Sharpe, by his Lordship, either to be forwarded to the Cavalier in return (for the Lord Clinton,) or to have it copied in oil to the size of life three quarters; but I know no hand," continues he, "that I think can do that to any advantage." He then asks my opinion; as it is supposed the Cavalier would prefer a portrait near to the size of life. A more absurd or indelicate thought never entered into the head of man; but, indeed, it is a madman's head! I did not reply, that I concluded the Cavalier, had he wished for a portrait of my Lady, might have obtained one from her, and could not wish for one painted fifty years ago. I did just hint, that it would be a very odd present. from my Lord to the Cavalier, but said I did not presume to give advice that for a copy, the picture, which has no merit but in the excellence of the enamel, would make a woful appearance in oil; for it is in the plain barren manner of that time, totally void of ornament and grace. And so I sent it back to let the cabal decide, whose delicacy I doubt not will decide for sending the original; especially as a copy, or any other present, would cost a few guineas, which they had rather get for themselves. However, it became me to object to the impropriety of giving away his mother's picture, and to the person in the world to whom he should not send it-and there I shall leave it.

Your nephew, I depend upon it, has been with you some time, and satisfied you in all you could wish to know. The new Parliament, as the papers will have told you, and as the progress of the elections foretold, is decidedly with the Court.* Nothing extraordinary has passed there or any where else. The House of Commons is occupied by the Westminster election, and sat on it till six this morning; nor yet is it finished. You know, I cannot bear election contests, nor ever inform myself of their circumstances. In truth, I am very ignorant of what is passing. I have been settled here this fortnight, though two dreary wet days drove me to town; but I returned today, and shall stay here if the weather is tolerable, though London is brimful-but then it is brimful of balls, shows, breakfasts, and joys, to which my age says no, and my want of inclination a treble no. It is my felicity to have remembered how ridiculous I have formerly thought old people who forgot their own age when every body else did not; and it is lucky too that I feel no disposition that can lead me into absurdities. The present world might be my grandchildren; as they are not, I have nothing to do with them. I am glad they are amused, but neither envy nor wish to partake of their pleasures or their business. When one preserves one's senses and faculties, and suffers no pain, old age would be no grievance but for one; yet oh! that one is a heavy calamity-the surviving one's friends: nay, even the loss of one's contemporaries is something! at least, I cannot feel interested about a generation that I do not know.

I felt this very sensibly last week. I have no taste for, and scarce

* The Opposition moved an amendment to the Address, which was supported by only 114 votes against 282.

ever read, the pamphlets and political letters in the newspapers; but I cannot describe the avidity with which I devour a new publica

A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heir has published that Lord's diary. Indeed, it commences in 1749, and I grieve it was not dated twenty years earlier. However, it deals in topics that are ten times more familiar and fresh to my memory than any passage that has happened within these six months. I wish I could convey it to you. Though drawn by his own hand, and certainly meant to flatter himself, it is a truer portrait than any of his hirelings would have given. Never was such a composition of vanity, versatility, and servility! In short, there is but one feature wanting-his wit, of which in his whole book there are not three sallies. I often said of Lord Hervey and Doddington, that they were the only two I ever knew who were always aiming at wit, and yet generally found it. There is one light in which the book pleases me particularly; it fully justifies the unfavourable opinion I always had of the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pelham, and which was thought such heresy during their lives.

I have somehow or other made out a longer letter than I expected. My correspondence in summer has commonly been barren, and probably will not be luxuriant in this, though the Parliament will be sitting: but I shall know no more than the newspapers tell me ; and they are grown so communicative, that you may draw from the fountains, without my purloining a pitcher here and there to send you. Adieu!

LETTER CCCCXXII.

Strawberry Hill, July 8, 1784.

