The Duke of Cumberland has had a dangerous sore-throat, but is recovered. In one of the bitterest days that could be felt, he would go upon the course at Newmarket with the windows of his landau down. Newmarket heath, at no time of the year, is placed under the torrid zone. I can conceive a hero welcoming death, or at least despising it; but if I was covered with more laurels than a boar's head at Christmas, I should hate pain, and Ranby, and an operation. His nephew of York has been at Blenheim, where they gave him a ball, but did not put themselves to much expense in dancers; the figurantes were the maid-servants. You will not doubt my authority, when I tell you my Lady Bute was my intelligence. I heard to-day, at Sion, of some bitter verses made at Bath, on both their graces of Bedford. I have not seen them, nor, if I had them, would I send them to you before they are in print, which I conclude they will be, for I am sorry to say, scandalous abuse is not the commodity which either side is sparing of. You can conceive nothing beyond the epigrams which have been in the papers, on a pair of doves and a parrot that Lord Bute has sent to the Princess [Dowager].

I hear—but this is another of my paragraphs that I am far from giving you for sterling-that Lord Sandwich is to have the Duke of Devonshire's garter; Lord Northumberland stands against Lord Morton' for president of the Royal Society, in the room of Lord Macclesfield. As this latter article will have no bad consequences if it should prove true, you may believe it.

I

Earl Poulet is dead, and Soame, who married Mrs. Naylor's sister. You will wonder more at what I am going to tell you in the last place I am preparing, in earnest, to make you a visit-not next week, but seriously in February. After postponing it for seven idle months, you will stare at my thinking of it just after the meeting of the Parliament. Why, that is just one of my principal reasons. will stay and see the opening, and one or two divisions; the minority will be able to be the majority, or they will not: if they can, they will not want me, who want nothing of them: if they cannot, I am sure I can do them no good, and shall take my leave of them;-I mean always, to be sure, if things do not turn on a few votes: they shall not call me a deserter. In every other case, I am so sick of politics, which I have long detested, that I must bid adieu to them. I have acted the part by your brother that I thought right. He

1 Lord Morton was elected.--CROKER.

VOL. IV.

approves what I have done, and what I mean to do; so do the few I esteem, for I have notified my intention; and for the rest of the world, they may think what they please. In truth, I have a better reason, which would prescribe my setting out directly, if it was consistent with my honour. I have a return of those nightly fevers and pains in my breast, which have come for the three last years at this season change of air and a better climate are certainly necessary to me in winter. I shall thus indulge my inclinations every way. I long to see you and my Lady Hertford, and am wofully sick of the follies and distractions of this country, to which I see no end, come what changes will! Now, do you wonder any longer at my resolution? In the mean time adieu for the present!

954, TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY.

November 10, 1764.

SOH! Madam, you expect to be thanked, because you have done a very obliging thing! But I won't thank you, and I won't be obliged. It is very hard one can't come into your house and commend anything, but you must recollect it and send it after one! I will never dine in your house again; and, when I do, I will like nothing; and when I do, I will commend nothing; and when I do, you shan't remember it. You are very grateful indeed to Providence that gave you so good a memory, to stuff it with nothing but bills of fare of what everybody likes to eat and drink! I wonder you are not ashamed-I wonder you are not ashamed! Do you think there is no such thing as gluttony of the memory ?-You a Christian! A pretty account you will be able to give of yourself!—Your fine folks in France may call this friendship and attention, perhaps, but sure, if I was to go to the devil, it should be for thinking of nothing but myself, not of others, from morning to night. I would send back your temptations; but, as I will not be obliged to you for them, verily I shall retain them to punish you; ingratitude being a proper chastisement for sinful friendliness. Thine in the spirit,

PILCHARD WHITFIELD.

1 Lady Hervey, it is supposed, had sent Mr. Walpole some potted pilchards.BERRY. I have just returned from the Hôtel de Milady [Hervey]; at dinner, Lord and Lady Stormont, Mrs. Dives, Stanley, Morris, Augustus [Hervey], and myself. Never was anything so French as her dinner, and the manner of its being served. It is a charming house, and as I have rather a partiality for the French, I am very glad to have the entré. Horace Walpole, who was in town yesterday, tells me I am in great favour, &c. Earl of March to Selwyn, 20th October 1762.-CUNNINGHAM.

955. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1764.

CHURCHILL the poet is dead,-to the great joy of the Ministry and the Scotch, and to the grief of very few indeed, I believe; for such a friend is not only a dangerous, but a ticklish possession. The next revolution would have introduced the other half of England into his satires, for no party could have promoted him, and woe had betided those who had left him to shift for himself on Parnassus ! He had owned that his pen itched to attack Mr. Pitt and Charles Townshend; and neither of them are men to have escaped by their steadiness and uniformity. This meteor blazed scarce four years; for his 'Rosciad' was subsequent to the accession of the present King, before which his name was never heard of; and what is as remarkable, he died in nine days after his antagonist, Hogarth.' Were I Charon, I should, without scruple, give the best place in my boat to the latter, who was an original genius. Churchill had great powers; but, besides the facility of outrageous satire, almost all his compositions were wild and extravagant, executed on no plan, and void of the least correction. Many of his characters were obscure even to the present age; and some of the most known were so unknown to him, that he has missed all resemblance; of which Lord Sandwich is a striking instance. He died of a drunken debauch at Calais, on a visit to his friend Wilkes, who is going to write notes to his Works. But he had lived long enough for himself, at least for his reputation and his want of it, for his works began to decrease considerably in vent. He has left some Sermons, for he wrote even sermons; but lest they should do any good, and for fear they should not do some hurt, he had prepared a Dedication of them to Bishop Warburton, whose arrogance and venom had found a proper corrector in Churchill. I don't know whether this man's fame had extended to Florence; but you may judge of the noise he made in this part of the world by the following trait, which is a pretty instance of that good breeding on which the French pique themselves. My sister'

