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766. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.

December 21, 1761.

YOUR specimen pleases me, and I give you many thanks for promising me the continuation. You will, I hope, find less trouble with printers than I have done. Just when my book was, I thought, ready to appear, my printer ran away, and has left it very imperfect. This is the fourth I have tried, and I own it discourages me. Our low people are so corrupt and such knaves, that being cheated and disappointed are all the fruits of attempting to amuse oneself or others. Literature must struggle with many difficulties. They who print for profit print only for profit; we, who print to entertain or instruct others, are the bubbles of our designs. Defrauded, abused, pirated-don't you think, Sir, one need have resolution ? Mine is very nearly exhausted.

767. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Dec. 3, 1761. Past midnight.

I AM this minute come home, and find such a delightful letter from you, that I cannot help answering it, and telling you so before I sleep. You need not affirm, that your ancient wit and pleasantry are revived; your letter is but five and twenty, and I will forgive any vanity, that is so honest, and so well founded. Ireland I see produces wonders of more sorts than one; if my Lord Anson was to go lord-lieutenant, I suppose he would return a ravisher. How different am I from this state of revivification! Even such talents as I had are far from blooming again; and while my friends, or cotemporaries, or predecessors, are rising to preside over the fame of this age, I seem a mere antediluvian; must live upon what little stock of reputation I had acquired, and indeed grow so indifferent that I can only wonder how those, whom I thought as old as myself, can interest themselves so much about a world, whose faces I hardly know. You recover your spirits and wit, Rigby is grown a speaker, Mr. Bentley a poet, while I am nursing one or two gouty friends, and sometimes lamenting that I am likely to survive the few I have left. Nothing tempts me to launch out again; every day teaches me how much I was mistaken in my own parts, and I am in no

danger now but of thinking I am grown too wise; for every period of life has its mistake.

Mr. Bentley's relation to Lord Rochester by the St. Johns is not new to me, and you had more reason to doubt of their affinity by the former marrying his mistress, than to ascribe their consanguinity to it. I shall be glad to see the epistle: are not "The Wishes" to be acted? remember me, if they are printed; and I shall thank you for this new list of prints.

I have mentioned names enough in this letter to lead me naturally to new ill usage I have received. Just when I thought my book finished, my printer ran away, and had left eighteen sheets in the middle of the book untouched, having amused me with sending proofs. He had got into debt, and two girls with child; being two, he could not marry two Hannahs. You see my luck; I had been kind to this fellow; in short, if the faults of my life had been punished as severely as my merits have been, I should be the most unhappy of beings; but let us talk of something else.

I have picked up at Mrs. Dunch's auction the sweetest Petitot in the world—the very picture of James the Second, that he gave Mrs. Godfrey,' and I paid but six guineas and a half for it.2 I will not tell you how vast a commission I had given; but I will own, that about the hour of sale, I drove about the door to find what likely bidders there were. The first coach I saw was the Chudleighs; could I help concluding, that a Maid of Honour, kept by a Duke, [Duke of Kingston] would purchase the portrait of a Duke kept by a Maid of Honour-but I was mistaken. The Oxendens' reserved the best pictures; the fine china, and even the diamonds, sold for nothing; for nobody has a shilling. We shall be beggars if we don't conquer Peru within this half year.

If you are acquainted with my Lady Barrymore, pray tell her that in less than two hours t'other night the Duke of Cumberland lost four hundred and fifty pounds at Loo; Miss Pelham won three hundred, and I the rest. However, in general, Loo is extremely gone to decay; I am to play at Princess Emily's to-morrow for

1 Arabella Churchill, sister of the great Duke of Marlborough, and mistress of James II. while Duke of York, by whom she had four children; the celebrated Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Albemarle, and two daughters. She married subsequen ly Colonel Charles Godfrey, master of the jewel office, and died in 1730, leaving by h m two daughters, Charlotte (died 1754) Viscountess Falmouth, and Elizabeth (died 1761), wife of Edmund Dunch, Esq., of Wittenham, in Berks.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 At the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842, Miss Burdett Coutts gave 781. 158. for this beautiful miniature.-CUNNINGHAM.

Lady Oxenden was Mrs. Dunch's daughter.-CUNNINGHAM.

the first time this winter, and it is with difficulty she has made. a party.

1

My Lady Pomfret is dead on the road to Bath; and unless the deluge stops, and the fogs disperse, I think we shall all die. A few days ago, on the cannon firing for the King going to the House somebody asked what it was for? M. de Choiseul replied, "Apparemment, c'est qu'on voit le soleil."

Shall I fill up the rest of my paper with some extempore lines, that I wrote t'other night on Lady Mary Coke having St. Anthony's fire in her cheek? You will find nothing in them to contradict what I have said in the former part of my letter; they rather confirm it.

