who had accused the mayor and magistracy of not trying to suppress the tumult; if they will not prosecute the rioters, it is not very unfair to surmise that they did not dislike the riot. Indeed, the city is so inflamed, and the ministry so obnoxious, that I am very apprehensive of some violent commotion. The court have lost the Essex election,1 merely from Lord Sandwich interfering in it, and from the Duke of Bedford's speech; a great number of votes going from the city on that account to vote for Luther. Sir John Griffin, who was disobliged by Sandwich's espousing Conyers, went to Chelmsford, at the head of five hundred voters.

2

4

One of the latest acts of the ministry will not please my Lady Hertford: they have turned out her brother, Colonel Fitzroy: Fitzherbert, too, is removed; and, they say, Sir Joseph Yorke recalled. I must do Lord Halifax and Mr. Grenville the justice to say that these violences are not imputed to them. It is certain that the former was the warmest opposer of the measure for breaking the officers; and Mr. Grenville's friends take every opportunity of throwing the blame on the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich. The Duchess of Bedford, who is too fond a wife not to partake in all her husband's fortunes, has contributed her portion of indiscretion. At a great dinner, lately, at Lord Halifax's, all the servants present, mention being made of the Archbishop of Canterbury, M. de Guerchy asked the Duchess,

John Luther, Esq. was returned for Essex, on the popular interest, after a severe and most expensive contest.-C.

2 Sir John Griffin Griffin, K.B. major-general and colonel of the 33rd regiment; member for Andover. He established, in 1784, a claim to the barony of Howard de Walden, and was created, in 1788, Baron Braybrook, with remainder to A. A. Neville, Esq. He died in 1797.-C.

3 Colonel Charles Fitzroy, member for Bury, afterwards Lord Southampton. It seems strange that Mr. Walpole should be mistaken in such a point; but Colonel Fitzroy was not Lady Hertford's brother, but her brother's son.-C.

• William Fitzherbert, Esq. member for Derby: a lord of trade.-C. 5 The rumour mentioned in the text was unfounded. Sir Joseph continued at the Hague till 1783.-C.

Archbishop Secker. The grounds for this strange story (which Walpole was fond of repeating) was, that the Archbishop had, in early youth, been intended for the medical profession, and had attended some hospitals.-C.

“Est-il de famille ?" She replied, "Oh! mon Dieu, non, il a été sage-femme." The mistake of sage-femme for accoucheur, and the strangeness of the proposition, confounded Guerchy so much, that it was necessary to explain it but think of a minister's wife telling a foreigner, and a Catholic, that the primate of her own church had been bred a manmidwife!

The day after my last, another verdict was given in the Common Pleas, of four hundred pounds to the printers; and another episode happened, relating to Wilkes: one Dunn, a mad Scotchman, was seized in Wilkes's house, whither he had gone intending to assassinate him. This was complained of in the House of Commons, but the man's phrensy was verified; it was even proved that he had notified his design in a coffee-house, some days before. The mob, however, who are determined that Lord Sandwich shall answer for everybody's faults, as well as his own, believe that he employed Dunn. I wish the recess, which begins next Monday, may cool matters a little, for indeed it grows very serious.

Nothing is discovered of Lord Harrington's robbery, nor do I know any other news, but that George West1 is to marry Lady Mary Grey. The Hereditary Prince's wound is broken out again, and will defer his arrival. We have had a new comedy, written by Mrs. Sheridan, and admirably acted; but there was no wit in it, and it was so vulgar that it ran but three nights.

Poor Lady Hervey desires you will tell Mr. Hume how incapable she is of answering his letter. She has been terribly afflicted for these six weeks with a complication of gout, rheumatism, and a nervous complaint. She cannot lie down in her bed, nor rest two minutes in her chair. I never saw such continued suffering.

You say in your last, of the 7th, that you have omitted

Mr. West married, in February 1764, Lady Mary Grey, daughter of the Earl of Stamford he died without issue, in 1776.-E.

2 "The Dupe," by Mrs. Sheridan, mother of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The Biographia Dramatica says it was condemned, " on account of a few passages, which the audience thought too indelicate."-E.

This gives me

to invite no Englishman of rank or name. an opportunity, my dear lord, of mentioning one Englishman, not of great rank, but who is very unhappy that you have taken no notice of him. You know how utterly averse I am to meddle, or give impertinent advice; but the letter I saw was expressed with so much respect and esteem for you, that you would love the person. It is Mr. Selwyn, the banker. He says, he expected no favour; but the great regard he has for the amiableness of your character, makes him miserable at being totally undistinguished by you. He has so good a character himself, and is so much beloved by many persons here that you know, that I think you will not dislike my putting you in mind of him. The letter was not to me, nor to any friend of mine; therefore, I am sure, unaffected. I saw the whole letter, and he did not even hint at its being communicated to me.

