Chapter XLIV: Letter 96: He married, in July following, Lady Grizel (10)

(1447) "Aedes Walpolianae, or a Description of the Pictures at Houghton Hall, in Norfolk," first printed in 1747, and again in 1752.

556 Letter 257 To George Montagu, Esq. Mistley, July 25, 1748.

Dear George, I have wished you with me extremely: you would have liked what I have seen. I have been to make a visit of two or three days to Nugent, and was carried to see the last remains of the glory of the old Aubrey de Veres, Earls of Oxford. They were once masters of' almost this entire county, but quite reduced even before the extinction of their house: the last Earl's son died at a miserable cottage, that I was shown at a distance; and I think another of the sisters, besides Lady Mary Vere, was forced to live upon her beauty.

Henningham Castle, where Harry the Seventh(1448) was so sumptuously banqueted, and imposed that villainous fine for his entertainment, is now shrunk to one vast curious tower, that stands on a spacious mount raised on a high hill with a large fosse. It commands a fine prospect, and belongs to Mr. Ashurst, a rich citizen, who has built a trumpery new house close to it. In the parish church is a fine square monument of black marble of one of the Earls; and there are three more tombs of the family at Earl's Colne, some miles from the castle. I could see but little of them, as it was very late, except that one of the Countesses has a headdress exactly like the description of Mount Parnassus, with two tops. I suppose you have heard much of Gosfield, Nugent's seat. It is extremely in fashion, but did not answer to me, though there are fine things about it; but being situated in a country that is quite blocked up with hills upon hills, and even too much wood, it has not an inch of prospect. The park is to be sixteen hundred acres, and is bounded with a wood of five miles round; and the lake, which is very beautiful, is of seventy acres, directly in a line with the house, at the bottom of a fine lawn, and broke with very pretty groves, that fall down a Slope into it. The house is vast, built round a very old court that has never been fine; the old windows and gateway left, and the old gallery, which is a bad narrow room, and hung with all the late patriots, but so ill done, that they look like caricatures done to expose them, since they have so much disgraced the virtues they pretended to. The rest of the house is all modernized, but in patches, and in the bad taste that came between the charming venerable Gothic and pure architecture. There is a great deal of good furniture, but no one room very fine - no tolerable pictures. Her dressing-room is very pretty, and furnished with white damask, china, japan, loads of easy chairs, bad pictures, and some pretty enamels. But what charmed me more than all I had seen, is the library chimney, which has existed from the foundation of the house; over it is an alto-relievo in wood, far from being ill done, of the battle of Bosworth Field. It is all white, except the helmets and trappings, which are gilt, and the shields, which are properly blazoned with the arms of all the chiefs engaged. You would adore it.

We passed our time very agreeably; both Nugent and his wife are very good-humoured, and easy in their house to a degree. There was nobody else but the Marquis of Tweedale; his new Marchioness,(1451) who is infinitely good-humoured and good company, and sang a thousand French songs mighty prettily; a sister of Nugent's, who does not figure; and a Mrs. Elliot,(1452) sister to Mrs. Nugent, who crossed over and figured in with Nugent: I mean she has turned Catholic, as he has Protestant. She has built herself a very pretty small house in the path-, and is only a daily visiter. Nugent was extremely communicative of his own labours; repeated us an ode of ten thousand stanzas to abuse Messieurs de la Gallerie, and reid me a whole tragedy, which has really a great many @ pretty things in it; not indeed equal to his glorious ode on religion and liberty, but with many of those absurdities which are so blended with his parts. We were overturned coming back, but, thank YOU, we were not it all hurt, and have been to-day to see a large house and a pretty park, belonging to a Mr. Williams; it is to be sold. You have seen in the papers that Dr. Bloxholme is dead. He cut his throat. He always was nervous and vapoured; and so good-natured, that he left off his practice from not being able to bear seeing so many melancholy objects. I remember him with as much wit as ever I knew; there was a pretty correspondence of Latin odes that passed between him and Hodges.

You will be diverted to hear that the Duchess of Newcastle was received at Calais by Locheil's regiment under arms, who did duty himself while she stayed. The Duke of Grafton is going to Scarborough; don't you love that endless back-stairs policy? and at his time of life! This fit of ill health is arrived on the Prince's going to shoot for a fortnight at Thetford, and his grace is afraid of not being civil enough or too civil.

