for three weeks. I shall go to Swallow field for a few days: so for one week you will miss hearing from me. We have escaped the Prince's affair hitherto, but we shall have it after the holidays. All depends upon the practices of both sides in securing or getting new votes during the recess. Sir Robert is very sanguine: I hope, for his sake and for his honour, and for the nation's peace, that he will get the better: but the moment he has the majority secure, I shall be very earnest with him to resign. He has a constitution to last some years, and enjoy some repose; and for my own part (and both my brothers agree with me in it), we wish most heartily to see an end of his ministry. If I can judge of them by myself, those who want to be in our situation, do not wish to see it brought about more than we do. It is fatiguing to bear so much envy and ill-will undeservedly. -Otium Divos rogo; but adieu, politics, for three weeks! C The Duchess of Buckingham, who is more mad with pride than any mercer's wife in Bedlam, came the other night to the opera en princesse, literally in robes, red velvet and ermine. I must tell you a story of her last week she sent for Cori, to pay him for her opera-ticket; he was not at home, but went in an hour afterwards. She said, "Did he treat her like a tradeswoman? She would teach him to respect women of her birth; said he was in league with Mr. Sheffield to abuse her, and bade him come the next morning at nine." He came, and she made him wait till eight at night, only sending him an omlet and a bottle of wine, " as it was Friday, and he a Catholic, she supposed he did not eat meat." At last she received him in all the form of a princess giving audience to an ambassador. "Now," she said," she had punished him." In this age we have some who pretend to impartiality: you will scarce guess how Lord Brook shows his: he gives one vote on one and generous zeal with which the noble lord who compiled that work has honoured and perpetuated his ancestry. Family histories, like the imagines majorum of the ancients, excite to virtue." See "Life of Johnson," vol viii. p. 188.] a Swallowfield, in Berkshire, the seat of John Dodd, Esq. b A scheme for obtaining a larger allowance for the Prince of Wales. Catherine, Duchess Dowager of Buckingham, natural daughter of King James II. (Supposed to be really the daughter of Colonel Graham, a man of gallantry of the time, and a lover of her mother, Lady Dorchester.-D.) [This remarkable woman was extravagantly proud of her descent from James the Second, and affected to be the head of the Jacobite party in England. She maintained a kind of royal state, and affected great devotion to the memory of her father and grandfather. On the death of her son, the second Duke of Buckingham of the Sheffield family (whose funeral was celebrated in a most extraordinary manner), she applied to the old Duchess of Marlborough, who was as high spirited as herself, for the loan of the richly-ornamented hearse which had conveyed the great duke to his grave. "Tell her," said Sarah," it carried the Duke of Marlborough, and shall never carry any one else."-" My upholsterer," rejoined Catherine of Buckingham in a fury, "tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds."-"This last stroke," says the editor of the Suffolk Correspondence, "was aimed at the parsimony of their Graces of Marlborough, which was supposed to have been visible even in the funeral; but the sarcasm was as unjust as the original request of borrowing the hearse was mean and unfeeling."-E.] d Angelo Maria Cori, prompter to the Opera. Mr. Sheffield, natural son of the late Duke of Buckingham, with whom she was at law. f Francis, Baron, and afterwards created Earl Brooke. side, one on the other, and the third time does not vote at all, and so on, regularly. My sister is up to the elbows in joy and flowers that she has received from you this morning and begs I will thank you for her. You know, or have heard of, Mrs. Nugent, Newsham's mother; she went the other morning to Lord Chesterfield to beg "he would encourage Mr. Nugent to speak in the house; for that really he was so bashful, she was afraid his abilities would be lost to the world." I don't know who has encouraged him; but so it is, that this modest Irish converted Catholic does talk a prodigious deal of nonsense in behalf of English liberty. Lord Gage is another; no man would trust him in a wager, unless he stakes, and yet he is trusted by a whole borough with their privileges and liberties! He told Mr. Winnington the other day, that he would bring his son into parliament, that he would not influence him, but leave him entirely to himself. "D- it," said Winnington, "so you have all his lifetime." Your brother says you accuse him of not writing to you, and that his reasons are, he has not time, and next, that I tell you all that can be said. So I do, I think: tell me when I begin to tire you, or if I am too circumstantial; but I don't believe you will think so, for I remember how we used to want such a correspondent when I was with you. I have spoke about the young man who is well content to live with you as a servant out of livery. I am to settle the affair finally with his father on Monday, and then he shall