I have not mentioned Lady Holdernesse's presentation, though I by no means approve it, nor a Dutch woman's lowering the peerage of England. Nothing of that sort could make me more angry, except a commoner's wife taking such a step; for you know I have all the pride of

A citizen of Rome, while Rome survives:

In that respect my name is thoroughly

HORATIUS.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Arlington Street, Dec. 29, 1763.

You are sensible, my dear lord, that any amusement from my letters must depend upon times and seasons. We are a very absurd nation (though the French are so good at present as to think us a very wise one, only because they, themselves, are now a very weak one); but then that absurdity depends upon the almanac. Posterity, who will know nothing of our intervals, will conclude that this age was a succession of events. I could tell them that we know as well when an

event, as when Easter, will happen. Do but recollect these last ten years. The beginning of October, one is certain that everybody will be at Newmarket, and the Duke of Cumberland will lose, and Shafto1 win, two or three thousand pounds. After that, while people are preparing to come to town for the winter, the ministry is suddenly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened, a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that the new arrangement cannot last a month. The Parliament opens; everybody is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to be composed of adamant. November passes, with two or three self-murders, and a new play. Christmas arrives; everybody goes out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres. The Parliament meets again; taxes are warmly opposed; and some citizen makes his fortune by a subscription. The opposition languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at the end of the session, that makes more noise than anything that was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peerage or two. Ranelagh opens and Vauxhall; one produces scandal, and t'other a drunken quarrel. People separate, some to Tunbridge, and some to all the horse-races in England; and sothe year comes again to October. I dare to prophesy, that if you keep this letter, you will find that my future correspondence will be but an illustration of this text; at least, it is an excuse for my having very little to tell you at present, and was the reason of my not writing to you last week.

Before the Parliament adjourned, there was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes: it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing Mr. Charles Townshend, who, having sat silent through the question of privilege, found

Robert Shafto, Esq. of Whitworth, member for Durham, well known on the turf.-C.

2 To a loan.-C.

VOL. IV.

Ꮓ

himself interested in the defence of Dr. Brocklesby !1 Charles ridiculed Lord North extremely, and had warm words with George Grenville. I do not look upon this as productive of consequential speaking for the opposition; on the contrary, I should expect him sooner in place, if the ministry could be fools enough to restore weight to him, and could be ignorant that he can never hurt them so much as by being with them. Wilkes refused to see Heberden and Hawkins, whom the House commissioned to visit him; and to laugh at us more, sent for two Scotchmen, Duncan and Middleton. Well! but since that, he is gone off himself: however, as I did in D'Eon's case, I can now only ask news of him from you, not tell you any; for you have got him. I do not believe you will invite him, and make so much of him, as the Duke of Bedford did. Both sides pretend joy at his being gone; and for once I can believe both. You will be diverted, as I was, at the cordial esteem the ministers have for one another; Lord Waldegrave told my niece, this morning, that he had offered a shilling, to receive an hundred pounds when Sandwich shall lose his head! what a good opinion they have of one another! apropos to losing heads, is Lally beheaded?

The East India Company have come to an unanimous resolution of not paying Lord Clive the three hundred thousand pounds, which the ministry had promised him in lieu of his nabobical annuity. Just after the bargain was made, his old

'Dr. Richard Brocklesby, an eminent physician. He had been examined before the House of Commons, as to Mr. Wilkes's incapacity to attend in his place. His Whig politics, which probably induced Mr. Wilkes to send for him, induced the majority of the House to distrust his report, and to order two other medical men to visit the patient. This proceeding implied a doubt of Dr. Brocklesby's veracity, which certainly called for the interference of Mr. Charles Townshend, who was a private as well as a political friend of the doctor's. Dr. Brocklesby, besides being one of the first physicians of his time, was a man of literature and taste, and did not confine his society nor his beneficence to those who agreed with him in politics. He was the friend and physician of Dr. Johnson; and when, towards the close of that great man's life, it was supposed that his circumstances were not quite easy, Dr. Brocklesby generously pressed him to accept an annuity of one hundred pounds, and he attended him to his death with unremitted affection and care.-C.

2 John, third Earl of Waldegrave, a general in the army; in 1770 master of the horse to the Queen.-E.