an attempt will be made before Christmas. I find valour is like virtue impregnable as they boast themselves, it is discovered that on the first attack both lie strangely open! They are raising more men, camps are to be formed in Kent and Sussex, the Duke of Newcastle is frightened out of his wits, which, though he has lost so often, you know he always recovers, and as fresh as ever. Lord Egmont despairs of the commonwealth; and I am going to fortify my castle of Strawberry, according to an old charter I should have had for embattling and making a deep ditch. But here am I laughing when I really ought to cry, both with my public eye and my private one. I have told you what I think ought to sluice my public eye; and your private eye too will moisten, when I tell you that poor Miss Harriet Montagu is dead. She died about a fortnight ago; but having nothing else to tell you, I would not send a letter so far with only such melancholy news-and so, you will say, I staid till I could tell still more bad news. The truth is, I have for some time had two letters of yours to answer: it is three weeks since I wrote to you, and one begins to doubt whether one shall ever be able to write again. I will hope all my best hopes; for I have no sort of intention at this time of day of finishing either as a martyr or a hero. I rather intend to live and record both those professions, if need be; and I have no inclination to scuttle barefoot after a Duke of Wolfenbuttle's army, as Philip de Comines says he saw their graces of Exeter and Somerset trudge after the Duke of Burgundy's. The invasion, though not much in fashion yet, begins, like Moses's rod, to swallow other news, both political and suicidical. Our politics I have sketched out to you, and can only add, that Mr. Fox's ministry does not as yet promise to be of long duration. When it was first thought that he had got the better of the Duke of Newcastle, Charles Townshend said admirably, that he was sure the Duchess, like the old Cavaliers, would make a vow not to shave her beard till the Restoration.

I can't recollect the least morsel of a fess or chevron of the Boynets they did not happen to enter into any extinct genealogy for whose welfare I interest myself. I sent your letter to Mr. Chute, who is still under his own vine: Mr. Müntz is still with him, recovering of a violent fever. Adieu! If memoirs don't grow too memorable, I think this season will produce a large crop.

P.S. I believe I scarce ever mentioned to you last winter the follies of the Opera: the impertinences of a great singer were too

when they

old and too common a topic. I must mention them now, rise to any improvement in the character of national folly. The Mingotti, a noble figure, a great mistress of music, and a most incomparable actress, surpassed any thing I ever saw for the extravagance of her humours. She never sung above one night in three, from a fever upon her temper and never would act at all when Ricciarelli, the first man, was to be in dialogue with her.' Her fevers grew so high, that the audience caught them, and hissed her more than once: she herself once turned and hissed again-Tit pro tat geminat Tov d'aпaμeißoμen-Well, among the treaties which a secretary of state has negotiated this summer, he has contracted for a succedaneum to the Mingotti. In short, there is a woman hired to sing when the other shall be out of humour!

3

Here is a 'World' by Lord Chesterfield: the first part is very pretty, till it runs into witticism. I have marked the passages I particularly like.

You will not draw Henry IV. at a siege for me: pray don't draw Louis XV.

439. TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Oct. 20, 1755.

You know, my dear Sir, that I do not love to have you taken unprepared the last visit I announced to you was of the Lord Dacre of the South and of the Lady Baroness, his spouse: the next company you may expect will be composed of the Prince of Soubise and twelve thousand French; though, as winter is coming on, they will scarce stay in the country, but hasten to London. I need not protest to you I believe, that I am serious, and that an invasion before Christmas will certainly be attempted; you will believe

1 The following is Dr. Burney's account:-"Upon the success of Jomelli's 'Andromaca' a damp was thrown by the indisposition of Mingotti, during which Frasi was called upon to play her part in that opera; when suspicion arising, that Mingotti's was a mere dramatic and political cold, the public was much out of humour, till she resumed her function in Metastasio's admirable drama of 'Demofoonte,' in which she acquired more applause, and augmented her theatrical consequence beyond any period of her performance in England."-WRIGHT.

2" Ricciarelli was a neat and pleasing performer, with a clear, flexible, and silvertoned voice; but so much inferior to Mingotti, both in singing and acting, that he was never in very high favour."-DR. BURNEY.-WRIGHT.

3 No. 146, Advice to the Ladies on their return to the country.-WRIGHT. Alluding to the subject Mr. Walpole had proposed to him for a picture, in the letter of the 15th of August, and to the then expected invasion of England by Louis XV.-WALPOLE

me at the first word. It is a little hard, however! they need not envy us General Braddock's laurels; they were not in such quantity!

Parliamentary and subsidiary politics are in great ferment. I could tell you much if I saw you; but I will not while you stay there —yet, as I am a true friend and not to be changed by prosperity, I can't neglect offering you my services when I am censé to be well with a minister. It is so long since I was, and I believe so little a while that I shall be so, (to be sure, I mean that he will be minister,) that I must faire valoir my interest, while I have any-in short, shall I get you one of these new independent companies ?-Hush! don't tell Mr. Müntz how powerful I am: his warlike spirit will want to coincide with my ministerial one; and it would be very inconvenient to the Lords Castlecomers to have him knocked on the head before he had finished all the strawberries and vines that we lust after.

