Northampton, Lord Suffolk, and Lord Grey. No sitters-by, but the Princess, the Duchess of Bedford, and Lady Bute. If it had not been for this ball, I don't know how I should have furnished a decent letter. Pamphlets on Mr. Pitt are the whole conversation, and none of them worth sending cross the water: at least I, who am said to write some of them, think so; by which you may perceive I am not much flattered with the imputation. There must be new personages at least, before I write on any side. Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle! I should as soon think of informing the world that Miss Chudleigh is no vestal. You will like better to see some words which Mr. Gray has writ, at Miss Speed's request, to an old air of Geminiani: the thought is from the French. I. Thyrsis, when we parted, swore And the buds that deck the thorn? II. Idle notes! untimely green! Speak not always winter past. Cease my doubts, my fears to move; Adieu, Madam, your most faithful servant. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE." Nov. 30, 1761. I AM much obliged to you, Sir, for the specimen of letters you have been so good as to send me. The composition is touching, and the printing very beautiful. I am still more pleased with the design of the work; nothing gives so just an idea of an age as genuine letters; nay, history waits for its last seal from them. I have an immense collection in my hands, chiefly of the very time on which you are engaged; but they are not my own. If I had received your commands in summer when I was at Strawberry Hill, and at leisure, I might have picked you out something to your purpose; at present I have not time, from Parliament and business, to examine them: yet to show you, Sir, that I have great desire to oblige you and contribute to your work, I send you the following singular paper, which I have obtained from Dr. Charles Lyttelton, Now first collected. Probably Sir David's "Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the Reigns of James the First and Charles the First," which were published in 1766, from the originals in the Advocates' Library.-E. Dean of Exeter, whose name I will beg you to mention in testimony of his kindness, and as evidence for the authenticity of the letter, which he copied from the original in the hands of Bishop Tanner, in the year 1733. It is from Anne of Denmark, to the Marquis of Buckingham. "ANNA R., "My kind dogge, if I have any power or credit with you, let me have a trial of it at this time, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the King, that Sir Walter Raleigh's life may not be called in question. If you do it, so that the success answer my expectation, assure yourself that I will take it extraordinarily kindly at your hands, and rest one that wisheth you well, and desires you to continue still as you have been, a true servant to your master." I have begun Mr. Hume's history, and got almost through the first volume. It is amusing to one who knows a little of his own country, but I fear would not teach much to a beginner; details are so much avoided by him, and the whole rather skimmed than elucidated. I cannot say I think it very carefully performed. Dr. Robertson's work I should expect would be more accurate. P. S. There has lately appeared, in four little volumes, a Chinese Tale, called Hau Kiou Choaan, not very entertaining from the incidents, but I think extremely so from the novelty of the manner and the genuine representation of their customs." TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, Dec. 8, 1761. I RETURN you the list of prints, and shall be glad you will bring me all to which I have affixed this mark X. The rest I have; yet the expense of the whole list would not ruin me. Lord Farnham, who, I believe, departed this morning, brings you the list of the Duke of Devonshire's pictures. I have been told that Mr. Bourk's history was of England, not of Ireland; I am glad it is the latter, for I am now in Mr. Hume's England, and would fain read no more. I not only know what has been written, but what would be written. Our story is so exhausted, that to make it new, they really make it new. Mr. Hume has exalted Edward the Second, and depressed Edward the Third. The next historian, I suppose, will make James the First a hero, and geld Charles the Second. Fingal is come out; I have not yet got through it; not but it is This pleasing little novel, in which the manners of the Chinese are painted to the life, was a translation from the Chinese by Mr. Wilkinson, and revised for publication by Dr. Percy.-E. very fine-yet I cannot at once compass an epic poem now. It tires me to death to read how many ways a warrior is like the moon, or the sun, or a rock, or a lion, or the ocean. Fingal is a brave collection of similes, and will serve all the boys at Eton and Westminster for these twenty years. I will trust you with a secret, but you must not disclose it; I should be ruined with my Scotch friends; in short, I cannot believe it genuine; I cannot believe a regular poem of six books has been preserved, uncorrupted, by oral tradition, from times before Christianity was introduced into the island. What! preserved unadulterated by savages dispersed among mountains, and so often driven from their dens, so wasted by wars civil and foreign! Has one man ever got all by heart? I doubt it; were parts preserved by some, other parts by others? Mighty lucky, that the tradition was never interrupted, nor any part lost-not a verse, not a measure, not the sense! luckier and luckier. I have been extremely qualified myself lately for this Scotch memory; we have had nothing but a coagulation of rains, fogs, and frosts, and though they have clouded all understanding, I suppose, if I had tried, I should have found that they thickened, and gave great consistence to my remembrance. You want news-I must make it, if I send it. To change the dulness of the scene I went to the play, where I had not been this winter. They are so crowded, that though I went before six, I got no better place than a fifth row, where I heard very ill, and was pent for five hours without a soul near me that I knew. It was Cymbeline, and appeared