DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.'

Tuesday, Feb. 7.

The little leisure I have to day will, I trust, excuse my saying very few words in answer to your obliging letter, of which no part touches me more than what concerns your health, which, however, I rejoice to hear is re-establishing itself.

I am sorry I did not save your trouble of catalogueing Ames's heads, by telling you, that another person has actually done it, and designs to publish a new edition ranged in a different method. I don't know the gentleman's name, but he is a friend of sir Wm. Musgrave, from whom I had this information some months ago.

You will oblige me much by the sight of the volume you mention, Don't mind the epigrams you transcribe on my father. I have been inured to abuse on him from my birth. It is not a quarter of an hour ago since cutting the leaves of a new dab called Anecdotes of Polite Literature, I found myself abused for having defended my father. I don't know the author, and suppose I never shall, for I find Glover's Leonidas is one of the things he admires-and so I leave them to be forgotten together, Fortunati Ambo!

I sent your letter to Ducarel, who has promised me those poems-I accepted the promise to get rid of him t'other day, when he would have talked me to death.

Adieu, dear sir,

Yours very sincerely.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Arlington-street, Feb. 22, 1762.

My scolding does you so much good, that I will for the future lecture you for the most trifling peccadillo. You have

1 A distinguished antiquary, better known by the assistance he gave to others, than by publications of his own. He was vicar of Burnham, in the county of Bucks, and died December 16th, 1782, in his sixty-eighth year, within six weeks of the date of the last letter to him in this collection. [Or.]

written me a very entertaining letter, and wiped out several debts; not that I will forget one of them if you relapse.

As we have never had a rainbow to assure us that the world shall not be snowed to death, I thought last night was the general connixation. We had a tempest of wind and snow for two hours beyond any thing I remember: chairs were blown to pieces, the streets covered with tassels and glasses and tiles, and coaches and chariots were filled like reservoirs. Lady Raymond's house in Berkeley-square is totally unroofed, and lord Robert Bertie, who is going to marry her, may descend into it like a Jupiter Pluvius. It is a week of wonders, and worthy the note of an almanack maker. Miss Draycott, within two days of matrimony, has dismissed Mr. Beauclerc ; but this is totally forgotten already in the amazement of a new elopement. In all your reading, true or false, have you ever heard of a young earl, married to the most beautiful woman in the world, a lord of the bedchamber, a general officer, and with a great estate, quitting every thing, resigning wife and world, and embarking for life in a pacquet boat with a Miss? I fear your connexions will but too readily lead you to the name of the peer; it is Henry earl of Pembroke, 2 the nymph Kitty Hunter. The town and lady Pembroke were but too much witnesses to this intrigue, last Wednesday at a great ball at lord Middleton's. On Thursday, they decamped. However, that the writer of their romance, or I, as he is a noble author, might not want materials, the earl has left a bushel of letters behind him; to his mother, to lord Bute, to lord Ligonier, (the two last to resign his employments) and to Mr. Stopford, whom he acquits of all privity to his design. In none he justifies himself, unless this is a justification, that having long tried in vain to make his wife hate and dislike him, he had no way left but this, and it is to be hoped he will succeed; and then it may not be the worst event that

1 They were married 5th April, 1762. [Ed.]

2 Henry Herbert, tenth earl of Pembroke, married 13th March 1756, lady Elizabeth Spencer, second daughter of Charles third duke of Marlborough, by whom he had a son, George eleventh earl, born 10th September 1759; and, some years afterwards, when he ran away with her, which he actually did, after they had lived for some time separated, a daughter who died unmarried. [Ed.]

could have happened to her. You may easily conceive the hubbub such an exploit must occasion. With ghosts, elopements, abortive motions, &c. we can amuse ourselves tolerably well, till the season arrives for taking the field and conquering the Spanish West-Indies.

I have sent you my books by a messenger; lord Barrington was so good as to charge himself with them. They barely saved their distance; a week later, and no soul could have read a line in them, unless I had changed the title page, and called them the Loves of the earl of Pembroke and Miss Hunter.

I am sorry lady Kingsland is so rich. However, if the papists should be likely to rise, pray disarm her of the enamel, and commit it to safe custody in the round tower at Strawberry. Good night, mine is a life of letter writing, I pray for a peace, that I may sheath my pen.

TO DR. DUCAREL.1

Yours ever.

Feb. 24, 1762.