set out as soon as possible. I will send the things for Prince Craon &c. by him. I will write to Madame Grifoni the moment I hear she is returned from the country. The Princess Hesse is brought to bed of a son. We are going into mourning for the Queen of Sweden; she had always been apprehensive of the small-pox, which has been very fatal in her family. You have heard, I suppose, of the new revolution in Muscovy. The letters from Holland to-day say, that they have put to death the young Czar and his mother, and his father too: which, if true, is going very far, for he was of a sovereign house in another country, Robert Nugent, a poet, a patriot, an author, a lord of the treasury, (and finally an Irish peer by the titles of Lord Clare and Earl Nugent. He seems to have passed his long life in seeking lucrative places and courting rich widows, in both of which pursuits he was eminently successful.-D.) [He married the sister and heiress of Secretary Craggs, and his only daughter married the first Marquis of Buckingham. A volume of his "Odes and Epistles" were published anonymously in 1739. He died in 1788] Lord Gage was one of those persons to whom the privileges of parliament were of extreme consequence, as their own liberties were inseparable from them. C Mary, fourth daughter of King George II. d Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, sister of Charles XII. This relates to the revolution by which the young Czar John was deposed, and the Princess Elizabeth raised to the throne. f This was not true. The Princess Anne of Mecklenburgh died in prison at Riga, a few years afterwards. Her son, the young Czar, and her husband, Prince Antony of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle, were confined for many years. VOL. I. 18 no subject of Russia, and after the death of his wife and son, could have no pretence or interest to raise more commotions there. We have got a new opera, not so good as the former; and we have got the famous Bettina to dance, but she is a most indifferent performer. The house is excessively full every Saturday, never on Tuesday: here, you know, we make every thing a fashion. I am happy that my fears for Tuscany vanish every letter. There! there is a letter of twelve sides! I am forced to page it, it is so long, and I have not time to read it over and look for the mistakes. Yours, ever. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Dec. 29, 1741. I WRITE to you two days before the post goes out, because tomorrow I am to go out of town; but I would answer your letter by way of Holland, to tell you how much you have obliged both Sir Robert and me about the Dominichin; and to beg you to thank Mr. Chute and Mr. Whithed-but I cannot leave it to you. 66 My dear Mr. Chute, was ever any thing so kind! I crossed the Giogob with Mr. Coke, but it was in August, and I thought it then the greatest compliment that ever was paid to mortal; and I went with him too! but you to go only for a picture, and in the month of December: What can I say to you? You do more to oblige your friend, than I can find terms to thank you for. If I was to tell it here, it would be believed as little as the rape of poor Toryd by a wolf. I can only say that I know the Giogo, its snows and its inns, and consequently know the extent of the obligation that I have to you and Mr. Whithed." Now I return to you, my dear child: I am really so much obliged to you and to them, that I know not what to say. I read Pennee's letter to Sir. R., who was much pleased with his discretion; he will be quite a favourite of mine. And now we are longing for the picture; you know, of old, my impatience. Your young secretary-servant is looking out for a ship, and will set out in the first that goes: I envy him. The Court has been trying, but can get nobody to stand for Westminster. You know Mr. Doddington has lost himself extremely by * A celebrated picture of a Madonna and Child by Dominichino, in the palace Zembeccari, at Bologna, now in the collection of the Earl of Orford, at Houghton, in Norfolk. (Since sent to Russia with the rest of the collection.-D.) b The Giogo is the highest part of the Apennine between Florence and Bologna. Son of Lord Lovel, since Earl of Leceister. [In 1744, Lord Lovel was created Viscount Coke of Holkham and Earl of Leccister. His only son Edward died before him, in 1753, without issue; having married Lady Mary, one of the co-heirs of John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.] A black spaniel of Mr. Walpole's was seized by a wolf on the Alps, as it was running at the head of the chaise-horses, at noonday. [See antè, p. 139.] his new turn, after so often changing sides: he is grown very fat and lethargic; my brother Ned says, "he is grown of less consequence, but more weight." One hears of nothing but follies said by the Opposition, who grow mad on having the least prospect. Lady Carteret, who, you know, did not want any new fuel to her absurdity, says, "they talk every day of making her lord first minister, but he is not so easily persuaded as they think for." Good night. Yours, ever. TO SIR HORACE MANN. London, Jan. 7, 1741-2, O. S. I MUST answer for your brother a paragraph that he showed me in one of your letters: "Mr. W.'s letters