Since I wrote my letter I have been fishing in Rapin for any Particulars relating to the Veres, and have already found that Robert de Vere,(1453) the great Duke of Ireland, and favourite of Richard the Second, is buried at Earl's COlnE, and probably under one of the tombs I saw there; I long to be certain that the lady with the strange coiffure is Lancerona, the joiner's daughter, that he married after divorcing a princess of the blood for her. I have found, too, that King Stephen's Queen died at Henningham, a castle belonging to Alberic de Vere:,(1454) in short, I am just now Vere mad, and extremely mortified to have Lancerona and lady Vere Beauclerk's, Portuguese grandmother blended with this brave old blood. Adieu! I go to town the day after to-morrow, and immediately from thence to Strawberry Hill. Yours ever.

(1448) See Hume's History of England, vol. iii. p. 399. ["The Earl of Oxford, his favourite general, having splendidly entertained him at his castle of Henningham, was desirous of making a parade of his magnificence at the departure of his royal guest; and ordered all his retainers, with their liveries and badges, to be drawn up in two lines, that their appearance might be the more gallant and splendid. 'My lord,' said the King, 'I have heard much of your hospitality; but the truth far exceeds the report: these handsome gentlemen and yeomen whom I see on both sides of me are no doubt your menial servants.' The Earl smiled, and confessed that his fortune was too narrow for such magnificence. 'They are most of them,' subjoined he, 'my retainers, who are come to do service at this time, when they know I am honoured with your Majesty's presence.' The King started a little, and said, 'By my faith! my lord, I thank you for your good cheer, but I must not allow my laws to be broken in my sight: my attorney must speak with you.' Oxford is said to have paid no less than fifteen thousand marks, as a compensation for his offence.")

(1449) Daughter of the Earl of Granville.

(1450) Harriot, wife of Richard Elliot, Esq., father of the first Lord St. Germains, and a daughter of Mr. Secretary Craggs. For a copy of verses addressed by Mr. Pitt to this lady, see the Chatham Correspondence, Vol. iv. j. 373.-E.

(1451)) Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the favourite of Richard the Second; who created him Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland, and transferred to him by patent the entire sovereignty of that island for life.

(1452) Alberic de Vere was an Earl in the reign of Edward the Confessor.

(1453) Daughter of Thomas Chambers, Esq., and married to Lord Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans by his wife Diana, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

558 Letter 258 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 11, 1748.

I am arrived at great knowledge in the annals of the house of Vere but though I have twisted and twined their genealogy and my own a thousand ways, I cannot discover, as I wished to do, that I am descended from them any how but from one of their Christian names the name of Horace having travelled from them into Norfolk by the marriage of a daughter of Horace Lord Vere of Tilbury with a Sir Roger Townshend, whose family baptised some of us with it. But I have made a really curious discovery! the lady with the strange dress at Earl's Colne, which I mentioned to you, is certainly Lancerona, the Portuguese-for I have found in Rapin, from one of the old chronicles, that Anne of Bohemia, to whom she had been Maid of Honour, introduced the fashion of piked horns, or high heads, which is the very attire on this tomb, and ascertains it to belong to Robert de Vere, the great Earl of Oxford, made Duke of Ireland by Richard II., who, after the banishment of this Minister, and his death at Louvain, occasioned by a boar at a hunting match, caused the body to be brought over, would have the coffin opened once more to see his favourite, and attended it himself in high procession to its interment at Earl's Colne. I don't know whether the "Craftsman" some years ago would not have found out that we were descended from this Vere, at least from his name and ministry: my comfort is, that Lancerona was Earl Robert's second wife. But in this search I have crossed upon another descent, which I am taking great pains to verify (I don't mean a pun)., and that is a probability of my being descended from Chaucer, whose daughter, the Lady Alice, before her espousals with Thomas Montagute,'Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards with William de la Pole, the great Duke of Suffolk, (another famous favourite), was married to a Sir John Philips, who I hope to find was of Picton Castle, and had children by her; but I have not yet brought these matters to a consistency. mr. Chute is persuaded I shall, for he says any body with two or three hundred years of pedigree may find themselves descended from whom they please; and thank my stars and my good cousin, the present Sir John] Philips,(1454) I have a sufficient pedigree to work upon; for he drew us up one by which Ego et rex mems are derived hand in hand from Cadwallader, and the English baronetage says from the Emperor Maximus (by the Philips's, who are Welsh, s'entend). These Veres have thrown me into a deal of this old study: t'other night I was reading to Mrs. Leneve and Mrs. Pigot,(1455) who has been here a few days, the description in Hall's Chronicle of the meeting of Harry VIII. and Francis I. which is so delightfully painted in your Windsor. We came to a paragraph, which I must transcribe; for though it means nothing in the world, it is so ridiculously worded in the old English that it made us laugh for three days.!

and the wer twoo kinges served with a banket and after mirthe, had communication in the banket time, and there sheweth the one the other their pleasure.

