TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, March 17, 1761. If my last letter raised your wonder, this will not allay it. Lord Talbot is lord steward! The stone, which the builders refused, is become the head-stone of the corner. My Lady Talbot, I suppose, would have found no charms in Cardinal Mazarin. As the Duke of Leeds was forced to give way to Jemmy Grenville, the Duke of Rutland has been obliged to make room for this new Earl. Lord Huntingdon is groom of the stole, and the last Duke I have named, master of the horse; the red liveries cost Lord Huntingdon a pang. Lord Holderness has the reversion of the Cinque-ports for life, and I think may pardon his expulsion. If you propose a fashionable assembly, you must send cards to Lord Spenser, Lord Grosvenor, Lord Melcomb, Lord Grantham, Lord Boston, Lord Scarsdale, Lady Mountstuart, the Earl of Tyrconnell, and Lord Wintertown. The two last you will meet in Ireland. No joy ever exceeded your cousin's or Doddington's: the former came last night to Lady Hilsborough's to display his triumph; the latter too was there, and advanced to me. I said, "I was coming to wish you joy.”—“ I concluded so,” replied he, "and came to receive it." He left a good card yesterday at Lady Petersham's, a very young lord to wait on Lady Petersham, to make her ladyship the first offer of himself. I believe she will be content with the exchequer: Mrs. Grey has a pension of eight hundred pounds a-year. Mrs. Clive is at her villa for Passion week; I have written to her for the box, but I don't doubt of its being gone; but, considering her alliance, why does not Miss Price bespeak the play and have the stage box. I shall smile if Mr. Bentley, and Müntz, and their two Hannahs meet at St. James's; so I see neither of them, I care not where they are. Lady Hinchinbrook and Lady Mansel are at the point of death; Lord Hardwicke is to be poet-laureate; and, accord ing to modern usage, I suppose it will be made a cabinetcounsellor's place. Good night! TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, March 19, 1761. 2 You will I CAN now tell you, with great pleasure, that your cousin1 is certainly named lord-lieutenant. I wish you joy. not be sorry too to hear that your Lord North is much talked of for succeeding him at the board of trade. I tell you this with great composure, though to-day has been a day of amazement. All the world is staring, whispering, and questioning. Lord Holderness has resigned the seals, and they are given to Lord Bute. Which of the two secretaries of state is first minister? the latter or Mr. Pitt? Lord Holderness received. the command but yesterday, at two o'clock, till that moment thinking himself extremely well at court; but it seems the King said he was tired of having two secretaries, of which one would do nothing, and t'other could do nothing; he would have a secretary who both could act and would. Pitt had as short notice of this resolution as the sufferer, and was little better pleased. He is something softened for the present by the offer of cofferer for Jemmy Grenville, which is to be ceded by the Duke of Leeds, who returns to his old post of justice in eyre, from whence Lord Sandys is to be removed, some say to the head of the board of trade. Newcastle, who enjoys this fall of Holderness's, who had deserted him for Pitt, laments over the former, but seems to have made his terms with the new favourite: if the Bedfords have done so too, will it surprise you? It will me, if Pitt submits to this humiliation; if he does not, I take for granted the Duke of The Earl of Halifax. 2 Lord Barrington, in a letter to Mr. Mitchell, of the 23rd, says, "Our friend Holderness is finally in harbour; he has four thousand a-year for life, with the reversionship of the cinque-ports, after the Duke of Dorset; which he likes better than having the name of pensioner. I never could myself understand the difference between a pension and a sinecure place."-E. Bedford will have the other seals. The temper with which the new reign has hitherto proceeded, seems a little impeached by this sudden act, and the Earl now stands in the direct light of a minister, if the House of Commons should cavil at him. Lord Delawar kissed hands to-day for his earldom; the other new peers are to follow on Monday. There are horrid disturbances about the militia1 in Northumberland, where the mob have killed an officer and three of the Yorkshire militia, who, in return, fired and shot twenty one. Adieu! I shall be impatient to hear some consequence of my first paragraph. P.S. Saturday. I forgot to tell you that Lord Hardwicke has written some verses to Lord Lyttelton, upon those the latter made on Lady Egremont. If I had been told that he had put on a bag, and was gone off with Kitty Fisher,3 I should not have been more astonished. Poor Lady Gower is dead this morning of a fever in her lying-in. I believe the Bedfords are very sorry; for there is a new opera this evening. 5 1 In consequence of the expiration of the three years' term of service, prescribed by the Militia-act, and the new ballot about to take place.-E. 2 The following are the lines alluded to," Addition extempore to the verses on Lady Egremont: "Fame heard with pleasure-straight replied, First on my roll stands Wyndham's bride, My trumpet oft I've raised to sound Her modest praise the world around; But notes were wanting canst thou find 3 A celebrated courtesan of the day.