312. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

June 2, 1759.

STRAWBERRY HILL is grown a perfect Paphos; it is the land of beauties. On Wednesday the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury dined there; the two latter stayed all night. There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in the shell; a thousand years hence, when I begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that event, and tell young people how much handsomer the women of my time were than they will be then: I shall say, "Women alter now; I remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her daughter, the pretty Duchess of Richmond, as they were sitting in the shell on my terrace with the Duchess of Hamilton, one of the famous Gunnings." Yesterday t'other more famous Gunning [Coventry] dined there. She has made a friendship with my charming niece, to disguise her jealousy of the new Countess's beauty there were they two, their lords, Lord Buckingham, and Charlotte. You will think that I did not choose men for my parties so well as women. I don't include Lord Waldegrave in this bad election.

Loo is mounted to its zenith; the parties last till one and two in the morning. We played at Lady Hertford's last week, the last night of her lying-in, till deep into Sunday morning, after she and her lord were retired. It is now adjourned to Mrs. Fitzroy's, whose child the town calls Pam-ela. I proposed, that instead of receiving cards for assemblies, one should send in a morning to Dr. Hunter's, the man-midwife, to know where there is loo that evening. I find poor Charles Montagu is dead: is it true, as the papers say, that his son comes into Parliament? The invasion is not half so much in fashion as loo, and the King demanding the assistance of the militia does not add much dignity to it. The great Pam of Parliament, who made the motion, entered into a wonderful definition of the several sorts of fear; from fear that comes from pusillanimity, up to fear from magnanimity. It put me in mind of that wise Pythian, my Lady Londonderry, who, when her sister, Lady Donnegal, was dying, pronounced, that if it were a fever from a fever, she would live; but if it were a ferer from death, she would die.

Mr. Mason has published another drama, called 'Caractacus;'

Charles Montagu, M.P. for Northampton.-CUNNINGHAM.

there are some incantations poetical enough, and odes so Greek as to have very little meaning. But the whole is laboured, uninteresting, and no more resembling the manners of Britons than of Japanese. It is introduced by a piping elegy; for Mason, in imitation of Gray, "will cry and roar all night" without the least provocation. Adieu! I shall be glad to hear that your Strawberry tide is fixed.

613. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, June 8, 1759.

THIS is merely a letter about your commission, and I hope it will get to you with wondrous haste. I have not lost a minute in trying to execute what you desire, but it is impossible to perform all that is required. A watch, perfect by Ellicot or Gray, with all the accompaniments, cannot possibly be had for near seventy-five pounds. Though the directions do not expressly limit me to seventy-five, yet I know Italians enough to be sure that when they name seventy-five, they would not bear a codicil of fifty-five more. Ellicot (and Gray is rather dearer) would have for watch and chain a hundred and thirty-four guineas; the seals will cost sixteen more. Two hundred and sixty-eight sequins are more than I dare lay out. But I will tell you what I have done: Deard,' one of the first jewellers and toymen here, has undertaken to make a watch and chain, enamelled according to a pattern I have chosen of the newest kind, for a hundred guineas, with two seals for sixteen more; and he has engaged that, if this is not approved, he will keep it himself; but to this I must have an immediate answer. He will put his own name to it, as a warrant to the goodness of the work; and then, except the name of Ellicot or Gray, your friend will have as good a watch as he can desire. I take for granted, at farthest, that I can have an answer by the 15th of July; and then there will be time, I trust, to convey it to you; I suppose by sea, for unless a fortunate messenger should be going à point nommé, you may imagine that a traveller would not arrive there in any time. My dear Sir, you know how happy I am to do anything you desire; and I shall pique myself on your credit in this, but your friend has

1 Deard lived in Pall Mall and died in 1761. "Deard's deluding toys" are mentioned by Garrick in the epilogue spoken by Mrs. Woffington, at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, in 1747.-CUNNINGHAM.

expected what, altogether, it is almost impossible to perform-what can be done, shall be.

There is not a syllable of news-if there was, I should not confine myself solely to the commission. Some of our captains in the East Indies have behaved very ill; if there is an invasion, which I don't believe there will, I am glad they were not here. Adieu !

MY DEAR LORD:

614. TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Strawberry Hill, June 12, 1759.

AFTER so kind a note as you left for me at your going out of town, you cannot wonder that I was determined to thank you the moment I knew you settled in Yorkshire. At least I am not ungrateful, if I deserve your goodness by no other title. I was willing to stay till I could amuse you, but I have not a battle big enough even to send in a letter. A war that reaches from Muscovy to Alsace, and from Madras to California, don't produce an article half so long as Mr. Johnson's riding three horses at once. The King of Prussia's campaign is still in its papillotes; Prince Ferdinand is laid up like the rest of the pensioners on Ireland; Guadaloupe has taken a sleeping-draught, and our heroes in America seem to be planting suckers of laurels that will not make any figure these three years. All the war that is in fashion lies between those two ridiculous things, an invasion and the militia. Prince Edward is going to sea, to inquire after the invasion from France; and all the old pot-bellied country colonels are preparing to march and make it drunk when it comes. I don't know, as it is an event in Mr. Pitt's administration, whether the Jacobite corporations, who are converted by his eloquence which they never heard, do not propose to bestow their freedom on the first corps of French that shall land.

