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saw him was in last Passion-week singing the Romish Stabat mater with the Mingotti, behind a harpsichord at a great concert at my Lady Carlisle's. Well-in a great apprehension of Sir Charles divulging the story of his swearing, Brown went to Dodsley in a most scurrilous and hectoring manner, threatening Dodsley if he should publish any thing personal against him; abusing Sir Charles for a coward and most abandoned man, and bidding Dodsley tell the latter that he had a cousin in the army who would call Sir Charles to account for any reflections on him, Brown. Stay; this 'Christian message from a divine, who by the way has a chapter in his book against duelling, is not all: Dodsley refused to carry any such message, unless in writing. The Doctor, enough in his senses to know the consequences of this, refused; and at last a short verbal message, more decently worded, was agreed on. To this Sir Charles made Dodsley write down this answer: "that he could not but be surprised at Brown's message, after that he, Sir Charles, had, at Ranby's desire, sent Brown a written assurance that he intended to say nothing personal of him-nay, nor should yet, unless Brown's impertinence made it necessary. This proper reply Dodsley sent: Brown wrote back, that he should send an answer to Sir Charles himself; but bid Dodsley take notice, that printing the works of a supposed lunatic might be imputed to the printer himself, and which he, the said Doctor, should chastise. Dodsley, after notifying this new and unprovoked insolence to me, Fox, and Garrick, the one friend of Sir Charles, the other of Brown, returned a very proper, decent, yet firm answer, with assurances of repaying chastisement of any sort. Is it credible? this audacious man sent only a card back, saying, "Footman's language I never return, J. Brown." You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is; how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman! but there is no exaggerating this behaviour by reflections. On the same card he tells Dodsley that he cannot now accept, but returns his present of the two last volumes of his collection of poems, and assures him that they are not soiled by the reading. But the best picture of him is his own second volume, which beats all the Scaligers and Scioppius's for vanity and insolent impertinence. What is delightful; in the first volume he had deified Warburton, but the success of that trumpery has made Warburton jealous, and occasioned a coolness-but enough of this jackanapes.

Your brother has been here, and as he is to go to-morrow, and the pedigree is not quite finished, and as you will be impatient, and as it is impossible for us to transcribe Welsh which we cannot read without your assistance, who don't understand it neither, we have determined that the Colonel should carry the pedigree to you; you will examine it and bring it with you to Strawberry, where it can be finished under your own eye, better than it is possible to do without. Adieu! I have not writ so long a letter this age.

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TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, May 31, 1758.

THIS is rather a letter of thanks than of course, though I have received, I verily believe, three from you since my last. Well, then, this is to thank you for them too-chiefly for that of to-day, with the account of the medals you have purchased for me from Stosch, and those your own munificence bestows on me. I am ashamed to receive the latter; I must positively know what you paid for the former; and beg they may all be reserved till a very safe opportunity. The price for the Ganymede is so monstrous that I must not regret not having it-yet if ever he should lower, I should still have a hankering, as it is one of the finest medals I ever saw. Are any of the others in silver? old Stosch had them so. When any of the other things I mentioned descend to more mortal rates, I would be sorry to lose them.

Should not you, if you had not so much experienced the contrary, imagine that services begot gratitude? You know they don't-shall I tell you what they do beget?-at best, expectations of more services. This is my very case now-you have just been delivered of one trouble for me I am going to get you with twins-two more troubles. In the first place, I shall beg you to send me a case of liqueurs; in the next all the medals in copper of my poor departed friend the Pope, for whom I am as much concerned as his subjects have reason to be. I don't know whether I don't want samples of his coins, and the little pieces struck during the sede vacante. I know what I shall want, any authentic anecdotes of the conclave. There are there commissions enough? I did receive the Pope's letter on my inscription, and the translation of the epitaph on Theodore, and liked both much, and thought I had thanked you for them— but I perceive I am not half so grateful as troublesome.

