
by the rules of Aristotle, I would not, on the other hand, give
to any work a title that must convey so different an idea to
every common reader.  I could wish, too, that the authenticity
had been more largely stated.  A man who knows Dr. Blair's
character, will undoubtedly take his word; but the gross of
mankind, considering how much it is the fashion to be sceptical
in reading, will demand proofs, not assertions.

I am glad to find, Sir, that we agree so much on the Dialogues of
the Dead; indeed, there are very few that differ from us.  It is
well for the author, that none of his critics have undertaken to
ruin his book by improving it, as you have done in the lively
little specimen you sent me., Dr. Brown has writ a dull dialogue,
called Pericles and Aristides, which will have a different effect
from what yours, would have.  One of the most objectionable
passages in lord Lyttelton's book is, in my opinion, his
apologizing for 'the moderate government of Augustus.  A man who
had exhausted tyranny in the most lawless and Unjustifiable
excesses is to be excused, because, out of weariness or policy,
he grows less sanguinary at last!

There is a little book coming Out, that will amuse you.  It is a
new edition of Isaac Walton's Complete Angler,. full of anecdotes
and historic notes.  It is published by Mr. Hawkins,(76) a very
worthy gentleman in my neighbourhood, but who, I could wish, did
not think angling so very innocent an amusement.  We cannot live
without destroying animals, but shall-we torture them for our
sport--sport in their destruction?(77)  I met a rough officer at
his house t'other day, who said he knew such a person was turning
Methodist; for, in the middle of conversation, he rose, and
opened the window to let out a moth.  I told him I did not know
that the Methodists had any principle so good, and that I, who am
certainly not on the point of becoming one, always did so too.
One of the bravest and best men I ever knew, Sir Charles Wager, I
have often heard declare he never killed a fly willingly.  It is
a comfortable reflection to me, that all the victories of last
year have been gained since the suppression of the bear garden
and prize-fighting; as it is plain, and nothing else would have
made it so, that our valour did not, singly and solely depend
upon, those two universities.  Adieu.!

(75) Now first collected.


(76) Afterwards Sir John Hawkins, Knight, the executor and
biographer of Dr. Johnson.-E.

(77) Lord Byron, like Walpole, had a mortal dislike to angling,
and describes it as " the cruelest, the coldest, and the
stupidest of pretended sports."  Of good Isaac Walton he says,

"The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb,. in his gullet
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."-E.



Letter 30 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(78)
Strawberry Hill, June 21, 1760. (page 70)

There is nothing in the world so tiresome as a person that always
says they will come to one and never does; that is a mixture of
promises and excuses; that loves one better than anybody, and yet
will not stir a step to see one; that likes nothing but their own
ways and own books, and that thinks the Thames is not as charming
in one place as another, and that fancies Strawberry Hill is the
only thing upon earth worth living for-all this you would say, if
even I could make you peevish: but since you cannot be provoked,
you see I am for you, and give myself my due.  It puts me in mind
of General Sutton, who was one day sitting by my father at his
dressing.  Sir Robert said to Jones, who was shaving him, "John,
you cut me"--presently afterwards, "John, you cut me"--and again,
with the same patience or Conway-ence, "John, you cut me."
Sutton started up and cried, "By God! if he can bear it, I can't;
if you cut him once more, damn my blood if I don't knock you
down!"  My dear Harry, I will knock myself down-but I fear I
shall cut you again.  I wish you sorrow for the battle of Quebec.
I thought as much of losing the duchies of Aquitaine and Normandy
as Canada.