Would not one swear that old Hal showed all that is showed in the Tower? I am now in the act of expecting the house of Pritchard,(1456) Dame Clive,(1457) and Mrs. Metheglin to dinner. I promise you the Clive, and I will not show one another our pleasure during the banket time nor afterwards. In the evening, we go to a play at Kingston, where the places are two pence a head. Our great company at Richmond and Twickenham has been torn to pieces by civil dissensions, but they continue acting. Mr. Lee, the ape of Garrick, not liking his part, refused to play it, and had the confidence to go into the pit as spectator. The actress, whose benefit was in agitation, made her complaints to the audience, who obliged him to mount the stage; but since that he has retired from the company. I am sorry he was such a coxcomb, for he was the best. . . .

You say, why won't I go to Lady Mary's?(1458) I say, why won't you go to the Talbots? Mary is busied about many things, is dancing the hays between three houses; but I will go with you for a day or two to the Talbots if you like it. and you shall come hither to fetch me. I have been to see Mr. Hamilton's, near Cobham, where he has really made a fine place out of a most cursed hill. Esher(1459) I have seen again twice, and prefer it to all villas, even to Southcote's--Kent is Kentissing there. I have been laughing too at Claremont house; the gardens are improved since I saw them: do you know that the pineapples are literally sent to Hanover by couriers! I am serious. Since the Duke of Newcastle went, and upon the news of the Duke of Somerset's illness, he has transmitted his commands through the King, and by him through the Bedford to the University of Cambridge to forbid their electing any body, but the most ridiculous person they could elect, his grace of Newcastle. The Prince hearing this, has written to them, that having heard his Majesty's commands, he should by no means oppose them. This is sensible: but how do the two secretaries answer such a violent act of authority? Nolkojumskoi(1460) has let down his dignity and his discipline, and invites continually all officers that are members of parliament. Doddington's sentence of expulsion is sealed: Lyttelton is to have his place (the second time he has tripped up his heels); Lord Barrington is to go to the treasury, and Dick Edgecumbe into the admiralty.

Rigby is gone from hence to Sir William Stanhope's to the Aylesbury races, where the Grenvilles and Peggy Banks design to appear and avow their triumph. Gray has been here a few days, and is transported with your story of Madame Bentley's diving, and her white man, and in short with all your stories. Room for cuckolds--here comes my company--

Aug. 15?.

I had not time to finish my letter last night, for we did not return from the dismal play, which was in a barn at Kingston, till twelve o'clock at night. Our dinner passed off very well; the Clive was very good company; you know how much she admires Asheton's preaching. She says, she is always vastly good for two or three days after his sermons;' but by the time that Thursday comes, all their effect is worn out. I never saw more proper decent behaviour than Mrs. Pritchard's, and I assure you even Mr. Treasurer Pritchard was far better than I expected. Yours ever, Chaucerides.

(1454) The grandmother of the Hon. Horace Walpole was daughter of sir Erasmus Philips, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire.

(1455) Niece of Mrs. Leneve, and first wife of Admiral Hugh Pigot.-E.

(1456/1457) Two celebrated actresses.

(1458) lady Mary Churchill.

(1459) The favourite seat of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham, which he embellished under the direction of Kent. It is pleasingly mentioned by Pope, in his Epilogue to the Imitations of the Satires of Horace:-

"Pleas'd let me own, in Esher's peaceful grove, Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love, The scene, the master, opening to my view, I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew."-E .

(1460) A cant name for the Duke of Cumberland.

561 Letter 259 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1748.

Dear Harry, Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I can't say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full- bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment to the full.

There's General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady Dowager Ferrers! Why, do you think I can extract more out of them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood?(1461) Your old women dress, go to the Duke's levee, see that the soldiers cock their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what they never did in their youth. Change hats for head-clothes, the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and the life is the very same. In short, these are the people I live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not, I give you my word, from the least negligence. My present and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress, and talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West-Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to transplant tulip-roots. I have even begun a treatise or panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers-One Of the improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so common as it will be. I shall talk of a secret for roasting a wild-boar and a whole pack of hounds alive, without hurting them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle's grandson, if he can ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds. Then the delightfulness of having whole groves of hummingbirds, tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in one's face for staring at, while they are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the principles of which we have not the least conception! If ever this book should come forth, I must expect to have all the learned in arms against me, who measure all knowledge backward: some of them have discovered symptoms of all arts in Homer; and Pineda(1462) had so much faith in the accomplishments of his ancestors, that he believed Adam understood all sciences but politics. But as these great champions for our forefathers are dead, and Boileau not alive to hitch me into a verse with Perrault, I am determined to admire the learning of posterity, especially being convinced that half our present knowledge sprung from discovering the errors of what had formerly been called so. I don't think I shall ever make any great discoveries myself, and therefore shall be content to propose them to my descendants, like my Lord Bacon, who, as Dr. Shaw says very prettily in his preface to Boyle, , had the art of inventing arts:" or rather like a Marquis of Worcester, of whom I have seen a little book which he calls A Century of Inventions where he has set down a hundred machines to do impossibilities with, and not a single direction how to make the machines themselves.(1463)