Here is the state of our news and politics. We thought our foreign King on the road to Vienna: he is now said to be prevented by Daun, and to be reduced to besiege Olmutz, which has received considerable supplies. Accounts make Louisbourgh reduced to wait for being taken by us as the easiest way of avoiding being starved-in short, we are to be those unnatural fowl, ravens that carry bread. But our biggest of all expectations is from our own invasion of France, which took post last Sunday; fourteen thousand landmen, eighteen ships of the line, frigates, sloops, bombs, and four volunteers, Lord Downe, Sir James Lowther, Sir John Armitage, and Mr. Delaval-the latter so ridiculous a character, that it has put a stop to the mode which was spreading. All this commanded by Lord Anson, who has beat the French; by the Duke of Marlborough, whose name has beaten them; and by Lord George Sackville, who is to beat them. Every port and town on the coast of Flanders and France have been

The King of Prussia.

guessed for the object. It is a vast armament, whether it succeeds or is lost.

At home there are seeds of quarrels. Pratt the attorney-general has fallen on a necessary extension of the Habeas Corpus to private cases. The interpreting world ascribes his motive to a want of affection for my Lord Mansfield, who unexpectedly is supported by the late Chancellor, the Duke of Newcastle, and that part of the ministry; and very expectedly by Mr. Fox, as this is likely to make a breach between the united powers. The bill passed almost unanimously through our House. It will have a very different fate in the other, where Lord Temple is almost single in its defence, and where Mr. Pitt seems to have little influence. If this should produce a new revolution, you will not be surprised. I don't know that it will; but it has already shown how little cordiality subsists since the last.

I had given a letter for you to a young gentleman of Norfolk, an only son, a friend of Lord Orford, and of much merit, who was going to Italy with Admiral Broderick. He is lost in that dreadful catastrophe of the Prince George-it makes one regret him still more, as the survivors mention his last behaviour with great en

comiums.

Adieu! my dear child! when I look back on my letter, I don't know whether there would not be more propriety in calling you my factor.

P. S. I cannot yet learn who goes to Turin: it was offered upon his old request, to my Lord Orford, but he has declined it.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Arlington Street, June 4, 1758.

THE Habeas Corpus is finished, but only for this year. Lord Temple threatened to renew it the next; on which Lord Hardwicke took the party of proposing to order the judges to prepare a bill for extending the power of granting the writ in vacation to all the judges. This prevented a division; though Lord Temple, who protested alone t'other day, had a flaming protest ready, which was to have been signed by near thirty. They sat last night till past nine. Lord Mansfield spoke admirably for two hours and twenty-five minutes. Except Lord Ravensworth and the Duke of Newcastle, whose meaning the first never knows himself, and the latter's nobody else, all who spoke spoke well: they were Lord Temple, Lord Talbot, Lord Bruce, and Lord Stanhope, for; Lord Morton, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Mansfield, against the bill. T'other day in our

a Lord Bute thus bewails the fate of the bill, in a letter to Mr. Pitt of the same day : "What a terrible proof was Friday, in the House of Lords, of the total loss of public spirit, and the most supreme indifference to those valuable rights, for the obtaining which

House, we had Lady Ferrers' affair: her sister was heard, and Lord Westmoreland, who had a seat within the bar. Mr. Fox opposed the settlement; but it passed.

The Duke of Grafton has resigned. Norborne Berkeley has converted a party of pleasure into a campaign, and is gone with the expedition, without a shirt but what he had on, and what is lent him. The night he sailed he had invited women to supper. Besides him, and those you know, is a Mr. Sylvester Smith. Every body was asking, "But who is Sylvester Smith?" Harry Townshend replied, Why, he is the son of Delaval, who was the son of Lowther, who was the son of Armitage, who was the son of Downe."b

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The fleet sailed on Thursday morning. I don't know why, but the persuasion is that they will land on this side Ushant, and that we shall hear some events by Tuesday or Wednesday. Some believe that Lord Anson and Howe have different destinations. Rochfort, where there are twenty thousand men, is said positively not to be the place. The King says there are eighty thousand men and three marshals in Normandy and Bretagne. George Selwyn asked General Campbell, if the ministry had yet told the King the object?

