1 is dead of age. When Lord Bolingbroke's last work was published, on the State of Parties at the late King's accession, Lord Dartmouth said, he supposed Lord Bolingbroke believed that everybody was dead who had lived at that period. There has been a droll cause in Westminster Hall: a man laid another a wager that he produced a person who should weigh as much again as the Duke. When they had betted, they recollected not knowing how to desire the Duke to step into a scale. They agreed to establish his weight at twenty stone, which, however, is supposed to be two more than he weighs. One Bright was then produced, who is since dead, and who actually weighed forty-two stone and a-half. As soon as he was dead, the person who had lost objected that he had been weighed in his clothes, and though it was impossible to suppose that his clothes could weigh above two stone, they went to law. There were the Duke's twenty stone bawled over a thousand times,-but the righteous law decided against the man who had won! 4 Poor Lord Lempster' is more Cerberus than ever; (you remember his bon-mot that proved such a blunder;) he has lost twelve thousand pounds at hazard to an ensign of the Guards-but what will you think of the folly of a young Sir Ralph Gore,' who took it into his head that he would not be waited on by drawers in brown frocks and blue aprons, and has literally given all the waiters at the King's Arms rich embroideries and laced clothes! The town is still empty: the parties for the two playhouses are the only parties that retain any spirit. I will tell you one or two bon mots of Quin the actor. Barry would have had him play the ghost in Hamlet, a part much beneath the dignity of Quin, who would give no other answer but, "I won't catch cold behind." 1 William Legge, first Earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state to Queen Anne, and the annotator of Burnet's History of his Own Times.'-CUNNINGHAM. 2 Edward Bright died at Malden in Essex, on the 10th of November, at the age of thirty. He was an active man till a year or two before that event; when his corpulency so overpowered his strength, that his life was a burthen to him.WRIGHT. 3 Eldest son of Thomas Fermor, Earl of Pomfret, whom, in 1753, he succeeded in the title.-WALPOLE. 4 When he was on his travels, and run much in debt, his parents paid his debts: some more came out afterwards; he wrote to his mother, that he could only compare himself to Cerberus, who, when one head was cut off, had another 'spring up in its room.-WALpole. 5 In 1747, when only a captain, Sir Ralph distinguished himself at the battle of Laffeldt. In 1764, he was created Baron Gore, and in 1771, Earl of Ross: in 1788, he was appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland, and died in 1802.-WRIGHT. I don't know whether you remember that the ghost is always ridiculously dressed, with a morsel of armour before, and only a black waistcoat and breech behind. The other is an old one, but admirable. When Lord Tweedale was nominal Secretary of State for Scotland, Mitchell,' his secretary, was supping with Quin, who wanted him to stay another bottle: but he pleaded my lord's business. "Then," said Quin, "only stay till I have told you a story. A vessel was becalmed: the master looked up and called to one of the cabin-boys on the top of the mast, Jack, what are you doing?' 'Nothing, Sir.' He called to another, a little below the first, 'Will, what are you doing?' 'Helping Jack, Sir.'" Adieu! · 317. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Strawberry Hill, Dec. 22, 1750. As I am idling away some Christmas days here, I begin a letter to you, that perhaps will not set out till next year. Any changes in the Ministry will certainly be postponed till that date: it is even believed that no alteration will be made till after the session; they will get the money raised and the new treaty ratified in Parliament before they break and part. The German ministers are more alarmed, and seem to apprehend themselves in as tottering a situation as some of the English: not that any secretary of state is jealous of them-their Countess is on the wane. The housekeeper' at Windsor, an old monster that Verrio painted for one of the Furies, is dead. The revenue is large,' and has been largely solicited. Two days ago, at the drawing-room, the gallant Orondates [George II.] strode up to Miss Chudleigh, and told her he was glad to have an opportunity of obeying her commands, that he appointed her mother housekeeper at Windsor, and hoped she would not think a kiss too great a reward-against all precedent he kissed her in the circle. He has had a hankering these two years. Her life, which is now of thirty years' standing, has been a little historic. Why 1 Andrew Mitchell, afterwards commissary at Antwerp.-WALPOLE. And, for many years, envoy from England to the Court of Prussia. In 1765 he was created a Knight of the Bath, and died at Berlin in 1771. His valuable collection of letters, forming sixty-eight volumes, was purchased in 1810, by the trustees of the British Museum. -WRIGHT. 2 Lady Yarmouth. The new amour did not proceed.-WALPOLE. 3 Mrs. Marriot.-WALPOLE. A place of 800l. a-year. Mrs. Chudleigh was the widow of Colonel Thomas Chudleigh, lieutenant-governor of Chelsea Hospital, who died in 1726.-CUNNINGHAM. 5 She was, though Maid of Honour, privately married to Augustus, second son of should not experience and a charming face on her side, and near seventy years on his, produce a title? Madame de Mirepoix is returned: she gives a lamentable account of another old mistress,' her mother. She had not seen her since the Princess went to Florence, which she it seems has left with great regret; with greater than her beauty, whose ruins she has not discovered but with few teeth, few hairs, sore eyes, and wrinkles, goes bare-necked and crowned with jewels! Madame Mirepoix told me a reply of Lord Cornbury, that pleased me extremely. They have revived at Paris old Fontenelle's opera of 'Peleus and Thetis ;' he complained of being dragged upon the stage again for one of his juvenile performances, and said he could not bear to be hissed now : Lord Cornbury immediately replied to him out of the very opera,"Jupiter en courroux Ne peut rien contre vous, Our old Laureat has been dying: when he thought himself at the extremity, he wrote this lively, good-natured letter to the Duke of Grafton: "MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE, "I know no nearer way of repaying your favours for these last twenty years than by recommending the bearer, Mr. Henry Jones, for the vacant laurel: Lord Chesterfield will tell you more of him. I don't know the day of my death, but while I live, I shall not cease to be, your Grace's, &c. "COLLEY CIBBER." I asked my Lord Chesterfield who this Jones' is; he told me a better poet would not take the post, and a worse ought not to have it. There are two new bon mots of his lordship much repeated, better than his ordinary. He says, "he would not be President [of the Council] because he would not be between two fires ;" and that the late Lord Hervey, by whom she had two children; but, disagreeing, the match was not owned. She afterwards, still Maid of Honour, lived very publicly with the Duke of Kingston, and at last married him-during Mr. Hervey's life.