If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of trouble. The dedication, with your leave, shall be addressed to your son that is coming, or, with my Lady Ailesbury's leave, to your ninth son, who Will be unborn nearer to the time I 'am writing of; always provided that she does not bring three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.

Well! I have here set you the example of' writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don't keep up the correspondence on the same foot. Adieu!

(1461) General Honeywood, governor of Portsmouth.

(1462) Pineda was a Spanish Jesuit, and a professor of theology. He died in 1637, after writing voluminous commentaries upon several books of the Holy Scriptures, besides an universal history of the church.

(1463) Walpole, in his "Royal and Noble Authors," designates the Marquis as a "fantastic protector and fanatic," and describes the " Century of Inventions" as "an amazing piece of folly;" and Hume, who does not even know the title of the book, boldly pronounces it "a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, and impossibilities." In 18@5, however, an edition of this curious and very amusing little work was published], with historical and explanatory notes, by Mr. C. F. Partington; who clearly proves, that the Marquis was the person, either in this or any Other country, who gave the first idea of the steam engine.-E.

563 Letter 260 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept, 3, 1748.

All my sins to Mrs. Talbot you are to expiate; I am here quite alone, and want nothing but your fetching to go to her. I have been in town for a day, just to see Lord Bury who is come over with the Duke; they return next Thursday. The Duke is fatter, and it is now not denied that he has entirely lost the sight of one eye. This did not surprise me so much as a bon mot of his. Gumley, who you know is grown Methodist, came to tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde Park, near the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the Duke replied, he hoped it was not by the new light. This nonsensical new light is extremely in fashion, and I shall not be surprised if we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age. Whitfield preaches continually at my Lady Huntingdon's,(1464) at Chelsea; my Lord Chesterfield, my Lord Bath, my Lady Townshend, my Lady Thanet, and others, have been to hear him.(1465) What will you lay that, next winter, he is not run after, instead of Garrick?

I am just come from the play at Richmond, where I found the Duchess of Argyle and Lady Betty Campbell, and their court. We had a new actress, a Miss Clough; an extremely fine tall figure, and very handsome: she spoke very justly, and with spirit. Garrick is to produce her next winter; and a Miss Charlotte Ramsey, a poetess and deplorable actress. Garrick, Barry, and some more of the players, were there to see these new comedians; it is to be their seminary.

Since I came home I have been disturbed with a strange, foolish woman, that lives at the great corner house yonder; she is an attorney's wife, and much given to the bottle. By the time she- has finished that and daylight, she grows afraid of thieves, and makes the servants fire minute guns out of the garret windows. I remember persuading Mrs. Kerwood that there was a great smell of thieves, and this drunken dame seems literally to smell it. The divine Asheton, whom I suppose you will have seen when you receive this, will give you an account of the astonishment we were in last night at hearing guns; I began to think that the Duke had brought some of his defeats from Flanders.

I am going to tell you a long story, but you will please to remember that I don't intend to tell it well; therefore, if you discover any beauties in the relation where I never intended them, don't conclude, as you did in your last, that I know they are there. If I had not a great command of my pen, and could not force it to write whatever nonsense I had heard last, you would be enough to pervert all one's letters, and put one upon keeping up one's character; but as I write merely to satisfy you, I shall take no care but not to write well: I hate letters that are called good letters.

You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy? he was walking in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was very pretty: they followed them; but the girls ran away, and the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to dog them: the porter hunted them-he the porter. The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre. Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker's wife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers. "Ay," says she, "but if I should, and should lose him by it." However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue: and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park, she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a dinner as a butterwoman's daughter could give him, he should be welcome. Away they walked to Craven Street: the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May-fair. The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did. The mother borrowed a pair of sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day they went to their own palace. In two or three days the scene grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he could bear it no longer. "Bear! bear what?"--"Why, to be teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a butterwoman's daughter. I am determined to go to France, and will leave you a handsome allowance."--"Leave me! why you don't fancy you shall leave me? I will go with you."--"What, you love me then?"--"No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan't go without me." And they are gone! If you know any body that proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in a more commodious method.

