three or four days. Mr. Pitt is exceedingly well-disposed to your brother, talks highly of him, and of the injustice done to him, and they are to meet on the first convenient opportunity. Thus much for politics, which, however, I cannot quit, without again telling you how sensible I am of all your goodness and friendly offers.

The court, independent of politics, makes a strange figure. The recluse life led here at Richmond, which is carried to such an excess of privacy and economy, that the Queen's friseur waits on them at dinner, and that four pounds only of beef are alllowed for their soup, disgusts all sorts of people. The drawing-rooms are abandoned: Lady Buckingham' was the only woman there on Sunday se'nnight. The Duke of York was commanded home. They stopped his remittances, and then were alarmed on finding he still was somehow or other supplied with money. The two next Princes are at the Pavilions at Hampton Court, in very private circumstances indeed; no household is to be established for Prince William, who accedes nearer to the malecontents every day. In short, one hears of nothing but dissatisfaction, which in the city rises almost to treason.

Mrs. Cornwallis has found that her husband has been dismissed from the bedchamber this twelvemonth with no notice: his appointments were even paid; but on this discovery they are stopped."

You ask about what I had mentioned in the beginning of my letter, the dissensions in the house of Grafton. The world says they are actually parted: I do not believe that; but I will tell you exactly all I know. His grace, it seems, for many months has kept one Nancy

Commons, to go there free from stipulations, about every question under consideration, as well as to come out of the House as free as I entered it. Having seen the close of last session, and the system of that great war, in which my share of the ministry was so largely arraigned, given up by silence in a full House, I have little thoughts of beginning the world again upon a new centre of union. Your grace will not, I trust, wonder if, after so recent and so strange a phenomenon in politics, I have no disposition to quit the free condition of a man standing single, and daring to appeal to his country at large, upon the soundness of his principles and the rectitude of his conduct." See Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 296.-E.

a

Mary Anne Drury, wife of John, second Earl of Buckinghamshire.-E.

b Mr. Walpole gives an unfair turn to this circumstance. The stopping the Duke of York's remittances, and ordering him home, was a measure of prudence, not to say of necessity, for that young Prince's extravagance abroad had made a public clamour; so much so, that a popular preacher delivered, about this time, a sermon on the following text: "The younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living." St. Luke, xv. 13. The letters and even the publications of the day allude to this extravagance, and surely it was the duty of his brother and sovereign to repress an indiscretion which occasioned such observations.-C.

e William, created, in November, 1764, Duke of Gloucester; and Henry created, in 1766, Duke of Cumberland. The injustice of Mr. Walpole's insinuations will be evident, when it is remembered that, at the date of this letter, the eldest of these Princes was but twenty, and the other eighteen years of age, and that they were both created Dukes, and had households established for them as soon as they respectively came of age.-C.

d Mary, daughter of Charles, second Viscount Townshend, wife of Edward, sixth son of the third Lord Cornwallis. I suspect that here again Mr. Walpole's accusation is not correct. General Cornwallis had been groom of the bedchamber to George II., and was continued in the same office by the successor, till he was appointed Governor of Gibraltar, when Mr. Henry Seymour was appointed in his room.-C.

Parsons, one of the commonest creatures in London, one much liked, but out of date. He is certainly grown immoderately attached to her, so much, that it has put an end to all his decorum. She was publicly with him at Ascot races, and is now in the forest; I do not know if actually in the house. At first, I concluded this was merely stratagem to pique the Duchess; but it certainly goes further. Before the Duchess laid in, she had a little house on Richmond-Hill, whither the Duke sometimes, though seldom, came to dine. During her month of confinement, he was scarcely in town at all, nor did he even come up to see the Duke of Devonshire. The Duchess is certainly gone to her father. She affected to talk of the Duke familiarly, and said she would call in the forest as she went to Lord Ravensworth's. I suspect she is gone thither to recriminate and complain. She did. not talk of returning till October. It was said the Duke was going to France, but I hear no more of it. Thus the affair stands, as far as

I or your brother, or the Cavendishes, know; nor have we heard one word from either Duke or Duchess of any rupture. I hope she will not be so weak as to part, and that her father and mother will prevent it. It is not unlucky that she has seen none of the Bedfords lately, who would be glad to blow the coals. Lady Waldegrave was with her one day, but I believe not alone.

