TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Jan. 22, 1761.

I AM glad you are coming, and now the time is over, that you are coming so late, as I like to have you here in the spring. You will find no great novelty in the new reign. Lord Denbigh is made master of the harriers, with two thousand a-year. Lord Temple asked it, and Newcastle and Hardwicke gave into it for fear of Denbigh's brutality in the House of Lords. Does this differ from the style of George the Second?

The King designs to have a new motto; he will not have a French one; so the Pretender may enjoy Dieu et mon droit in quiet.

Princess Amelia is already sick of being familiar: she has been at Northumberland-house, but goes to nobody more. That party was larger, but still more formal than the rest, though the Duke of York had invited himself and his commerce-table. I played with Madam * * * *, and we were mighty well together; so well, that two nights afterwards she commended me to Mr. Conway and Mr. Fox, but calling me that Mr. Walpole, they did not guess who she meant. For my part, I thought it very well, that when I played with her, she did not call me that gentleman. As she went away, she thanked my Lady Northumberland, like a parson's wife, for all her civilities.

I was excessively amused on Tuesday night; there was a play at Holland-house, acted by children; not all children, for Lady Sarah Lenox and Lady Susan Strangways played the women. It was Jane Shore; Mr. Price, Lord Barrington's nephew, was Gloster, and acted better than three parts of the comedians. Charles Fox, Hastings; a little Nichols, who spoke well, Belmour; Lord Ofaly, Lord Ashbroke, and other boys did the rest: but the two girls were delightful, and acted with so much nature and simplicity, that they appeared the very things they represented. Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive, and her very awkwardness gave an air of truth to the shame of the part, and the antiquity of the time, which was kept up by her dress, taken out of Montfaucon. Lady Susan was dressed from Jane Seymour; and all the parts were clothed in ancient habits, and with the most minute propriety. I was infinitely more struck with the last scene between the two women than ever I was when I have seen it on the stage. When Lady Sarah was in white, with her hair about her ears, and on the ground, no Magdalen by Corregio was half so lovely and expressive. You would have been charmed too with seeing Mr. Fox's little boy of six years old, who is

a Basil Fielding, sixth Earl of Denbigh, and fifth Earl of Desmond. He died in 1800.-E.

b Daughter of the Duke of Richmond, afterwards married to Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, Bart.-E.

Daughter of Stephen Fox, first Earl of Ilchester; married, in 1764, to William O'Brien, Esq.-E.

d Eldest son of the Marquis of Kildare.-E.

beautiful, and acted the Bishop of Ely, dressed in lawn sleeves and with a square cap; they had inserted two lines for him, which he could hardly speak plainly. Francis had given them a pretty prologue. Adieu!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Feb. 7, 1761.

I HAVE not written to you lately, expecting your arrival. As you are not come yet, you need not come these ten days if you please, for I go next week into Norfolk, that my subjects of Lynn may at least once in their lives see me. 'Tis a horrible thing to dine with a mayor! I shall profane King John's cup, and taste nothing but water out of it, as if it were St. John Baptist's.

Prepare yourself for crowds, multitudes. In this reign all the world lives in one room: the capital is as vulgar as a country town in the season of horse-races. There were no fewer than four of these throngs on Tuesday last, at the Duke of Cumberland's, Princess Emily's, the Opera, and Lady Northumberland's; for even operas, Tuesday's operas, are crowded now. There is nothing else new. Last week there was a magnificent ball at Carleton-house: the two royal Dukes and Princess Emily were there. He of York danced; the other and his sister had each their table at loo. I played at hers, and am grown a favourite; nay, have been at her private party, and was asked again last Wednesday, but took the liberty to excuse myself, and am yet again summoned for Tuesday. It is triste enough: nobody sits till the game begins, and then she and the company are all on stools. At Norfolk-house were two armchairs placed for her and the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of York being supposed a dancer, but they would not use them. Lord Huntingdon arrived in a frock, pretending he was just come out of the country; unluckily, he had been at court, full-dressed, in the morning. No foreigners were there but the son and daughter-in-law of Monsieur de Fuentes: the Duchess told. the Duchess of Bedford, that she had not invited the ambassadress, because her rank is disputed here. You remember the Bedford took place of Madame de Mirepoix; but Madame de Mora danced first, the Duchess of Norfolk saying she supposed that was of no consequence.