SIR,

I AM glad my books have at all amused you, and am much obliged to you for your notes and communications. Your thought of an English Montfaucon accords perfectly with a design I have long had of attempting something of that kind, in which, too, I have been lately encouraged; and therefore I will beg you at your leisure, as they shall occur, to make little notes of customs, fashions, and portraits, relating to our history and manners. Your work on vicarages, I am persuaded, will be very useful, as every thing you undertake is, and curious.After the medals I lent Mr. Perry, I have a little reason to take it ill, that he has entirely neglected me; he has published a number, 2 and sent it to several persons, and never to me. I wanted to see him, too, because I know of two very curious

1 Librarian at Lambeth Palace, and a well known antiquary. He died in 1785. [Or.]

2 A series of English medals, by Francis Perry, 4to. London, 1762, with thirteen plates. Mr. Perry likewise etched a series of fourteen views in Kent. [Ed.]

medals, which I could borrow for him. He does not deserve it at my hands, but I will not defraud the public of any thing valuable; and therefore, if he will call on me any morning, but a Sunday or Monday, between eleven and twelve, I will speak to him of them.-With regard to one or two of your remarks, I have not said that real lions were originally leopards. I have said that lions in arms, that is, painted lions, were leopards; and it is fact, and no inaccuracy. Paint a leopard yellow, and it becomes a lion.-You say, colours rightly prepared do not grow black. The art would be much obliged for such a preparation. I have not said that oil-colours would not endure with a glass; on the contrary, I believe they would last the longer.

I am much amazed at Vertue's blunder about my marriage of Henry VII.; and afterwards, he said, Sykes, knowing how to give names to pictures to make them sell, called this the marriage of Henry VII.; and afterwards, he said, Sykes had the figures inserted in an old picture of a church. He must have known little indeed, sir, if he had not known how to name a picture that he had painted on purpose that he might call it so ! That Vertue, on the strictest examination, could not be convinced that the man was Henry VII., not being like any of his pictures. Unluckily, he is extremely like the shilling, which is much more authentic than any picture of Henry VII. But here Sykes seems to have been extremely deficient in his tricks. Did he order the figure to be painted like Henry VII., and yet could not get it painted like him, which was the easiest part of the task? Yet how came he to get the queen painted like, whose representations are much scarcer than those of her husband? and how came Sykes to have pomegranates painted on her robe, only to puzzle the cause? It is not worth adding, that I should much sooner believe the church was painted to the figures, than the figures to the church. They are hard and antique: the church in a better style, and at least more fresh. If Vertue had made no better criticisms than these, I would never have taken so much trouble with his MS. Adieu !

I am, &c.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Arlington-street, Feb. 25, 1762.

I SENT you my gazette but two days ago; I now write to nswer a kind long letter I have received from you since.

I have heard of my brother's play several years ago; but I never understood that it was completed, or more than a few detached scenes. What is become of Mr. Bentley's play and Mr. Bentley's epistle?

When I go to Strawberry, I will look for where lord Cutts was buried; I think I can find it. I am disposed to prefer the younger picture of madame Grammont by Lely; but I stumbled at the price; twelve guineas for a copy in enamel is very dear. Mrs. Vezey tells me his originals cost sixteen, and are not so good as his copies. I will certainly have none of his originals. His, what is his name? I would fain resist this copy; I would more fain excuse myself for having it. I say to myself, it would be rude not to have it, now lady Kingsland and Mr. Montagu have had so much trouble-well—I think I must have it, as my lady Wishfort says, why does not the fellow take me? Do try if he will not take ten; remember it is the younger picture: and oh! now you are remembering, don't forget all my prints and a book bound in vellum. There is a thin folio, too, I want, called Hibernica; it is a collection of curious papers, one a translation by Carew earl of Totness: I had forgot that you have no books in Ireland; however, I must have this, and your pardon for all the trouble I give you.

1

No news yet of the runaways: but all that comes out antecedent to the escape, is more and more extraordinary and absurd, The day of the elopement he had invited his wife's family and other folk to dinner with her, but said he must himself dine at a tavern; but he dined privately in his own dressing-room, put on a sailor's habit, and black wig, that he had brought home

1 Hibernica, or some ancient pieces relating to Ireland, &c. Dublin, 1747, folio. The translation alluded to by Walpole, is from an Anglo-Norman poem, contained in a MS. in the Archiepiscopal library at Lambeth. The original poem is preparing for publication by M. Francisque Michel, and has been recently analysed in Fraser's Magazine for 1836. [Ed.]