LETTER CCCLII.

Berkeley Square, May 16, 1781. By not sending you the first rumours of Lord Cornwallis's victory over the American General, Greene, and by waiting for the confirmation, which is not yet come, though undoubted, I am able to balance accounts, though perhaps you did not desire Fortune to be so impartial. Yesterday we learnt that La Mothe Piquet, who had lain in ambush (no sea-term, I doubt,) at the mouth of the Channel, had fallen in au beau milieu of our fleet from Eustatia, laden with the plunder of all nations, and has taken at least twenty of them.* The two men-of-war and two frigates that convoyed all that spoil took to their heels, and, to talk like an Irishman, are on Irish ground in one of their harbours. To-day we invented a re-capture by Darby, but he is not arrived. However, our loss of so much wealth will not comfort the King of Spain for the relief of Gibraltar, nor the Dutch for the loss of St. Eustatia; for I do not suppose that France will invite its allies to the partition, unless, like the lion in the fable, to see her seize all on different pleas,-I should say, prerogatives to which nullum tempus, nullum plea occurrant.

My military details are very brief, for I neither understand them, nor load my memory with them; and for your information it is better I should not, as the quintessence is more easily digested, and can be less contested.

The discon

The Gazette of private news will lie in little room. solate widower, your friend Sir John Dick, is going to be married. already; and, which is still more rash at his age, to a giantess. She is the eldest daughter of the late Sir John Clavering, and was ripened by the climate of India, like an orange to a shaddock. I suppose she intends to be a relict, and then to marry some young Gargantua.

Strawberry Hill, 17.

I came hither this morning; but as I shall return to town to-mor row, when the post goes away, my letter will be in time, though a little ashamed of being so meagre. I doubt my despatches are grown very barren, though the field of battle is so extensive; but you must allow that our enemies are not very alert, and that we have some negative credit in not having lost more, after risking so much. As to domestic news, it is no wonder my details are lean. The House of Lords, who never fatigued themselves, are become as antiquated as their college, the Heralds' Office, and as idle. In the other House

* With six sail of the line and two frigates, destined for some secret expedition, De la Motte Piquet fell in, on the 26th of April, with the St. Eustatia convoy, off the coast of Ireland, captured twenty of the merchant-ships, and returned safe with them to port. So anxious was he to secure his prizes before Admiral Darby's return, that he suffered Commodore Hotham, with six of the transports, to escape.ED.

there are not many debates, and the unshaken majority renders those of little consequence.* The disunion of the leaders increases this supineness. For smaller events, I go so little into the world, that many escape me, and fewer interest me. Can one take much part in the occupations of the grand-children of one's first acquaintance? I might, no doubt, collect paragraphs if I took pains; for certainly no reformation has taken place. Dissipation is at high-water mark; but it is either without variety, novelty, and imagination, or the moroseness of age makes me see no taste in their pleasures. Lateness of hours is the principal feature of the times, and certainly demands no stress of invention. Every fashionable place is still crowded; no instance of selection neither. Gaming is yet general; though money, the principal ingredient, does not abound. My old favourite game, Faro, is lately revived. I have played but thrice, and not all night, as I used to do; it is not decent to end where one began, nor to sit up with a generation by two descents my juniors. Mr. Fox is the first figure in all the places I have mentioned; the hero in Parliament, at the gaming-table, at Newmarket. Last week he passed four-andtwenty hours without interruption at all three, or on the road from

*There had, a few days before, been a long debate in the House of Commons, on a motion of Sir George Savile for referring the Petition of the Delegated Counties for a Redress of Grievances to a Committee of the whole House. The subscribers to the petition were stated to be "freeholders" of the respective counties, not "delegates" of associations; several members having stated, that they could admit of no such characters in a constitutional point of view. Mr. Wilberforce, then in his twenty-second year, and who had been returned to the new Parliament, for Hull, thus wrote, on the 30th of April, to one of his constituents: "The papers would show you by what a trick the petition was laid upon the table. The petitioners were said to be private freeholders, and as such were gravely read over the names of Christopher Wyvill, Charles Fox, Richard Fitzpatrick, &c. They will, I have no doubt, proceed artfully; but let them once but put in their noses in their delegate capacity, and they will be hunted out as they deserve; and though I will not promise to open, I will accompany the hounds in full cry, with my Lord Advocate at their head-and a fine leader of a pack he is." Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, was the "leader of a pack" here spoken of. Sir George Savile's motion was, upon a division, negatived by 212 to 135.-ED.