to me as long as if every body in it went really to Italy in every act, and came back again. With a few pretty passages and a scene or two, it is so absurd and tiresome, that I am persuaded Garrick * TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE. b December 21, 1761. YOUR specimen pleases me, and I give you many thanks for promising me the continuation. You will, I hope, find less trouble with printers than I have done. Just when my book was, I thought, ready to appear, my printer ran away, and has left it very imperfect. This is the fourth I have tried, and I own it discourages me. Our low people are so corrupt and such knaves, that being cheated and disappointed are all the fruits of attempting to amuse oneself or others. Literature must struggle with many difficulties. They who print for profit print only for profit; we, who print to entertain or instruct others, are the bubbles of our designs. Defrauded, abused, pirated— don't you think, Sir, one need have resolution? Mine is very nearly exhausted. a The rest of this letter is lost. b Now first collected. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1761. Past midnight. I AM this minute come home, and find such a delightful letter from you, that I cannot help answering it, and telling you so before I sleep. You need not affirm, that your ancient wit and pleasantry are revived; your letter is but five and twenty, and I will forgive any vanity, that is so honest, and so well founded. Ireland I see produces wonders of more sorts than one; if my Lord Anson was to go lordlieutenant, I suppose he would return a ravisher. How different am I from this state of revivification! Even such talents as I had are far from blooming again; and while my friends, or cotemporaries, or predecessors, are rising to preside over the fame of this age, I seem a mere antediluvian; must live upon what little stock of reputation I had acquired, and indeed grow so indifferent, that I can only wonder how those, whom I thought as old as myself, can interest themselves so much about a world, whose faces I hardly know. You recover your spirits and wit, Rigby is grown a speaker, Mr. Bentley a poet, while I am nursing one or two gouty friends, and sometimes lamenting that I am likely to survive the few I have left. Nothing tempts me to launch out again; every day teaches me how much I was mistaken in my own parts, and I am in no danger now but of thinking I am grown too wise; for every period of life has its mistake. Mr. Bentley's relation to Lord Rochester by the St. Johns is not new to me, and you had more reason to doubt of their affinity by the former marrying his mistress, than to ascribe their consanguinity to it. I shall be glad to see the epistle: are not "The Wishes," to be acted? remember me, if they are printed; and I shall thank you for this new list of prints. I have mentioned names enough in this letter to lead me naturally to new ill usage I have received. Just when I thought my book finished, my printer ran away, and had left eighteen sheets in the middle of the book untouched, having amused me with sending proofs. He had got into debt, and two girls with child; being two, he could not marry two Hannahs. You see my luck; I had been kind to this fellow; in short, if the faults of my life had been punished as severely as my merits have been, I should be the most unhappy of beings; but let us talk of something else. I have picked up at Mrs. Dunch's auction the sweetest Petitot in the world-the very picture of James the Second, that he gave Mrs. Godfrey, and I paid but six guineas and a half for it. I will not tell you how vast a commission I had given; but I will own, that about * Arabella Churchill, sister of the great Duke of Marlborough, was the mistress of James the Second while Duke of York, by whom she had four children; the celebrated Duke of Berwick, the Duke of Albemarle, and two daughters. She afterwards became the wife of Colonel Charles Godfrey, master of the jewel office, and died in 1714, leaving by him two daughters, Charlotte Viscountess Falmouth, and Elizabeth, wife of Edmund Dunch, Esq.-E. the hour of sale, I drove about the door to find what likely bidders there were. The first coach I saw was the Chudleighs; could I help concluding, that a maid of honour, kept by a duke, would purchase the portrait of a duke kept by a maid of honour-but I was mistaken. The Oxendens reserved the best pictures; the fine china, and even the diamonds, sold for nothing; for nobody has a shilling. We shall be beggars if we don't conquer Peru within this half year. If you are acquainted with my Lady Barrymore, pray tell her that in less than two hours t'other night the Duke of Cumberland lost four hundred and fifty pounds at loo; Miss Pelham won three hundred, and I the rest. However, in general, loo is extremely gone to decay; I am to play at Princess Emily's to-morrow for the first time this winter, and it is with difficulty she has made a party. My Lady Pomfret is dead on the road to Bath; and unless the deluge stops, and the fogs disperse, I think we shall all die. A few days ago, on the cannon firing for the King going to the House, somebody asked what it was for? M. de Choiseul replied, "Apparemment, c'est qu'on voit le soleil." Shall I fill up the rest of my paper with some extempore lines that I wrote t'other night on Lady Mary Coke having St. Anthony's fire in her cheek? You will find nothing in them to contradict what I have said in the former part of my letter; they rather confirm it. No rouge you wear, nor can a dart From Love's bright quiver wound your heart. But gives you mightier power to please. Willis is dead, and Pratt is to be chief justice; Mr. Yorke attorney general; solicitor, I don't know who. Good night! the watchman cries, past one! TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, Dec. 30, 1761. I HAVE received two more letters from you since I wrote last week, and I like to find by them that you are so well and so happy. As nothing has happened of change in my situation but a few more months passed, I have nothing to tell you new of myself. Time does not sharpen my passions or pursuits, and the experience I have had |