thinking he could not die." In short, the Prince relapsed that night, has had three physicians ever since, and has never been supposed out of danger till yesterday: a thrush had appeared, and for the two or three last evenings he had dangerous suppressions of breath. However, his family thought him so well yesterday, that there were cards in his outward room. Between nine and ten he was seized with a violent fit of coughing. Wilmot, and Hawkins the surgeon, were present the former said, "Sir, have you brought up all the phlegm ? I hope this will be over in a quarter of an hour, and that your Royal Highness will have a good night." Hawkins had occasion to go out of the room, and said, "Here is something I don't like." The cough continued; the Prince laid his hand upon his stomach, and said, "Je sens la mort!" The page who held him up, felt him shiver, and cried out, "The Prince is going!" The Princess was at the feet of the bed; she catched up a candle and ran to him, but before she got to the head of the bed, he was dead.

Lord North was immediately sent to the King, who was looking over a table, where Princess Emily, the Duchess of Dorset, and Duke of Grafton were playing. He was extremely surprised, and said, "Why, they told me he was better!" He bid Lord North tell the Princess he would do everything she could desire; and has this morning sent her a very kind message in writing. He is extremely shocked-but no pity is too much for the Princess; she has eight children, and is seven months gone with another. She bears her affliction with great courage and sense. They asked her if the body was to be opened; she replied, what the King pleased.

This is all I know yet; you shall have fresh and fresh intelligence -for reflections on minorities, Regencies, Jacobitism, Oppositions, factions, I need not help you to them. You will make as many as anybody, but those who reflect on their own disappointments. The creditors are no inconsiderable part of the moralists. They talk of fourteen hundred thousand pounds on post-obits. This I am sure I don't vouch: I only know that I never am concerned to see the tables of the money-changers overturned and cast out of the temple.'

I much fear, that by another post I shall be forced to tell you news that will have much worse effects for my own family. My Lord Orford has got such another violent boil as he had two years ago—and a thrush has appeared too along with it. We are in

2

1 Frederick Prince of Wales's debts were never paid.-DOVER.

2 His eldest brother. He died (ten days after this letter was written) of an abscess

in the back, aged fifty-one.-CUNNINGHAM.

the utmost apprehensions about him, the more, because there is no possibility of giving him any about himself. He has not only taken an invincible aversion to physicians, but to the bark, and we have no hopes from anything else. It will be a fatal event for me, for your brother, and for his own son. Princess Emily,' Mr. Pelham,' and my Lady Orford, are not among the most frightened.

Your brother, who dines here with Mr. Chute and Gray,' has just brought me your letter of March 12th. The libel you ask about was called "Constitutional Queries; " have not you received mine of February 9th? there was some account of our present history. Adieu! I have not time to write any longer to you; but you may well expect our correspondence will thicken.

321. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, April 1, 1751.

How shall I begin a letter that will-that must-give you as much pain as I feel myself? I must interrupt the story of the Prince's death, to tell you of two more, much more important, God knows! to you and me! One I had prepared you for-but how will you be shocked to hear that our poor Mr. Whithed is dead' as well as my brother! Whithed had had a bad cough for two months; he was going out of town to the Winchester assizes; I persuaded and sent him home from hence one morning to be blooded. However, he went in extreme bad weather. His youngest brother, the clergyman, who is the greatest brute in the world, except the elder brother, the layman, dragged him out every morning to hunt, as eagerly as if it had been to hunt heretics. One day they were overturned in a water, and then the parson made him ride forty miles; in short, he arrived at the Vine half dead, and soon grew delirious. Poor Mr. Chute was sent for to him last Wednesday, and sent back for two

1 Princess Emily had the reversion of New-park [Richmond].—WAlpole.

2 The Auditor of the Exchequer was in the gift of Mr. Pelham, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury.-WALPOLE.

3 Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy in a Churchyard,' and other poems.— WALPOLE.

4 Francis Thistlethwaite, who took the name of Whithed for his uncle's estate, and, as heir to him, recovered Mr. Norton's estate, which he had left to the Parliament for the use of the poor, &c. ; but the will was set aside [in 1739] for insanity.-WALPOLE. Richard Norton, of Southwick, in Hampshire, Esq. Colley Cibber dedicated his first play to him. Like his neighbour, Anthony Henley, of the Grange, Esq., he was the patron of most of the poets of his time. He died in 1732. See his will in the Gentleman's Magazine,' vol. iii. p. 57; and see Malone's Dryden,' vol. i. part ii p. 122.-CUNNINGHAM.

more physicians, but in vain; he expired on Friday night! Mr. Chute is come back half distracted, and scarce to be known again. You may easily believe that my own distress does not prevent my doing all in my power to alleviate his. Whithed, that best of hearts, had forgiven all his elder brother's beastliness, and has left him the Norton estate, the better half; the rest to the clergyman, with an annuity of one hundred and twenty pounds a year to his Florentine mistress, and six hundred pounds to their child. He has left Mr. Chute one thousand pounds, which, if forty times the sum, would not comfort him, and, little as it is, does not in the least affect or alter his concern. Indeed, he not only loses an intimate friend, but in a manner an only child; he had formed him to be one of the prettiest gentlemen in England, and had brought about a match for him, that was soon to be concluded with a Miss Nicoll,' an immense fortune; and I am persuaded had fixed his heart on making him his own heir, if he himself outlived his brother. With such a fortune, and with such expectations, how hard to die!-or, perhaps, how lucky, before he had tasted misfortune and mortification.

