George, and the prerogative is to be exalted as high as ever, by being obliged to give up the Primate. There! I think I have told you volumes: yet I know you will not be content, you will want to know something of the war, and of America; but, I assure you, it is not the bon-ton to talk of either this week. We think not of the former, and of the latter we should think to very little purpose, for we have not heard a syllable more; Braddock's defeat still remains in the situation of the longest battle that ever was fought with nobody. Content your English spirit with knowing that there are very near three thousand French prisoners in England, taken out of several ships.

MY DEAR SIR,

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Oct. 7, 1755.

NOBODY living feels more for you than I do: nobody knows better either the goodness and tenderness of your heart, or the real value of the person you have lost. I cannot flatter myself that any thing I could say would comfort you under an affliction so well founded; but I should have set out, and endeavoured to share your concern, if Mrs. Trevor had not told me that you were going into Cheshire. I will only say, that if you think change of place can contribute at all to divert your melancholy, you know where you would be most welcome; and whenever you will come to Strawberry Hill, you will, at least, if you do not find a comforter, find a most sincere friend that pities your distress, and would do any thing upon earth to alleviate your misfortune. If you can listen yet to any advice, let me recommend to you to give up all thoughts of Greatworth; you will never be able to support life there any more: let me look out for some little box for you in my neighbourhood. You can live nowhere where you will be more beloved; and you will there always have it in your power to enjoy company or solitude, as you like. I have long wished to get you so far back into the world, and now it is become absolutely necessary for your health and peace. I will say no more, lest too long a letter should be either troublesome or make you think it necessary to answer; but do not, till you find it more agreeable to vent your grief this way than in any other. I am, my good Sir, with hearty concern and affection, yours most sincerely.

TO RICHARD BENTLEY, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Oct. 19, 1755.

Do you love royal quarrels? You may be served-I know you don't love an invasion-nay, that even passes my taste; it will make

a His sister, Miss Harriet Montagu.

too much party. In short, the lady dowager Prudence begins to step a little over the threshold of that discretion which she has always hitherto so sanctimoniously observed. She is suspected of strange whims; so strange, as neither to like more German subsidies or more German matches. A strong faction, professedly against the treaties,* openly against Mr. Fox, and covertly under the banners of the aforesaid lady Prudence, arm from all quarters against the opening of the session. Her ladyship's eldest boy declares violently against being bewolfenbuttled a word which I don't pretend to understand, as it is not in Mr. Johnson's new dictionary. There! now I have been as enigmatic as ever I have accused you of being; and hoping you will not be able to expound my German hieroglyphics, I proceed to tell you in plain English that we are going to be invaded. I have within this day or two seen grandees of ten, twenty, and thirty thousand pounds a-year, who are in a mortal fright; consequently, it would be impertinent in much less folk to tremble, and accordingly they don't. At court there is no doubt but an attempt will be made before Christmas. I find valour is like virtue: impregnable as they boast themselves, it is discovered that on the first attack both lie strangely open! They are raising more men, camps are to be formed in Kent and Sussex, the Duke of Newcastle is frightened out of his

a Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to Mr. Dayrolles, of the 4th of this month, says, "the next session, which now draws very near, will, I believe, be a very troublesome one; and I really think it very doubtful whether the subsidiary treaties with Russia and Cassel will be carried or not. To be sure, much may be said against both; but yet I dread the consequences of rejecting them by Parliament, since they are made."-E.