are full of wit; don't they adore him in England?" Not at all-and I don't wonder at them; for if I have any wit in my letters, which I do not at all take for granted, it is ten to one that I have none out of my letters. A thousand people can write, that cannot talk; and besides, you know, (or I conclude so, from the little one hears stirring,) that numbers of the English have wit, who don't care to produce it. Then, as to adoring; you now see only my letters, and you may be sure I take care not to write you word of any of my bad qualities, which other people must see in the gross; and that may be a great hindrance to their adoration. Oh! there are a thousand other reasons I could give you, why I am not the least in fashion. I came over in an ill season: it is a million to one that nobody thinks a declining old minister's son has wit. At any time, men in opposition have always most; but now, it would be absurd for a courtier to have even common sense. There is not a Mr. Sturt, or a Mr. Stewart, whose names begin but with the first letters of Stanhope, that has not a better chance than I, for being liked. I can assure you, even those of the same party would be fools, not to pretend to think me one. Sir Robert has showed no partiality for me; and do you think they would commend where he and George Bubb Dodington had lately resigned his post of one of the lords of the treasury, gone again into Opposition. [In Walpole's copy of the celebrated Diary of this versatile politician, he had written a " Brief account of George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe," which the noble editor of the "Memoires" has inserted. It describes him, "as his Diary shows, vain, fickle, ambitious, and corrupt,' and very lethargic; but gives him credit for great wit and readiness." Cumberland, in his Memoirs, thus paints him :-" Dodington, lolling in his chair, in perfect apathy and self-command, dozing, and even snoring, at intervals, in his lethargic way, broke out every now and then into gleams and flashes of wit and humour." In 1761, he was created Lord Melcombe, and died in the following year.] Frances, daughter of Sir Robert Worseley, and first wife of John Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville. e The name of Lord Chesterfield. d On the subject of Sir Robert's alleged want of partiality for his son, the following passage occurs in the anecdotes prefixed to Lord Wharncliffe's edition of the works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu :-"Those ironical lines, where Pope says that Sir Robert does not even supposing they had no envy, which, by the way, I am far from saying they have not. Then, my dear child, I am the coolest man of my party, and if I am ever warm, it is by contagion ; and where violence passes for parts, what will indifference be called? But how could you think of such a question? I don't want money, consequently no old women pay me or my wit; I have a very flimsy constitution, consequently the young women won't taste my wit, and it is a long while before wit makes its own way in the world; especially, as I never prove it, by assuring people that I have it by me. Indeed, if I were disposed to brag, I could quote two or three halfpay officers, and an old aunt or two, who laugh prodigiously at every thing I say; but till they are allowed judges, I will not brag of such authorities. If you have a mind to know who is adored and has wit, there is old Churchill' has as much God-d-n-ye wit as ever-except that he has lost two teeth. There are half a dozen Scotchmen who vote against the Court, and are cried up by the Opposition for wit, to keep them steady. They are forced to cry up their parts, for it would be too 'Had never made a friend in private life, And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife,' are well understood, as conveying a sly allusion to his good-humoured unconcern about some things which more strait-laced husbands do not take so coolly. In a word, Horace Walpole was generally supposed to be the son of Carr Lord Hervey, and Sir Robert not to be ignorant of it. One striking circumstance was visible to the naked eye; no beings in human shape could resemble each other less than the two passing for father and son; and while their reverse of personal likeness provoked a malicious whisper, Sir Robert's marked neglect of Horace in his infancy tended to confirm it. Sir Robert took scarcely any notice of him till his proficiency in Eton school, when a lad of some standing, drew his attention, and proved that, whether he had or had not a right to the name he went by, he was likely to do it honour." Vol. i. p. 33.-E. General Charles Churchill. (Whose character has been so inimitably sketched, at about the same period when this letter was written, by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in his poem of" Isabella, or the Morning :" "The General, one of those brave old commanders, Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders. Frank and good-natur'd, of an honest heart, Loving to act the steady friendly part; None led through youth a gayer life than he, Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee; But with old age, its vices come along, If you name one of Marlbro's ten campaigns, |