I now must mention my own misfortune. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, the physicians and all the family of painful death,' (to alter Gray's phrase,) were persuaded and persuaded me, that the bark, which took great place, would save my brother's life —but he relapsed at three o'clock on Thursday, and died last night. He ordered to be drawn and executed his will with the greatest tranquillity and satisfaction on Saturday morning. His spoils are prodigious-not to his own family! indeed I think his son the most ruined young man in England. My loss, I fear, may be considerable, which is not the only motive of my concern, though, as you know, I had much to forgive, before I could regret: but indeed I do regret. It is no small addition to my concern, to fear or foresee that Houghton and all the remains of my father's glory will be pulled to pieces! The widow-Countess immediately marries-not Richcourt, but Shirley,' and triumphs in advancing her son's ruin by enjoying her own estate, and tearing away great part of his.

1 About the same time happened a great family quarrel. My friend Mr. Chute had engaged Miss Nicoll, a most rich heiress, to run away from her guardians, who had used her very ill; and he proposed to marry her to my nephew, Lord Orford, who refused her, though she had above 150,000l. I wrote a particular account [see Appendix to last volume] of the whole transaction.-Walpole's Short Notes (vol. i. p. lxvii.)-CUNNINGHAM.

2 Vide Gray's Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College.-WALPOLE.

3 Hon. Sewallis Shirley. See vol. ii. p. 253.—CUNNINGHAM.

Now I will divert your private grief by talking to you of what is called the public. The King and Princess are grown as fond as if they had never been of different parties, or rather as people who always had been of different. She discountenances all opposition, and he all ambition. Prince George, who, with his two eldest brothers, is to be lodged at St. James's, is speedily to be created Prince of Wales. Ayscough, his tutor, is to be removed with her entire inclination as well as with everybody's approbation. They talk of a Regency to be established (in case of a minority) by authority of Parliament, even this session, with the Princess at the head of it. She and Dr. Lee, the only one she consults of the late cabal, very sensibly burned the late Prince's papers the moment he was dead. Lord Egmont, by seven o'clock the next morning, summoned (not very decently) the faction to his house: all was whisper! at last he hinted something of taking the Princess and her children under their protection, and something of the necessity of harmony. No answer was made to the former proposal. Somebody said, it was very likely indeed they should agree now, when the Prince could never bring it about; and so everybody went away to take care of himself. The imposthumation is supposed to have proceeded, not from his fall last year, but from a blow with a tennis-ball some years ago. The grief for the dead brother is affectedly great; the aversion to the living one as affectedly displayed. They cried about an elegy,' and added, “Oh, that it were but his brother!" On 'Change they said, "Oh, that it were but the butcher!"

1 The elegy alluded to, was probably the effusion of some Jacobite royalist. That faction could not forgive the Duke of Cumberland his excesses or successes in Scotland; and, not contented with branding the parliamentary government of the country as usurpation, indulged in frequent unfeeling and scurrilous personalities on every branch of the reigning family:

Here lies Fred,

Who was alive and is dead :

Had it been his father,

I had much rather;

Had it been his brother,

Still better than another;

Had it been his sister,

No one would have missed her;
Had it been the whole generation,

Still better for the nation:

But since 'tis only Fred,

Who was alive and is dead

There's no more to be said.

Walpole's Memoirs of George II., i. p. 504, 4to ed.---WRIGHT.

2 The Duke of Cumberland.--CUNNINGHAM.

The Houses sit, but no business will be done till after the holidays. Anstruther's affair will go on, but not with much spirit. One wants to see faces about again! Dick Lyttelton, one of the patriot officers, had collected depositions on oath against the Duke for his behaviour in Scotland, but I suppose he will now throw his papers into Hamlet's grave?

Prince George, who has a most amiable countenance, behaved excessively well on his father's death. When they told him of it, he turned pale, and laid his hand on his breast. Ayscough said, "I am afraid, Sir, you are not well!"-he replied, "I feel something here, just as I did when I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew." Prince Edward' is a very plain boy, with strange loose eyes, but was much the favourite. He is a sayer of things! Two men were heard lamenting the death in Leicester-fields: one said, "He has left a great many small children!"-" Ay," replied the other, "and what is worse, they belong to our parish!" But the most extraordinary reflections on his death were set forth in a sermon at Mayfair chapel." "He had no great parts, (pray mind, this was the parson said so, not I,) but he had great virtues; indeed, they degenerated into vices: he was very generous, but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people: and then his condescension was such, that he kept very bad company."

Adieu! my dear child; I have tried, you see, to blend so much public history with our private griefs, as may help to interrupt your too great attention to the calamities in the former part of my letter. You will, with the properest good-nature in the world, break the news to the poor girl, whom I pity, though I never saw. Miss Nicoll is, I am told, extremely to be pitied too; but so is everybody that knew Whithed! Bear it yourself as well as you can!

322. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, April 22, 1751.

I COULD not help, my dear child, being struck with the conclusion of your letter of the 2nd of this month, which I have just received: it mentions the gracious assurances you had received from the dead Prince-indeed, I hope you will not want them. The person' who

1 Prince Edward, afterwards Duke of York; died 1767.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 Keith's.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 George Bubb Dodington.-WALPOLE.