1 Mr. Hogarth is said to be dying and of a broken heart. It grieves me much. He says that he believes I wrote that paper [The North Briton], but he forgives me, for he must own I am a thorough good humoured fellow, only Pitt-bitten. Wilkes to Earl Temple, November 23rd, 1762.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 A mistake for Boulogne.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 Lady Maria Walpole, only child of Sir Robert Walpole Earl of Orford, by his second wife, and married to Charles, son [by Mrs. Oldfield] of General Charles Churchill.-WALPOLE.

and Mr. Churchill are in France; a Frenchman asked him if he was Churchill le fameux poëte? "Non"-"Ma foi, monsieur, tant pis

pour vous!"

Wilkes and Churchill, you know, were father and mother of D'Eon. This madman has begotten another, or rather has transmuted his old enemy De Vergy into an ally. The latter having been ten months in prison for debt, has been redeemed by D'Eon, and in gratitude, or in concert, has printed (and sent about) a French North Briton, in which he pretends to confess that he was brought over by Monsieur de Guerchy to cut D'Eon's throat. This legend is so ill put together that, on the face of it, it confutes itself. However, he has tacked an affidavit or oath to it; and I hear within these three days he has deposed the same on oath before Judge Wilmot. I am not positive that the last is fact, or whether it does not grow out of the printed affidavit, which I have read. However, the whole embroil is vexatious enough to poor Guerchy, who is in a country where to have any scandal believed it is not necessary to swear to it. His very being a foreigner would induce half this good town to supply the affidavit, without knowing anything of the matter.

Strawberry Hill, November 25th.

I had locked up this letter in town and forgot it, when I went to Park-place. It does not signify; my news were of no consequence and may as well come a week later as not. D'Eon has been cited to receive his sentence in the King's Bench, but absconded. That Court issued a search-warrant for him, and a house was broken open, but he was not there. Thus that interlude is almost concluded. Wilkes is, I hear, going to Italy, so you will probably see one of these Sacheverells.

Sir Thomas Clarke, the Master of the Rolls, is dead, and makes some alteration in politics. Norton,' a man whom the world has heard of, and I suppose you too, succeeds him, and Charles Yorke reaccepts the Attorney-General's place. This will decrease our illstarred minority by some votes; but England cannot pay its friends so well as the Ministers of England can pay theirs. Well, it all will expedite my journey to France, whither I have so long designed and wished to go, and for which I am in earnest preparing.

I have been in town to hear Manzoli.' He is not so great as I

1 Sir Fletcher Norton, afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons, and [1782] Baron Grantley [died 1789].-WALPOLE.

2 Giovanni Manzoli, having attained much celebrity in Italy and Spain, arrived

expected, nor has such pleasing tones as Elisi, though a very fine singer. The Duke of York came into our box, and said a thousand gracious and kind things to me of you, and how sorry he had been to disappoint you in not returning to Florence. I told him how very happy I should make you by this account of his Royal Highness's goodness. Prince William is Duke of Gloucester, with twelve thousand pounds a-year, like the Duke of York. The papers persisted in creating him Duke of Lancaster. I will tell you my reflection on this: What authority we should think it, if we could meet with a 'Daily Advertiser' printed in the reign of Edward I.! if it told us he had created one of his sons Duke of Twickenham, should not we say, that must be true; a paper printed in the capital could not assert a fact which every mortal could contradict? Yet, how are our old Histories written? By monks at fifty or an hundred miles perhaps from the metropolis, when there was no post, scarce a highway those reverend fathers must have been excellently wellinformed! I scarcely believe even a battle they relate never their details.

Adieu! my dear sir; it will not be three months before I am nearer to you by some miles, and with no sea betwixt us-but I fear we shall not meet yet; I don't know.

P.S. I ought to tell you how excessively Manzoli was applauded.

956. TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 25, 1764.

How could you be so kind, my dear lord, as to recollect Dr. Blanchard, after so long an interval. It will make me still more cautious of giving recommendations to you, instead of drawing upon the credit you give me. I saw Mr. Stanley last night at the Opera, who made his court extremely to me by what he said of you. It was our first opera, and I went to town to hear Manzoli, who did not

here in 1764. Dr. Burney thus describes his début : "The expectations which the vast reputation of this performer had excited were so great, that at the opening of the theatre in November, with the pasticcio of Ezio, it was with much difficulty I obtained a place, after waiting two hours at the door. Manzoli's voice was the most powerful and voluminous soprano that had been heard on our stage since the time of Farinelli; and his manner of singing was grand and full of dignity. The lovers of music in London were more unanimous in approving his voice and talents than those of any other singer within my memory." Manzoli remained in London only one season.-ED., 1843.