countess of Ferrers. Ossory. The Duchess of Grafton is actually Countess of This is a short gazette; but, consider, it is a time of truce. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, April 15, 1769. I SHOULD be very sorry to believe half your distempers. I am heartily grieved for the vacancy that has happened in your mouth, though you describe it so comically. As the only physic I believe in is prevention, you shall let me prescribe to you. Use a little bit of alum twice or thrice in a week, no bigger than half your nail, till it has all dissolved in your mouth, and then spit out. This has fortified my teeth, that they are as strong as the pen of Junius. I learned it of Mrs. Grosvenor, who had not a speck in her teeth to her death. For your other complaints, I revert to my old sermon, temperance. If you will live in a hermitage, methinks it is no great addition to live like a hermit. Look in Sadeler's prints, they had beards down to their girdles; and with all their impatience to be in heaven, their roots and water kept them for a century from their wishes. I have lived all my life like an anchoret in London, and within ten miles, shed my skin after the gout, and am as lively as an eel in a week after. Mr. Chute, who has drunk no more wine than a fish, grows better every year. He has escaped this winter with only a little pain in one hand. Consider that the physicians recommended wine, and then can you doubt of its being poison? Medicines may cure a few acute distempers, but how should they mend a broken constitution? they would as soon mend a broken leg. Abstinence and time may repair it, nothing else can; for when time has been employed to spoil the blood, it cannot be purified in a moment. Wilkes, who has been chosen member of Parliament almost as often as Marius was consul, was again re-elected on Thursday. The House of Commons, who are as obstinate as the county, have again rejected him. To-day they are to instate Colonel Luttrell in his place. What is to follow I cannot say, but I doubt grievous com * See vol. iii. p. 58. This unfortunate lady was burnt to death at Lord Frederick's seat at Combe Bank, in July 1807.-E. Lady Anne Liddel, only daughter of Henry Liddel, Lord Ravensworth, married, in 1756, to Augustus Henry, third Duke of Grafton; from whom being divorced by act of parliament, she was married secondly, on the 26th of March, to the Earl of Ossory.-E. The Letters of Junius, the first of which appeared on the 21st of January, were now in course of publication, and exciting great attention, not only in this country, but, as it would seem, also in France : "On parle ici beaucoup de votre écrit de Junius," writes Madame du Deffand to Walpole.-E. d Wilkes, having been expelled the House of Commons on the 3d of February 1769, was a third time elected for Middlesex on the 16th of March. On the 17th, the election was declared by the House to be null and void, and a new writ was ordered to be issued. On the day of election, the 13th of April, Wilkes, Luttrell, and Serjeant Whitaker presented themselves as candidates, when the former, having a majority, was declared duly elected. On the 14th, this election was pronounced void, and on the 15th Henry Laws Luttrell, Esq. was duly elected, by 197 against 143, and took his seat accordingly.-E. motions. Both sides seem so warm, that it will be difficult for either to be in the right. This is not a merry subject, and therefore I will have done with it. If it comes to blows, I intend to be as neutral as the gentleman that was going out with his hounds the morning of Edgehill. I have seen too much of parties to list with any of them. You promised to return to town, but now say nothing of it. You had better come before a passport is necessary. Adieu! TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, May 11, 1769. You are so wayward, that I often resolve to give you up to your humours. Then something happens with which I can divert you, and my good-humour returns. Did not you say you should return to London long before this time? At least, could you not tell me you had changed your mind? why am I to pick it out from your absence and silence, as Dr. Warburton found a future state in Moses's saying nothing of the matter! I could go on with a chapter of severe interrogatories, but I think it more cruel to treat you as a hopeless reprobate; yes, you are graceless, and as I have a respect for my own scolding, I shall not throw it away upon you. Strawberry has been in great glory; I have given a festino there that will almost mortgage it. Last Tuesday all France dined there: Monsieur and Madame du Chatelet, the Duc de Liancourt, three more French ladies, whose names you will find in the enclosed paper, eight other Frenchmen, the Spanish and Portuguese ministers, the Holdernesses, Fitzroys, in short we were four-and-twenty. They arrived at two. At the gates of the castle I received them, dressed in the cravat of Gibbons's carving, and a pair of gloves embroidered up to the elbows that had belonged to James the First. The French servants stared, and firmly believed this was the dress of English country gentlemen. After taking a survey of the apartments, we went to the printing-house, where I had prepared the enclosed verses, with translations by Monsieur de Lille, one of the company. The moment they were printed off, I gave a private signal, and French horns and clarionets accompanied this compliment. We then went to see Pope's grotto and garden, and returned to a magnificent dinner Le Marquis du Châtelet, was son to la Marquise du Châtelet, the commentator upon Newton, and the Amélie of Voltaire. The scandalous chronicles of the time accord to the philosopher the honour of his paternity.