in favour of Malibrunus, the Jew-painter's abilities. I should sooner have suspected that Mr. Masters would have produced such witnesses to condemn Richard III. The note relating to Lady Boteler does not relate to her marriage.

I send you two martagon roots, and some jonquils; and have added some prints, two enamelled pictures, and three medals. One of Oliver, by Simon; a fine one of Pope Clement X, and a scarce one of Archbishop Sancroft and the Seven Bishops. I hope the two latter will atone for the first. As I shall never be out of your debt, pray draw on me for any more other roots, or anything that will be agreeable to you, and excuse me at present.

SIR,

TO DR. BERKENHOUT.1

July 6, 1773.

I AM SO much engaged in private business at present, that I have not had time to thank you for the favour of your letter: nor can I now answer it to your satisfaction.

My life has been too insignificant to afford materials interesting to the public. In general, the lives of mere authors are dry and unentertaining; nor, though I have been one occasionally, are my writings of a class or merit to entitle me to any distinction. I can as little furnish you, Sir, with a list of them or their dates, which would give me more trouble to make out than is worth while. If I have any merit with the public, it is for printing and preserving some valuable works of others; and if ever you write the lives of printers, I may be

1 Dr. John Berkenhout had been a captain both in the English and Prussian service, and in 1765 took his degree of M.D. at Leyden. His application to Walpole was for the purpose of procuring materials for a life of him in his forthcoming work, "Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical History of Literature; containing the Lives of English, Irish, and Scottish Authors, from the dawn of Letters in these Kingdoms to the present Times." The first volume, which treats of those writers who lived from the beginning of the fifth to the end of the sixth century, and which is the only one ever published, appeared in 1777. He died in 1791.-E.

enrolled in the number. My own works, I suppose, are dead and buried; but, as I am not impatient to be interred with them, I hope you will leave that office to the parson of the parish, and I shall be, as long as I live, yours, &c.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Arlington Street, Aug. 30, 1773.

I RETURNED last night from Houghton, where multiplicity of business detained me four days longer than I intended, and where I found a scene infinitely more mortifying than I expected; though I certainly did not go with a prospect of finding a land flowing with milk and honey. Except the pictures, which are in the finest preservation, and the woods, which are become forests, all the rest is ruin, desolation, confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villany, waste, folly, and madness. I do not believe that five thousand pounds would put the house and buildings into good repair. The nettles and brambles in the park are up to your shoulders; horses have been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in every cottage. The perpetuity of livings that come up to the park-pales have been sold and every farm let for half its value. In short, you know how much family-pride I have, and consequently may judge how much I have been mortified! Nor do I tell you half, or near the worst circumstances. I have just stopped the torrent - and that is all. I am very uncertain whether I must not fling up the trust; and some of the difficulties in my way seem unsurmountable, and too dangerous not to alarm even my zeal; since I must not ruin myself, and hurt those for whom I must feel, too, only to restore a family that will end with myself, and to retrieve an estate from which I am not likely ever to receive the least advantage.

If you will settle with the Churchills your journey to Chalfont, and will let me know the day, I will endeavour to meet

Whither he had gone during the mental alienation of his nephew, George Earl of Orford, to endeavour to settle and arrange his affairs.

you there; I hope it will not be till next week. I am overwhelmed with business but, indeed, I know not when I shall be otherwise! I wish you joy of this endless summer.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 24, 1773.

THE multiplicity of business which I found chalked out to me by my journey to Houghton, has engaged me so much, my dear lord, and the unpleasant scene opened to me there struck me so deeply, that I have neither had time nor cheerfulness enough to flatter myself I could amuse my friends by my letters. Except the pictures, I found everything worse than I expected, and the prospect almost too bad to give me courage to pursue what I am doing. I am totally ignorant in most of the branches of business that are fallen to my lot, and not young enough to learn any new business well. All I can hope is to clear the worst part of the way; for, in undertaking to retrieve an estate, the beginning is certainly the most difficult of the work—it is fathoming a chaos. But I will not unfold a confusion to your lordship which your good sense will always keep you from experiencing-very unfashionably; for the first geniuses of this age hold, that the best method of governing the world is to throw it into disorder. The experiment is not yet complete, as the rearrangement is still to come.