Have you heard what immense riches old Wortley has left? One million three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It is all to centre in my Lady Bute; her husband is one of Fortune's prodigies. They

"You see old Wortley Montagu is dead at last, at eighty-three. It was not mere avarice and its companion abstinence, that kept him alive so long. He every day drank, I think it was, half-a-pint of tokay, which he imported himself from Hungary in greater quantity than he could use, and sold the overplus for any price he chose to set upon it. He has left better than half a million of money." Gray, Works, vol. iii. p. 272. -E.

talk of a print, in which her mistress is reprimanding Miss Chudleigh; the latter curtsies, and replies, "Madame, chacun a son but." Have you seen a scandalous letter in print, from Miss Ford," to Lord Jersey, with the history of a boar's head? George Selwyn calls him Meleager. Adieu! this is positively my last.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Monday, five o'clock, Feb. 1761.

I AM a little peevish with you-I told you on Thursday night that I had a mind to go to Strawberry on Friday without staying for the Qualification-bill. You said it did not signify-No! What if you intended to speak on it? Am I indifferent to hearing you? MoreAm I indifferent about acting with you? Would not I follow you in any thing in the world?-This is saying no profligate thing. Is there any thing I might not follow you in? You even did not tell me yesterday that you had spoken. Yet I will tell you all I have heard; though if there was a point in the world in which I could not wish you to succeed where you wish yourself, perhaps it would be in having you employed. I cannot be cool about your danger; yet I cannot know any thing that concerns you, and keep it from you. Charles Townshend called here just after I came to town to-day. Among other discourse he told me of your speaking on Friday, and that your speech was reckoned hostile to the Duke of Newcastle. Then talking of regiments going abroad, he said, *

*

With regard to your reserve to me, I can easily believe that your natural modesty made you unwilling to talk of yourself to me. I don't suspect you of any reserve to me: I only mention it now for an occasion of telling you, that I don't like to have any body think that I would not do whatever you do. I am of no consequence: but at least it would give me some, to act invariably with you; and that I shall most certainly be ever ready to do. Adieu!

a Miss Ford was the object of an illicit, but unsuccessful attachment, on the part of Lord Jersey, whose advances, if not sanctioned by the lady, appear to have been sanc. tioned by her father, who told her "she might have accepted the settlement his lordship offered her, and yet not have complied" with his terms. The following extract from the letter will explain the history above alluded to:-"However, I must do your lordship the justice to say, that as you conceived this meeting [one with a noble personage which Lord Jersey had desired her not to make] would have been most pleasing to me, and perhaps of some advantage, your lordship did (in consideration of so great a disappointment) send me, a few days after, a present of a boar's head, which I had often had the honour to meet at your lordship's table before. It was rather an odd first and only present from a lord to his beloved mistress; but its coming from your lordship gave it an additional value, which it had not in itself; and I received it with the regard I thought due to every thing coming from your lordship, and would have eat it, had it been eatable. I am impatient to acquit your lordship and myself, by showing that as your lordship's eight hundred pounds a-year did not purchase my person, the boar's head did not purchase my silence."-E.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, March 7, 1761.

I REJOICE, you know, in whatever rejoices you, and though I am not certain what your situation is to be, I am glad you go, as you like it. I am told it is black rod. Lady Anne Jekyll said, she had written to you on Saturday night. I asked when her brother was to go, if before August; she answered: "Yes, if possible." Long before October you may depend upon it; in the quietest times no lord lieutenant ever went so late as that. Shall not you come to town first? You cannot pack up yourself, and all you will want, at Greatworth. We are in the utmost hopes of a peace; a Congress is agreed upon at Augsbourg, but yesterday's mail brought bad news. Prince Ferdinand has been obliged to raise the siege of Cassel, and to retire to Paderborn; the hereditary prince having been again defeated, with the loss of two generals, and to the value of five thousand men, in prisoners and exchanged. If this defers the peace it will be grievous news to me, now Mr. Conway is gone to the army.