I HAVE delayed and delayed writing, in hopes of being able to send you the completion of Cavalier Mozzi's business; but at last I have lost my patience, as I suppose he has. Lucas is intolerable. I sent him word of it the moment I received the order on Mr. Hoare. Lucas desired to see a copy of it: I sent it. He said, Mr. Hoare must have it before he (Lucas) could withdraw the caveat: but Lucas had stayed sometime before he gave me that notice. I replied, I would deliver the order, if Mr. Hoare would engage to restore it to me, provided he, Lucas, should start any new difficulties; but would not part with it out of my hands till every thing was ready for conclusion: and I did express resentment at his endeavouring to represent me as the cause of the delay. I said, I had learned circumspection from him, and gave him plainly to understand that I would not trust him with the order; in which I believe I was very much in the right. He begged my pardon, and pretended to have had great difficulties in waiving his own scruples-I don't know

* It is generally named Doddington's Memoirs.

about what. Still, I hear nothing from him, though I told him, near a fortnight ago, that I would meet him and Mr. Hoare, &c. in town, whenever they would give me notice they were ready. I comprehend nothing of all this. I am surprised Lucas is not impatient to finger his booty; but his invincible slowness, in which, somehow or other, he thinks he finds his account, is perhaps the sole cause; for I do not see how he can possibly hope to extort more from Mozzi than he has done. You may depend upon hearing, the moment the affair is terminated.

This letter is merely written to explain my silence to poor Mozzi. I know no news, public or private. The Parliament sits, but only on necessary business. There is much noise about a variety of new taxes, yet only few have a right to complain of them. The ma jority of the nation persisted in approving and calling for the American war, and ought to swallow the heavy consequences in silence. Instead of our colonies and trade, we have a debt of two hundred and fourscore millions! Half of that enormous burden our wise country-gentlemen have acquired, instead of an alleviation of the Land-tax, which they were such boobies as as to expect from the prosecution of the war! Posterity will perhaps discover what his own age would not see, that my father's motto, Quieta non movere, was a golden sentence; but what avail retrospects?

Pray tell me if you know any thing of a very thin book lately printed at Florence, called "The Arno Miscellany," said to be printed at the Stamperia Bonducciana; and what does that mean? The Abbé Bonducci I thought dead many years ago; yet that term, and the style of the work, seems to allude to his buffoonery. The paper, impression, and binding, I will swear, are Florentine. This dab was left at my house in town without a name. It consists of some pretended translations and odes by (pretended) initials, though I suppose all by the same hand. The last two are a pastoral and an ode that are perfect nonsense; designedly nonsensical, no doubt; yet undesignedly too, for they have no humour, or at least no originality, being copies of Swift's ballad, Mild Arcadians, ever blooming: and certainly nothing is so easy as to mismatch substantives and adjec tives, when the idea has once been started. The last ode seems to be meant to ridicule Gray's magnificent odes, and in truth is better than the serious pieces; for a thousand persons can mimic an actor, who cannot act themselves. I imagine the whole to be the work of young Beckford. He is just returned from Italy.

*The budget comprised a loan of six millions, which was obtained on very favourable terms, and an increase of the window-tax, to make up for a reduction of the duties on tea.

This was a slip of memory. Mr. Walpole, in 1740, had been acquainted at Florence with the Abbés Bonducci and Buondelmonte: the latter was the wit and mimic; the other had taught Mr. Gray Italian. In this letter Mr. Walpole had

confounded them.

The celebrated author of " Vathek," and of " Italy, Spain, and Portugal; with an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha."-ED.

One of my hundred nieces has just married herself by an expedition to Scotland. It is Mrs. Keppel's second daughter;* a beautiful girl, and more universally admired than her sister or cousins the Waldegraves. For such an exploit her choice is not a very bad one; the swain is eldest son of Lord Southampton.† Mrs. Keppel has been persuaded to pardon her, but Lady Southampton is inexorable; nor can I quite blame her, for she has thirteen other children, and a fortune was very requisite: but both the bride and bridegroom are descendants of Charles the Second, from whom they probably inherit stronger impulses than a spirit of collateral calculation.

Another of the Fitzroys is dead, the Dowager Lady Harrington,‡ who in the predominant characteristic of the founders of her line certainly did not degenerate in her day from the King her grandfather, or her grandam the Duchess of Cleveland.

Adieu! I hope you will hear from me again very soon; but I answer for nothing that depends on Lucas. One would think that he had been the inventor of the game of chess.

