will take care of himself; but yesterday, the coldest day we have felt, he would go into the drawing-room, as if he was fond of showing the new stick he is forced to walk with.

The Parliament is all harmony, and thinks of nothing but giving away twelve more millions. Mr. Pitt made the most artful speech he ever made: provoked, called for, defied objections; promised enormous expense, demanded never to be judged by events. Universal silence left him arbiter of his own terms. In short, at present he is absolute master, and if he can coin twenty millions may command them. He does every thing, the Duke of Newcastle gives every thing. As long as they can agree in this partition, they may do what they will.

We have been in great anxiety for twenty-four hours to learn the fate of Dresden, and of the King of resources, as Mr. Beckford called the King of Prussia the other day. We heard that while he was galloped to raise the siege of Neiss, Marshal Daun was advanced to Dresden; that Schmettau had sent to know if he meant to attack it, having orders to burn the Fauxbourgs and defend it street by street; that Daun not deigning a reply, the conflagration had been put in execution; that the King was posting back, and Dohna advancing to join him. We expect every minute to hear either of the demolition of the city, or of a bloody decision fought under the walls—an account is just arrived that Daun' is retired-thus probably the campaign is finished, and another year of massacre to come. One could not but be anxious at such a crisis-one felt for Dresden, and pitied the Prince Royal shut up in his own capital, a mere spectator of its destruction; one trembled for the decisive moment of the life of such a man as the King of Prussia. It is put off-yet perhaps he will scarce recover so favourable a moment. He had assembled his whole force, except a few thousands left to check the Swedes. Next year this force must be again parcelled out against Austrians, Russians, Swedes, and possibly French. He must be more than a King of resources if he can for ever weather such tempests!

Knyphausen diverted me yesterday with some anecdotes of the Empress's college of chastity-not the Russian Empress's. The King of Prussia asked some of his Austrian prisoners whether their mistress consulted her college of chastity on the letters she wrote (and he intercepted) to Madame Pompadour.

You have heard some time ago of the death of the Duke of Marlborough. The estate is forty-five thousand pounds a-year-nine of which are jointured out. He paid but eighteen thousand pounds ayear in joint lives. This Duke and the estate save greatly by his death, as the present wants a year of being of age, and would cer

The King of Prussia has just compelled Daun to raise the siege of Dresden, in spite of his (the King's) late most disastrous defeat by the same general at Hochkirchen, which had taken place on the 14th of October, 1758.-D.

b The Prussian minister.

Charles Spencer, second Duke of Marlborough. He died, on the 28th of October, at Munster, in Westphalia.-E.

tainly have accommodated his father in agreeing to sell and pay. Lord Edgcumbe is dead too, one of the honestest and most steady men in the world.

I was much diverted with your histories of our Princess and Madame de Woronzow. Such dignity as Madame de Craon's wants a little absolute power to support it! Adieu! my dear Sir.

TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.

Arlington Street, Dec. 9, 1758.

SIR,

I HAVE desired Mr. Whiston to convey to you the second edition of my Catalogue, not so complete as it might have been, if great part had not been printed before I received your remarks, but yet more correct than the first sketch with which I troubled you. Indeed, a thing of this slight and idle nature does not deserve to have much more pains employed upon it.

I am just undertaking an edition of Lucan, my friend Mr. Bentley having in his possession his father's notes and emendations on the first seven books. Perhaps a partiality for the original author concurs a little, with this circumstance of the notes, to make me fond of printing, at Strawberry Hill, the works of a man who, alone of all the classics, was thought to breathe too brave and honest a spirit for the perusal of the Dauphin and the French. I don't think that a good or bad taste in poetry is of so serious a nature, that I should be afraid of owning too, that, with that great judge Corneille, and with that, perhaps, no judge Heinsius, I prefer Lucan to Virgil. To speak fairly, I prefer great sense to poetry with little sense. There are hemistics in Lucan that go to one's soul and one's heart;-for a mere epic poem, a fabulous tissue of uninteresting battles that don't teach one even to fight, I know nothing more tedious. The poetic images, the versification and language of the Æneid are delightful; but take the story by itself, and can any thing be more silly and unaffecting? There are a few gods without power, heroes without character, heaven-directed wars without justice, inventions without probability, and a hero who betrays one woman with a kingdom that he might have had, to force himself upon another woman and another kingdom to which he had no pretensions, and all this to show his obedience to the gods! In short, I have always admired his numbers so much, and his meaning so little, that I think I should like Virgil better if I understood him less.

