MY DEAR FRIEND: I have this moment received your letter of the 19th. If I find any alterations by drinking these waters, now six days, it is rather for the better; but, in six days more, I think I shall find with more certainty what humor they are in with me; if kind, I will profit of, but not abuse their kindness; all things have their bounds, ‘quos ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum’; and I will endeavor to nick that point.
The Queen’s jointure is larger than, from SOME REASONS, I expected it would be, though not greater than the very last precedent authorized. The case of the late Lord Wilmington was, I fancy, remembered.
I have now good reason to believe that Spain will declare war to us, that is, that it will very soon, if it has not already, avowedly assist France, in case the war continues. This will be a great triumph to Mr. Pitt, and fully justify his plan of beginning with Spain first, and having the first blow, which is often half the battle.
Here is a great deal of company, and what is commonly called good company, that is, great quality. I trouble them very little, except at the pump, where my business calls me; for what is company to a deaf man, or a deaf man to company?
Lady Brown, whom I have seen, and who, by the way, has got the gout in her eye, inquired very tenderly after you. And so I elegantly rest, Yours, till death.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have been in your debt some time, which, you know, I am not very apt to be: but it was really for want of specie to pay. The present state of my invention does not enable me to coin; and you would have had as little pleasure in reading, as I should have in writing ‘le coglionerie’ of this place; besides, that I am very little mingled in them. I do not know whether I shall be able to follow, your advice, and cut a winner; for, at present, I have neither won nor lost a single shilling. I will play on this week only; and if I have a good run, I will carry it off with me; if a bad one, the loss can hardly amount to anything considerable in seven days, for I hope to see you in town to-morrow sevennight.
I had a dismal letter from Harte, last week; he tells me that he is at nurse with a sister in Berkshire; that he has got a confirmed jaundice, besides twenty other distempers. The true cause of these complaints I take to be the same that so greatly disordered, and had nearly destroyed the most august House of Austria, about one hundred and thirty years ago; I mean Gustavus Adolphus; who neither answered his expectations in point of profit nor reputation, and that merely by his own fault, in not writing it in the vulgar tongue; for as to facts I will maintain that it is one of the best histories extant.
‘Au revoir’, as Sir Fopling says, and God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I arrived here, as I proposed, last Sunday; but as ill as I feared I should be when I saw you. Head, stomach, and limbs, all out of order.
I have yet seen nobody but Villettes, who is settled here for good, as it is called. What consequences has the Duke of Devonshire’s resignation had? He has considerable connections and relations; but whether any of them are resigned enough to resign with him, is another matter. There will be, to be sure, as many, and as absurd reports, as there are in the law books; I do not desire to know either; but inform me of what facts come to your knowledge, and of such reports only as you believe are grounded. And so God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have received your letter, and believe that your preliminaries are very near the mark; and, upon that supposition, I think we have made a tolerable good bargain with Spain; at least full as good as I expected, and almost as good as I wished, though I do not believe that we have got ALL Florida; but if we have St. Augustin, I suppose that, by the figure of ‘pars pro toto’, will be called all Florida. We have by no means made so good a bargain with France; for, in truth, what do we get by it, except Canada, with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi! and that is all. As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland, they are very well ‘per la predica’, and for the Commissary whom we shall employ: for he will have a good salary from hence, to see that those restrictions are complied with; and the French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be broken through. It is plain to me, that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war.
The three Leeward islands, which the French yield to us, are not, all together, worth half so much as that of St. Lucia, which we give up to them. Senegal is not worth one quarter of Goree. The restrictions of the French in the East Indies are as absurd and impracticable as those of Newfoundland; and you will live to see the French trade to the East Indies, just as they did before the war. But after all I have said, the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered that no one single person who carried on this negotiation on our parts was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before. Upon the whole, then, the acquisition of Canada has cost us fourscore millions sterling. I am convinced we might have kept Guadaloupe, if our negotiators had known how to have gone about it.
His most faithful Majesty of Portugal is the best off of anybody in this, transaction, for he saves his kingdom by it, and has not laid out one moidore in defense of it. Spain, thank God, in some measure, ‘paye les pots cassis’; for, besides St. Augustin, logwood, etc., it has lost at least four millions sterling, in money, ships, etc.