There was nobody at Park-place but Lord and Lady William Campbell. Old Sir John Barnard is dead; for other news, I have none. I beg you will always say a great deal for me to my lady. As I trouble you with such long letters, it would be unreasonable to overwhelm her too. You know my attachment to every thing that is yours. My warmest wish is to see an end of the present unhappy posture of public affairs, which operate so shockingly even on our private. If I can once get quit of them, it will be no easy matter to involve me in them again, however difficult it may be, as you have found, to escape them. Nobody is more criminal in my eyes than George Grenville, who had it in his power to prevent what has happened to your brother. Nothing could be more repugnant to all the principles he has ever most avowedly and publicly professed-but he has opened my eyes-such a mixture of vanity and meanness, of falsehood and hypocrisy, is not common even in this country! It is a ridiculous embarras after all the rest, and yet you may conceive the distress I am under about Lady Blandford,' and the negotiations I am forced to employ to avoid meeting him there, which I am determined not to do.

This scandal has been immortalized by Junius.-C.

At Wakefield Lodge, in Whittlebury Forest, Northamptonshire.-E.

Lord William, brother of General Conway's lady, and third brother of the fifth Duke of Argyle; his wife was Sarah, daughter of W. Teard, Esq. of Charleston.-E.

Father of the city, which he had represented in six parliaments. He had been a very leading member of the House of Commons, and was much deferred to on all matters of commerce.-C.

See antè, p. 272.

f Maria Catherine de Jonge, a Dutch Lady, widow of William Godolphin, Marquis of Blandford, and sister of Isabella Countess of Denbigh; they were near neighbours and intimate acquaintances of Mr. Walpole's.-C.

I shall be able, when I see you, to divert you with some excellent stories of a principal figure on our side; but they are too long and too many for a letter, especially of a letter so prolix as this. Adieu, my dear lord!

SIR,

TO THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT.a

Arlington Street, Aug. 29, 1764.

As you have always permitted me to offer you the trifles printed at my press, I am glad to have one to send you of a little more consequence than some in which I have had myself too great a share. The singularity of the work I now trouble you with is greater merit than its rarity; though there are but two hundred copies, of which only half are mine. If it amuses an hour or two of your idle time, I am overpaid. My greatest ambition is to pay that respect which every Englishman owes to your character and services; and therefore you must not wonder if an inconsiderable man seizes every opportunity, however awkwardly, of assuring you, Sir, that he is,

Your most devoted, &c.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1764.

DEAR SIR,

AMONG the multitude of my papers I have mislaid, though not lost, the account you was so good as to give me of your ancestor Tuer, as a painter. I have been hunting for it to insert it in the new edition. of my Anecdotes. It is not very reasonable to save myself trouble at the expense of yours; but perhaps you can much sooner turn to your notes, than I find your letter. Will you be so good as to send me soon all the particulars you recollect of him. I have a print of Sir Lionel Jenkins from his painting.

I did not send you any more orange flowers, as you desired; for the continued rains rotted all the latter blow: but I had made a vast pot-pourri, from whence you shall have as much as you please, when I have the pleasure of seeing you here, which I should be glad might be in the beginning of October, if it suits your convenience. At the same time you shall have a print of Lord Herbert, whch I think I did not send you.

P.S. I trust you will bring me a volume or two of your MSS. of which I am most thirsty.

a Now first collected. b The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. See antè, p. 329.-E.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

September 1, 1764.

