and Lord Arran' carried thither to take the oaths, who I believe has not appeared there since the Revolution ? In short, it has become quite a trial for power; and though the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford have lent their names and their vehemence, you will guess what has been the engine behind the curtain. The French are so obliging as to wait till we have done with these important squabbles: the House of Commons takes care too not to draw off the attention of the nation. The Militia-bill has passed through that solitude, but I hear will be stopped in the House of Lords. I have lived lately in a round of great disagreeable suppers, which you know are always called for my Lady Yarmouth, as if the poor woman loved nothing but cramming: I suppose it will so much become the etiquette, that in the next reign there will be nothing but suppers for my Lord Bute. I am now come hither to keep my Newmarket, but the weather is cold and damp: it is uncertain whether the Duke makes that campaign, or against the French. As the road-bill extinguished the violence about the two operas of next year, and they made the invasion forgot, and the invasion the earthquake, I foresee-and I go almost upon as sure grounds as prophets that take care to let the event precede the prediction-I foresee that the Hanoverians will swallow up all: they have already a general named, who ranks before any one of ours; and there are to be two Hanoverian aide-de-camps! You will hear by this post of the death of Sir William Lowther,' whose vast succession falls to Sir James,' and makes him Crœsus: he may hire the Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough for led captains. I am sorry for this young man, though I did not know him; but it is hard to be cut off so young and so rich: old rich men seldom deserve to live, but he did a thousand generous acts. You will be diverted with a speech of Lord Shelburne,' one of those second-rate fortunes who have not above five-and-thirty thousand pounds a year. 1 Charles Butler, second son of Thomas, Earl of Ossory, created Earl of Arran in 1693. At his death, in 1759, his title became extinct.-WRIGHT. 2 Son of Sir Thomas Lowther, by Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of William, Duke of Devonshire. Dr. King, in his Anecdotes, tells a characteristic story of the meanness of a Lowther.-CUNNINGHAM. 3 Sir James Lowther, created Earl of Lonsdale 1784, died 1802. He married Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the minister, Lord Bute, and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.-CUNNINGHAM. 4 John, fifth son of Thomas Fitzmaurice, first Earl of Kerry. He inherited, pursuant to the will of his uncle, Henry Petty, Earl of Shelburne, his lordship's opulent fortune, and assumed his surname in 1751. He was created Earl of Shelburne in the kingdom of Ireland; and, in 1760, was raised to the dignity of a British peer, by the title of Lord Wycombe. He died in 1761.-WRIGHT. He says everybody may attain some one point if they give all their attention to it; for his part, he knows he has no great capacity, he could not make a figure by his parts; he shall content himself with being one of the richest men in England! I literally saw him t'other day buying pictures for two-and-twenty shillings, that I would not hang in my garret; while I, who certainly have not made riches my sole point of view, was throwing away guineas, and piquing myself for old tombstones against your father-in-law the General.' I hope Lady Ailesbury will forgive my zeal for Strawberry against Combe-Bank. Are you ever to see your Strawberry Hill again ? Lord Duncannon flatters us that we shall see you in May. If I did not hope it, I would send you the only two new fashionable pieces; a comic elegy' by Richard Owen Cambridge, and a wonderful book by a more wonderful author, Greville.' It is called "Maxims and Characters: " several of the former are pretty: all the latter so absurd, that one in particular, which at the beginning take for the character of a man, turns out to be the character of a post-chaise. you You never tell me now any of Missy's bon-mots. I hope she has, not resided in Ireland till they are degenerated into bulls! Adieu! 463. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Strawberry Hill, April 18, 1756. I WISH I could send you accounts of your brother's amendment in proportion to your impatience, and to my own: he does mend certainly, but it is slowly: he takes the air every day, and they talk of his riding, though I don't think him strong enough yet to sit a horse; when he has rid a little he is to go to the Bath. I wish it much; 1 General John Campbell, who, upon the death of Archibald, Duke of Argyle, succeeded to that title.-WAlpole. 2 Combe-Bank in Kent, the seat of Lady Ailesbury's father, John, fourth Duke of Argyle, and afterwards of the Duke's second son, Lord Frederick Campbell.CUNNINGHAM. An Elegy on an Empty Assembly-room.-WRIGHT. ♦ Fulke Greville, Esq. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, dated Louvere, Oct. 9, 1757, says, “We have had many English here. Mr. Greville, his lady, Fanny Macartney, [vol. ii., p.136, 157] and her suite of adorers deserved particular notice he was so good as to present me with his curious book: since the days of the Honourable Edward Howard, nothing has ever been published like it. I told him the age wanted an Earl of Dorset to celebrate it properly; and he was so well pleased with that speech, that he visited me every day, to the great comfort of Madame, who was entertained, meanwhile, with parties of pleasure of another kind, though I fear I lost his esteem at last, by refusing to correspond with him."-WRIGHT. for though he is at Richmond, there is no keeping him from doing too much business. Dr. Cocchi has showed his usual sagacity; the case is pronounced entirely asthmatic. As they have acquitted him of a consumption, I feel easy, though the complaint he has is so uneasy to himself. You must not be discouraged by my accounts; for I see your brother so very often, that it is not possible for me to discern the progress of alteration in him. You will not believe how little we have thought of the French lately! We are engaged in a civil war-not between St. James's and Leicester House, but between the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford, about a new turn-pike road on the back of the town: as you may imagine, it grows politics; and if it is not compromised during the recess, the French may march deep into the kingdom before they become greater politics. We think them not ready for Minorca, and that we shall be prepared to receive them there. The Hessians are expected immediately; and soon after them, the Hanoverians; and soon after them, many jealousies and uneasinesses. These are all the politics I can tell you; and I have as little else to tell you. Poor Lady Drumlanrig,' whose lord perished so unfortunately about a year and a half ago, is dead of a consumption from that shock; and Sir William Lowther, one of the two heirs of old Sir James, died two days ago of a fever. He was not above six-andtwenty, master of above twenty thousand pounds a-year; sixteen of which comes to young Sir James, who was equally rich: think what a fortune is here assembled-will any Florentine believe this when reduced to sequins or scudi? I receive such packets of thanks from Lady Harry Beauclerc, transmitted to her from Mr. Dick, that you must bear to have some of them returned to you. I know you enough to believe that you will be still better pleased with new trouble than with my gratitude, therefore I will immediately flounce into more recommendation; but while I do recommend, I must send a bill of discount at the same time: in short, I have been pressed to mention a Sir Robert Davers to you; but as I have never seen him, I will not desire much more than your usual civility for him; sure, he may be content with that! I remember Sir William Maynard,' and am cautious. Since I began this, I receive yours of April 2nd, full of uneasiness for your brother's quicksilver and its effects. I did not mention it to 1 Daughter of the Earl of Hopton.-CUNNINGHAM. 2 Whom Mr. Walpole recommended to Sir H. Mann, to whom Sir William, who was a Jacobite, behaved very impertinently.-WAlpole. you, because, though it put him back, his physicians were persuaded that he would not suffer, and he has not. As to reasoning with them, my dear child, it is impossible: I am more ignorant in physic than a child of six years old; if it were not for reverence for Dr. Cocchi, and out of gratitude to Dr. Pringle, who has been of such service to your brother, I should say, I am as ignorant as a physician. I am really so sensible of the good your brother has received from this doctor, that I myself am arrived so far towards being ill, that I now know, if I was to be ill, who should be my physician. The weather has been so wet and cold that your brother has received very little benefit from it: he talked to me again this morning of riding, but I don't yet think him able; if you had seen him as I saw him the day I wrote my first letter to you, you would be as happy as I am now; without that, I fear you would be shocked to see how he is emaciated; but his eyes, his spirits, his attention, give me great hopes, though I absolutely think it a tedious asthmatic case. Adieu! my dear child; be in better spirits, and don't expect either sudden amendment or worse change. 464. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, April 20, 1756. YOUR steward called on me just as I was going to keep my Newmarket at Strawberry Hill; he promised to leave me the direction to the statuary, but as I have not heard from him, I wish you would send it me. The cold and the wet have driven me back to London, empty London! where we are more afraid of the deluge than of the invasion! The French are said to be sailed for Minorca, which I hold to be a good omen of their not coming hither; for if they took England, Port-Mahon, I should think, would scarcely hold out. Pray don't die, like a country body, because it is the fashion for gentlefolks to die in London: it is the bon ton now to die; one can't show one's face without being a death's head. Mrs. Bethel and I are come strangely into fashion; but true critics in mode object to our having underjaws, and maintain that we are not dead comme il faut.' 1 The following letter (now first published) from the polite Lord Chesterfield to David Mallet, is written in Walpole's vein : LORD CHESTERFIELD TO DAVID MALLET. "Lord Chesterfield sends his compliments to Mr. Mallet, and he will be extremely glad to see him and Monsieur de Bussy at dinner next Wednesday; but he desires The young Lady Exeter' died almost suddenly, and has handsomely confirmed her father's will, by leaving her money to her lord only for his life, and then to Thomas Townshend.' Sir William Lowther has made a charming will, and been as generous at his death as he was in his short life; he has left thirteen legacies of five thousand pounds each to friends; of which you know by sight, Reynolds,' Mrs. Brudenel's son, and young Turner. He has given seventeen hundred pounds a-year; that is, I suppose, seventeen hundred pounds, to old Mrs. Lowther. What an odd circumstance! a woman passing an hundred years to receive a legacy from a man of twenty-seven: after her it goes to Lord George Cavendish. Six hundred pounds per year he gives to another Mrs. Lowther, to be divided afterwards between Lord Frederick and Lord John. Lord Charles, his uncle, is residuary legatee. But what do you think of young Mr. James Lowther, who not of age becomes master of one or two and forty thousand pounds a-year? England will become a Heptarchy, the property of six or seven people! The Duke of Bedford is fallen to be not above the fourth rich man in the island. Poor Lord Digby' is likely to escape happily at last, after being cut for the stone, and bearing the preparation and execution with such heroism, that waking with the noise of the surgeons, he asked if that was to be the day? "Yes.' "How soon will they be ready?""Not for some time."-"Then let me sleep till they are?" He was cut by a new instrument of Hawkins,' which reduces an age of torture to but one minute. The Duke had appeared in form on the causeway in Hyde Park with my Lady Coventry; it is the new office, where all lovers now are entered. How happy she must be with Billy and Bully! I Mr. Mallet to inform Monsieur de Bussy previously, that Lord Chesterfield has been dead these twelve years, and has lost all the advantages of flesh and blood, without acquiring any of the singular privileges of a spirit. "Blackheath, Sunday.” -CUNNINGEAM. 1 Daughter and heir of Horatio, son of the first Viscount Townshend.-ED. 1819. 2 The Honourable Thomas Townshend, second son of Charles, second Viscount Townshend, member for the University of Cambridge.-WRIGHT. Francis Reynolds, of Strangeways, Esq.-WRIGHT. George Brudenel, Esq., afterwards member for Rutlandshire, and equerry to George II.-WRIGHT. Hannah, youngest daughter of Alderman Lowther. She had been maid of honour to Queens Mary and Anne, and died in 1757, at the age of a hundred and three.-WRIGHT. Edward, sixth Lord Digby. He died in the following year-WRIGHT. 7 Cæsar Hawkins, the celebrated surgeon.-CUNNINGHAM. The Duke of Cumberland and Lord Bolingbroke.—WRIGHT. |