The following is Mr. Wilberforce's picture of fashionable life at this period: "When I left the university, so little did I know of general society, that I came up to London stored with arguments to prove the authenticity of Rowley's poems; and now I was at once immersed in politics and fashion. The very first time I went to Boodle's, I won twenty-five guineas of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at this time to five clubs-Miles and Evans's, Brooke's, Boodle's, White's, Goostrees. The first time I was at Brookes's, scarcely knowing any one, I joined from mere shyness in play at the Faro table, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim decked out for sacrifice, called to me, What, Wilberforce, is that you?' Selwyn quite resented the interference, and, turning to him, said in his most expressive tone, 'O, sir, don't interrupt Mr. Wilberforce; he could not be better employed.' Nothing could be more luxurious than the style of these clubs; Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading men frequented them, and associated upon the easiest terms; you chatted, played at cards, or gambled, as you pleased."-ED.

.

Mr. Fox had, on the 14th, made a long and eloquent speech in support of Mr. Burke's motion relating to the seisure and confiscation of private property on the island of St. Eustatia. A fortnight after, Walpole, in a letter to General Conway

one to the other; and ill the whole time, for he has a bad constitution, and treats it as if he had been dipped in the immortal river: but I doubt his heel at least will be vulnerable.*

There is a topict which begins to predominate, but not proper for the post, nor one that shall be so to me; for I recollect under what King I was born, and consequently can have nothing to do with a reign so far removed as the next will be. As I too am always partial to youth, having not at least the spleen of age,-I make the greatest allowances for inexperience and novel passions. In one word, I give no ear to the commencement of future history; it is a page I shall not peruse and what are the first leaves of a book to one that can make no progress in it? I see no prospect of conclusion to the war -occupation enough, one should think, for every body at present; and yet, unless roused by some event, which too is forgotten in three days, no one seems to care about the general face of affairs, but is as indifferent as if we were in a dead calm.

Your nephew is to come here to-morrow morning to show my house to some company; my nephew is to command a small camp this summer.

My lord has answered your nephew's letter, and tells him he is not legally bound to pay his father's debts, and refers him to Lucas— mon Chancelier vous dira le reste, as Kings say when they are ashamed of what they are going to do.

says, "As I came up St. James's-street, I saw a cart and porters at Charles's door; coppers and old chests of drawers loading. In short, his success at Faro had awakened his host of creditors; but unless his bank had been swelled to the size of the Bank of England, it could not have yielded a sop for each. Epsom, too, had been unpropitious, and one creditor had actually seized and carried off his goods, which did not seem worth removing. As I returned full of this scene, whom should I find sauntering by my own door but Charles? He came up and talked to me at the coach-window, on the Marriage-Bill, with as much sang froid as if he knew nothing of what had happened. I have no admiration for insensibility to one's own faults, especially when committed out of vanity. Perhaps the whole philosophy consists in the commission. The more marvellous Fox's parts are, the more one is provoked at his follies, which comfort so many rascals and blockheads, and make all that is admirable and amiable in him only matter of regret to those who like him as I do."-ED.

* "As early as 1781," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, "Fox was attacked with frequent complaints of the stomach and bowels, attended by acute pain; to moderate the symptoms of which he usually had recourse to laudanum. He had already im. paired his bodily powers by every variety of excess, added to the most violent mental agitation." Hist. Mem. vol. ii. p. 246.—Ed.

The Prince of Wales. [The topic of general conversation at this time was the connexion which the Prince had formed with the youthful and beautiful actress, Mrs. Robinson, who first attracted his Royal Highness's notice when performing the part of Perdita, in the Winter's Tale.-ED.

Lord Orford.

LETTER CCCLIII.

Berkeley Square, June 8, 1781. THE late Gazette, boiled down from Lord Cornwallis's relation, will still convince you how transient our prospects are from his lordship's successes. In truth, as we draw prospects from the faintest hints, no wonder they have no lasting body of colours. We expect something about Necker's fall*-no ill compliment to him. I am amazed how he could hope, or at least expect, to stand. A general reformer, a Protestant, and a man of no birth, was an outrage to all interests and all prejudices. Sully, with some less objections, could not have stemmed the same torrent without a Henri Quatre to descry his merit and support it.

