At Buckden, in the Bishop's palace, I saw a print of Mrs. Newcome: I suppose the late mistress of St. John's. Can you tell me where I can procure one? Mind, I insist that you do not serve me as you have often done, and send me your own, if you have one. I seriously will not accept it, nor ever trust you again. On the staircase, in the same palace, there is a picture of two young men, in the manner of Vandyck, not at all ill done: do you know who they are, or does anybody? There is a worse picture, in a large room, of some lads, which, too, the housemaid did not know. Sir, yours ever.

Adieu! dear

DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 7, 1772.

I DID receive the print of Mrs. Newcome, for which I am extremely obliged to you, with a thousand other favours, and should certainly have thanked you for it long ago, but I was then, and am now, confined to my bed with the gout in every limb, and in almost every joint. I have not been out of my bedchamber these five weeks to-day; and last night the pain returned violently into one of my feet; so that I am now writing to you in a most uneasy posture, which will oblige me to be very short.

Your letter, which I suppose was left at my house in Arlington-street by Mr. Essex, was brought to me this morning. I am exceedingly sorry for his disappointment, and for his coming without writing first; in which case I might have prevented his journey. I do not know, even, whither to send to him, to tell him how impossible it is for me just now, in my present painful and hopeless situation, to be of any use to him. I am so weak and faint, I do not see even my nearest relations, and God knows how long it will be before I am able to bear company, much less application. I have some thoughts, as soon as I am able, of removing to Bath; so that I cannot guess when it will be in my power to consider duly

Mr. Essex's plan with him. I shall undoubtedly, if ever I am capable of it, be ready to give him my advice, such as it is; or to look over his papers, and even to correct them, if his modesty thinks me more able to polish them than he is himself. At the same time, I must own, I think he will run too great a risk by the expense. The engravers in London are now arrived at such a pitch of exorbitant imposition, that, for my own part, I have laid aside all thoughts of having a single plate more done.

Dear Sir, pray tell Mr. Essex how concerned I am for his mischance, and for the total impossibility I am under of seeing him now. I can write no more, but shall be glad to hear from you on his return to Cambridge: and, when I am recovered, you may be assured how glad I shall be to talk his plan over with him. I am his and

Your obliged humble servant.

ness.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

I HAVE had a relapse, and not been able to use my hand, or I should have lamented with you on the plunder of your prints by that Algerine hog. I pity you, dear Sir, and feel for your awkwardness, that was struck dumb at his rapaciousThe beast has no sort of taste neither-and in a twelvemonth will sell them again. I regret particularly one print, which I dare to say he seized, that I gave you, Gertrude More; I thought I had another, and had not; and, as you liked it, I never told you so. This Muley Moloch used to buy books, and now sells them. He has hurt his fortune, and ruined himself, to have a collection, without any choice of what it should be composed. It is the most underbred swine I ever saw; but I did not know it was so ravenous. I wish

This letter may want some explanation. A gentleman, a collector of prints, and a neighbour of Mr. Walpole's, had just before requested to see Mr. Cole's collection, and on Mr. Cole's offering to accommodate him with such heads as he had not, he selected and took away no less than one hundred and eighty-seven of the most rare and valuable.

you may get paid any how; you see by my writing how difficult it is to me, and therefore will excuse my being short.

TO THE COUNTESS OF AILESBURY.

Arlington Street, Dec. 20, 1772.

INDEED, Madam, I want you and Mr. Conway in town. Christmas has dispersed all my company, and left nothing but a loo-party or two. If all the fine days were not gone out of town, too, I should take the air in a morning; but I am not yet nimble enough, like old Mrs. Nugent, to jump out of a post-chaise into an assembly.

You have a woful taste, my lady, not to like Lord Gower's bon-mot. I am almost too indignant to tell you of a most amusing book in six volumes, called "Histoire Philosophique et Politique du Commerce des Deux Indes." It tells one everything in the world;-how to make conquests, invasions, blunders, settlements, bankruptcies, fortunes, &c.; tells you the natural and historical history of all nations; talks commerce, navigation, tea, coffee, china, mines, salt, spices; of the Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Danes, Spaniards, Arabs, caravans, Persians, Indians, of Louis XIV. and the King of Prussia; of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and women that dance naked; of camels, ginghams, and muslin; of millions of millions of livres, pounds, rupees, and cowries; of iron cables and Circassian women; of Law and the Mississippi; and against all governments and religions. This and everything else is in

