particularly as I wished to settle this party. If you let me know when it will be your pleasure, I will write to my sister. I am your ladyship's most faithful servant. To the EARL of STRAFFORD. Strawberry-hill, August 5, 1762. MY DEAR LORD, As you have correspondents of better authority in town, I don't pretend to send you great events, and I know no small ones. Nobody talks of any thing under a revolution. That in Russia alarms me, lest lady * * * should fall in love with the czarina, who has deposed her lord * * *, and set out for Petersburgh. We throw away a whole summer in writing Britons and North Britons; the Russians change sovereigns faster than Mr. Wilkes can choose a motto for a paper. What years were spent here in controversy on the abdication of King James, and the legitimacy of the pretender! Commend me to the czarina.1 They doubted, that is, her husband did, whether her children were of genuine blood-royal. She appealed to the Preobazinsky guards, excellent casuists; and, to prove duke Paul heir to the crown, assumed it herself. The proof was compendious and unanswerable. I trust you know that Mr. Conway has made a figure by taking the castle of Waldeck. There has been another action to prince Ferdinand's advantage, but no English were engaged. You tantalize me by talking of the verdure of Yorkshire; we have not had a tea-cup-full of rain till to-day for these six weeks. Corn has been reaped that never wetted its lips; not a blade of grass; the leaves yellow and falling as in the end of October. In short, Twickenham is rueful; I don't believe Westphalia The proclamation issued on the accession of the empress Catherine, contains the announcement of the death of the emperor Paul, in very extraordinary terms. "But to our great regret and affliction we learned yesterday evening, that by the permission of the Almighty, the late emperor departed this life." * which is followed by a request to her subjects, "to consider this unexpected and sudden death as a special effect of the divine providence. [Ed.] looks more barren. Nay, we are forced to fortify ourselves, too. Hanworth was broken open last night, though the family was all there. Lord Vere lost a silver standish, an old watch, and his writing-box with fifty pounds in it. They broke it open in the park, but missed a diamond ring, which was found, and the telescope, which by the weight of the case they had fancied full of money. Another house in the middle of Sunbury has had the same fate. I am mounting cannon on my battlements. Your chateau, I hope, proceeds faster than mine. The carpenters are all associated for increase of wages; I have had but two men at work these five weeks. You know, to be sure, that lady Mary Wortley cannot live. Adieu, my dear lord! Your most faithful servant. SIR, TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, August 5, 1762. As I had been dilatory in accepting your kind offer of coming hither, I proposed it as soon as I returned. As we are so burnt, and as my workmen have disappointed me, I am not quite sorry that I had not the pleasure of seeing you this week. Next week I am obliged to be in town on business. If you please, therefore, we will postpone our meeting till the first of September; by which time, I flatter myself we shall be green, and I shall be able to shew you my additional apartment to more advantage. Unless you forbid me, I will expect you, sir, the very beginning of next month. In the mean time, I will only thank you for the obliging and curious notes you have sent me, which will make a great figure in my second edition. I am, Sir, Your much obliged humble servant. To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq. Strawberry-hill, August 10, 1762. I HAVE received your letter from Greatworth since your return, but I do not find that you have got one which I sent you to the Vine, enclosing one directed for you: Mr. Chute says you did not mention hearing from me there. I left your button, too, in town with old Richard to be transmitted to you. Our drought continues, though we have had one handsome storm. I have been reading the story of Phaeton in the Metamorphoses; it is a picture of Twickenham. Ardet Athos, taurusque Cilix, &c.; mount Richmond burns, parched is Petersham, Parnassusque biceps, dry is Pope's grot, the nymphs of Clivden are burning to blackmoors, their faces are already as glowing as a cinder, Cycnus is changed into a swan; quodque suo Tagus amne vehit, fluit ignibus aurum; my gold fishes are almost molten. Yet this conflagration is nothing to that in Russia : what do you say to a czarina mounting her horse, and marching at the head of fourteen thousand men, with a large train of artillery, to dethrone her husband? Yet, she is not the only virago in that country; the conspiracy was conducted by the sister of the czar's mistress, a heroine under twenty! They have no fewer than two czars now in coops-that is, supposing these gentle damsels have murdered neither of them. Turkey will become a