I SEND you the reply to the Counter-address; it is the lowest of all Grub-street, and I hear is treated so. They have nothing better to say, than that I am in love with you, have been so these twenty years, and am no giant. I am a very constant old swain: they might have made the years above thirty; it is so long I have the same unalterable friendship for you, independent of being near relations and bred up together. For arguments, so far from any new ones, the man gives up or denies most of the former. I own I am rejoiced not only to see how little they can defend themselves, but to know the extent of their malice and revenge. They must be sorely hurt, when reduced to such scurrility. Yet there is one paragraph, however, which I think is of George Grenville's own inditing. It says, "I flattered, solicited, and then basely deserted him." I no more expected to hear myself accused of flattery, than of being in love with you; but I shall not laugh at the former as I do at the latter. Nothing but his own consummate vanity could suppose I had ever stooped to flatter him! or that any man was connected with him, but who was low enough to be paid for it. Where has he one such attachment?

You have your share too. The miscarriage at Rochfort now directly laid at your door! repeated insinuations against your courage. But I trust you will mind them no more than I do, excepting the fluttery, which I shall not forget, I promise them.

I came to town yesterday on some business, and found a case. When I opened it, what was there but my Lady Ailesbury's most beautiful of all pictures ! Don't imagine I can think it intended for me; or that, if it could be so, I would hear of such a thing. It is far above what can be parted with, or accepted. I am serious-there is no letting such a picture, when one has accomplished it, go from where one can see it every day. I should take the thought equally kind and friendly, but she must let me bring it back, if I am not to do any thing else with it, and it came by mistake. I am not so selfish as to deprive her of what she must have such pleasure in seeing. I shall have more satisfaction in seeing it at Park-place; where, in spite of the worst kind of malice, I shall persist in saying my heart is fixed. They may ruin me, but no calumny shall make me desert you. Indeed your case would be completely cruel, if it was more honourable for your relations and friends to abandon you than to stick to you. My option is made, and I scorn their abuse as much as I despise their power.

I think of coming to you on Thursday next for a day or two, unless your house is full, or you hear from me to the contrary. Adieu! Yours ever.

A pamphlet written by Mr. Walpole, in answer to another, called "An Address to the Public on the late Dismissal of a General Officer."

b A landscape executed in worsteds by Lady Ailesbury. It is now at Strawberry Hill.

SIR,

TO THE REV. DR. BIRCH.

September 3, 1764.

I AM extremely obliged to you for the favour of your letter, and the enclosed curious one of Sir William Herbert. It would have made a very valuable addition to Lord Herbert's Life, which is now too late; as I have no hope that Lord Powis will permit any more to be printed. There were indeed so very few, and but half of those for my share, that I have not it in my power to offer you a copy, having disposed of my part. It is really a pity that so singular a curiosity should not be public; but I must not complain, as Lord Powis has been so good as to indulge my request thus far. I am, Sir,

Your much obliged humble servant,

H. W.

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 5, 1764.

MY DEAR LORD, THOUGH I wrote to you but a few days ago, I must trouble you with another line now. Dr. Blanchard, a Cambridge divine, and who has a good paternal estate in Yorkshire, is on his travels, which he performs as a gentleman; and, therefore, wishes not to have his profession noticed. He is very desirous of paying his respects to you, and of being countenanced by you while he stays at Paris. It will much oblige a particular friend of mine, and consequently me, if you will favour him with your attention. Every body experiences your goodness, but in the present case I wish to attribute it a little to my request.

I asked you about two books, ascribed to Madame de Boufflers. If they are hers, I should be glad to know where she found, that Oliver Cromwell took orders and went over to Holland to fight the Dutch. As she has been on the spot where he reigned (which is generally very strong evidence), her countrymen will believe her in spite of our teeth; and Voltaire, who loves all anecdotes that never happened, because they prove the manners of the times, will hurry it into the first history he publishes. I, therefore, enter my caveat against it; not as interested for Oliver's character, but to save the world from one more fable. I know Madame de Boufflers will attribute this scruple to my partiality to Cromwell (and, to be sure, if we must be ridden, there is some satisfaction when the man knows how to ride). I remember one night at the Duke of Grafton's, a bust of Cromwell was produced: Madame de Boufflers, without uttering a syllable, gave me the most speaking look imaginable, as much as to say, Is it possible you can admire this man! Apropos: I am sorry to say

the