strict attendance on her sister, Lady Binning, who has been ill. They were a family of love, and break their hearts for her. She had a thousand good qualities; but no mortal was ever so surprised as I when I was first told that she was the nymph Arthur Gray would have ravished. She had taken care to guard against any more such danger by more wrinkles than ever twisted round a human face. Adieu! If you have a mind to be fashionable, you must raise a regiment of Florentine militia.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1759.

I

As you bid me fix a day about six weeks from the date of your last, it will suit me extremely to see you here the 1st of August. don't mean to treat you with a rowing for a badge, but it will fall in very commodely between my parties. You tell me nothing of the old house you were to see near Blenheim: I have some suspicion that Greatworth is coming into play again. I made your speeches to Mr. Chute, and to Mr. Müntz, and to myself; your snuff-box is bespoke, your pictures not done, the print of Lady Waldegrave not begun.

News there are none, unless you have a mind for a panic about the invasion. I was in town yesterday, and saw a thousand people from Kensington, with faces as loyally long as if it was the last accession of this family that they were ever to see. The French are coming with fifty thousand men, and we shall meet them with fifty addresses. Pray, if you know how, frighten your neighbours, and give them courage at the same time.

My Lady Coventry and my niece Waldegrave have been mobbed in the Park. I am sorry the people of England take all their liberty out in insulting pretty women.

You will be diverted with what happened to Mr. Meynell lately. He was engaged to dine at a formal old lady's, but stayed so late hunting that he had not time to dress, but went as he was, with forty apologies. The matron very affected, and meaning to say something very civil, cried, "Oh! Sir, I assure you I can see the gentleman through a pair of buckskin breeches as well as if he was in silk or satin."

I am sure I can't tell you any thing better, so good night! Yours

ever.

P. S. I hope you have as gorgeous weather as we have; it is even hot enough for Mr. Bentley. I live upon the water.

was a woman of merit and ability, and of excellent conduct. She was an intimate friend of Lady Hervey, who, in her letters, thus speaks of her;-"I have lost the first friend I had the kindest, best, and most valuable one I ever had, with whom I have lived at her grandfather's, Lord Marchmont."-E.]

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, July 8, 1759.

THIS will be the most indecisive of all letters: I don't write to tell you that the French are not landed at Deal, as was believed yesterday. An officer arrived post in the middle of the night, who saw them disembark. The King was called up; my Lord Ligonier buckled on his armour. Nothing else was talked of in the streets; yet there was no panic. Before noon, it was known that the invasion was a few Dutch hoys. The day before, it was triumph. Rodney was known to be before Havre de Grace; with two bomb-ketches he set the town on fire in different places, and had brought up four more to act, notwithstanding a very smart fire from the forts, which, however, will probably force him to retire without burning the flatbottomed boats, which are believed out of his reach. The express came from him on Wednesday morning. This is Sunday noon, and I don't know that farther intelligence is arrived. I am sorry for this sort of war, not only for the sufferers, but I don't like the precedent, in case the French should land. I think they will scarce venture; for besides the force on land, we have a mighty chain of fleet and frigates along the coast. There is great animosity to them, and few can expect to return.

Our part of the war in Germany seems at an end: Prince Ferdinand is retiring, and has all the advantage of that part of great generalship, a retreat. From America we expect the greatest things; our force there by land and sea is vast. I hope we shall not be to buy England back by restoring the North Indies! I will gladly give them all the hundred thousand acres that may fall to my share on the Ohio for my twenty acres here. Truly I don't like having them endangered for the limits of Virginia!

I wait impatiently for your last orders for the watch; if the worst comes to the worst, I can convey it to you by some French officer.

The weather is sultry; this country never looked prettier. I hope our enemies will not have the heart to spoil it! It would be much disappointment to me, who am going to make great additions to my castle; a gallery, a round tower, and a cabinet, that is to have all the air of a Catholic chapel-bar consecration. Adieu! I will tell you more soon, or I hope no more.

"Every body," says Gray, in a letter to Dr. Wharton, of the 21st, "continues as quiet about the invasion as if a Frenchman, as soon as he set his foot on our coast, would die, like a toad in Ireland. Yet the King's tents and equipage are ordered to be ready at an hour's warning." Works, vol. iii. p. 218.-E.

42*

TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.

Strawberry Hill, July 11, 1759.

You will repent, Sir, I fear, having drawn such a correspondent upon yourself. An author flattered and encouraged is not easily shaken off again; but if the interests of my book did not engage me to trouble you, while you are so good as to write me the most entertaining letters in the world, it is very natural for me to lay snares to inveigle more of them. However, Sir, excuse me this once, and I will be more modest for the future in trespassing on your kindness. Yet, before I break out on my new wants, it will be but decent, Sir, to answer some particulars of your letter.

I have lately read Mr. Goodall's book. There is certainly ingenuity in parts of his defence: but I believe one seldom thinks a defence ingenious without meaning that it is unsatisfactory. His work left me fully convinced of what he endeavoured to disprove; and showed me, that the piece you mention is not the only one that he has written against moderation.

I have lately got Lord Cromerty's Vindication of the legitimacy of King Robert, and his Synopsis Apocalyptica, and thank you much, Sir, for the notice of any of his pieces. But if you expect that his works should lessen my esteem for the writers of Scotland, you will please to recollect, that the letter which paints Lord Cromerty's pieces in so ridiculous a light, is more than a counterbalance in favour of the writers of your country: and of all men living, Sir, you are the last who will destroy my partiality for Scotland.