moderate government; one must travel to frozen climates if one chooses to see revolutions in perfection. Here's room for meditation even to madness: the deposed emperor possessed Muscovy, was heir to Sweden, and the true heir of Denmark; all the northern crowns centred in his person; one hopes he is in a dungeon, that is, one hopes he is not assassinated. You cannot crowd more matter into a lecture of morality than is comprehended in those few words. This is the fourth czarina that you and I have seen; to be sure, as historians, we have not passed our time ill. Mrs. Ann Pitt, who, I suspect, envies the heroine of twenty a little, says, "The czarina has only robbed Peter to pay Paul;" and I do not believe that her brother, Mr. William Pitt, feels very happy, that he cannot immediately dispatch a squadron to the Baltic to reinstate the friend of the king of Prussia. I cannot afford to live less than fifty years more; for so long, I suppose, at least, it will be before the court of Petersburgh will cease to produce amusing scenes. Think of old count Biron, formerly master of that empire, returning to Siberia, and bowing to Bestucheff, whom he may meet on the road from thence. I interest myself now about nothing but Russia; lord Bute must be sent to the Orcades before I shall ask a question in English politics; at least I shall expect that Mr. Pitt, at the head of the Preobazinski guards, will seize the person of the prime minister for giving up our conquests to the chief enemy of this nation. My pen is in such a sublime humour, that it can scarce condescend to tell you that sir Edward Deering1 is going to marry Polly Hart, Danver's old mistress; and three more baronets, whose names nobody knows, but Collins, are treading in the same steps. My compliments to the house of Montagu-upon my word I congratulate the general and you, and your viceroy, that you escaped being deposed by the primate of Novogorod. Yours ever. SIR, TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry-hill, August 19, 1762. I am very sensible of the obligations I have to you and Mr. Masters, and ought to make separate acknowledgments to both; but, not knowing how to direct to him, I must hope that you will kindly be once more the channel of our correspondence; and that you will be so good as to convey to him an answer to what you communicated from him to me, and in particular my thanks for the most obliging offer he has made me of a picture of Henry VII.; of which I will by no means rob him. My view in publishing the Anecdotes was, to assist gentlemen in discover 1 This match does not appear to have taken place. Sir Edward Deering, the sixth baronet, whose father had died on the 15th April, 1762, married first, in 1755, Selina, daughter and co-heiress of sir Robert Turnese, bart., of Waldershare, in the county of Kent, by whom he had a son and a daughter: and secondly, Deborah, only daughter of John Winchester, esq., of Nethersole, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. [Ed.] ing the hands of pictures they possess; and I am sufficiently rewarded when that purpose is answered. If there is another edition, the mistake in the calculation of the tapestry shall be rectified, and any others which any gentleman will be so good as to point out. With regard to the monument of sir Nathaniel Bacon, Vertue certainly describes it as at Culford; and, in looking to the place to which I am referred, in Mr. Master's history of Corpus Christi College,2 I think he himself allows in the note that there is such a monument at Culford. Of sir Balthazar Gerbier, there are several different prints. Nich. Lanicre purchasing pictures at the king's sale, is undoubtedly a mistake for one of his brothers.—I cannot tell now whether Vertue's mistake or my own. At Longleate, is a whole length of Frances duchess of Richmond, exactly such as Mr. Master describes, but in oil. I have another whole length of the same duchess, I believe by Mytins, but younger than that at Longleate. But the best picture of her is in Wilson's life of King James, and very diverting indeed. I will not trouble you, sir, or Mr. Masters, with any more at present; but, repeating my thanks to both, will you assure that I am, &c. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Strawberry-hill, Sept. 9, 1762. Nondum laurus erat, longoque decentia crine THIS is a hint to you, that as Phoebus, who was certainly your superior, could take up with a chestnut garland, or any crown he found, you must have the humility to be content without laurels, when none are to be had: you have hunted far and near for them, and taken true pains to the last in that old nursery-garden, Germany, and by the way have made me shudder with your last journal: but you must be easy with qualibet 2 The History of the College of Corpus Christi and of the B. Virgin Mary, (commonly called Bene't) in the University of Cambridge, from its foundation to the present time, by Robert Masters, B. D. in two parts. Cambridge, 1753. 4to. [Ed.] |