However, as my public feeling never carries me to any great
lengths of reflection, I bound all my Qu`ebecian meditations to a
little diversion on George Townshend's absurdities.  The Daily
Advertiser said yesterday, that a certain great officer who had a
principal share in the reduction of Quebec had given it as his
opinion, that it would hold out a tolerable siege.  This great
general has acquainted the public to-day in an advertisement
with--what do you think?--not that he has such an opinion, for he
has no opinion at all, and does not think that it can nor cannot
hold out a siege,--but, in the first place, that he was luckily
shown this paragraph, which, however, he does not like; in the
next, that he is and is not that great general, and yet that
there is nobody else that is; and, thirdly, lest his silence,
till he can proceed in another manner with the printer, (and
indeed it is difficult to conceive what manner of proceeding
silence is,) should induce anybody to believe the said paragraph,
he finds himself under a necessity of giving the public his
honour, that there is no more truth in this paragraph than in
some others which have tended to set the opinions of some general
officers together by the ears--a thing, however, inconceivable,
which he has shown may be done, by the confusion he himself has
made in the King's English.  For his another manner with the
printer, I am impatient to see how the charge will lie against
Matthew Jenour, the publisher of the Advertiser, who, without
having the fear of God before his eyes, has forcibly, violently,
and maliciously, with an offensive weapon called a hearsay, and
against the peace of our sovereign Lord the King, wickedly and
traitorously assaulted the head of George Townshend, general, and
accused it of having an opinion, and him the said George
Townshend, has slanderously and of malice prepense believed to be
a great general; in short, to make Townshend easy, I wish, as he
has no more contributed to the loss of Quebec than he did to the
conquest of it, that he was to be sent to sign this capitulation
too.

There is a delightful little French book come out, called "Tant
Mieux pour elle." It is called Cr`ebillon's, and I should think
was so.  I only borrowed it, and cannot get one; tant pis pour
vous.  By the way, I am not sure you did not mention it to me;
somebody did.

Have you heard that Miss Pitt has dismissed Lord Buckingham?
Tant mieux pour lui.  She damns her eyes that she will marry some
captain--tant mieux pour elle.  I think the forlorn earl should
match with Miss Ariadne Drury; and by the time my Lord Halifax
has had as many more children and sentiments by and for Miss
Falkner, as he can contrive to have. probably Miss Pitt may be
ready to be taken into keeping.  Good night!

P. S. The Prince of Wales has been in the greatest anxiety for
Lord Bute; to whom he professed to Duncombe, and Middleton, he
has the greatest obligations; and when they pronounced their
patient out of danger, his Royal Highness gave to each of them a
gold modal of himself, as a mark of his sense of their care and
attention.

(78) Now first printed.



Letter 31 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, June 28, 1760. (page 72)

The devil is in people for fidgetting about! They can neither be
quiet in their own houses, nor let others be at peace in theirs!
Have not they enough of one another in winter, but they must
cuddle in summer too? For your part, you are a very priest: the
moment one repents, you are for turning it to account.  I wish
you was in camp--never will I pity you again.  How did you
complain when you was in Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, and I don't
know where, that you could never enjoy Park-place! Now you have a
whole summer to yourself, and you are as junkettaceous as my Lady
Northumberland.  Pray, what horse-race do you go to next?  For my
part, I can't afford to lead such a life: I have Conway-papers to
sort; I have lives of the painters to write; I have my prints to
paste, my house to build, and every thing in the world to tell
posterity.  How am I to find time for all this?  I am past forty,
and may 'not have above as many more to live; and here I am to go
here and to go there--well, I will meet you at Chaffont on
Thursday; but I positively will stay but one night.  I have
settled with our brother that we will be at Oxford on the 13th of
July, as Lord Beauchamp is only loose from the 12th to the 20th.
I will be at Park-place on the 12th, and we will go together the
next day.  If this is too early for you, we may put it off to the
15th: determine by Thursday, and one of us will write to Lord
Hertford.

Well! Quebec(79) is come to life again.  Last night I went to see
the Holdernesses, who by the way are in raptures with Park-in
Sion-lane; as Cibber says of the Revolution, I met the Raising of
the Siege; that is, I met my lady in a triumphal car, drawn by a
Manks horse thirteen little fingers high, with Lady Emily:

et sibi Countess
Ne placeat, ma'amselle curru portatur eodem-

Mr. Milbank was walking in ovation by himself after the car; and
they were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner.
The whole procession returned with me; and from the countess's
dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob
crying "God bless the good news!"--These are all the particulars
I know of the siege: my lord would have showed me the journal,
but we amused ourselves much better in going to eat peaches from
the new Dutch stoves.