-E. bThe Duc de Liancourt, of the family de la Rochefoucauld, grand maître de la garde. robe du Roi. At the commencement of the Revolution, his conduct was much blamed by those attached to the court. He eventually emigrated to England, and, after residing here some time, visited America, and published an account of his travels in that country. In 1799, after the 19th Brumaire, he returned to France. He died in March 1827, in his eightieth year.-E. M. de Lille was an officer of the French cavalry, an agreeable man in society, and author of several pretty ballads and vers de société. in the refectory. In the evening we walked, had tea, coffee, and lemonade in the gallery, which was illuminated with a thousand, or thirty candles, I forgot which, and played at whist and loo till midnight. Then there was a cold supper, and at one the company returned to town, saluted by fifty nightingales, who, as tenants of the manor, came to do honour to their lord. I cannot say last night was equally agreeable. There was what they called a ridotto el fresco at Vauxhall, for which one paid half-aguinea, though, except some thousand more lamps and a covered passage all round the garden, which took off from the gardenhood, there was nothing better than on a common night. Mr. Conway and I set out from his house at eight o'clock; the tide and torrent of coaches was so prodigious, that it was half-an-hour after nine before we got half-way from Westminster-bridge. We then alighted; and after scrambling under bellies of horses, through wheels, and over posts and rails, we reached the gardens, where were already many thousand persons. Nothing diverted me but a man in a Turk's dress and two nymphs in masquerade without masks, who sailed amongst the company, and, which was surprising, seemed to surprise nobody. It had been given out that people were desired to come in fancied dresses without masks. We walked twice round and were rejoiced to come away, though with the same difficulties as at our entrance; for we found three strings of coaches all along the road, who did not move half a foot in half-an-hour. There is to be a rival mob in the same way at Ranelagh to-morrow; for the greater the folly and imposition the greater is the crowd. I have suspended the vestimenta that were torn off my back to the god of repentance, and shall stay away. Adieu! I have not a word more to say to you. Yours ever. P.S. I hope you will not regret paying a shilling for this packet. DEAR SIR, TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Arlington Street, May 27, 1769. I HAVE not heard from you this century, nor knew where you had fixed yourself. Mr. Gray tells me you are still at Waterbeche. Mr. Granger has published his Catalogue of Prints and Lives down VOL. III. a แ They went to the Ridotto-'tis a hall Where people dance, and sup, and dance again; 46 to the Revolution; and as the work sells well, I believe, nay, do not doubt, we shall have the rest. There are a few copies printed but on one side of the leaf. As I know you love scribbling in such books as well as I do, I beg you will give me leave to make you a present of one set. I shall send it in about a week to Mr. Gray, and have desired him, as soon as he has turned it over, to convey it to you. I have found a few mistakes, and you will find more. To my mortification, though I have four thousand heads, I find, upon a rough calculation, that I still want three or four hundred. Pray, give me some account of yourself, how you do, and whether you are fixed. I thought you rather inclined to Ely. Are we never to have the history of that cathedral? I wish you would tell me that you have any thoughts of coming this way, or that you would make me a visit this summer. I shall be little from home this summer till August, when I think of going to Paris for six weeks. To be sure you have seen the History of British Topography, which was published this winter, and it is a delightful book in our way. Adieu! dear Sir. Yours ever. b TO THE REV. MR. COLE. Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1769. DEAR SIR, AMONG many agreeable passages in your last, there is nothing I like so well as the hope you give me of seeing you here in July. I will return that visit immediately: don't be afraid; I do not mean to incommode you at Waterbeche; but, if you will come, I promise I will accompany you back as far as Cambridge: nay, carry you on to Ely, for thither I am bound. The Bishop has sent a Dr. Nichols to A Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution. A continuation, bringing the work down from the Revolution to the end of George I.'s reign, was published in 1806, by the Rev. Mark Noble. In a letter to Boswell, of the 30th of August 1776, Dr. Johnson says—“I have read every word of Granger's Biogra phical History. It has entertained me exceedingly, and I do not think him the Whig that you supposed. Horace Walpole being his patron is, indeed, no good sign of his political principles; but he denied to Lord Mansfield that he was a Whig, and said he had been accused by both parties of partiality. It seems he was like Pope 'While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.' I wish you would look more into his book; and as Lord Mountstuart wishes much to find a proper person to continue the work upon Granger's plan, and has desired I would mention it to you, if such a man occurs, please to let me know. His lordship will give him generous encouragement."-E. b By Richard Gough, the well-known antiquary. The second edition, published in 1780, is a far better one.-E. Dr. Matthias Mawson, translated from Llandaff to the see of Ely in 1754. He died in November 1770, in his eighty-seventh year. His character was thus drawn, in 1749, by the Rev. W. Clarke :-"Our Bishop is a better sort of man than most of the mitred order. He is, indeed, awkward, absent, &c.; but then, he has no ambition, no desire to please, and is privately munificent when the world thinks him parsimonious. He has given more to the Church than all the bishops put together for almost a century."—E. me, to desire I would assist him in a plan for the east window of his cathedral, which he intends to benefactorate with painted glass. The window is the most untractable of all Saxon uncouthness: nor can I conceive what to do with it, but by taking off the bottoms for arms and mosaic, splitting the crucifixion into three compartments, and filling the five lights at top with prophets, saints, martyrs, and such like; after shortening the windows like the great ones. This I shall propose. However, I choose to see the spot myself, as it will be a proper attention to the Bishop after his civility, and I really would give the best advice I could. The Bishop, like Alexander VIII., feels that the clock has struck half-an-hour past eleven, and is impatient to be let depart in peace after his eyes shall have seen his vitrification: at least, he is impatient to give his eyes that treat; and yet it will be a pity to precipitate the work. If you can come to me first, I shall be happy; if not, I must come to you: that is, will meet you at Cambridge. Let me know your mind, for I would not press you unseasonably. I am enough obliged to you already; though, by mistake, you think it is you that are obliged to me. I do not mean to plunder you of any more prints; but shall employ a little collector to get me all that are getable. The rest, the greatest of us all must want. I am very sorry for the fever you have had: but, Goodman Frog, if you will live in the fens, do not expect to be as healthy as if you were a fat Dominican at Naples. You and your MSS. will all grow mouldy. When our climate is subject to no sign but Aquarius and Pisces, would one choose the dampest country under the heavens? I do not expect to persuade you, and so I will say no more. I wish you joy of the treasure you have discovered: six Saxon bishops and a Duke of Northumberland!" You have had fine sport this season. Thank you much for wishing to see my name on a plate in the history. But, seriously, I have no such vanity. I did my utmost to dissuade Mr. Granger from the dedication, and took especial pains to get my virtues left out of the question; till I found he would be quite hurt if I did not let him express his gratitude, as he called it: so, to satisfy him, I was forced to accept of his present; for I doubt I have few virtues but what he has presented me with; and in a dedication, you know, one is permitted to have as many as the author can afford to bestow. I really have another objection to the plate: which is, the ten guineas. I have so many draughts on my extravagance for trifles, that I like better than vanity, that I should not care to be at that expense. But I should think either the Duke or Duchess of Northum. The following is an extract from a previous letter of Mr. Cole's, and to this Mr. Walpole alludes:-" An old wall being to be taken down behind the choir [at Ely], on which were painted seven figures of six Saxon bishops, and a Duke, as he is called, of Northumberland, one Brithnoth; which painting I take to be as old as any we have in England-I guessed by seven arches in the wall, below the figures, that the bones of these seven benefactors to the old Saxon conventual church were reposited in the wall under them accordingly, we found seven separate holes, each with the remains of the said persons," &c. &c. Mr. Cole proposed that Mr. Walpole should contribute an engraving from this painting to the History of Ely Cathedral, a work about to be published, or to use his interest to induce the Duke of Northumberland to do so. |