No rouge you wear, nor can a dart

From Love's bright quiver wound your heart.
And thought you, Cupid and his mother
Would unrevenged their anger smother?
No, no, from heaven they sent the fire
That boasts St. Anthony its sire;
They pour'd it on one peccant part,
Inflamed your cheek, if not your heart.
In vain-for see the crimson rise,
And dart fresh lustre through your eyes;
While ruddier drops and baffled pain
Enhance the white they mean to stain.
Ah! nymph, on that unfading face
With fruitless pencil Time shall trace
His lines malignant, since disease

But gives you mightier power to please.

Willes is dead, and Pratt is to be Chief Justice; Mr Yorke Attorney-General; Solicitor, I don't know who. Good night! the watchman cries, past one!

768. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Dec. 28, 1761.

OUR correspondence is a register of events and æras, a chronicle of wars and revolutions in ministries: stay! Mr. Pitt is not restored, but the foundation is laid. The last courier is arrived from Spain

The Dowager Countess, so often mentioned in Walpole's Letters, she died 17th December, 1761.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 Dec. 20, 1761. Wrote a few lines to Lady Mary Coke on her having St. Anthony's fire in her cheek. Walpole's Short Notes.-CUNNINGHAM.

we demanded a sight of their treaty with France, or threatened war. They have refused the one, and defied us to the other. Lord Bristol is on the road home [from Madrid]: Fuentes departs immediately. We did not dare to turn out war, as well as Mr. Pitt; and so, I conclude, we shall have both. Three weeks ago he was sunk to nothing; the first calamity will make the nation clamour for him. This will sound very well in his future Plutarch; but, if he had stooped to peace, and had confirmed his conquests, would not his character have been at least as amiable? A single life spared were worth Peru and Mexico, which to be sure he will subdue, the moment we are undone and he becomes necessary.

I know nothing more; but a Spanish war will make my letter as heavy as if it contained eight pages. Young Mr. Pitt' is arrived; we have exchanged visits, but have not met yet, as I have been the last four days at Strawberry. The Parliament is adjourned to the nineteenth of January. My Gallery advances, and I push on the works there, for pictures, and baubles, and buildings look to me as if I realised something. I had rather have a Bronze than a thousand pounds in the Stocks; for, if Ireland or Jamaica are invaded, I shall still have my bronze: I would not answer so much for the funds, nor will I buy into the new loan of glory. If the Romans or the Greeks were beat, they were beat; they repaired their walls, and did as well as they could; but they did not lose every sesterce, every talent they had, by the defeat affecting their ChangeAlley. Crassus, the richest man on t'other side their Temple Bar, lost his army and his life, and yet their East India bonds did not fall an obolus under par. I like that system better than ours. If people would be heroes, they only suffered themselves by a miscarriage; they had a triumph, or a funeral oration, just as it happened; and private folk were entertained with the one or the other, and nobody was a farthing the richer or poorer; but it makes a strange confusion now that brokers are so much concerned in the events of war. How Scipio would have stared if he had been told that he must not demolish Carthage, as it would ruin several aldermen who had money in the Punic actions! Apropos, do you know what a Bull, and a Bear, and a Lame Duck, are? Nay, nor I either; I only am certain that they are neither animals nor fowl, but are extremely interested in the new subscription. I don't believe I apply it right; but I feel as if I should be a lame

1 Mr. Thomas Pitt.-WALPOLE.

duck if the Spaniards take the vessel that has my Altar on board.

Monday, at night.

I have been abroad, and have heard some particulars that are well worth subjoining to my letter. Fuentes last night delivered copies to the foreign ministers of his master's declaration. It is, properly, the declaration of the King of Spain against Mr. Pitt (a circumstance that will not lessen the dignity of the latter). It intimates that, if we had asked to see the treaty in a civil manner, we might have obtained it; and it pretends still to have no hostile intentions. Fuentes comments on this latter passage at large. You may judge of their pacific sentiments, by hearing that they have threatened the court of Portugal to march an army into that kingdom if they do not declare offensively against us. War was the only calamity left for the Portuguese to experience. When they have dethroned the royal family at Lisbon, I suppose, according to the tenderness of royal brotherhood, Don Carlos will afford his sister, her husband, and their race, an asylum in his own court. How much better he behaved when he was under your tuition at Naples! The same courier brought Fuentes the Toison d'Or, and carried another to the Duc de Choiseul; in return, the Cordon Bleu was given to Grimaldi at Paris. Well, we must make our fortune now we have a monopoly of all the war in Europe!

My Lady Pomfret is dead, of a complication of distempers, on the road to Bath. Lady Mary Wortley is not yet arrived. Good night!

769. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Dec. 30, 1761.

I HAVE received two more letters from you since I wrote last week. and I like to find by them that you are so well and so happy. As nothing has happened of change in my situation but a few more months passed, I have nothing to tell you new of myself. Time does not sharpen my passions or pursuits, and the experience I have had by no means prompts me to make new connections. 'Tis a busy world, and well adapted to those who love to bustle in it; I loved it once, loved its very tempests-now I barely open my window, to view what course the storm takes. The town, who, like the devil, when one has once sold oneself to him, never permits one to have done

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