Have you seen, Sir, a book which has made some noise-Helvetius de l'Esprit? The author is so good and moral a man, that I grieve he should have published a system of as relaxed morality as can well

a

Richard, first Lord Edgcumbe; an intimate friend of Sir Robert Walpole. b The Princess de Craon.

be imagined: 'tis a large quarto, and in general a very superficial one. His philosophy may be new in France, but is greatly exhausted here. He tries to imitate Montesquieu, and has heaped commonplaces upon commonplaces, which supply or overwhelm his reasoning; yet he has often wit, happy allusions, and sometimes writes finely: there is merit enough to give an obscure man fame; flimsiness enough to depreciate a great man. After his book was licensed, they forced him to retract it by a most abject recantation. Then why print this work? If zeal for his system pushed him to propagate it, did not he consider that a recantation would hurt his cause more than his arguments could support it?

We are promised Lord Clarendon in February from Oxford, but I hear shall have the surreptitious edition from Holland much sooner. You see, Sir, I am a sceptic as well as Helvetius, but of a more moderate complexion. There is no harm in telling mankind that there is not so much divinity in the Eneid as they imagine; but, even if I thought so, I would not preach that virtue and friendship are mere names, and resolvable into self-interest; because there are numbers that would remember the grounds of the principle, and forget what was to be engrafted on it. Adieu!

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Christmas-day, 1758.

ADIEU! my dear Sir-that is, adieu to our correspondence, for I am neither dying nor quarrelling with you; but as we, Great-Britons, are quarrelling with all Europe, I think very soon I shall not be able to convey a letter to you, but by the way of Africa, and there I am afraid the post-offices are not very well regulated. In short, we are on the brink of a Dutch war too. Their merchants are so enraged that we will not only not suffer them to enrich themselves by carrying all the French trade, and all kinds of military stores to the French settlements, but that they lose their own ships into the bargain, that they are ready to despatch the Princess Royal into the other world even before her time; if her death arrives soon, and she is thought in great danger, it will be difficult for any body else to keep the peace. Spain and Denmark are in little better humour-well, if we have not as many lives as a cat or the King of Prussia! However, our spirits do not droop; we are raising thirteen millions, we look upon France as totally undone, and that they have not above five loaves and a few small fishes left; we intend to take all America from them next summer, and then if Spain and Holland are not terrified, we shall be at leisure to deal with them. Indeed, we are rather in a hurry to do all this, because people may be weary of paying thirteen millions; and

The Princess Dowager of Orange, eldest daughter of George II.

besides it may grow decent for Mr. Pitt to visit his gout, which this year he has been forced to send to the Bath without him. I laugh, but seriously we are in a critical situation; and it is as true, that if Mr. Pitt had not exerted the spirit and activity that he has, we should ere now have been past a critical situation. Such a war as ours carried on by my Lord Hardwicke, with the dull dilatoriness of a Chancery suit, would long ago have reduced us to what suits in Chancery reduce most people! At present our unanimity is prodigious-you would as soon hear No from an old maid as from the House of Commons-but I don't promise you that this tranquillity will last." One has known more ministries overturned of late years by their own squabbles than by any assistance from Parliaments.

Sir George Lee, formerly an heir-apparent to the ministry is dead; it was almost sudden, but he died with great composure. Lord Arran went off with equal philosophy. Of the great house of Ormond there now remains only his sister, Lady Emily Butler, a young heiress of ninety-nine.

It is with great pleasure I tell you that Mr. Conway is going to Sluys to settle a cartel with the French. The commission itself is honourable, but more pleasing as it re-establishes him-I should say his merit re-establishes him. All the world now acknowledges itand the insufficiency of his brother-generals makes it vain to oppress him any longer.