Harte is here, who tells me he has been at this place these three years, excepting some few excursions to his sister; he looks ill, and laments that he has frequent fits of the yellow jaundice. He complains of his not having heard from you these four years; you should write to him. These waters have done me a great deal of good, though I drink but two-thirds of a pint in the whole day, which is less than the soberest of my countrymen drink of claret at every meal.
I should naturally think, as you do, that this session will be a stormy one, that is, if Mr. Pitt takes an active part; but if he is pleased, as the Ministers say, there is no other AEolus to blow a storm. The Dukes of Cumberland, Newcastle, and Devonshire, have no better troops to attack with than the militia; but Pitt alone is ipse agmen. God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter this morning, and return you the ball ‘a la volee’. The King’s speech is a very prudent one; and as I suppose that the addresses in answer to it were, as usual, in almost the same words, my Lord Mayor might very well call them innocent. As his Majesty expatiates so much upon the great ACHIEVEMENTS of the war, I cannot help hoping that, when the preliminaries shall be laid before Parliament IN DUE TIME, which, I suppose, means after the respective ratifications of all the contracting parties, that some untalked of and unexpected advantage will break out in our treaty with France; St. Lucia, at least. I see in the newspapers an article which I by no means like, in our treaty with Spain; which is, that we shall be at liberty to cut logwood in the Bay of Campeachy, BUT BY PAYING FOR IT. Who does not see that this condition may, and probably will, amount to a prohibition, by the price which the Spaniards may set it at? It was our undoubted right, and confirmed to us by former treaties, before the war, to cut logwood gratis; but this new stipulation (if true) gives us a privilege something like a reprieve to a criminal, with a ‘non obstante’ to be hanged.
I now drink so little water, that it can neither do me good nor hurt; but as I bathe but twice a-week, that operation, which does my rheumatic carcass good, will keep me here some time longer than you had allowed.
Harte is going to publish a new edition of his “Gustavus,” in octavo; which, he tells me, he has altered, and which, I could tell him, he should translate into English, or it will not sell better than the former; for, while the world endures, style and manner will be regarded, at least as much as matter. And so, ‘Diem vous aye dans sa sainte garde’!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter this morning, with the inclosed preliminaries, which we have had here these three days; and I return them, since you intend to keep them, which is more than I believe the French will. I am very glad to find that the French are to restore all the conquests they made upon us in the East Indies during this war; and I cannot doubt but they will likewise restore to us all the cod that they shall take within less than three leagues of our coasts in North America (a distance easily measured, especially at sea), according to the spirit, though not the letter of the treaty. I am informed that the strong opposition to the peace will be in the House of Lords, though I cannot well conceive it; nor can I make out above six or seven, who will be against it upon a division, unless (which I cannot suppose) some of the Bishops should vote on the side of their maker. God bless you.
MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter, which gave me a very clear account of the debate in your House. It is impossible for a human creature to speak well for three hours and a half; I question even if Belial, who, according to Milton, was the orator of the fallen angels, ever spoke so long at a time.
There must have been, a trick in Charles Townshend’s speaking for the Preliminaries; for he is infinitely above having an opinion. Lord Egremont must be ill, or have thoughts of going into some other place; perhaps into Lord Granville’s, who they say is dying: when he dies, the ablest head in England dies too, take it for all in all.
I shall be in town, barring accidents, this day sevennight, by dinnertime; when I have ordered a haricot, to which you will be very welcome, about four o’clock. ‘En attendant Dieu vous aye dans sa sainte garde’!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received, by the last mail, your letter of the 4th, from The Hague; so far so good.
You arrived ‘sonica’ at The Hague, for our Ambassador’s entertainment; I find he has been very civil to you. You are in the right to stop for two or three days at Hanau, and make your court to the lady of that place. —[Her Royal Highness Princess Mary of England, Landgravine of Hesse.] —Your Excellency makes a figure already in the newspapers; and let them, and others, excellency you as much as they please, but pray suffer not your own servants to do it.
Nothing new of any kind has happened here since you went; so I will wish you a good-night, and hope God will bless you.
MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter from Ratisbon, where I am glad that you are arrived safe. You are, I find, over head and ears engaged in ceremony and etiquette. You must not yield in anything essential, where your public character may suffer; but I advise you, at the same time, to distinguish carefully what may, and what may not affect it, and to despise some German ‘minutiae’; such as one step lower or higher upon the stairs, a bow more or less, and such sort of trifles.