Mademoiselle de l'Enclos is arrived, to my supreme felicity-I cannot say very handsome or agreeable: but I had been prepared on the article of her charms. I don't say, like Henry VIII. of Anne of Cleves, that she is a Flanders mare, though to be sure she is rather large on the contrary, I bear it as well as ever prince did who was married by proxy-and she does not find me fricassé dans de la neige. Adieu!

P. S. I forgot to tell you of another galanterie I have had, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth left here while I was out of town. The servant said it was a present, but he had orders not to say from whom.

TO DR. DUCAREL.

June, 1758.

SIR,

I AM very much obliged to you for the remarks and hints you have sent me on my Catalogue. They will be of use to me; and any observations of my friends I shall be very thankful for, and disposed to employ, to make my book, what it is extremely far from being, more perfect. I was very glad to hear, Sir, that the present Lord

our ancestors freely risked both life and fortune! These are dreadful clouds that hang over the future accession, and damp the hopes I should otherwise entertain of that important day." Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 317.—E.

a The expedition against St. Maloes.

b All these gentlemen had been volunteers on successive expeditions to the coast of France.

The portrait of Ninon de l'Enclos.

d Madame de Sévigné, in her letters to her daughter, reports that Ninon thus expressed herself relative to her son, the Marquis de Sevigne, who was one of her lovers.

Archbishop of Canterbury has continued you in an employment for which nobody is so fit, and in which nobody would be so useful. I wish all manner of success to, as well as continuance of, your labours; and am, &c. &c.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Sunday morning, June 11, 1758. THIS will not depart till to-morrow, by which time probably there will be more news, but I am obliged to go into the country to-day, and would not let so much history set out, without my saying a word of it, as I know you trust to no gazette but mine. Last Thursday se'nnight our great expedition departed from Portsmouth-and soon separated; Lord Anson with the great ships to lie before Brest, and Commodore Howe, our naval hero, with the transports and a million of small fry on the secret enterprise. At one o'clock on Thursday night, alias Friday morning, a cutter brought advice that on Sunday night the transports had made land in Concalle Bay, near St. Maloes, had disembarked with no opposition or loss, except of a boatswain and two sailors, killed from a little fort, to which Howe was near enough to advise them not to resist. However, some peasants in it fired and then ran away. Some prisoners have assured our troops that there is no force within twenty leagues. This may be apocryphal, a word which, as I am left at liberty, I always interpret false. It is plain, however, that we were not expected at St. Maloes at least. We are in violent impatience to hear the consequences-especially whether we have taken the town, in which there is but one battalion, many old houses of wood, and the water easily to be cut off.

If you grow wise and ask me with a political face, whether St. Maloes is an object worth risking fourteen thousand of our best troops, an expense of fifty thousand pounds, and half of the purplest blood of England, I shall toss up my head with an air of heroism and contempt, and only tell you-There! there is the Duke of Marlborough in the heart of France; (for in the heroic dictionary the heart and the coast signify the same thing;) what would you have? Did Harry V. or Edward III. mind whether it was a rich town or a fishing town, provided they did but take a town in France? We are as great as ever we were in the most barbarous ages, and you are asking mercantile questions with all the littleness of soul that attends the improvements in modern politics! Well! my dear child, I smile, but 1 tremble: and though it is pleasanter to tremble when one invades, than when one is invaded, I don't like to be at the eve even of an Azincourt. There are so many of my friends upon heroic ground, that I discern all their danger through all their laurels. Captain Smith, aide-de-camp to Lord George Sackville, dated his letter to the Duke of Dorset, "from

a Richard, after the death of his elder brother, Viscount Howe.

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