I had a note from Gray, who is still at Stoke; and he desires I would tell you, that he has continued pretty well. Do come.

Adieu!

Lottery tickets rise: subsidiary treaties under par-I don't say, no price. Lord Robert Bertie, with a company of the Guards, has thrown himself into Dover Castle; don't they sound very war-full.

440. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 27, 1755.

WHEN the newspapers swarm with our military preparations at home, with encampments, fire-ships, floating castles at the mouths of the great rivers, &c., in short, when we expect an invasion, you would chide, or be disposed to chide me, if I were quite silent-and yet, what can I tell you more than that an invasion is threatened? that sixteen thousand men are about Dunkirk, and that they are assembling great quantities of flat-bottomed boats! Perhaps they will attempt some landing; they are certainly full of resentment; they broke the peace, took our forts and built others on our boundaries; we did not bear it patiently; we retook two forts, attacked or have been going to attack others, and have taken vast numbers of their ships: this is the state of the provocation-what is more provoking, for once we have not sent twenty or thirty thousand men to Flanders on whom they might vent their revenge. Well! then

they must come here, and perhaps invite the Pretender to be of the party; not in a very popular light for him, to be brought by the French in revenge of a national war. You will ask me, if we are alarmed? the people not at all so: a minister or two, who are subject to alarms, are-and that is no bad circumstance. We are as much an island as ever, and I think a much less exposed one than we have been for many years. Our fleet is vast; our army at home, and ready, and two-thirds stronger than when we were threatened in 1744; the season has been the wettest that ever has been known, consequently the roads not very invadeable: and there is the additional little circumstance of the late rebellion defeated; I believe I may reckon too, Marshal Saxe dead. You see our situation is not desperate in short, we escaped in '44, and when the rebels were at Derby in '45; we must have bad luck indeed, if we fall now!

Our Parliament meets in a fortnight; if no French come, our campaign there will be warm; nay, and uncommon, the opposition will be chiefly composed of men in place. You know we always refine; it used to be an imputation on our senators, that they opposed to get places. They now oppose to get better places! We are a comical nation (I speak with all due regard to our gravity!)-— it were a pity we should be destroyed, if it were only for the sake of posterity; we shall not be half so droll, if we were either a province to France, or under an absolute prince of our own.

I am sorry you are losing my Lord Cork; you must balance the loss with that of Miss Pitt,' who is a dangerous inmate. You ask me if I have seen Lord Northumberland's Triumph of Bacchus ; I have not you know I never approved the thought of those copies, and I have adjourned my curiosity till the gallery is thrown open with the first Masquerade. Adieu! my dear Sir.

1 Elizabeth Pitt, sister of Lord Chatham. She had been maid of honour to Augusta Princess of Wales; then lived openly with Lord Talbot as his mistress; went to Italy, turned Catholic, and married; came back, wrote against her brother, and a trifling pamphlet recommending magazines of corn, and called herself Clara Villiers Pitt.-WALPOLE.-Compare Letter to Mann, January 28, 1754.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 Hugh, Earl and afterwards Duke of Northumberland, bespoke at a great price five copies of capital pictures in Italy, by Mentz, Pompeo Battoni, &c., for his gallery at Northumberland House.-WALPOLE.

441. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, March 21, 1755.

As the invasion is not ready, we are forced to take up with a victory. An account came yesterday, that General Johnson' had defeated the French near the lake St. Sacrement, had killed one thousand, and taken the lieutenant-general who commanded them prisoner; his name is Dieskau, a Saxon, an esteemed elève of Marshal Saxe. By the printed account, which I enclose, Johnson showed great generalship and bravery. As the whole business was done by irregulars, it does not lessen the faults of Braddock, and the panic of his troops. If I were so disposed, I could conceive that there are heroes in the world who are not quite pleased with this extramartinette success-but we won't blame those Alexanders, till they have beaten the French in Kent! You know it will be time enough to abuse them, when they have done all the service they can! The other enclosed paper is another World,' by my Lord Chesterfield; not so pretty, I think, as the last; yet it has merit. While England and France are at war, and Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt going to war, his lordship is coolly amusing himself at picquet at Bath with a Moravian baron, who would be in prison, if his creditors did not occasionally release him to play with and cheat my Lord Chesterfield, as the only chance they have for recovering their money!

We expect the Parliament to be thronged, and great animosities. I will not send you one of the eggs that are laid; for so many political ones have been addled of late years, that I believe all the state game-cocks in the world are impotent.

I did not doubt but that you would be struck with the death of poor Bland. I, t'other night, at White's, found a very remarkable

1 In the following month created Sir William Johnson, Bart. Parliament was so satisfied with his conduct on this occasion, that it voted him the sum of 5000l. He afterwards distinguished himself as a negotiator with the Indian tribes, and was ultimately chosen colonel of the Six Nations, and superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern parts of America. He became well acquainted with the manners and language of the Indians, and, in 1772, sent to the Royal Society some valuable communications relative to them. He died in 1774.-WRIGHT.

Alluding to the Duke of Cumberland.-WALPOLE.

3 No. 148, On Civility and Good-breeding.-WRIGHT. Sir John Bland. See vol. ii. p. 418.-CUNNINGHAM.