By the Abbé Raynal. Sensible of the faults of his work, the Abbé visited England and Holland to obtain correct mercantile information, and, on his return, published an improved edition at Geneva, in ten volumes, octavo. Hannah More relates, that, when in England, the Abbé was introduced to Dr. Johnson, and advancing to shake his hand, the Doctor drew back and put it behind him, and afterwards replied to the expostulation of a friend-" Sir, I will not shake hands with an infidel." The Parliament of Paris ordered the work to be burnt, and the author to be arrested; but he retired to Spain, and, in 1788, the National Assembly cancelled the decree passed against him. He died at Passy in 1794, at the age of eighty-five.-E.

the two first volumes. I cannot conceive what is left for the four others. And all is so mixed, that you learn forty new trades, and fifty new histories, in a single chapter. There is spirit, wit, and clearness-and, if there were but less avoirdupois weight in it, it would be the richest book in the world in materials-but figures to me are so many ciphers, and only put me in mind of children that say, an hundred hundred hundred millions. However, it has made me learned enough to talk about Mr. Sykes and the Secret Committee,1 which is all that anybody talks of at present, and yet Mademoiselle Heinel is arrived. This is all I know, and a great deal, too, considering I know nothing—and yet, were there either truth or lies, I should know them; for one hears everything in a sick room. Good night both!

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Arlington Street, Jan. 8, 1773.

In return to your very kind inquiries, dear Sir, I can let you know, that I am quite free from pain, and walk a little about my room, even without a stick: nay, have been four times to take the air in the park. Indeed, after fourteen weeks this is not saying much; but it is a worse reflection, that when one is subject to the gout, and far from young, one's worst account will probably be better than that after the next fit. I neither flatter myself on one hand, nor am impatient on the other-for will either do one any good? one must bear one's lot whatever it be.

I rejoice Mr. * * * * has justice, though he had no bowels. How Gertrude More escaped him I do not guess. It will be wrong to rob you of her, after she has come to you through so many hazards- nor would I hear of it either, if you have a mind to keep her, or have not given up all thoughts of a collection since you have been visited by a Visigoth.

1 Upon East-Indian affairs. 2 See antè, p. 314. The gentleman who had carried off so many of Mr. Cole's prints. He now fully remunerated Mr. Cole in a valuable present of books.

I am much more impatient to see Mr. Gray's print, than Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's answer to my Historic Doubts.1 He may have made himself very angry; but I doubt whether he will make me at all so. I love antiquities; but I scarce ever knew an antiquary who knew how to write upon them. Their understandings seem as much in ruins as the things they describe. For the Antiquarian Society, I shall leave them in peace with Whittington and his Cat. As my contempt for them has not, however, made me disgusted with what they do not understand, antiquities, I have published two numbers of Miscellanies, and they are very welcome to mumble them with their toothless gums. I want to send you these not their gums, but my pieces, and a Grammont, of which I have printed only a hundred copies, and which will be extremely scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France. Tell me how I shall convey them safely.

3

Another thing you must tell me, if you can, is, if you know anything ancient of the Freemasons. Governor Pownall, a Whittingtonian, has a mind they should have been a corporation erected by the popes. As you see what a good creature I am, and return good for evil, I am engaged to pick up what I can for him, to support this system, in which I believe no more than in the pope: and the work is to appear in a volume of the Society's pieces. I am very willing to oblige him, and turn my cheek, that they may smite that, also. Lord help them! I am sorry they are such numsculls, that they almost make me think myself something! but there are great authors enough to bring me to my senses again.

'Mr. Masters's pamphlet, printed at the expense of the Antiquarian Society in the second volume of the Archæologia.

2 "Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, nouvelle édition, augmentée de Notes et Eclaircissemens nécessaires, par M. Horace Walpole." Strawberry Hill, 1772. 4to. To the Mémoires was prefixed the following dedication to Madame du Deffand: -" L'Editeur vous consacre cette édition, comme un monument de son amitié, de son admiration, et de son respect, à vous dont les grâces, l'esprit, et le goût retracent au siècle présent le siècle de Louis XIV, et les agrémens de l'auteur de ces Mémoires.”—E. * Thomas Pownall, Esq. the antiquary, and a constant contributor to the Archæologia. Having been governor of South Carolina and other American colonies, he was always distinguished from his brother John, who was likewise an antiquary, by the title of Governor.-E.