-E. 4 Daughter of Scroope Duke of Bridgewater. 5 The serious opera of Tito Manlio, by Cocchi. By a letter from Gray to Mason, of the 22nd of January, the Opera appears at this time to have been in a flourishing condition "The Opera is crowded this year like any ordinary theatre. Elisi is finer than anything that has been here in your memory; yet, as I suspect, has been finer than he is he appears to be near forty, a little pot-bellied and thickshouldered, otherwise no bad figure; has action proper, and not ungraceful. We have heard nothing, since I remember operas, but eternal passages, divisions, and flights of execution: of these he has absolutely none; whether merely from judgment, or a little from age, I will not TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. March 21, 1761. Or the enclosed, as you perceive, I tore off the seal, but it has not been opened. I grieve at the loss of your suit, and for the injustice done you, but what can one expect but injury, when forced to have recourse to law? Lord Abercorn asked me this evening if it was true that you are going to Ireland? I gave a vague answer, and did not resolve him how much I knew of it. I am impatient for the reply to your compliment. There is not a word of newer news than what I sent you last. The Speaker has taken leave, and received the highest compliments, and substantial ones too; he did not over-act, and it was really a handsome scene.1 I go to my election on Tuesday, and, if I do not tumble out of the chair and break my neck, you shall hear from me at my return. I got the box for Miss Rice; Lady Hinchinbrook is dead. affirm his point is expression, and to that all the graces and ornaments he inserts (which are few and short) are evidently directed. He gets higher, they say, than Farinelli; but then this celestial note you do not hear above once in a whole opera; and he falls from this altitude at once to the mellowest, softest, strongest tones (about the middle of his compass) that can be heard. The Mattei, I assure you, is much improved by his example, and by her great success this winter; but then the burlettas and the Paganina, I have not been so pleased with anything these many years. She is too fat, and above forty, yet handsome withal, and has a face that speaks the language of all nations. has not the invention, the fire, and the variety of action that the Spiletta had; yet she is light, agile, ever in motion, and, above all, graceful; but then, her voice, her ear, her taste in singing; good God! as Mr. Richardson, the painter, says." Works, vol. iii. p. 268.-E. She 1 Mr. Onslow held the office of Speaker of the House of Commons for above thirty-three years, and during part of that time enjoyed the lucrative employment of treasurer of the navy: "notwithstanding which," says Mr. Hatsell," it is an anecdote perfectly well known, that on his quitting the Chair, his income from his private fortune, which had always been inconsiderable, was rather less than it had been in 1727, when he was first elected into it. Superadded to his great and accurate knowledge of the history of this country, and of the minuter forms and proceedings of Parliament, the distinguishing features of his character were a regard and veneration for the British constitution, as it was declared and established at the Revolution."-E. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Houghton, March 25, 1761. HERE I am at Houghton! and alone! in this spot, where (except two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen years! Think, what a crowd of reflections! No; Gray, and forty church-yards, could not furnish so many; nay, I know one must feel them with greater indifference than I possess, to have patience to put them into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time of my life, though not for the last time: : every clock that strikes tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church-that church, into which I have not yet had courage to enter, where lies that mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it! There too lies he who founded its greatness, to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets. The surprise the pictures1 gave me is again renewed; accustomed for many years to see nothing but wretched daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at these as enchantment. My own description of them seems poor; but shall I tell you truly, the majesty of Italian ideas almost sinks before the warm nature of Flemish colouring. Alas! don't I grow old? My young imagination was fired with Guido's ideas; must they be plump and prominent as Abishag to warm me now? Does great youth feel with poetic limbs, as well as see with poetic eyes? In one respect I am very young, I cannot satiate myself with looking: an incident contributed to make me feel this more strongly. A party arrived, just as I did, 'This magnificent collection of pictures was sold to the Empress of Russia, and some curious particulars relative to the sale will be found in Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature. A series of engravings was likewise made from them, which was published in 1788, under the title of "The Houghton Gallery: a collection of prints, from the best pictures in the possession of the Earl of Orford."-E. VOL. IV. K |