I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn. living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.'(1466)

There are still two months to London; if you could discover your own mind for any three or four days of that space, I will either go with you to the Tigers or be glad to see you here; but I positively will ask you neither one nor t'other any more. I have raised seven-and-twenty bantams from the patriarchs you sent me. Adieu!

(1464) Daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers.

(1465) Lord Bolingbroke, in a letter to the Earl of Marchmont of the 1st of November, says, "I hope you heard from me by myself, as well of me by Mr. Whitfield. This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon's, and I should have been curious to hear him. Nothing kept me from going, but an imagination that there was to be a select auditory. That saint, our friend Chesterfield, was there; and I hear from him an extreme good account of the sermon." Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.-E.

(1466) Dr. Beattie says, in a letter to Sir W. Forbes, "Gray's letters very much resemble what his conversation was: he had none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet; and though on those and all other subjects he spoke to me with the utmost freedom, and without any reserve, he was in general company much more silent than one could have wished."-E.

565 Letter 261 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1748.

I have two letters of yours to account for, and nothing to plead but my old insolvency. Oh! yes, I have to scold you, which you find is an inexhaustible fund with me. You sent me your d`em`el`e(1467) with the whole city of Florence, and charged me to keep it secret-and the first person I saw was my Lord Hobart, who was full of the account he had received from you. You might as well have told a woman an improper secret, and expected to have it kept! but you may be very easy, for unless it reaches my Lady Pomfret or my Lady Orford, I dare say it will never get back to Florence; and for those two ladies, I don't think it likely that they should hear it, for the first is in a manner retired from the world, and the world is retired from the second. Now I have vented my anger, I am seriously sorry for you, to be exposed to the impertinence of those silly Florentine women: they deserve a worse term than silly, since they pretend to any characters. How could you act with so much temper? If they had treated me in this manner, I should have avowed ten times more than they pretended you had done; but you are an absolute minister!

I am much obliged to Prince Beauvau for remembering me, and should be extremely pleased to show him all manner of attentions here: you know I profess great attachment to that family for their civilities to me. But how gracious the Princess has been to you! I am quite jealous of her dining with you: I remember what a rout there was to get her for half of half a quarter of an hour to your assembly.

The Bishop of London is dead; having luckily for his family, as it proves, refused the archbishopric.*1468) We owe him the justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and without any resentment or ingratitude.

Your brothers are coming to dine with me; your brother Gal. is extremely a favourite with me: I took to him for his resemblance to you, but am grown to love him upon his own fund.

The peace is still in a cloud: according to custom, we have hurried on our complaisance before our new friends were at all ready with theirs. There was a great Regency(1469) kept in town, to take off the prohibition of commerce with Spain: when they were met, somebody asked if Spain was ready to take off theirs? "Oh, Lord! we never thought of that!" They sent for Wall,(1470) and asked him if his court would take the same step with us? He said, "he believed they might, but he had no orders about it." However, we proceeded, and hitherto are bit.

Adieu! by the first opportunity I shelf send you the two books of Houghton, for yourself and Dr. Cocchi. My Lord Orford is much mended: my uncle has no prospect of ever removing from his couch.

(1467) A Madame Ubaldini having raised a scandalous story of two persons whom she saw together in Mr. Mann's garden at one of his assemblies, and a scurrilous sonnet having been made upon the occasion, the Florentine ladies for some time pretended that it would hurt their characters to come any more to his assembly.

(1468) Dr. Edmund Gibson had been very intimate with Sir Robert Walpole, and was designed by him for archbishop after the death of Wake; but setting himself at the head of the clergy against the Quaker bill, he broke with Sir Robert and lost the archbishoprick which was given to Potter; but on his death, the succeeding ministry offered it to Dr. Gibson. [The Doctor declined it, on account of his advanced age and increasing infirmities. He died on the 6th of February, 1748.)

(1469) This means a meeting of the persons composing the Regency during the King's absence in Hanover.-D.

(1470) General Wall, the Spanish ambassador.