The rain is come indeed, and my grass is as green as grass; but
all my hay has been cut and soaking this week, and I am too much
in the fashion not to have given Up gardening for farming; as
next I suppose We shall farming and turn graziers and hogdrivers.

I never heard of such a Semele as my Lady Stormont(80) brought to
bed in flames.  I hope Miss Bacchus Murray will not carry the
resemblance through, and love drinking like a Pole.  My Lady
Lyttelton is at Mr. Garrick's, and they were to have breakfasted
here this morning; but somehow or other they have changed their
mind.  Good Night!

(79) Quebec was besieged by the French in the spring of this
year, with an army of fifteen thousand men, under the command of
the Chevalier de Levis, assisted by a naval force.  They were,
however, repulsed by General Murray, who was supported by Lord
Colville and the fleet under his command; and on the night of the
16th of May raised the siege very precipitately, leaving their
cannon, small arms, stores, etc. behind them.-E.

(80) See vol. ii. p. 513, letter 336.-E.



Letter 32 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, July 4, 1760. (page 73)

I am this minute returned from Chaffont, where I have been these
two days.  Mr. Conway, Lady Ailesbury, Lady Lyttelton, and Mrs.
Shirley are there; and Lady Mary is going to add to the number
again.  The house and grounds are still in the same dislocated
condition; in short, they finish nothing but children; even Mr.
Bentley's Gothic stable, which I call Houynhm castle, is not
roughcast yet.  We went to see More-park, but I was not much
struck with it, after all the miracles I had heard Brown had
performed there.  He has undulated the horizon in so many
artificial mole-hills, that it is full as unnatural as if it was
drawn with a rule and compasses.  Nothing is done to the house;
there are not even chairs in the great apartment.  My Lord Anson
is more slatternly than the Churchills, and does not even finish
children.  I am going to write to Lord Beauchamp, that I shall be
at Oxford on the 15th, where I depend upon meeting you.  I design
to see Blenheim, and Rousham, (is not that the name of Dormer's?)
and Althorp, and Drayton, before I return--but don't be
frightened, I don't propose to drag you to all or any of these,
if you don't like it.

Mr. Bentley has sketched a very pretty Gothic room for Lord
Holderness, and orders are gone to execute it directly in
Yorkshire.  The first draught was Mason's; but as he does not
pretend to much skill, we were desired to correct it.  I say we,
for I chose the ornaments.  Adieu! Yours ever.

P. S. My Lady Ailesbury has been much diverted, and so will you
too.  Gray is in @their neighbourhood.  My Lady Carlisle says,
"he is extremely like me in his manner." They went a party to
dine on a cold loaf, and passed the day; Lady A. protests he
never opened his lips but once, and then only said, "Yes, my
lady, I believe so."(81)

(81) Gray, in a letter to Dr. Clarke, of the 12th of August,
says, "For me, I am come to my resting-place, and find it very
necessary, after living for a month in a house with three women
that laughed from morning till night, and would allow nothing to
the sulkiness of my disposition.  Company and cards at home,
parties by land and water abroad, and (what they call) doing
something, that is, racketting about from morning to night, are
occupations, I find, that wear out my spirits." Works, vol. iii.
p. 253.-E.



Letter 33 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, July 7, 1760. (page 74)

I shall write you but a short letter myself, because I make your
brother, who has this moment been here, write to-night with all
the particulars relating to the machine.  The ten guineas are
included in the sixty; and the ship, which is not yet sailed, is
insured.  My dear child, don't think of making me any excuses
about employing me; I owe you any trouble sure that I can
possibly undertake, and do it most gladly; in this one instance I
was sorry you had pitched upon me, because it was entirely out of
my sphere, and I could not even judge whether I had served you
well or not.  I am here again waiting for Dagge, whom it is more
difficult to see than a minister; he disappointed me last time,
but writ to me afterwards that he would immediately settle the
affair for poor Sophia.

Quebec, you know, is saved; but our German histories don't go on
so well as our American.  Fouquet is beat, and has lo

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