of his ever liked; and what is forty times more extraordinary than this circumstantial kindness, he remembers it just at the time when others, who might be afflicted with as good a memory, would take pains to forget it, that is, when it is to be obtained :—exactly then this person goes and purchases the thing in question, whips it on board a ship, and sends it to his friend, in the manner in the world to make it most agreeable, except that he makes it impossible to thank him, because you must allow that one ought to be possessed of the same manner of obliging, before one is worthy of thanking such a person. I don't know whether you will think this person so extraordinary as I do; but I have one favour to beg; if you should ever hear his name, which, for certain reasons, I can't tell you, let me intreat you never to disclose it, for the world in general is so much the reverse of him, that they would do nothing but commend to him everything they saw, in order to employ his memory and generosity. For this reason you will allow that the prettiest action that ever was committed, ought not to be published to all the world.

You, who love your friends, will not be sorry to hear a little circumstance, that concerns, in a tolerable manner, at least two of them. The last of my mother's surviving brothers' is dead, and dead without a will, and dead rich. Mr. Conway and I shall share about six thousand pounds a-piece in common with his brother and sister and my brother. I only tell you this for a momentary pleasure, for you are not a sort of person to remember anything relative to your friends beyond the present instant!

After writing me two sheets of paper, not to mention the episode of Bianca Capello, I know not how to have the confidence to put an end to my letter already; and yet I must, and you will admit the excuse: I have but just time to send my brother an account of his succession you who think largely enough to forgive any man's deferring such notice to you, would be the last man to defer giving it to anybody else; and therefore, to spare you any more of the compliments and thanks, which surely I owe you, you shall let me go make my brother happy. Adieu!

Erasmus Shorter, brother of Catherine Lady Walpole, and of Charlotte Lady Conway, whose surviving children, Edward and Horace Walpole, Francis Earl of Hertford, Henry and Anne Conway, became his heirs.-WALPOLE. See Vol. i. p. Ixvii. CUNNINGHAM.

372. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Dec. 6, 1753.

I HAVE at last found a moment to answer your letter; a possession of which, I think, I have not been master these ten days. You must know that I have an uncle dead; a sort of event that could not possibly have been disagreeable to me, let his name have been what it would; and to make it still less unpleasant, here am I one of the heirs-at-law to a man worth thirty thousand pounds. One of the heirs, you must construe, one of five. In short, my uncle Erasmus is dead, and I think at last we may depend on his having made no will. If a will should appear, we are but where we were; if it does not, it is not uncomfortable to have a little sum of money drop out of the clouds, to which one has as much right as anybody, for which one has no obligation, and paid no flattery. This death and the circumstances have made extreme noise, but they are of an extent impossible to tell you within the compass of any letter, and I will not raise your curiosity when I cannot satisfy it but by a narration, which I must reserve till I see you. The only event I know besides within this atmosphere, is the death of Lord Burlington,1 who, I have just heard, has left every thing in his power to his relict. I tell you nothing of Jew bills and Jew motions, for I dare to say you have long been as weary of the words as I am. only point that keeps up any attention, is expectation of a mail from Ireland, from whence we have heard, by a side wind, that the court have lost a question by six; you may imagine one wants to know more of this.

The

The Opera is indifferent; the first man has a finer voice than Monticelli, but knows not what to with it. Ancient Visconti does so much with hers that it is intolerable. There is a new play of Glover's, in which Boadicea the heroine rants as much as Visconti screams; but happily you hear no more of her after the end of the third act, till in the last scene somebody brings a card with her compliments, and she is very sorry she cannot wait upon you, but she is dead. Then there is a scene between Lord Sussex and Lord

The architect Earl.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 'Boadicea,' a Tragedy, by Glover, author of 'Leonidas,' acted for the first time at Drury Lane Theatre, December 1, 1753. It ran ten nights. Garrick, Mrs. Cibber, and Mr. Pritchard had parts in it.-CUNNINGHAM.

Cathcart, two captives, which is most incredibly absurd but yet the parts are so well acted, the dresses so fine, and two or three scenes pleasing enough, that it is worth seeing.

There are new young lords, fresh and fresh: two of them are much in vogue; Lord Huntingdon and Lord Stormont.' I supped with them t'other night at Lady Caroline Petersham's; the latter is most cried up; but he is more reserved, seems sly and to have sense, but I should not think extreme: yet it is not fair to judge on a silent man at first. The other is very lively and very agreeable. This is the state of the town you inquire after, and which you do inquire after as one does after Mr. Somebody that one used to see at Mr. Such-a-one's formerly: do you never intend to know more of us? or do you intend to leave me to wither upon the hands of the town, like Charles Stanhope' and Mrs. Dunch? My cotemporaries seem to be all retiring to their proprieties. If I must too, positively I will go no farther than Strawberry Hill! You are very good to lament our gold fish: their whole history consists in their being stolen à deux reprises, the very week after I came to town.

Mr. Bentley is where he was, and well, and now and then makes me as happy as I can be, having lost him, with a charming drawing. We don't talk of his abode; for the Hecate his wife endeavours to discover it. Adieu! my best compliments to Miss Montagu.

373. TO RICHARD BENTLEY, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Dec. 19, 1753.

I LITTLE thought when I parted with you, my dear Sir, that your absence could indemnify me so well for itself: I still less expected that I should find you improving daily: but your letters grow more and more entertaining, your drawings more and more picturesque; you write with more wit, and paint with more melancholy, than ever anybody did: your woody mountains hang down "somewhat so

David Murray, Viscount Stormont (died 1796), nephew of the great Lord Mansfield.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 Charles Stanhope, Esq., elder brother of the first Earl of Harrington. He died March 16, 1760, aged 87. He figures conspicuously in Hanbury Williams's charming poem of 'Isabella, or the Morning.'-CUNNINGHAM.

