To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Arlington-street, Dec. 16, 1764.

As I have not read in the paper that you died lately at Greatworth, in Northamptonshire, nor have met with any Montagu or Trevor in mourning, I conclude you are living: I send this, however, to inquire, and if you should happen to be departed, hope your executor will be so kind as to burn it. Though you do not seem to have the same curiosity about my existence, you may gather from my hand-writing that I am still in being; which being perhaps full as much as you want to know of me, I will trouble you with no farther particulars about myself-nay, nor about any body else; your curiosity seeming to be pretty much the same about all the world. News there are certainly none; nobody is even dead, as the bishop of Carlisle told me to-day, which I repeat to you in general, though I apprehend in his own mind he meant no possessor of a better bishopric.

If you like to know the state of the town, here it is. In the first place, it is very empty; in the next, there are more diversions than the week will hold. A charming Italian opera, with no dances and no company, at least on Tuesdays; to supply which defect, the subscribers are to have a ball and supper-a plan that in my humble opinion will fill the Tuesdays and empty the Saturdays. At both playhouses are woful English operas; which, however, fill better than the Italian, patriotism being entirely confined to our ears: how long the sages of the law may leave us those I cannot say. Mrs. Cornelis, apprehending the future assembly at Almack's, has enlarged her vast room, and hung it with blue satin, and another with yellow satin; but Almack's room, which is to be ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers, as easily as Moses's rod gobbled down those of the magicians. Well, but there are more joys; a dinner and assembly every Tuesday at the Austrian minister's; ditto on Thursdays at the Spaniard's; ditto on Wednesdays and Sundays at the French ambassador's; besides madame de Welderen's on Wednesdays, lady Harrington's Sundays, and occasional private mobs at my lady Northumberland's. Then for the mornings, there are levees and drawing-rooms without end. Not to mention the maccaroni-club, which has quite absorbed Arthur's; for

The

you know old fools will hobble after young ones. Of all these pleasures, I prescribe myself a very small pittance,—my dark corner in my own box at the opera, and now and then an ambassador, to keep my French going till my journey to Paris. Politics are gone to sleep, like a paroli at Pharaoh, though there is the finest tract lately published that ever was written, called an Inquiry into the Doctrine of Libels.' It would warm your old Algernon blood; but for what any body cares, might as well have been written about the wars of York and Lancaster. thing most in fashion is my edition of lord Herbert's life; people are mad after it, I believe because only two hundred were printed; and, by the numbers that admire it, I am convinced that if I had kept his lordship's counsel, very few would have found out the absurdity of it. The caution with which I hinted at its extravagance, has passed with several for approbation, and drawn on theirs. This is nothing new to me; it is when one laughs out at their idols that one angers people. I do not wonder now that sir Philip Sidney was the darling ero, when lord Herbert, who followed him so close and trod in his steps, is at this time of day within an ace of rivalling him. I wish I had let him; it was contradicting one of my own maxims, which I hold to be very just; that it is idle to endeavour to cure the world of any folly, unless we could cure it of being foolish.

Tell me whether I am likely to see you before I go to Paris, which will be early in February. I hate you for being so indifferent about me. I live in the world, and yet love nothing; care a straw for nothing, but two or three old friends, that I have loved these thirty years. You have buried yourself with half-adozen parsons and 'squires, and yet never cast a thought upon those you have always lived with. You come to town for two months, grow tired in six weeks, hurry away, and then one hears no more of you till next winter. I don't want you to like the world, I like it no more than you; but I stay awhile in it, because while one sees it one laughs at it, but when one gives it up one grows angry with it; and I hold it much wiser to laugh than to be out of humour. You cannot imagine how much ill blood this perseverance has cured me of; I used to say to myself,

"Inquiry into the doctrine lately propagated concerning Juries, Libels, &c., upon the principles of the law and the constitution."-London, 8vo., 1764. [Ed.]

"Lord! this person is so bad, that person is so bad, I hate them." I have now found out that they are all pretty much alike, and I hate nobody. Having never found you out, but for integrity and sincerity, I am much disposed to persist in a friendship with you, but if I am to be at all the pains of keeping it up, I shall imitate my neighbours (I don't mean those at next door, but in the scripture sense of neighbour, any body) and say "That is a very good man, but I don't care a farthing for him.” Till I have taken my final resolution on that head, I am, Yours most cordially.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Christmas-eve, 1764.

You are grown so good, and I delight so much in your letters when you please to write them, that though it is past midnight and I am to go out of town to-morrow morning, I must thank you.

