dare to prophesy, that if you keep this letter, you will find that my future correspondence will be but an illustration of this text; at least, it is an excuse for my having very little to tell you at present, and was the reason of my not writing to you last week.

Before the Parliament adjourned, there was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes; it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing Mr. Charles Townshend, who having sat silent through the question of privilege, found himself interested in the defence of Dr. Brocklesby ! Charles ridiculed Lord North extremely, and had warm words with George Grenville. I do not look upon this as productive of consequential speaking for the opposition; on the contrary, I should expect him sooner in place, if the ministry could be fools enough to restore weight to him, and could be ignorant that he can never hurt them so much as by being with them. Wilkes refused to see Heberden and Hawkins, whom the House commissioned to visit him; and to laugh at us more, sent for two Scotchmen, Duncan and Middleton. Well! but since that, he is gone off himself: however, as I did in D'Eon's case, I can now only ask news of him from you, and not tell you any; for you have got him. I do not believe you will invite him, and make so much of him, as the Duke of Bedford did. Both sides pretend joy at his being gone; and for once. I can believe both. You will be diverted, as I was, at the cordial esteem the ministers have for one another; Lord Waldegrave told my niece, this morning, that he had offered a shilling, to receive an hundred pounds when Sandwich shall lose his head! what a good opinion they have of one another! apropos to losing heads, is Lally beheaded?

The East India Company have come to an unanimous resolution of not paying Lord Clive the three hundred thousand pounds, which the ministry had promised him in lieu of his nabobical annuity. Just after the bargain was made, his old rustic of a father was at the King's levée; the King asked where his son was; he replied, "Sire, he is coming to town, and then your Majesty will have another vote." If you like these franknesses, I can tell you another. The Chancellor'

a Dr. Richard Brocklesby, an eminent physician. He had been examined before the House of Commons, as to Mr. Wilkes's incapacity to attend in his place. His Whig politics, which probably induced Mr. Wilkes to send for him, induced the majority of the House to distrust his report, and to order two other medical men to visit the patient. This proceeding implied a doubt of Dr. Brocklesby's veracity, which certainly called for the interference of Mr. Charles Townshend, who was a private as well as a political friend of the doctor's. Dr. Brocklesby, besides being one of the first physicians of his time, was a man of literature and taste, and did not confine his society nor his beneficence to those who agreed with him in politics. He was the friend and physician of Dr. Johnson; and when, towards the close of that great man's life, it was supposed that his circumstances were not quite easy, Dr. Brocklesby generously pressed him to accept an annuity of one hundred pounds, and he attended him to his death with unremitted affection and care.-C.

b John, third Earl of Waldegrave, a general in the army; in 1770 master of the horse to the Queen.-E.

c Lord Henley; afterwards Earl of Northington.

is chosen a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital; a smart gentleman, who was sent with the staff, carried it in the evening, when the Chancellor happened to be drunk. "Well, Mr. Bartlemy," said his lordship, snuffling, "what have you to say?" The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was transported to have so fair opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, "By God, it is a lie! I have neither health nor abilities; my bad health has destroyed my abilities." The late Chancellor is much better.

The last time the King was at Drury-lane, the play given out for the next night was "All in the Wrong:" the galleries clapped, and then cried out. "Let us be all in the right! Wilkes and Liberty!" When the King comes to a theatre, or goes out, or goes to the House, there is not a single applause; to the Queen there is a little: in short, Louis le bien-aimé is not French at present for King George.

The town, you may be sure, is very empty; the greatest party is at Woburn, whither the Comte de Guerchy and the Duc de Pecquigny are going. I have been three days at Strawberry, and had George Selwyn, Williams, and Lord Ashburnham; but the weather was intolerably bad. We have scarce had a moment's drought since you went, no more than for so many month's before. The towns and the roads are beyond measure dirty, and every thing else under water. I was not well neither, nor am yet, with pains in my stomach: however, if I ever used one, I could afford to pay a physician. T'other day, coming from my Lady Townshend's, it came into my head to stop at one of the lottery offices, to inquire after a single ticket I had, expecting to find it a blank, but it was five hundred pounds-Thank you! I know you wish me joy. It will buy twenty pretty things when I come to Paris.

I read last night, your new French play, Le Comte de Warwic, which we hear has succeeded much. I must say, it does but confirm the cheap idea I have of you French: not to mention the preposterous perversion of history in so known a story, the Queen's ridiculous preference of old Warwick to a young King; the omission of the only thing she ever said or did in her whole life worth recording, which was thinking herself too low for his wife, and too high for his mistress;d the romantic honour bestowed on two such savages as Edward and Warwick besides these, and forty such glaring absurdities, there is but one scene that has any merit, that between Edward and Warwick

a Lord Hardwicke.

b John, second Earl of Ashburnham; one of the lords of the bedchamber, and keeper of the parks.-E.

By La Harpe. This play, written when the author was only twenty-three years old, raised him into great celebrity; and is, in the opinion of the French critics, his first work in merit as well as date.-C.

This phrase has been also attributed to Mademoiselle de Montmorency, afterwards Princess de Condé, in reply to the solicitations of Henry IV.; and is told also of Mademoiselle de Rohan, afterwards Duchess of Deux Ponts.-C.

in the third act. Indeed, indeed, I don't honour the modern French: it is making your son but a slender compliment, with his knowledge, for them to say it is extraordinary. The best proof I think they give of their taste, is liking you all three. I rejoice that your little boy is recovered. Your brother has been at Park-place this week, and stays a week longer: his hill is too high to be drowned.

Thank you for your kindness to Mr. Selwyn: if he had too much impatience, I am sure it proceeded only from his great esteem for you.