566 Letter 262 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1748.

I shall write you a very short letter, for I don't know what business we have to be corresponding when we might be together. I really wish to see you, for you know I am convinced of what you say to me. It is few people I ask to come hither, and if possible, still fewer that I wish to see here. The disinterestedness of your friendship for me has always appeared, and is the only sort that for the future I will ever accept, and consequently I never expect any more friends. As to trying to make any by obligations, I have had such woful success, that, for fear of thinking still worse than I do of the world, I will never try more. But you are abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton: have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I mean, since it was my brother's: I did not expect to prevail with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not only will never do a dirty thing, but you won't even venture the appearance of it. I have often applied to you in my own mind a very pretty passage that I remember in a letter of Chillingworth; "you would not do that for preferment that you would not do but for preferment." You oblige me much in what you say about my nephews, and make me happy in the character you have heard of Lord Malpas;(1471) I am extremely inclined to believe he deserves it. I am as sorry to hear what a companion lord Walpole has got: there has been a good deal of noise about him, but I had laughed at it, having traced the worst reports to his gracious mother, who is now sacrificing the character of her son to her aversion for her husband. If we lived under the Jewish dispensation, how I should tremble at my brother's leaving no children by her, and its coming to my turn to raise him up issue!

Since I gave you the account of the Duchess of Ireland's piked horns among the tombs of the Veres, I have found a long account in Bayle of the friar, who, as I remember to have read somewhere, preached so vehemently against that fashion: it was called Hennin, and the monk's name was Thomas Conecte. He was afterwards burnt at Rome for censuring the lives of the clergy. As our histories say that Anne of Bohemia introduced the fashion here, it is probable that the French learnt it from us, and were either long before they caught it, Or long in retaining the mode; for the Duke of Ireland died in 1389, and Connect was burnt at Rome in 1434. There were, indeed, several years between his preaching down Hennins and his death, but probably not near five-and-forty years, and half that term was a long duration for so outrageous a fashion. But I have found a still more entertaining fashion in another place in Bayle which was, the women wearing looking-glasses upon their bellies': I don't conceive for what use. Adieu! don't write any more, but come.

(1471) Eldest son of George, third Earl of Cholmondoley, and grandson of Sir Robert Walpole.

567 Letter 263 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1748.

Dear harry, I am sorry our wishes clash so much. Besides that I have no natural inclination for the Parliament, it will particularly disturb me now in the middle of all my planting; for which reason I have never inquired when it will meet, and cannot help you to guess--but I should think not hastily-for I believe the peace, at least the evacuations, are not in so prosperous a way as to be ready to make any figure in the King's speech. But I speak from a distance; it may all be very toward: our ministers enjoy the consciousness of their wisdom, as the good do of their virtue, and take no pains to make it shine before men. In the mean time, we have several collateral emoluments from the pacification: all our milliners, tailors, tavern keepers, and young gentlemen are tiding to France for our improvement in luxury; and as I foresee we shall be told on their return that we have lived in a total state of blindness for these six years. and gone absolutely retrograde to all true taste in every particular, I have already begun to practise walking on my head, and doing every thing the wrong way. Then Charles Frederick has turned all his virt`u into fireworks, and, by his influence at the ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of the peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal. I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still hoarser on the superiority that his firework will have over the Roman naumachia.

I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas(1472) at Hampton Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute receive a message that the Duchess of Montagu(1473) is extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady Cardigan's(1474) account, whom I grow every day more in love with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really estimable qualities: such a dignity in her way of thinking; so little idea of any thing mean or ridiculous, and such proper contempt for both! Adieu! I must go dress for dinner, and you perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.

(1472) Daughter of the first Earl of Albemarle, and wife of General Thomas.-E.

(1473) She was mother to Lady Cardigan, and daughter to the great Duke of Marlborough.

(1474) Lady Mary Montagu, third daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, and wife of George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards created Duke of Montagu.

568 Letter 264 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 20, 1748.

You are very formal to send me a ceremonious letter of thanks; you see I am less punctilious, for having nothing to tell you, I did not answer your letter. I have been in the empty town for a day: Mrs. Muscovy and I cannot devise where you have planted Jasmine; I am all plantation, and sprout away like any chaste nymph in the Metamorphosis.

They say the old Monarch at Hanover has got a new mistress; I fear he ought to have got * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Now I talk of getting, Mr. Fox has got the ten thousand pound prize; and the Violette, as it is said, Coventry for a husband. It is certain that at the fine masquerade he was following her, as she was under the Countess's arm, who, pulling off her glove, moved her wedding-ring up and down her finger, which it seems was to signify that no other terms would be accepted. It is the year for contraband marriages, though I do not find Fanny Murray's is certain. I liked her spirit in an instance I heard t'other night: she was complaining of want of money; Sir Robert Atkins immediately gave her a twenty pound note; she said, "D-n your twenty pound! what does it signify?" clapped it between two pieces of bread and butter, and ate it. Adieu! nothing should make me leave off so shortly but that my gardener waits for me, and you must allow that he is to be preferred to all the world.