By what I see in Cressener’s letter to you, the cheapness of wine compensates the quantity, as the cheapness of servants compensates the number that you must make use of.
Write to your mother often, if it be but three words, to prove your existence; for, when she does not hear from you, she knows to a demonstration that you are dead, if not buried.
The inclosed is a letter of the utmost consequence, which I was desired to forward, with care and speed, to the most Serene LOUIS.
My head is not well to-day. So God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I hope that by this time you are pretty well settled at Ratisbon, at least as to the important points of the ceremonial; so that you may know, to precision, to whom you must give, and from whom you must require the ‘seine Excellentz’. Those formalities are, no doubt, ridiculous enough in themselves; but yet they are necessary for manners, and sometimes for business; and both would suffer by laying them quite aside.
I have lately had an attack of a new complaint, which I have long suspected that I had in my body, ‘in actu primo’, as the pedants call it, but which I never felt in ‘actu secundo’ till last week, and that is a fit of the stone or gravel. It was, thank God, but a slight one; but it was ‘dans toutes les formes’; for it was preceded by a pain in my loins, which I at first took for some remains of my rheumatism; but was soon convinced of my mistake, by making water much blacker than coffee, with a prodigious sediment of gravel. I am now perfectly easy again, and have no more indications of this complaint.
God keep you from that and deafness! Other complaints are the common, and almost the inevitable lot of human nature, but admit of some mitigation. God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: You will, by this post, hear from others that Lord Egremont died two days ago of an apoplexy; which, from his figure, and the constant plethora he lived in, was reasonably to be expected. You will ask me, who is to be Secretary in his room: To which I answer, that I do not know. I should guess Lord Sandwich, to be succeeded in the Admiralty by Charles Townshend; unless the Duke of Bedford, who seems to have taken to himself the department of Europe, should have a mind to it. This event may perhaps produce others; but, till this happened, everything was in a state of inaction, and absolutely nothing was done. Before the next session, this chaos must necessarily take some form, either by a new jumble of its own atoms, or by mixing them with the more efficient ones of the opposition.
I see by the newspapers, as well as by your letter, that the difficulties still exist about your ceremonial at Ratisbon; should they, from pride and folly, prove insuperable, and obstruct your real business, there is one expedient which may perhaps remove difficulties, and which I have often known practiced; but which I believe our people know here nothing of; it is, to have the character of MINISTER only in your ostensible title, and that of envoy extraordinary in your pocket, to produce occasionally, especially if you should be sent to any of the Electors in your neighborhood; or else, in any transactions that you may have, in which your title of envoy extraordinary may create great difficulties, to have a reversal given you, declaring that the temporary suspension of that character, ‘ne donnera pas la moindre atteinte ni a vos droits, ni a vos pretensions’. As for the rest, divert yourself as well as you can, and eat and drink as little as you can. And so God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: Great news! The King sent for Mr. Pitt last Saturday, and the conference lasted a full hour; on the Monday following another conference, which lasted much longer; and yesterday a third, longer than either. You take for granted, that the treaty was concluded and ratified; no such matter, for this last conference broke it entirely off; and Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple went yesterday evening to their respective country houses. Would you know what it broke off upon, you must ask the newsmongers, and the coffee-houses; who, I dare say, know it all very minutely; but I, who am not apt to know anything that I do not know, honestly and humbly confess, that I cannot tell you; probably one party asked too much, and the other would grant too little. However, the King’s dignity was not, in my mind, much consulted by their making him sole plenipotentiary of a treaty, which they were not in all events determined to conclude. It ought surely to have been begun by some inferior agent, and his Majesty should only have appeared in rejecting or ratifying it. Louis XIV. never sat down before a town in person, that was not sure to be taken.
However, ‘ce qui est differe n’est pas perdu’; for this matter must be taken up again, and concluded before the meeting of the parliament, and probably upon more disadvantageous terms to the present Ministers, who have tacitly admitted, by this negotiation, what their enemies have loudly proclaimed, that they are not able to carry on affairs. So much ‘de re politica’.
