made me? Am not I already in love with "the youngest, handsomest, and wittiest widow in England?" As Herculean a labourer as I am, as Tom Hervey says, I don't choose another. I am still in the height of my impatience for the chest of old papers from Ragley, which, either by the fault of their servants, or of the wagoner, is not yet arrived. I shall go to London again on Monday in quest of it; and in truth think so much of it, that, when I first heard of the victory this morning, I rejoiced, as we were likely now to recover the Palatinate. Good night!

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 9, 1758.

WELL! the King of Prussia is found again-where do you think? only in Poland, up to the chin in Russians! Was ever such a man! He was riding home from Olmutz; they ran and told him of an army of Muscovites, as you would of a covey of partridges; he galloped thither, and shot them. But what news I am telling you! I forgot that all ours comes by water-carriage, and that you must know every thing a fortnight before us. It is incredible how popular he is here; except a few, who take him for the same person with Mr. Pitt, the lowest of the people are perfectly acquainted with him: as I was walking by the river the other night, a bargeman asked me for something to drink the King of Prussia's health. Yet Mr. Pitt specifies his own glory as much as he can: the standards taken at Louisbourg have been carried to St. Paul's with much parade; and this week, after bringing it by land from Portsmouth, they have dragged the cannon of Cherbourg into Hyde Park, on pretence of diverting a man, at whom, in former days, I believe, Mr. Pitt has laughed for loving such rattles as drums and trumpets. Our expedition, since breaking a basin at Cherbourg, has done nothing, but are dodging about still. Prince Edward gave one hundred guineas to the poor of Cherbourg, and the General and Admiral twenty-five apiece. I love charity, but sure is this excess of it, to lay out thousands, and venture so many lives, for the opportunity of giving a Christmas-box to your enemies! Instead of beacons, I suppose, the coast of France will be hung with pewter-pots with a slit in them, as prisons are, to receive our alms.

Don't trouble yourself about the Pope: I am content to find that he will by no means eclipse my friend. You please me with telling me of a collection of medals bought for the Prince of Wales. I hope it is his own taste; if it is only thought right that he should have it, I am glad.

This was the battle of Zorndorf, fought on the 25th of August, 1758, and gained by the King of Prussia over the Russians, commanded by Count Fermor.-D.

b The King.

I am again got into the hands of builders, though this time to a very small extent; only the addition of a little cloister and bedchamber. A day may come that will produce a gallery, a round tower, a large cloister, and a cabinet, in the manner of a little chapel: but I am too poor for these ambitious designs yet, and I have so many ways of dispersing my money, that I don't know when I shall be richer. However, I amuse myself infinitely; besides my printinghouse, which is constantly at work, besides such a treasure of taste and drawing as my friend Mr. Bentley, I have a painter in the house, who is an engraver too, a mechanic, an every thing. He was a Swiss engineer in the French service; but his regiment being broken at the peace, Mr. Bentley found him in the Isle of Jersey and fixed him with me. He has an astonishing genius for landscape, and added to that, all the industry and patience of a German. We are just now practising, and have succeeded surprisingly in a new method of painting, discovered at Paris by Count Caylus, and intended to be the encaustic method of the ancients. My Swiss has painted, I am writing the account, and my press is to notify our improvements. As you will know that way, I will not tell you here at large. In short, to finish all the works I have in hand, and all the schemes I have in my head, I cannot afford to live less than fifty years more. What pleasure it would give me to see you here for a moment! I should think I saw you and your dear brother at once! Can't you form some violent secret expedition against Corsica or Port Mahon, which may make it necessary for you to come and settle here? Are we to correspond till we meet in some unknown world? Alas! I fear so; my dear Sir, you are as little likely to save money as I am--would you could afford to resign your crown and be a subject at Strawberry Hill! Adieu !