I am happy that you are pleased with the monument, and vain that you like the Catalogue"-if it would not look too vain, I would tell you that it was absolutely undertaken and finished within five months. Indeed, the faults in the first edition and the deficiencies show it was; I have just printed another more correct.

Of the Pretender's family one never hears a word: unless our Protestant brethren the Dutch meddle in their affairs, they will be totally forgotten; we have too numerous a breed of our own, to want Princes from Italy. The old Chevalier by your account is likely to precede his rival, who with care may still last a few years, though I think will scarce appear again out of his own house.

I want to ask you if it is possible to get the royal edition of the Antiquities of Herculaneum? and I do not indeed want you to get it for me unless I am to pay for it. Prince San Severino has told the

* Lord Chesterfield, in a letter of the 15th, says, "The estimates for the expenses of the year 1759 are made up. I have seen them; and what do you think they amount to? No less than twelve millions three hundred thousand pounds: a most incredible sum, and yet already all subscribed, and even more offered! The unanimity in the House of Commons in voting such a sum, and such forces, both by sea and land, is not less astonishing. This is Mr. Pitt's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."-E.

Frederick, Prince of Wales, had designed, if he outlived the King, to make Sir George Lee chancellor of the exchequer.

He was Charles Butler, the second and last surviving son of Thomas, Earl of Ossory, eldest son of the first Duke of Ormond. He had been created, in 1693, Baron Cloghgrenan, Viscount Tullough, and Earl of Arran, in Ireland; and at the same time Baron Butler of Weston, in the Peerage of England. Dying without issue his titles became extinct.-D.

d The Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors.

foreign ministers here that there are to be twelve hundred volumes of it-and they believe it. I imagine the fact is, that there are but twelve hundred copies printed. Could Cardinal Albani get it for me? I would send him my Strawberry-editions, and the Birmingham-editions in exchange-things here much in fashion.

The night before 1 came from town, we heard of the fall of the Cardinal de Bernis, but not the cause of it-if we have a Dutch war, how many cardinals will fall in France and in England, before you hear of these or I of the former! I have always written to you with the greatest freedom, because I care more that you should be informed of the state of your own country, than what secretaries of state or their clerks think of me-but one must be more circumspect if the Dey of Algiers is to open one's letters. Adieu !

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Dec. 26th, 1758.

It is so little extraordinary to find you doing what is friendly and obliging, that one don't take half notice enough of it. Can't you let Mr. Conway go to Sluys without taking notice of it? How would you be hurt, if he continued to be oppressed? what is it to you whether am glad or sorry? Can't you enjoy yourself whether I am happy or not? I suppose if I were to have a misfortune, you would immediately be concerned at it! How troublesome it is to have you sincere and good-natured! Do be a little more like the rest of the world.

I have been at Strawberry these three days, and don't know a tittle. The last thing I heard before I went was that Colonel Yorke is going to be married to one or both of the Miss Crasteyns, nieces of the rich grocer that died three years ago. They have two hundred and sixty thousand pounds apiece. A marchioness-or a grocer-nothing comes amiss to the digestion of that family. If the rest of the trunk was filled with money, I believe they would really marry Carafattatouadaht-what was the lump of deformity called in the Persian Tales, that was sent to the lady in a coffer? And as to marrying both the girls, it would cost my Lord Hardwicke but a new marriage-bill: I suppose it is all one to his conscience whether he prohibits matrimony or licenses bigamy.

a Editions printed with the Baskerville types.-D.

b The Cardinal de Bernis was a frivolous and incapable minister, who was equally raised and overthrown by the influence of the King of France's mistress, Madaine de Pompadour.-D.

"Cardinal Bernis's disgrace," says Lord Chesterfield, "is as sudden, and hitherto as little understood, as his elevation was. I have seen his poems printed at Paris, not by a friend, I dare say; and, to judge by them, I humbly conceive his excellency is a puppy. I will say nothing of that excellent head-piece that made him and unmade him in the same month, except O King, live for ever !"-E.

d Colonel Yorke, afterwards Lord Dover, married in 1783 the Dowager Baroness de Boetzalaer, widow of the first noble of the province of Holland.-E.