I am very seriously glad of the birth of your nephew,1 my lord; I am going this evening with my gratulations; but have been so much absent and so hurried, that I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing Lady Anne, though I have called twice. To Gunnersbury I have had no summons this summer: I receive such honours, or the want of them, with proper respect. Lady Mary Coke, I fear, is in chace of a Dulcineus that she will never meet. When the ardour of peregrination is a little abated, will not she

A son of John Earl of Buckingham, who died young. * Lady Anne Conolly.

probably give in to a more comfortable pursuit; and, like a print I have seen of the blessed martyr Charles the First, abandon the hunt of a corruptible for that of an incorruptible crown ? There is another beatific print just published in that style: it is of Lady Huntingdon. With much pompous humility, she looks like an old basket-woman trampling on her coronet at the mouth of a cavern.-Poor Whitfield! if he was forced to do the honours of the spelunca!-Saint Fanny Shirley is nearer consecration. I was told two days ago that she had written a letter to Lady Selina that was not intelligible. Her grace of Kingston's glory approaches to consummation in a more worldly style. The Duke1 is dying, and has given her the whole estate, seventeen thousand a-year. I am told she has already notified the contents of the will, and made offers of the sale of Thoresby. Pious matrons have various ways of expressing decency.

Your lordship's new bow-window thrives. I do not want it to remind me of its master and mistress, to whom I am ever the most devoted humble servant.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1773.

I AM very sorry, my dear lord, that you are coming towards us so slowy and unwillingly. I cannot quite wonder at the latter. The world is an old acquaintance that does not improve upon one's hands: however, one must not give way to the disgusts it creates. My maxim, and practice, too, is to laugh, because I do not like to cry. I could shed a pail-full of tears over all I have seen and learnt since my poor nephew's misfortune-the more one has to do with men the worse one finds them. But can one mend them? Shall we shut ourselves up from them? No. We should grow humorists-and of all animals an Englishman is least made to live alone. For my part, I am conscious of so many

No.

1 The Duke of Kingston died on the 22d of September, when all his honours became extinct.-E.

faults, that I think I grow better the more bad I see in my neighbours; and there are so many I would not resemble, that it makes me watchful over myself. You, my lord, who have forty more good qualities than I have, should not seclude yourself. I do not wonder you despise knaves and fools; but remember, they want better examples; they will never grow ashamed by conversing with one another.

I came to settle here on Friday, being drowned out of Twickenham. I find the town desolate, and no news in it, but that the ministry give up the Irish tax-some say, because it will not pass in Ireland; others, because the city of London would have petitioned against it; and some, because there were factions in the council-which is not the most incredible of all. I am glad, for the sake of some of my friends who would have suffered by it, that it is over.1 In other respects, I have too much private business of my own to think about the public, which is big enough to take care of itself.

I have heard of some of Lady Mary Coke's mortifications. I have regard and esteem for her good qualities, which are many; but I doubt her genius will never suffer her to be quite happy. As she will not take the psalmist's advice of not putting trust, I am sure she would not follow mine; for, with all her piety, King David is the only royal person she will not listen to, and therefore I forbear my sweet counsel. When she and Lord Huntingdon meet, will not they put you in mind of Count Gage and Lady Mary Herbert, who met in the mines of Asturias, after they had failed of the crown of Poland ?2-Adieu, my dear lord! Come you and

1 A tax upon absentees. Mr. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont, says, that the influence of the Whig leaders predominated so far as to oblige the ministers to relinquish the measure.-E.

2 The crown of Poland, venal twice an age,

To just three millions stinted modest Gage."

Pope, in a note to the above couplet, states that Mr. Gage and Lady Mary Herbert, "each of them, in the Mississippi scheme, despised to realize above three hundred thousand pounds; the gentleman with a view to the purchase of the crown of Poland, the lady on a vision of the like royal nature: they have since retired into Spain, where they are still in search of gold, in the mines of the Asturias."-E.