TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

DEAR GEORGE,

Arlington Street, Nov. 3, 1746.

Do not imagine I have already broke through all my wholesome resolutions and country schemes, and that I am given up, body and soul, to London for the winter. I shall be with you by the end of the week; but just now I am under the maiden palpitation of an author. My epilogue will, I believe, be spoken to-morrow night; and I flatter myself I shall have no faults to answer for but what are in it, for I have kept secret whose it is. It is now gone to be licensed; but as the Lord Chamberlain is mentioned, though rather to his honour, it is possible it may be refused.

1

Don't expect news, for I know no more than a newspaper. Asheton would have written it if there were any thing to tell you. Is it news that my Lord Rochford is an oaf? He has got a set of plate buttons for the birth-day clothes, with the Duke's head in every one. Sure my good lady carries her art too far to make him so great a dupe. How do all the comets? Has Miss Harriet found out any more ways at solitaire? Has Cloe left off evening prayer on account of the damp evenings? How is Miss Rice's cold and coachman? Is Miss Granville better? Has Mrs. Masham made a brave hand of this bad season, and lived upon carcases like any vampire? Adieu! I am just going to see Mrs. Muscovy,3 and will be sure not to laugh if my old lady should talk of Mr. Draper's white skin, and tickle his bosom like Queen Bess.

Rowe's tragedy of Tamerlane was written in compliment to William the Third, whose character the author intended to display under that of Tamerlane, as he meant to be understood to draw that of Louis the Fourteenth in Bajazet. Tamerlane was always acted on the 4th and 5th of November, the anniversaries of King William's birth and landing; and this year Mr. Walpole had written an epilogue for it, on the suppression of the rebellion.-E.

The Duke of Grafton.

3 Mrs. Boscawen, wife of the Hon. George Boscawen, fifth son of Viscount Falmouth.-E.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Nov. 4, 1746.

MR. CHUTE and I agreed not to tell you of any new changes till we could tell you more of them, that you might not be "put into a taking," as you was last winter with the revolution of three days; but I think the present has ended with a single fit. Lord Harrington,1 quite on a sudden, resigned the seals; it is said, on some treatment not over gracious; but he is no such novice to be shocked with that, though I believe it has been rough ever since his resigning last year, which he did more boisterously than he is accustomed to behave to Majesty. Others talk of some quarrel with his brother secretary, who, in complaisance, is all for drums and trumpets. Lord Chesterfield was immediately

named his successor; but the Duke of Newcastle has taken the northern province, as of more business, and consequently better suited to his experience and abilities! I flatter myself that this can no way affect you. Ireland is to be offered to Lord Harrington, or the Presidentship; and the Duke of Dorset, now President, is to have the other's refusal. The King has endured a great deal with your old complaint; and I felt for him, recollecting all you underwent.

You will have seen in the papers all the histories of our glorious expeditions and invasions of France, which have put Cressy and Agincourt out of all countenance. On the first view, indeed, one should think that our fleet had been to victual; for our chief prizes were cows and geese and turkeys. But I rather think that the whole was fitted out by

' William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, secretary of state.

2 The expedition to Quiberon; the troops under General St. Clair, the fleet under Admiral Lestock. The object was to surprise Port l'Orient, and destroy the stores and ships of the French East India Company, but the result attained was only the plunder and burning of a few helpless villages. The fleet and troops returned, however, with little loss. "The truth is," says Tindal, "Lestock was too old and infirm for enterprise, and, as is alleged, was under the shameful direction of a woman he carried along with him; and neither the soldiers nor the sailors seem to have been under any kind of discipline.”—E.

the Royal Society, for they came back quite satisfied with having discovered a fine bay! Would one believe, that in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-six, we should boast of discovering something on the coast of France, as if we had found out the North-east passage, or penetrated into some remote part of America? The Guards are come back too, who never went: in one single day they received four several different orders!

Matthews is broke at last. Nobody disputes the justice of the sentence; but the legality of it is not quite so authenticated. Besides some great errors in the forms, whenever the Admiralty perceived any of the court-martial inclined to favour him, they were constantly changed. Then, the expense has been enormous; two hundred thousand pounds! chiefly by employing young captains, instead of old half-pay officers; and by these means, double commissions. Then there has been a great fracas between the court-martial and Willes. He, as Chief Justice, sent a summons, in the ordinary form of law, to Mayerne, to appear as an evidence in a trial where a captain had prosecuted Sir Chaloner Ogle for horrid tyranny: the ingenious court-martial sat down and drew up articles of impeachment, like any House of Commons, against the Chief Justice, for stopping their proceedings! and the Admiralty, still more ingenious, had a mind to complain of him to the House! He was charmed to catch them at such absurdities-but I believe at last it is all compromised.