This is an allusion to a contemplated marriage between the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Third, and a daughter of the Duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle. The following is Lord Waldegrave's account of this project:-" An event happened about the middle of the summer, which engaged Leicester House still deeper in faction than they at first intended. The Prince of Wales was just entering into his eighteenth year; and being of a modest, sober disposition, with a healthy, vigorous constitution, it might reasonably be supposed that a matrimonial companion might be no unacceptable amusement. The Duchess of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle, with her two unmarried daughters, waited on his Majesty at Hanover. The elder, both as to person and understanding, was a most accomplished Princess: the King was charmed with her cheerful, modest, and sensible behaviour, and wished to make her his grand-daughter, being too old to make her his wife. I remember his telling me, with great eagerness, that had he been only twenty years younger, she would never have been refused by a Prince of Wales, but should at once have been Queen of England. Now, whether his Majesty spoke seriously is very little to the purpose; his grandson's happiness was undoubtedly his principal object; and he was desirous the match might be concluded before his own death, that the Princess of Wales should have no temptation to do a job for her relations, by marrying her son to one of the Saxe Gotha family, who might not have the amiable accomplishments of the Princess of Wolfenbuttle. The King's intentions, it may easily be imagined, were not agreeable to the Princess of Wales. She knew the temper of the Prince her son; that he was by nature indolent, hated business, but loved a domestic life, and would make an excellent husband, She knew also that the young Princess, having merit and understanding equal to her beauty, must in a short time have the greatest influence over him. In which circumstances, it may naturally be concluded that her Royal Highness did every thing in her power to prevent the match. The Prince of Wales was taught to believe that he was to be made a sacrifice merely to gratify the King's private interest in the electorate of Hanover. The young Princess was most cruelly misrepresented; many even of her perfections were aggravated into faults; his Royal Highness implicitly believing every idle tale and improbable aspersion, till his prejudice against her amounted to aversion itself." Memoirs, p. 39.-E.

wits, which, though he has lost so often, you know he always recovers, and as fresh as ever. Lord Egmont despairs of the commonwealth; and I am going to fortify my castle of Strawberry, according to an old charter I should have had for embattling and making a deep ditch. But here am I laughing when I really ought to cry, both with my public eye and my private one. I have told you what I think ought to sluice my public eye; and your private eye too will moisten, when I tell you that poor Miss Harriet Montagu is dead. She died about a fortnight ago; but having nothing else to tell you, I would not send a letter so far with only such melancholy newsand so, you will say, I stayed till Icould tell still more bad news. The truth is, I have for some time had two letters of yours to answer: it is three weeks since I wrote to you, and one begins to doubt whether one shall ever be to write again. I will hope all my best hopes; for I have no sort of intention at this time of day of finishing either as a martyr or a hero. I rather intend to live and record both those professions, if need be; and I have no inclination to scuttle barefoot after a Duke of Wolfenbuttle's army as Philip de Comines says he saw their graces of Exeter and Somerset trudge after the Duke of Burgundy's. The invasion, though not much in fashion yet, begins, like Moses's rod, to swallow other news, both political and suicidical. Our politics I have sketched out to you, and can only add, that Mr. Fox's ministry does not as yet promise to be of long duration. When it was first thought that he had got the better of the Duke of Newcastle, Charles Townshend said admirably, that he was sure the Duchess, like the old Cavaliers, would make a vow not to shave her beard till the restoration.

I can't recollect the least morsel of a fess or chevron of the Boynets: they did not happen to enter into any extinct genealogy for whose welfare I interest myself. I sent your letter to Mr. Chute, who is still under his own vine: Mr. Müntz is still with him, recovering of a violent fever. Adieu! If memoirs don't grow too memorable, I think this season will produce a large crop.

P.S. I believe I scarce ever mentioned to you last winter the follies of the Opera: the impertinences of a great singer were too old and common a topic. I must mention them now, when they rise to any improvement in the character of national folly. The Mingotti, a noble figure, a great mistress of music, and a most incomparable actress, surpassed any thing I ever saw for the extravagance of her humours. She never sung above one night in three, from a fever upon her temper: and never would act at all when Ricciarelli, the

The following is Dr. Burney's account:-" Upon the success of Jomelli's Andromaca' a damp was thrown by the indisposition of Mingotti, during which Frasi was called upon to play her part in that opera; when suspicion arising, that Mingotti's was a mere dramatic and political cold, the public was much out of humour, till she resumed her function in Metastasio's admirable drama of Demofoonte,' in which she acquired more applause, and augmented her theatrical consequence beyond any period of her performance in England."-E.

first man, was to be in dialogue with her. Her fevers grew so high, that the audience caught them, and hissed her more than once: she herself once turned and hissed again-Tit pro tat geminat rov S'añaμsiCoμevn•—Well, among the treaties which a secretary of state has negotiated this summer, he has contracted for a succedaneum to the Mingotti. In short, there is a woman hired to sing when the other shall be out of humour!