Adieu, my lord and my lady! I hope you are all beauty and verdure. We are drowned with obtaining ours.

615. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, June 22, 1759.

WELL! they tell us in good earnest that we are to be invaded; Mr. Pitt is as positive of it as of his own invasions. As the French

affect an air of grandeur in all they do, "Mr. Pitt sent ten thousands, but they send fifty thousands." You will be inquisitive after our force-I can't tell you the particulars; I am only in town for to-day, but I hear of mighty preparations. Of one thing I am sure; they missed the moment when eight thousand men might have carried off England and set it down in the gardens of Versailles. In the last war, when we could not rake together four thousand men, and were all divided, not a flat-bottomed boat lifted up its leg against us! There is a great spirit in motion; my Lord Orford is gone with his Norfolk militia to Portsmouth: everybody is raising regiments or themselves-my Lord Shaftesbury,' one of the new colonels of militia, is to be a brigadier-general. I shall not march my Twickenham militia for some private reasons; my farmer has got an ague, my printer is run away, my footboy is always drunk, and my gardener is a Scotchman, and I believe would give intelligence to the enemy. France has notified to the Dutch that she intends to surprise us; and this makes us still more angry. In the mean time, we have got Guadaloupe to play with. I did not send you any particulars, for this time the Gazette piqued itself upon telling its own story from beginning to end; I never knew it so full of chat. It is very comfortable, that if we lose our own island, we shall at least have all America to settle in. Quebec is to be conquered by the 15th of July, and two more expeditions, I don't know whither, are to be crowned with all imaginable success, I don't know when; so you see our affairs, upon the whole, are in a very prosperous train. Your friend, Colonel Clavering, is the real hero of Guadaloupe; he is come home, covered with more laurels than a boar's head indeed he has done exceedingly well. A much older friend of yours is just dead, my Lady Murray; she caught her death by too strict attendance on her sister, Lady Binning, who has been ill. They were a family of love, and break their hearts for her. She had a thousand good qualities; but no mortal was ever so surprised as I when I was first told that she was the nymph Arthur Gray would have ravished. She had taken care to guard against any more such danger by more wrinkles than ever twisted round a human face. Adieu! If you have a mind to be fashionable, you must raise a regiment of Florentine militia.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, fourth Earl of Shaftesbury: died 1771.-Dover.

2 Daughter of George Baillie, Esq. See an epistle from Arthur Gray, her footman, to her, in the poems of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.-WALPOLE. Lady Hervey speaks very highly of her in her Letters.-CUNNINGHAM,

616. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1759.

As you bid me fix a day about six weeks from the date of your last, it will suit me extremely to see you here the 1st of August. I don't mean to treat you with a rowing for a badge, but it will fall in very commodely between my parties. You tell me nothing of the old house you were to see near Blenheim: I have some suspicion that Greatworth is coming into play again. I made your speeches to Mr. Chute, and to Mr. Müntz, and to myself; your snuff-box is bespoke, your pictures not done, the print of Lady Waldegrave not begun.

News there are none, unless you have a mind for a panic about the invasion. I was in town yesterday, and saw a thousand people from Kensington, with faces as loyally long as if it was the last accession of this family that they were ever to see. The French are coming with fifty thousand men, and we shall meet them with fifty addresses. Pray, if you know how, frighten your neighbours, and give them courage at the same time.

My Lady Coventry and my niece Waldegrave have been mobbed. in the Park. I am sorry the people of England take all their liberty out in insulting pretty women.

"The only particular that is worth sending you, is a very silly action of Lady Coventry, who, having been insulted in the Park, Sunday was se'night, the King heard of it, and said that to prevent the same for the future he would have a guard. Upon this foundation her ladyship ventured boldly again into the Park on Sunday evening, but she was attended with two sergeants of the guards in front, with their halberds, and no less than twelve followed her. The whole guard was ready to have turned out if there had been occasion, and the colonel of the guard in waiting kept at the proper distance: with this ridiculous parade she walked there from 8 of the clock till 10, and as all this could not prevent the mob from having curiosity, some impertinent things were still uttered, though at some little farther distance, and some of Fielding's men that attended took up the most troublesome."-Mr. Jenkinson to George Grenville, June 26, 1759.

"Will it be of any news to inform you that last Sunday se'night, your friend Lady Coventry was mobb'd in the Park and that to prevent it, last Sunday twelve sergeants of the guards were ordered to disperse themselves about in case of a riot, and a sergeant and twelve men were ready in case of wanting assistance. This her ladyship knew, went to the Park and pretended to be frightened directly, desired the assistance of the officer on guard, who ordered the twelve sergeants to march a-breast before her, and the sergeant and twelve behind her, and in this pomp did the idiot walk all the evening with more mob about her than ever, as you may imagine; her sensible husband supporting her on one side and Lord Pembroke on the other. This is at present the talk of the whole town."—Honourable J. West to Lord Nuneham, June 26, 1759 (MS.).—CUNNINGHAM.