3 Mr. Bentley was now in the island of Jersey; whither he had retired on account of the derangement of his affairs, and whither all the following letters are addressed to him.-BERRY.

poetical," as Mr. Ashe' said, that your own poet Gray will scarce keep tune with you. All this refers to your cascade scene and your letter. For the library, it cannot have the Strawberry imprimatur : the double arches and double pinnacles are most ungraceful; and the doors below the book-cases in Mr. Chute's design had a conventual look, which yours totally wants. For this time, we shall put your genius in commission, and, like some other regents, execute our own plan without minding our sovereign. For the chimney, I do not wonder you missed our instructions: we could not contrive to understand them ourselves; and therefore, determining nothing but to have the old picture stuck in a thicket of pinnacles, we left it to you to find out the how. I believe it will be a little difficult; but as I suppose facere quia impossibile est, is full as easy as credere, whyyou must do it.

2

The present journal of the world and of me stands thus: King George II. does not go abroad.-Some folks fear. nephews, as much as others hate uncles. The Castle of Dublin has carried the Armagh election by one vote only-which is thought equivalent to losing it by twenty. Mr. Pelham has been very ill, I thought of St. Patrick's fire, but it proved St. Antony's. Our House of Commons, mere poachers, are piddling with the torture of Leheup,' who extracted so much money out of the lottery.

The robber of Po Yang' is discovered, and I hope will be put to death, without my pity interfering, as it has done for Mr. Shorter's servant, or Lady Caroline Petersham's, as it did for Maclean. In

A nurseryman at Twickenham. He had served Pope. Mr. Walpole telling him he would have his trees planted irregularly, he said, "Yes, Sir, I understand: you would have them hang down somewhat poetical."-WALPOLE.

2 Frederic II. King of Prussia, nephew to George II. Mr. Walpole alludes to himself, who was upon bad terms with his uncle Horace Walpole, afterwards Lord Walpole of Wolterton.-BERRY.

3 Alluding to the disturbances and opposition to government, which took place in Ireland during the viceroyalty of Lionel Duke of Dorset.-WALPOLE.

4 In framing the act for the purchase of the Sloane Museum and the Harleian Manuscripts by lottery, Mr. Pelham, who disapproved of this financial expedient, as tending to foster a spirit of gambling, had taken care to restrict the number of tickets to be sold to any single individual. Notwithstanding which, Mr. Leheup, one of the commissioners of the lottery, had sold to one person, under names which he knew to be fictitious, between two and three hundred tickets. The subject was brought before the House of Commons, where a series of resolutions was passed against Mr. Leheup, accompanied by an address to the King, praying that the offender might be prosecuted. The result was, that he was prosecuted by the Attorney-general, and fined one thousand pounds.-WRIGHT. See Vol. i. p. 391.-CUNNINGHAM.

5 Mr. Walpole had given this Chinese name to a pond of gold fish at Strawberry Hill. [See p. 286].—WALPOLE.

6 A Swiss servant of Erasmus Shorter's, maternal uncle to Mr. Walpole, who was not without suspicion of having hastened his master's death.--Berry,

short, it was a heron. I like this better than thieves, as I believe the gang will be more easily destroyed, though not mentioned in the King's speech or Fielding's treatises.'

Lord Clarendon, Lord Thanet, and Lord Burlington are dead. The second sent for his tailor, and asked him if he could make him a suit of mourning in eight hours: if he could, he would go into mourning for his brother Burlington-but that he did not expect to live twelve hours himself.

There are two more volumes come out of Sir "Charles Grandison." I shall detain them till the last is published, and not think I postpone much of your pleasure. For my part, I stopped at the fourth; I was so tired of sets of people getting together, and saying, “Pray, Miss, with whom are you in love?" and of mighty good young men that convert your Mr. M * * 's in the twinkling of a sermon!

-You have not been much more diverted, I fear, with Hogarth's book'-'tis very silly!-Palmyra' is come forth, and is a noble book; the prints finely engraved, and an admirable dissertation before it. My wonder is much abated: the Palmyrene empire which I had figured, shrunk to a small trading city with some magnificent public buildings out of proportion to the dignity of the place.

The operas succeed pretty well; and music has so much recovered its power of charming, that there is started up a burletta at Covent Garden, that has half the vogue of the old Beggar's Opera: indeed there is a soubrette, called the Niccolina,' who, besides being pretty, has more vivacity and variety of humour than ever existed in any creature.

374. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Jan. 28, 1754.

HER Serene Highness, the Great Duchess Bianca Capello, is arrived safe at a palace lately taken for her in Arlington Street. She

1 Fielding's 'Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers,' was published this year.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 The Countesses of Thanet and Burlington were sisters.-WAlpole. 3 The Analysis of Beauty.'-WALPOLE.

4 Robert Wood's great work, The Ruins of Palmyra.' The epitaph for his monument at Putney, written by Walpole at the request of his widow, concludes thus :"The beautiful editions of Balbec and Palmyra, illustrated by the classic pen of Robert Wood, supply a nobler and more lasting monument, and will survive those august remains."-CUNNINGHAM.

5 See Genest's 'Stage,' iv. 395. Murphy calls her, Signora Spiletta.-—CUNNINGHAM. 6 Bianca Capello was the daughter of a noble Venetian. She had been seduced and carried off from her father's house by a young Florentine of low origin, named