Here is a "World" by Lord Chesterfield: the first part is very pretty, till it runs into witticism. I have marked the passages I particularly like.

You would not draw Henry IV. at a siege for me: pray don't draw Louis XV.c

TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.d

Arlington Street, October 20, 1755.

You know, my dear Sir, that I do not love to have you taken unprepared: the last visit I announced to you was of the Lord Dacre of the South and of the Lady Baroness, his spouse: the next company you may expect will be composed of the Prince of Soubise and twelve thousand French; though, as winter is coming on, they will scarce stay in the country, but hasten to London. I need not protest to you I believe, that I am serious, and that an invasion before Christmas will certainly be attempted; you will believe me at the first word. It is a little hard, however! they need not envy us General Braddock's laurels; they were not in such quantity!

tell

Parliamentary and subsidiary politics are in great ferment. I could you much if I saw you; but I will not while you stay there—yet, as I am a true friend and not to be changed by prosperity, I can't neglect offering you my services when I am censé to be well with a minister. It is so long since I was, and I believe so little a while that I shall be so, (to be sure, I mean that he will be minister,) that I must faire valoir my interest, while I have any-in short, shall I get you one of these new independent companies?-Hush! don't tell Mr. Müntz how powerful I am: his warlike spirit will want to coincide with my ministerial one; and it would be very inconvenient to the Lords Castlecomers to have him knocked on the head before he had finished all the strawberries and vines that we lust after.

I had a note from Gray, who is still at Stoke; and he desired I would tell you, that he has continued pretty well. Do come. Adieu!

a "Ricciarelli was a neat and pleasing performer, with a clear, flexible, and silvertoned voice; but so much inferior to Mingotti, both in singing and acting, that he was never in very high favour." Burney.-E.

b No. 146, Advice to the Ladies on their return to the country.-E.

C

Alluding to the subject Mr. Walpole had proposed to him for a picture, in the letter of the 15th of August, and to the then expected invasion of England by Louis XV. d Now first printed.

Lottery tickets rise: subsidiary treaties under par-I don't say, no price. Lord Robert Bertie, with a company of the Guards, has thrown himself into Dover castle; don't they sound very war-full?

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 27, 1755.

WHEN the newspapers swarm with our military preparations at home, with encampments, fire-ships, floating castles at the mouths of the great rivers, &c. in short, when we expect an invasion, you would chide, or be disposed to chide me, if I were quite silent-and yet, what can I tell you more than that an invasion is threatened? that sixteen thousand men are about Dunkirk, and that they are assembling great quantities of flat-bottomed boats! Perhaps they will attempt some landing; they are certainly full of resentment; they broke the peace, took our forts and built others on our boundaries; we did not bear it patiently; we retook two forts, attacked or have been going to attack others, and have taken vast numbers of their ships: this is the state of the provocation-what is more provoking, for once we have not sent twenty or thirty thousand men to Flanders on whom they might vent their revenge. Well! then they must come here, and perhaps invite the Pretender to be of the party; not in a very popular light for him, to be brought by the French in revenge of a national war. You will ask me, if we are alarmed? the people not at all so: a minister or two, who are subject to alarms, are-and that is no bad circumstance. We are as much an island as ever, and I think a much less exposed one than we have been for many years. Our fleet is vast; our army at home, and ready, and two-thirds stronger than when we were threatened in 1744; the season has been the wettest that ever has been known, consequently the roads not very invadeable and there is the additional little circumstance of the late rebellion defeated; I believe I may reckon too, Marshal Saxe dead. You see our situation is not desperate: in short, we escaped in '44, and when the rebels were at Derby in '45; we must have bad luck indeed, if we fall now!

Our Parliament meets in a fortnight; if no French come, our campaign there will be warm; nay, and uncommon, the opposition will be chiefly composed of men in place. You know we always refine; it used to be an imputation on our senators, that they opposed to get places. They now oppose to get better places! We are a comical nation (I speak with all due regard to our gravity!)—It were a pity we should be destroyed, if it were only for the sake of posterity; we shall not be half so droll, if we are either a province to France, or under an absolute prince of our own.

I am sorry you are losing my Lord Cork; you must balance the