P.S. I have forgot to tell you of a wedding in our family; my brother's eldest daughter is to be married to-morrow to Lord Albemarle's third brother, a canon of Windsor. We are very happy with the match. The bride is very agreeable, and sensible, and good; not so handsome as her sisters, but farther from ugliness than beauty. It is the second, Maria, who is beauty itself! Her face, bloom, eyes, hair, teeth, and person are all perfect. You may imagine how charming she is, when her only fault, if one must find one, is, that her face is rather too round. She has a great deal of wit and vivacity, with perfect modesty. I must tell you too of their brother he was on the expedition to St. Maloes; a party of fifty men appearing on a hill, he was despatched to reconnoitre with only eight men. Being stopped by a brook, he prepared to leap it; an old sergeant dissuaded him, from the inequality of the numbers. "Oh!" said the boy, "I

• Müntz left Mr. Walpole, and published another account himself.

Laura, the eldest daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, married to Dr. Frederick Keppel, afterwards Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Exeter.

c Maria, second daughter, married first to James second Earl of Waldegrave, and afterwards to William Henry Duke of Gloucester, brother to King George the Third. d Edward, only son of Sir Edward Walpole. He died young.

will tell you what; our profession is bred up to so much regularity that any novelty terrifies them-with our light English horses we will leap the stream; and I'll be d-d if they don't run." He did soand they did so. However, he was not content; but insisted that each of his party should carry back a prisoner before them. They had got eight, when they overtook an elderly man, to whom they offered quarter, bidding him lay down his arms. He replied," they were English, the enemies of his King and country; that he hated them, and had rather be killed." My nephew hesitated a minute, and then said, "I see you are a brave fellow, and don't fear death, but very likely you fear a beating-if you don't lay down your arms this instant, my men shall drub you as long as they can stand over you." The fellow directly flung down his arms in a passion. The Duke of Marlborough sent my brother word of this, adding, it was the only clever action in their whole exploit. Indeed I am pleased with it; for besides his spirit, I don't see, with this thought and presence of mind, why he should not make a general. I return to one little word of the King of Prussia-shall I tell you? I fear all this time he is only fattening himself with glory for Marshal Daun, who will demolish him at last, and then, for such service, be shut up in some fortress or in the inquisition-for it is impossible but the house of Austria must indemnify themselves for so many mortifications by some horrid ingratitude!

SIR,

TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.

Strawberry Hill, September 14, 1758.

THOUGH the approaching edition of my Catalogue is so far advanced that little part is left now for any alteration, yet as a book of that kind is always likely to be reprinted from the new persons who grow entitled to a place in it, and as long as it is in my power I shall wish to correct and improve it, I must again thank you, Sir, for the additional trouble you have given yourself. The very first article strikes me much. May I ask where, and in what page of what book, I can find Sir R. Cotton's account of Richard II. being an author: does not he mean Richard I.?

The Basilicon Doron is published in the folio of K. James's works, and contains instructions to his son, Prince Henry. In return, I will ask you where you find those verses of Herbert; and I would also ask you, how you have had time to find and know so much?

Lord Leicester, and much less the Duke of Monmouth, will scarce, I fear, come under the description I have laid down to myself of authors. I doubt the first did not compose his own Apology.

a Mr. Walpole takes no notice of Richard II. as an author; but Mr. Park inserts this prince as a writer of ballads. In a letter to Archbishop Usher, Sir Robert Cotton requests his grace to procure for him a poem by Richard II. which that prelate had pointed

out.-C.

Did the Earl of Bath publish, or only design to publish, Dionysius? Shall I find the account in Usher's Letters? Since you are so very kind, Sir, as to favour me with your assistance, shall I beg, Sir, to prevent my repeating trouble to you, just to mark at any time where you find the notices you impart to me; for, though the want of a citation is the effect of my ignorance, it has the same consequence to you.

I have not the Philosophical Transactions, but I will hereafter examine them on the hints you mention, particularly for Lord Brounker, who I did not know had written, though I have often thought it probable he did. As I have considered Lord Berkeley's LoveLetters, I have no doubt but they are a fiction, though grounded on a real story.

That Lord Falkland was a writer of controversy appears by the list of his works, and that he is said to have assisted Chillingworth: that he wrote against Chillingworth, you see, Sir, depends upon very vague authority; that is, upon the assertion of an anonymous person, who wrote so above a hundred years ago.