I will endeavour to learn what you desire; and will answer, in another letter, that and some other passages in your last. Dr. Hunter is very good, and calls on me sometimes. You may guess whether we talk you over or not. Adieu!

P. S. There has not been a death, but Sir William Maynard's, who is come to life again; or a marriage, but Admiral Knollys's who has married his divorced wife again.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Jan. 11, 1764.

It is an age, I own, since I wrote to you; but except politics, what was there to send you? and for politics, the present are too contemptible to be recorded by any body but journalists, gazetteers, and such historians! The ordinary of Newgate, or Mr. ****, who write for their monthly half-crown, and who are indifferent whether Lord Bute, Lord Melcombe, or Maclean is their hero, may swear they find diamonds on dunghills; but you will excuse me, if I let our correspondence lie dormant rather than deal in such trash. I am forced to send Lord Hertford and Sir Horace Mann such garbage, because they are out of England, and the sea softens and makes palatable any potion, as it does claret; but unless I can divert you, I had rather wait till we can laugh together; the best employment for friends, who do not mean to pick one another's pocket, nor make a property of either's frankness. Instead of politics, therefore, I shall amuse you to-day with a fairy tale.

I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk's on New-year's morn, where I found Lady Temple and others. On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small round box. She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of eleven years. In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring, and a paper in which, in a hand as small as Buckinger's, who used to write the Lord's Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following lines:

Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen

A new-year's gift from Mab onr queen:

But tell it not, for if you do,

You will be pinch'd all black and blue.

Consider well, what a disgrace,

To show abroad your mottled face:
Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
And sometimes think of Ob., the king.

You will easily guess that Lady Temple' was the poetess, and that we were delighted with the genteelness of the thought and execution. The child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the present. Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwards from the ring to a new coat, that she had been trying on when sent for down; impatient to revisit her coat, and to show the ring to her maid, she whisked up stairs; when she came down again, she found a letter sealed, and lying on the floor-new exclamations! Lady Suffolk bade her open it: here it is:

Your tongue, too nimble for your sense,
Is guilty of a high offence;

Hath introduced unkind debate,
And topsy-turvy turned our state.
In gallantry I sent the ring,
The token of a lovesick king:
Under fair Mab's auspicious name
From me the trifling present came.
You blabb'd the news in Suffolk's ear;
The tattling zephyrs brought it here;
As Mab was indolently laid

Under a poppy's spreading shade.
The jealous queen started in rage;

She kick'd her crown and beat her page:

46

Bring me my magic wand," she cries;

"Under that primrose there it lies;

I'll change the silly, saucy chit,

Into a flea, a louse, a nit,

A worm, a grasshopper, a rat,

An owl, a monkey, hedge-hog, bat.

Ixion once a cloud embraced,

By Jove and jealousy well placed;

What sport to see proud Oberon stare,

And flirt it with a pet-en l'air!"

Then thrice she stamped the trembling ground,

And thrice she waved her wand around;
When I, endowed with greater skill,
And less inclined to do you ill,
Mutter'd some words, withheld her arm,
And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm.
But though not changed to owl or bat,
Or something more indelicate;
Yet, as your tongue has run ton fast,
Your boasted beauty must not last,
No more shall frolic Cupid lie
In ambuscade in either eye,

From thence to aim his keenest dart

To captivate each youthful heart:

No more shall envious misses pine

At charms now flown, that once were thine:
No more, since you so ill behave,

Shall injured Oberon be your slave.

Anne, one of the daughters and coheirs of Thomas Chambers, of Hanworth, in the county of Middlesex, Esq. wife of Earl Temple. This lady was a woman of genius: it will hereafter be seen, that a small volume of her poems was printed at the Strawberry Hill press.-E.

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The next day my Lady Suffolk desired I would write her a patent for appointing Lady Temple poet laureate to the fairies. I was excessively out of order with a pain in my stomach, which I had had for ten days, and was fitter to write verses like a poet laureate, than for making one: however, I was going home to dinner alone, and at six I sent her some lines, which you ought to have seen how sick I was, to excuse; but first, I must tell you my tale methodically. The next morning by nine o'clock Miss Hotham (she must forgive me twenty years hence for saying she was eleven, for I recollect she is but ten,) arrived at Lady Temple's, her face and neck all spotted with saffron, and limping. "Oh, Madam!" said she, "I am undone for ever if you do not assist me!" Lord, child," cried my Lady Temple, "what is the matter?" thinking she had hurt herself, or lost the ring, and that she was stolen out before her aunt was up. "Oh, Madam," said the girl," nobody but you can assist me!" My Lady Temple protests the child acted her part so well as to deceive her. "What can I do for you?" "Dear Madam, take this load from my back; nobody but you can." Lady Temple turned her round, and upon her back was tied a child's waggon. In it were three tiny purses of blue velvet; in one of them a silver cup, in another a crown of laurel, and in the third four new silver pennies, with the patent, signed at top, Oberon Imperator; and two sheets of warrants strung together with blue silk according to form; and at top an office seal of wax and a chaplet of cut paper on it. The warrants were these:

From the Royal Mews:

A waggon with the draught horses, delivered by command without fee.

From the Lord Chamberlain's Office:

A warrant with the royal sign manual, delivered by command without fee, being first entered in the office books.

From the Lord Steward's Office:

A butt of sack, delivered without fee or gratuity, with an order for returning the cask for the use of the office, by command.

From the Great Wardrobe:

Three velvet bags, delivered without fee, by command.

From the Treasurer of the Household's Office:

A year's salary paid free from land-tax, poundage, or any other deduction whatever, by command.

fee.

From the Jewel Office:

A silver butt, a silver cup, a wreath of bays, by command without