The Parliament will sit to the middle of next month on India af fairs, but I trouble myself with neither.

LETTER CCCLIV.

Strawberry Hill, July 5, 1781.

YOUR last is of the 26th of May, and mine of the 8th of June; since that, I have had no public news to tell you. Gazettes will perhaps have made you think that the Duke of Gloucester's visit to the Emperor was political. If it was, the business was despatched in an instant, for no visit was ever shorter. Nothing has come to my knowledge here that looks towards peace; but indeed nothing does come to my knowledge, nor do I inquire about any thing else. The war is not even entertaining; nothing but miscarriages and drawn bat

*The expected reforms which Necker had recommended in the administration of the finances, being represented to the King as inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown, he was dismissed from his office of Controller-general, and M. Jolly de Fleuri was appointed in his stead.-ED.

†The House of Commons were at this time closely occupied on Lord North's bill, for securing to the public a participation in the profits of the East India Company. On the subject of this bill, Mr. Wilberforce thus wrote, on the 9th of June, to a friend: "We have a blessed prospect of sitting till the end of next month. Between business in the morning and pleasure at night, my time is pretty well filled up. You say, the Lord Advocate (Mr. Dundas) will give them a trimming on the Indian affairs. I agree with you in thinking him the first speaker on the ministerial side in the House of Commons, and there is a manliness in his character, which prevents his running away from the question; he grants all his adversaries' premises, and fights them upon their own ground. The only India affairs we have yet had before us relate to Lord North's claim on the Company of 600,000l., and it is not in the power even of the Lord Advocate to put a good face on that transaction. Upon my honour, I believe it to be a transaction which, were it to take place in private life, would be considered as a direct robbery. The matter is too long to be explained in a letter; but we will have some conversation on the subject, and, to use your own mode of arguing, I will lay you any sum that you will be finally of my opinion." Life, vol. i. p. 21.-ED.

tles. I believe the expense of the sum total will be the only striking

event.

You are, as usual, very kind about the Rolle estate,* but be assured I shall never concern myself about it. All my views for my family were cut up by the roots when the pictures were sold; nor would I for the world make interest to influence my lord's will, even were I younger. You say he is kinder to me—yes, to serve himself. If my real services have had so little weight, I will not be obliged to him indirectly, nor will I stoop to court his rascally creatures. Oh! my dear sir, I am sixty-four, and am infirm and breaking. I do not look beyond the life of a younger man, nor have a single view left; scarce a wish but to pass the short remainder in tranquillity, and, as much as I can, without pain, and with preservation of my senses.

You are quite mistaken about the descent of the barony of Clinton. Should my lord leave every shilling to his father's relations, that peerage, coming by his mother, would go away. Another barony, that of Say and Sele, has just now been adjudged to a Mr. Twisleton, and occasioned examination into the honours that have been in the earldom of Lincoln. It struck me that the barony of Clinton, if Lord Orford dies without children, would revert to the present Duke of Newcastle, and thence to Lady Lincoln's only child, a daughter. I mentioned this to her father, Lord Hertford; he has had the pedigree sifted, and it comes out that I was in the right, though it had occurred to no body else: so, I have at least contributed to give a peerage to one of my relations.

But I ought not to have wandered so far when I was thanking you for a friendly hint, but should have thanked you for a positive present. You told me, months ago, that you had sent me a lump of crystal before my last positive prohibition. That lump I have just received, and what you spoke of so irreverently proves a beautiful sculptured vase of rock crystal. There is no end of your gifts-but there must be ! remember, reflect, how little time I may have to enjoy them; they will only figure in my inventory at my death.

The Duchess Dowager of Beaufort breakfasted here the other day, and, after inquiring about you most particularly, told me the transport you expressed on attaining the silver chest of Benvenuto Cellini for me. Oh how sad is the thought that you are never to see your presents arranged and displayed here with all the little honour I can confer on them; but they are all recorded in my catalogue, and who ever reads it will think I had no shame or gratitude. To put a stop to your magnificence, I must be brutal, and treat you as Lord Hunsdon did Queen Elizabeth, when she laid the robes of an earl on his death-bed. I must finish; for I am at this instant in pain with the rheumatism, and going to-bed. I wish us both a good night.

The town says, Lord Mulgrave is returned from a design against

*The estate of the Rolles was come to Lord Orford on his mother's death, and he had power to cut off the entail, and leave it to whom he pleased, as well as the Walpole estate.