James, Earl of Marlborough, is entirely a new author to me-at present, too late. Lord Raymond I had inserted, and he will appear in the next edition.

I have been as unlucky, for the present, about Lord Totness. In a collection published in Ireland, called Hibernica, I found, but too late, that he translated another very curious piece, relating to Richard II. However, Sir, with these, and the very valuable helps I have received from you, I shall be able, at a proper time, to enrich another edition much.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.C

Arlington Street, Sept. 19, 1758.

I HAVE all my life laughed at ministers in my letters; but at least with the decency of obliging them to break open the seal. You have more noble frankness, and send your satires to the post with not so much as a wafer, as my Lord Bath did sometimes in my father's administration. I scarce laughed more at the inside of your letter than at the cover-not a single button to the waistband of its breeches, but all its nakedness fairly laid open! what was worse, all Lady Mary Coke's nakedness was laid open at the same time. Is this your way of treating a dainty widow? What will Mr. Pitt think of all this? will he begin to believe that you have some spirit, when, with no fear of

Spelman's is the only English translation of the Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis, known to be printed.-C.

b He wrote several papers in the Philosophical Transactions, and also translated Descartes' Music Compendium.-C.

• Now first printed.

Dr. Shebbeare's example" before your eyes, you speak your mind so freely, without any modification? As Mr. Pitt may be cooled a little to his senses, perhaps he may now find out, that a grain of prudence is no bad ingredient in a mass of courage; in short, he and the mob are at last undeceived, and have found, by sad experience that all the cannon of France has not been brought into Hyde Park. An account, which you will see in the Gazette, (though a little better disguised than your letters,) is come that after our troops had been set on shore, and left there, till my Lord Howe went somewhere else and cried Hoop! having nothing else to do for four days to amuse themselves, nor knowing whether there was a town within a hundred miles, went staring about the country to see whether there were any Frenchmen left in France; which Mr. Pitt, in very fine words, had assured them there was not, and which my Lord Howe, in very fine silence, had confirmed. However, somehow or other, (Mr. Deputy Hodges says they were not French, but Papists sent from Vienna to assist the King of France,) twelve battalions fell upon our rear-guard, and, which General Blighe says is "very common," (I suppose he means that rashness and folly should run itself into a scrape,)-were all cut to pieces or taken. The town says, Prince Edward (Duke of York) ran hard to save himself; I don't mean too fast, but scarcely fast enough; and the General says, that Lord Frederick Cavendish, your friend, is safe; the thing he seems to have thought of most, except a little vain parade of his own self-denial on his nephew. I shall not be at all surprised if, to show he was not in the wrong, Mr. Pitt should get ready another expedition by the depth of winter, and send it in search of the cannons and colours of these twelve battalions. Pray Heaven your letter don't put it in his head to give you the command! It is not true, that he made the King ride upon one of the cannons to the Tower.

I was really touched with my Lady Howe's advertisement, though I own at first it made me laugh; for seeing an address to the voters for Nottingham signed "Charlotte Howe," I concluded (they are so manly a family) that Mrs. Howe, who rides a fox-chase, and dines at the table d'hôte at Grantham, intended to stand for member of Parliament.

Sir John Armitage died on board a ship before the landing; Lady Hardwicke's nephew, Mr. Cocks, scarce recovered of his Cherbourg wound, is killed. He had seven thousand pounds a year, and was

a Dr. Shebbeare had just before been sentenced to fine, imprisonment, and the pillory, for his Sixth Letter to the People of England. The under-sheriff, however, allowed him to stand on, instead of in, the pillory; for which lenity he was prosecuted.-E.

b On the news of the death of Lord Howe reaching the dowager Lady Howe, she addressed the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of Nottingham, whom the deceased had represented in Parliament, in favour of his next younger brother, Colonel Howe, to supply his place in the House of Commons. "Permit me," she says, "to implore the protection of every one of you, as the mother of him whose life has been lost in the service of his country." The appeal was responded to, and Colonel, afterwards General Sir William Howe, was returned.-E.

The Hon. Caroline Howe, daughter of the above-mentioned lady, who married her namesake, John Howe, Esq. of Hemslop.-E.