I shall put your letter to Rheims into the foreign post with a proper penny, and it will go much safer and quicker than if I sent it to lord Hertford, for his letters lie very often till enough are assembled to compose a jolly caravan. I love your good brother John, as I always do, for keeping your birthday; I, who hate ceremonious customs, approve of what I know comes so much from the heart as all he and you do and say. The general surely need not ask leave to enclose letters to me.

There is neither news nor any body to make it but the clergy, who are all gaping after or about the Irish mitre,' which your old antagonist has quitted. Keene has refused it; Newton hesitates, and they think will not accept it; Ewer pants for it, and many of the bench I believe do every thing but pray for it. Goody Carlisle hopes for Worcester if it should be vacated, but I believe would not dislike to be her Grace.

This comes with your muff, my Anecdotes of Painting, the fine pamphlet on libels, and the Castle of Otranto, which came out to-day. All this will make some food for your fireside.

1 Dr. John Stone, archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, died 19th December, 1764. [Ed.]

Since you will not come and see me before I go, I hope not to be gone before you come, though I am not quite in charity with you about it. Oh, I had forgot; don't lend your lord Herbert, it will grow as dirty as the street; and as there are so few, and they have been so lent about, and so dirtied, the few clean copies will be very valuable. What signifies whether they read it or not? there will be a new fashion, or a new separation, or a new something or other, that will do just as well, before you I can convey your copy to them; and seriously, if you lose it, have not another to give you; and I would fain have you keep my editions together, as you have had the complete set. As I want to make you an economist of my books, I will inform you that this second set of anecdotes sells for three guineas. Adieu !

Yours ever.

P.S. I send you a decent smallish muff, that you may put in your pocket, and it costs but fourteen shillings.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Arlington-street, Feb. 19, 1765.

YOUR health and spirits and youth delight me; yet I think you make but a bad use of them, when you destine them to a triste house in a country solitude. If you were condemned to retirement, it would be fortunate to have spirits to support it; but great vivacity is not a cause for making it one's option.

Why waste your sweetness on the desert air? at least, why bestow so little of your cheerfulness on your friends? I do not wish you to parade your rubicundity and gray hairs through the mobs and assemblies of London; I should think you bestowed them as ill as on Greatworth; but you might find a few rational creatures here, who are heartily tired of what are called our pleasures, and who would be glad to have you in their chimney corner. There you might have found me any time this fortnight; I have been dying of the worst and longest cold I ever had in my days, and have been blooded and taken James's

powder to no purpose. I look almost like the skeleton that Frederick found in the oratory: my only comfort was, that I should have owed my death to the long day in the House of Commons, and have perished with our liberties: but I think I am getting the better of my martyrdom, and shall live to see you; nay, I shall not be gone to Paris. As I design that journey for the term of my figuring in the world, I would fain wind up my politics, too, and quit all public ties together. As I am not old yet, and have an excellent though delicate constitution, I may promise myself some agreeable years, if I could detach myself from all connexions but with a very few persons that I value. Oh, with what joy I could bid adieu to loving and hating! to crowds, public places, great dinners, visits, and above all, to the House of Commons; but pray mind, when I retire, it shall only be to London and Strawberry-hill-in London one can live as one will, and at Strawberry I will live as I will. Apropos, my good old tenant Franklin is dead, and I am in possession of his cottage, which will be a delightfully additional plaything at Strawberry. I shall be violently tempted to stick in a few cypresses and lilacs there, before I go to Paris. I don't know a jot of news: I have been a perfect hermit this fortnight, and buried in Runic poetry and Danish wars, In short, I have been deep in a late history of Denmark, written by one Mallet, a Frenchman, a sensible man, but I cannot say he has the art of making a very tiresome subject agreeable. There are six volumes, and I am stuck fast in the fourth.

2

Lord Byron's trial," I hear, is to be in May. If you are curious

1 An allusion to the now well known scene in the last chapter of his Castle of Otranto. [Ed.]

2 "Mallet's History of Denmark." The introduction to which was afterwards translated by bishop Percy, who added to it a number of additional notes and Goranson's Latin Version of the Edda, and published it in 1770, under the title of "Northern Antiquities, &c. [Ed.]

3 For killing Mr. Chaworth in a duel on the 29th January 1765. He was arraigned before his peers in Westminster-hall the 26th and 27th April following, and found guilty of manslaughter; but claiming the benefit of the statute of Edward VI., he was discharged upon simply paying his fees. The quarrel arose at a meeting of the Nottinghamshire club, of which they were both members, upon a question as to the quantity of game on their estates; and, when Mr. Chaworth retired, lord Byron followed him out of the room in which they had dined, and stopping him on the landing of the stairs, desired the waiter to show them into an empty room. They were