The town talks of nothing but an immediate Queen, yet I am certain the ministers know not of it. Her picture is come, and lists of her family given about; but the latter I do not send you, as I believe it apocryphal. Adieu!

P. S. Have you seen the advertisement of a new noble author? A Treatise of Horsemanship, by Henry Earl of Pembroke ! As George Selwyn said of Mr. Greville," so far from being a writer, I thought he was scarce a courteous reader."

TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.

Arlington Street, March 7, 1761.

JUST what I supposed, Sir, has happened; with your good breeding, I did not doubt but you would give yourself the trouble of telling me that you had received the Lucan, and as you did not, I concluded Dodsley had neglected it: he has in two instances. The moment they were published, I delivered a couple to him, for you, and one for a gentleman in Scotland. I received no account of either, and after examining Dodsley a fortnight ago, I learned three days since. from him, that your copy, Sir, was delivered to Mrs. Ware, bookseller, in Fleet Street, who corresponds with Mr. Stringer, to be sent in the first parcel; but, says he, as they send only once a month, it probably was not sent away till very lately.

Mr. Montagu was appointed usher of the black rod in Ireland.

b Sister of the Earl of Halifax.

Tenth Earl of Pembroke and seventh Earl of Montgomery. The work was entitled "Military Equitation; or a Method of breaking Horses, and teaching Soldiers to ride." A fourth edition, in quarto, appeared in 1793.-E. ·

I am vexed, Sir, that you have waited so long for this trifle: if you neither receive it, nor get information of it, I will immediately convey another to you. It would be very ungrateful in me to neglect what would give you a moment's amusement, after your thinking so obligingly of the painted glass for me. I shall certainly be in Yorkshire this summer, and as I flatter myself that I shall be more lucky in meeting you, I will then take what you shall be so good as to bestow on me, without giving you the trouble of sending it.

If it were not printed in the London Chronicle, I would transcribe for you, Sir, a very weak letter of Voltaire to Lord Lyttelton, and the latter's answer: there is nothing else new, but a very indifferent play, called The Jealous Wife, so well acted as to have succeeded greatly. Mr. Mason, I believe, is going to publish some elegies: have seen the principal one, on Lady Coventry; it was then only an unfinished draft.

The second and third volumes of Tristram Shandy, the dregs of nonsense, have universally met the contempt they deserve: genius may be exhausted;-I see that folly's invention may be so too.

The foundations of my gallery at Strawberry Hill are laying. May I not flatter myself, Sir, that you will see the whole even before it is quite complete?

P. S. Since I wrote my letter, I have read a new play of Voltaire's, called Tancred, and I am glad to say that it repairs the idea of his decaying parts, which I had conceived from his Peter the Great, and the letter I mentioned. Tancred did not please at Paris, nor was I charmed with the two first acts; in the three last are great flashes of genius, single lines, and starts of passion of the first fire: the woman's part is a little too Amazonian.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, March 17, 1761.

Ir my last letter raised your wonder, this will not allay it. Lord Talbot is lord steward! The stone, which the builders refused, is become the head-stone of the corner. My Lady Talbot, I suppose, would have found no charms in Cardinal Mazarin. As the Duke of

a An absurd letter from Voltaire to the author of the Dialogues of the Dead, remonstrating against a statement, that "he, Voltaire, was in exile, on account of some blamable freedoms in his writings." He denies both the facts and the cause assigned; but he convinced nobody, for both were notoriously true. Voltaire was, it is true, not banished by sentence; but he was not permitted to reside in France, and that surely may be called exile, particularly as he was all his life endeavouring to obtain leave to return to Paris.-C.

The Jealous Wife still keeps the stage, and does not deserve to be so slightingly spoken of: but there were private reasons which might possibly warp Mr. Walpole's judgment on the works of Colman. He was the nephew of Lord Bath, and The Jealous Wife was dedicated to that great rival of Sir Robert Walpole.-C. [Dr. Johnson says, that the Jealous Wife, "though not written with much genius, was yet so well exhibited by the actors, that it was crowded for near twenty nights."]