There is another point, Sir, on which, with all your address, you will persuade me as little. Can I think that we want writers of history while Mr. Hume and Mr. Robertson are living? It is a truth, and not a compliment, that I never heard objections made to Mr. Hume's History without endeavouring to convince the persons who found fault with it, of its great merit and beauty; and for what I saw of Mr. Robertson's work, it is one of the purest styles, and of the greatest impartiality, that I ever read. It is impossible for me to recommend a subject to him: because I cannot judge of what materials he can obtain. His present performance will undoubtedly make him so well known and esteemed, that he will have credit to obtain many new lights for a future history; but surely those relating to his own country will always lie most open to him. This is much my way of thinking with regard to myself. Though the Life of Christina is a pleasing and a most uncommon subject, yet, totally unacquainted as I am with Sweden and its language, how could I flatter myself

a Now first collected.

b Walter Goodall, librarian of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. He was warmly devoted to Mary Queen of Scots, and in 1754, published an Examination of the Letters said to be written by Mary to the Earl of Bothwell, in which he endeavoured to prove them to be forgeries.-E.

C

Robert, the third King of Scotland, from the imputation of bastardy.-E.

with saying any thing new of her? And when original letters and authentic papers shall hereafter appear, may not they contradict half one should relate on the authority of what is already published? for though memoirs written nearest to the time are likely to be the truest, those published nearest to it are generally the falsest.

But, indeed, Sir, I am now making you only civil excuses; the real one is, I have no kind of intention of continuing to write. I could not expect to succeed again with so much luck,-indeed, I think it so,— as I have done; it would mortify me more now, after a little success, to be despised, than it would have done before; and if I could please as much as I should wish to do, I think one should dread being a voluminous author. My own idleness, too, bids me desist. If I continued, I should certainly take more pains than I did in my Catalogue; the trouble would not only be more than I care to encounter, but would probably destroy what I believe the only merit of my last work, the ease. If I could incite you to tread in steps which I ceive you don't condemn, and for which it is evident you are so well qualified, from your knowledge, the grace, facility, and humour of your expression and manner, I shall have done a real service, where I expected at best to amuse.

per

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, July 19, 1759.

WELL, I begin to expect you; you must not forget the first of August. If we do but look as well own Strawberry is still in its bloom. had an Italian summer, and

as we do at present, you will With English verdure, we have

Whatever sweets Sabæan springs disclose,
Our Indian jasmin, and the Persian rose.

I am forced to talk of Strawberry, lest I should weary you with what every body wearies me, the French and the militia. They, I mean the latter only, not the former, passed just by us yesterday, and though it was my own clan, I had not the curiosity to go and see them. The crowds in Hyde Park, when the King reviewed them, were inimaginable. My Lord Orford, their colonel, I hear, looked gloriously martial and genteel, and I believe it; his person and air have a noble wildness in them; the regiments, too, are very becoming, scarlet faced with black, buff waistcoats, and gold buttons. How knights of shires, who have never shot any thing but woodcocks, like this warfare, I don't know; but the towns through which they pass

a Mr. Pitt, in a letter of this day, to Lady Hester, says, "Nothing could make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions. Lord Orford, with the port of Mars himself, and really the genteelest figure under arms I ever saw, was the theme of every tongue." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 4.-E.

adore them; every where they are treated and regaled. The Prince of Wales followed them to Kingston, and gave fifty guineas among the private men.

I expect some anecdotes from you of the coronation at Oxford; I hear my Lord Westmoreland's own retinue was all be-James'd with true-blue ribands; and that because Sir William Calvert, who was a fellow of a college, and happened to be Lord Mayor, attended the Duke of Newcastle at his inthronization, they dragged down the present Lord Mayor to Oxford, who is only a dry-salter.

I have your Butler's posthumous works. The poetry is most uncouth and incorrect, but with infinite wit; especially one thing on plagiaries is equal to any thing in Hudibras. Have you read my Lord Clarendon's? I am enchanted with it; 'tis very incorrect, but I think more entertaining than his History. It makes me quite out of humour with other memoirs. Adieu!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, July 26, 1759.

I AM dying in a hot street, with my eyes full of dust, and my table full of letters to be answered-yet I must write you a line. I am sorry your first of Augustness is disordered; I'll tell you why: I go to Ragley on the twelfth. There is to be a great party at loo for the Duchess of Grafton, and thence they adjourn to the Warwick races. I have been engaged so long to this, that I cannot put it off; and besides, I am under appointments at George Selwyn's, &c. afterwards. If you cannot come before all this to let me have enough of your company, I should wish you to postpone it to the first of September, when I shall be at leisure for ten or twelve days, and could go with you from Strawberry to the Vine; but I could like to know certainly, for as I never make any of my visits while Strawberry is in bloom, I am a little crowded with them at the end of the season.

I came this morning in all this torrent of heat from Lord Waldegrave's at Navestock. It is a dull place, though it does not want prospect backwards. The garden is small, consisting of two French allées of old limes, that are comfortable, two groves that are not so, and a green canal; there is besides a paddock. The house was built by his father, and ill finished, but an air seigneurial in the furniture; French glasses in quantities, handsome commodes, tables, screens, &c. goodish pictures in rich frames, and a deal of noblesse à la St. Germain-James the Second, Charles the Second, the Duke of Berwick, her Grace of Buckingham, the Queen Dowager in the dress she visited Madame Maintenon, her daughter the Princess Louisa, a

"The Genuine Remains, in prose and verse, of Samuel Butler; with notes by R. Thyer." A very pleasant review of this work, by Oliver Goldsmith, will be found in the fourth volume of Mr. Murray's enlarged edition of his Miscellaneous Works.-E.