569 Letter 265 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, October 24, 1748.

I have laughed heartily at your adventure of Milord Richard Onslow;(1475) it is an admirable adventure! I am not sure that Riccardi's absurdity was not the best part of it. Here were the Rinuncinis, the Panciaticis, and Pandolfinis? were they as ignorant too? What a brave topic it would have been for Niccolini, if he had been returned, to display all his knowledge of England!

Your brothers are just returned from Houghton, where they found my brother extremely recovered: my uncle too, I hear, is better; but I think that an impossible recovery.(1476) Lord Walpole is setting out on his travels; I shall be impatient to have him in Florence; I flatter myself you will like him: I, who am not troubled with partiality to my family, admire him much. Your brother has got the two books of Houghton, and will send them by the first Opportunity: I am by no means satisfied with then; they are full of' faults, and the two portraits wretchedly unlike.

The peace is signed between us, France, and Holland, but does not give the least joy; the stocks do not rise, and the merchants are unsatisfied; they say France will sacrifice us to Spain, which has not yet signed: in short, there has not been the least symptom of public rejoicing; but the government is to give a magnificent firework.

I believe there are no news, but I am here all alone, planting. The Parliament does not meet till the 29th of next month: I shall go to town but two or three days before that. The Bishop of Salisbury,(1477) who refused Canterbury, accepts London, upon a near prospect of some fat fines. Old Tom Walker(1478) is dead, and has left vast wealth and good places; but have not heard where either are to go. Adieu! I am very paragraphical, and you see have nothing to say.

(1475) One Daniel Bets, a Dutchman or Fleming, who called himself my Lord Richard Onslow, and pretended to be the Speaker's son, having forged letters of credit Ind drawn money from several bankers, came to Florence, and was received as an Englishman of quality by Marquis Riccardi, who could not be convinced by Mr. Mann of the imposture till the adventurer ran away on foot to Rome in the night.

(1476) Yet he did in great measure recover by the use of soap and limewater.

(1477) Dr. Sherlock.

(1478) He was surveyor of the roads; had been a kind of toad-eater to Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Godolphin; was a great frequenter of Newmarket, and a notorious usurer. His reputed wealth is stated, in the Gentleman's Magazine, at three hundred thousand pounds.]

570 Letter 266 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1748.

Our King is returned and our parliament met: we expected nothing but harmony and tranquillity, and love of the peace; but the very first day opened with a black cloud, that threatens a stormy session. To the great surprise of the ministry, the Tories appear in intimate league with the Prince's party, and both agreed in warm and passionate expressions on the treaty: we shall not have the discussion till after Christmas. My uncle, who is extremely mended by soap, and the hopes of a peerage is come up, and the very first day broke out in a volley of treaties: though he is altered, you would be astonished at his spirits.

We talk much of the Chancellor's(1479) resigning the seals, from weariness of the fatigue, and being made president of the council, with other consequent changes, which I will write you if they happen; but as this has already been a discourse of six months, I don't give it you for certain.

Mr. Chute, to whom alone I communicated Niccolini's banishment, though it is now talked of from the Duke of Bedford's office, says "he is sorry the Abb`e is banished for the only thing which he ever saw to commend in him,-his abusing the Tuscan ministry." I must tell you another admirable bon mot of Mr. Chute, now I am mentioning him. Passing by the door of Mrs. Edwards, who died of drams, be saw the motto which the undertakers had placed to her escutcheon, Mors janua vitae, he said "it ought to have been Mors aqua vita."

The burlettas are begun; I think, not decisively liked or condemned yet: their success is certainly not rapid, though Pertici is excessively admired. Garrick says he is the best comedian he ever saw: but the women are execrable, not a pleasing note amongst them. Lord Middlesex has stood a trial with Monticelli for arrears of salary, in Westminster-hall, and even let his own handwriting be proved against him! You may imagine he was cast. Hume Campbell, lord Marchmont's brother, a favourite advocate, and whom the ministry have pensioned out of the Opposition into silence, was his council, and protested, striking his breast, that he had never set his foot but once into an opera-house in his life. This affectation 'of British patriotism is excellently ridiculous in a man so known: I have often heard my father say, that of all the men he ever ](new, Lord Marchmont and Hume Campbell were the most abandoned in their professions to him on their coming into the world: he was hindered from accepting their services by the present Duke of Argyll, of whose faction they were not. They then flung themselves into the Opposition, where they both have made great figures, till the elder was shut out of Parliament by his father's death, and the younger being very foolishly dismissed from being solicitor to the Prince, in favour of Mr. Bathurst, accepted a pension from the court, and seldom comes into the House, and has lately taken to live on roots and study astronomy.(1480) Lord Marchmont, you know, was one of Pope's heroes, had a place in Scotland on Lord Chesterfield's coming into the ministry, though he had not power to bring him into the sixteen: and was very near losing his place last winter, on being Supposed the author of the famous apology for Lord Chesterfield's resignation. This is the history of these Scotch brothers, which I have told you for want of news.