LETTER CCCCXXIII.

July 10, 1784.

THE very night on which I sent my letter for you to town, complaining of Lucas's tediousness, I received one, not from him, but from Mr. Sharpe,-telling me that Mr. Hoare had paid the money to my Lord, who had executed a full discharge to Cavalier Mozzi, one part of which was lodged with Mr. Hoare, and the other part, or duplicate he, Sharpe, had sent me, as he apprehended the Chevalier had desired him to do, in hopes that I might find some favourable opportunity of conveying it to you; and, as the Chevalier must execute a counterpart, he had sent that to me too, and had himself written to Mozzi to acquaint him with the termination, and in what manner he must execute the deed. Thus the same post will convey my complaint of the delay, and Sharpe's account of the conclusion: however, this will explain the contradiction. But what will explain Lucas's conduct? He would not withdraw the caveat till Mr. Hoare had the order; and yet Mr. Hoare pays the money without that order, of which he has seen nothing but a copy! This may be law-it is not common sense. What do you think, too, of Lucas's impertinence to me? I was referee; I have made no decision in form; I offered to meet all the parties, to settle and conclude the whole business; and then Lucas,

* Laura, second daughter of Dr. Frederic Keppel, Bishop of Exeter, by Laura, eldest daughter of Sir Edward Walpole.

+ Lord Southampton was grandson of the Duke of Grafton; the Bishop of Exeter's mother was Lady Anne Lenox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond.

Lady Caroline Fitzroy, eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of Grafton, and widow of Henry Stanhope, second Earl of Harrington.

VOL. II.-29

without taking notice of me, concludes the whole without me! A footman would have been treated with less disrespect; they would at least have told him they did not want him. I have written a word of resentment to Sharpe: but do not mention it to Mozzi, lest he should suspect any informality, and not yet be easy.

I do not doubt but they have acted legally, and only chose to af front me after all the trouble I have had. They never omit any opportunity of egging the poor madman to insult me. I wish that was all: I despise such wretches; but I am not indifferent to being kept out of even the interest of my fortune. But I shall not trouble you with my own grievances; indeed, they do not sit heavy. I am arrived too near the term when grievances or joys will be equally shadows passed away, not to consider either but as the colours of a moment. A prospect of suffering long may poison even the present hour; but it were weak indeed to be much affected by injuries that arrive at the end of one's course: one is within reach of the great panacea which delivers one from the power of the most malevolent. Old age is like dipping one in Styx; not above the breadth of one's heel is left vulnerable. I perceive this numbness even to bodily pain. Some years ago the dread of a fit of the gout soured even the intervals; now, if the apprehension occurs, I say to myself, "Is not it full as probable that I shall be laid out as be laid up? then why anticipitate what may never happen?" My dear sir, life is like a chessboard, the white spaces and the black are close together: it does not signify of which hue the last square is; the border closes all!

12th.

Well! I have received a note from Lucas, to tell me he had desired Mr. Sharpe to give me intelligence of the conclusion, and that Mr. Hoare now ought to have the order-if I please to deliver it. This, you see, is again to imply blame on me—as if I could have had any reason for detaining the order, but from a caution which in justice I owed to Cavalier Mozzi. Does any one give up an order on a banker, unless he is ready to pay the money? Nor indeed did I know till now that a banker would pay money on the copy of an order. It is all a juggle that I do not comprehend: perhaps it is not irreputable not to understand all the tricks of such an attorney as Lucas.

I can plainly see that he and his associates are willing to censure me for ends for which they would always have pretended some reasons or other; and it is not improbable but that was an inducement to employing me as referee. Lucas knew I disapproved of his instigating my Lord to contest his mother's will; and, because I have said what I owed in justice to Mozzi, he will have represented me as partial to one for whom in reality I could have no partiality, though I certainly would not be influenced by any prejudice against him. I smile at all their plots, and am not fool enough to entertain myself with such improbable visions as they may think I indulge; though my whole conduct, and the little management I have had for the crew, proves how far I am from having a grain of such weakness.