I have not heard from you for some time, but I don't pretend to complain: you have real occupation; my idleness is for its own sake. The Abbé Niccolini and Pandolfini are arrived; but I have not yet seen them. Rinuncini cannot bear England - and if the Chutes speak their mind, I believe they are not captivated yet with anything they have found: I am more and more with them: Mr. Whitehed is infinitely improved; and Mr. Chute has absolutely more wit, knowledge, and good-nature, than, to their great surprise,

John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

ever met together in one man.1 He has a bigotry to you, that even astonishes me, who used to think that I was pretty well in for loving you; but he is very often ready to quarrel with me for not thinking you all pure gold.

Adieu !

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Windsor, Nov. 12, 1746.

I AM come hither, per saldare; but though the country is excellently convenient, from the idleness of it, for beginning a letter, yet it is not at all commode for finishing one: the same ingredients that fill a basket by the carrier, will not fill half a sheet of paper; I could send you a cheese, or a hare; but I have not a morsel of news. Mr. Chute threatened me to tell you the distress I was in last week, when I starved Niccolini and Pandolfini on a fast-day, when I had thought to banquet them sumptuously. I had luckily given a guinea for two pine-apples, which I knew they had never seen in Italy, and upon which they revenged themselves for all the meat that they dared not touch. Rinuncini could not come. How you mistook me, my dear child! I meant simply, that you had not mentioned his coming; very far from reproving you for giving him a letter. Don't I give letters for you every day to cubs, ten times cubber than Rinuncini? and don't you treat them as if all their names were Walpole? If you was to send me all the uncouth productions of Italy, do you think any of them would be so brutal as Sir William Maynard? I am exactly like you; I have no greater pleasure than to make them value your recommendation, by showing how much I value it. Besides, I love the Florentines for their own sakes, and to indemnify them, poor creatures! a little for the Richcourts, the Lor

Gray, in a letter to Mr. Chute of the 12th of October, says, "Mr. Walpole is full, I assure you, of your panegyric. Never any man had half so much wit as Mr. Chute, (which is saying everything with him, you know,) and Mr. Whithead is the finest young man that was ever imported." Works, vol. iii. p. 22.—E.

raines, and the Austrians. I have received, per mezzo di Pucci, a letter from Marquis Riccardi, with orders to consign to the bearer all his treasure in my hands, which I shall do immediately with great satisfaction. There are four rings that I should be glad he would sell me; but they are such trifles, and he will set such a value on them the moment he knows I like them, that it is scarce worth while to make the proposal, because I would give but a little for them. However, you may hint what plague I have had with his roba, and that it will be a gentillezza to sell me these four dabs. One is a man's head, small, on cornelian, and intaglio; a fly, ditto; an Isis, cameo; and an inscription in Christian Latin: the last is literally not worth two sequins.

As to Mr. Townshend, I now know all the particulars, and that Lord Sandwich was at the bottom of it. What an excellent heart his lordship will have by the time he is threescore, if he sets out thus! The persecution3 is on account of the poor boy's relation to my father; of whom the world may judge pretty clearly already, from the abilities and disinterestedness of such of his enemies as have succeeded; and from their virtue in taking any opportunity to persecute any of his relations; in which even the public interest of their country can weigh nothing, when clashing with their malice. The King of Sardinia has written the strongest letter imaginable to complain of the grievous prejudice the Admiralty has done his affairs by this step.

Don't scold me for not sending you those Lines to Eckardt: I never wrote anything that I esteemed less, or that was seen so incorrect; nor can I at all account for their having been so much liked, especially as the thoughts were so old and so common. I was hurt at their getting into print. I enclose you an epilogues that I have written since, merely for a specimen of something more correct. You know, or

1 Minister from the Great Duke.

2 John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty. 3 See letter of the 14th October.

The Beauties, an Epistle to Eckardt, the painter; reprinted in Dodsley's Miscellanies [and in Walpole's Works, vol. i. p. 19].

On the suppression of the rebellion. [See Works, vol. i. p. 25.]