Two Oxford scholars are condemned to two years' imprisonment for treason;(1481) and their vice-chancellor, for winking at it, is soon to be tried. What do you say to the young Pretender's persisting to stay in France? It will not be easy to persuade me that it is without the approbation of that court. Adieu!

(1479) Lord Hardwicke.-D.

(1480) In the preceding March, Lord Marchmont had married a second wife.@, Miss Crampton. The circumstances attending this marriage are thus related by David Hume, in a letter to Mr. Oswald, dated January 29, 1748:-" Lord Marchmont has had the most extraordinary adventure in the world. About three weeks ago he was at the play, when he espied in one of the boxes a fair virgin, whose looks, airs, and manners had such a wonderful effect upon him, as was visible by every bystander. His raptures were so undisguised, his looks so expressive of passion, his inquiries so earnest, that every person took notice of it. He soon was told that her name was Crampton, a linendraper's daughter, who had been bankrupt last year. He wrote next morning to her father, desiring to visit his daughter on honourable terms, and in a few days she will be the Countess of Marchmont. Could you ever suspect the ambitious, the severe, the bustling, the impetuous, the violent Marchmont of becoming so tender and gentle a swain-an Orondates!"-E.

(1481) In drinking the Pretender's health, and using seditious expressions against the King. They were also sentenced "to walk round Westminster-hall with a label affixed to Their foreheads, denoting their crime and sentence, and to ask pardon of the several courts;" which they accordingly performed.-E.

571 Letter 267 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Dec. 15, 1748.

I conclude your Italy talks of nothing but the young Pretender's imprisonment at Vincennes. I don't know whether he be a Stuart, but I am sure, by his extravagance he has proved himself' of English extraction! What a mercy that we had not him here! with a temper so, impetuous and obstinate, as to provoke a French government when in their power, what would he have done with an English Government in his power?(1482) An account came yesterday that he, with his Sheridan and a Mr. Stafford (who was a creature of my Lord Bath,) are transmitted to Pont de Beauvoisin, under a solemn promise never to return into France (I suppose unless they send for him). It is said that a Mr. Dun, who married Alderman Parsons's eldest daughter, is in the Bastile for having struck the officer when the young man was arrested.

Old Somerset(1483) is at last dead, and the Duke of Newcastle Chancellor of Bainbridge, to his heart's content. Somerset tendered his pride even beyond his hate; for he has left the present Duke all the furniture of his palaces, and forbore to charge the estate, according to a power he had, with five-and-thirty thousand pounds. To his Duchess,(1484) who has endured such a long slavery with him, he has left nothing but one thousand pounds and a small farm, besides her jointure; giving the whole of his unsettled estate, which is about six thousand pounds a-year, equally between his two daughters, and leaving it absolutely in their own powers now, though neither are of age; and to Lady Frances, the eldest, he has additionally given the fine house built by Inigo Jones, in Lincoln's-inn-fields, (which he had bought of the Duke of Ancaster for the Duchess,) hoping that his daughter will let her mother live with her. To Sir Thomas Bootle he has given half a borough, and a whole one,(1485) to his grandson Sir Charles Windham,(1486) with an estate that cost him fourteen thousand pounds. To Mr. Obrien,(1487) Sir Charles Windham's brother, a single thousand; and to Miss Windham an hundred a-year, which he gave her annually at Christmas, and is just Such a legacy as you would give to a housekeeper to prevent her from going to service again. She is to be married immediately to the second Grenville;(1488) they have waited for a larger legacy. The famous settlement(1489) is found, which gives Sir Charles Windham about twelve thousand pounds a-year of the Percy estate after the present Duke's death; the other five, with the barony of Percy, must go to Lady Betty Smithson.(1490) I don't know whether you ever heard that, in Lord Grenville's administration, he had prevailed with the King to grant the earldom of Northumberland to Sir Charles; Lord Hertford represented against it; at last the King said he would give it to whoever they would make it appear was to have the Percy estate; but old Somerset refused to let any body see his writings, and so the affair dropped, every body believing that there was no such settlement.