— WALPOLE. 1 Princess Craon, formerly mistress of Leopold, Duke of Lorraine.-WALPOLE. 2 I think he was an Irish bricklayer; he wrote an 'Earl of Essex.'-WALPOLE. Having a natural inclination for the Muses," says his biographer, "he pursued his devotions to them even during the labours of his mere mechanical avocations, and composing a line of brick and a line of verse alternately, his walls and poems rose in growth together." His tragedy of the Earl of Essex' came out at Covent Garden in 1753, and met with considerable success. He died in great want, in 1770.WRIGHT. 3 The two fires were the Pelham brothers; between whom all private intercourse was at this time suspended. -WRIGHT. "the two brothers are like Arbuthnot's Lindamira and Indamora ; ' the latter was a peaceable, tractable gentlewoman, but her sister was always quarrelling and kicking, and as they grew together, there was no parting them." You will think my letters are absolute jest-and-story books, unless you will be so good as to dignify them with the title of Walpoliana. Under that hope, I will tell you a very odd new story. A citizen had advertised a reward for the discovery of a person who had stolen sixty guineas out of his scrutoire. He received a message from a condemned criminal in Newgate, with the offer of revealing the thief. Being a cautious grave personage, he took two friends along with him. The convict told him that he was the robber; and when he doubted, the fellow began with these circumstances: "You came home such a night, and put the money into your bureau: I was under your bed you undressed, and then went to the foot of the garret stairs, and cried, Mary, come to bed to me-"""Hold, hold," said the citizen, "I am convinced." Nay," said the fellow, you shall hear all, for your intrigue saved your life. Mary replied, 'If any body wants me, they may come up to me:' you went : I robbed your bureau in the mean time, but should have cut your throat, if you had gone into your own bed instead of Mary's.' The conclusion of my letter will be a more serious story, but very proper for the Walpoliana. I have given you scraps of Ashton's history. To perfect his ingratitude, he has struck up an intimacy with my second brother [Sir Edward], and done his utmost to make a new quarrel between us, on the merit of having broke with me on the affair of Dr. Middleton. I don't know whether I ever told you that my brother hated Middleton, who was ill with a Dr. Thirlby,2 a creature of his. He carried this and his jealousy of me so far, that once when Lord Mountford brought Middleton for one night only to Houghton, my brother wrote my father a most outrageous letter,' telling him that he knew I had fetched Middleton to Houghton to write my father's life, and how much more capable Thirlby was of that task. Can one help admiring in these instances the dignity of human nature? Poor Mrs. Middleton is alarmed with a scheme that I think she very justly suspects as a plot of the clergy to get at and suppress her husband's papers. He died in a lawsuit with a 1 See the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus in Swift's Works; Indamora alludes to Mr. Pelham, Lindamira to the Duke of Newcastle.-WALPOLE. 2 See vol. i. p. 363.-CUNNINGHAM. 3 See vol. i. p. 359.-CUNNINGHAM. builder, who has since got a monition from the Commons for her to produce all the Doctor's effects and papers. The whole debt is but eight hundred pounds. She offered ten thousand pounds security, and the fellow will not take it. Is there clergy in it, or no? Adieu! 318. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Feb. 9, 1751. You will wonder that I, who am pretty punctual, even when I have little to say, should have been so silent at the beginning of a session: I will tell you some reasons why; what I had to tell you was not finished; I wished to give you an entire account; besides, we have had so vigorous an attendance, that with that, and the fatigue, it was impossible to write. Before the parliament met, there was a dead tranquillity, and no symptoms of party spirit. What is more extraordinary, though the Opposition set out vehemently the very first day, there has appeared ten times greater spirit on the court side, a Whig vehemence that has rushed on heartily. I have been much entertained-what should I have been, if I had lived in the times of the Exclusion-bill, and the end of Queen Anne's reign, when votes and debates really tended to something! Now they tend but to the alteration of a dozen places, perhaps, more or less—but come, I'll tell you, and you shall judge for yourself. The morning the Houses met, there was universally dispersed, by the penny post, and by being dropped into the areas of houses, a paper called Constitutional Queries, a little equivocal, for it is not clear whether they were levelled at the Family, or by Part of the Family at the Duke.' The Address was warmly opposed, and occasioned a remarkable speech of Pitt, in recantation of his former orations on the Spanish war, and in panegyric on the Duke of Newcastle, with whom he is pushing himself, and by whom he is pushed at all rates, in opposition to Lord Sandwich and the Bedfords. Two or three days afterwards there were motions in both Houses to have the queries publicly burnt. That too occasioned a debate with us, and a fine speech of Lord Egmont, artfully condemning the paper, though a little 1 The object of the paper was to expose the Duke of Cumberland to popular odium by comparing him with Richard III., and exciting a suspicion that he would employ his military power to violate the birth-right of his brother, and usurp the throne.WRIGHT. |