I have at last done the best office that can be done to most married people; that is, I have fixed the separation between my brother and his wife; and the definitive treaty of peace will be proclaimed in about a fortnight; for the only solid and lasting peace, between a man and his wife, is, doubtless, a separation. God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: You will have known, long before this, from the office, that the departments are not cast as you wished; for Lord Halifax, as senior, had of course his choice, and chose the southern, upon account of the colonies. The Ministry, such as it is, is now settled ‘en attendant mieux’; but, in, my opinion cannot, as they are, meet the parliament.
The only, and all the efficient people they have, are in the House of Lords: for since Mr. Pitt has firmly engaged Charles Townshend to him, there is not a man of the court side, in the House of Commons, who has either abilities or words enough to call a coach. Lord B——is certainly playing ‘un dessous de cartes’, and I suspect that it is with Mr. Pitt; but what that ‘dessous’ is, I do not know, though all the coffeehouses do most exactly.
The present inaction, I believe, gives you leisure enough for ‘ennui’, but it gives you time enough too for better things; I mean reading useful books; and, what is still more useful, conversing with yourself some part of every day. Lord Shaftesbury recommends self-conversation to all authors; and I would recommend it to all men; they would be the better for it. Some people have not time, and fewer have inclination, to enter into that conversation; nay, very many dread it, and fly to the most trifling dissipations, in order to avoid it; but, if a man would allot half an hour every night for this self-conversation, and recapitulate with himself whatever he has done, right or wrong, in the course of the day, he would be both the better and the wiser for it. My deafness gives me more than a sufficient time for self-conversation; and I have found great advantages from it. My brother and Lady Stanhope are at last finally parted. I was the negotiator between them; and had so much trouble in it, that I would much rather negotiate the most difficult point of the ‘jus publicum Sacri Romani Imperii’ with the whole Diet of Ratisbon, than negotiate any point with any woman. If my brother had had some of those self-conversations, which I recommend, he would not, I believe, at past sixty, with a crazy, battered constitution, and deaf into the bargain, have married a young girl, just turned of twenty, full of health, and consequently of desires. But who takes warning by the fate of others? This, perhaps, proceeds from a negligence of selfconversation. God bless you.
MY DEAR FRIEND: The last mail brought me your letter of the 2d instant, as the former had brought me that of the 25th past. I did suppose that you would be sent over, for the first day of the session; as I never knew a stricter muster, and no furloughs allowed. I am very sorry for it, for the reasons you hint at; but, however, you did very prudently, in doing, ‘de bonne grace’, what you could not help doing; and let that be your rule in every thing for the rest of your life. Avoid disagreeable things as much as by dexterity you can; but when they are unavoidable, do them with seeming willingness and alacrity. Though this journey is ill-timed for you in many respects, yet, in point of FINANCES, you will be a gainer by it upon the whole; for, depend upon it, they will keep you here till the very last day of the session: and I suppose you have sold your horses, and dismissed some of your servants. Though they seem to apprehend the first day of the session so much, in my opinion their danger will be much greater in the course of it.
When you are at Paris, you will of course wait upon Lord Hertford, and desire him to present you to the King; at the same time make my compliments to him, and thank him for the very obliging message he left at my house in town; and tell him, that, had I received it in time from thence, I would have come to town on purpose to have returned it in person. If there are any new little books at Paris, pray bring them me. I have already Voltaire’s ‘Zelis dans le Bain’, his ‘Droit du Seigneur’, and ‘Olympie’. Do not forget to call once at Madame Monconseil’s, and as often as you please at Madame du Pin’s. Au revoir.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I arrived here, as you suppose in your letter, last Sunday; but after the worst day’s journey I ever had in my life: it snowed and froze that whole morning, and in the evening it rained and thawed, which made the roads so slippery, that I was six hours coming post from the Devizes, which is but eighteen miles from hence; so that, but for the name of coming post, I might as well have walked on foot. I have not yet quite got over my last violent attack, and am weak and flimsy.
I have now drank the waters but three days; so that, without a miracle, I cannot yet expect much alteration, and I do not in the least expect a miracle. If they proved ‘les eaux de Jouvence’ to me, that would be a miracle indeed; but, as the late Pope Lambertini said, ‘Fra noi, gli miracoli sono passati girt un pezzo’.
I have seen Harte, who inquired much after you: he is dejected and dispirited, and thinks himself much worse than he is, though he has really a tendency to the jaundice. I have yet seen nobody else, nor do I know who here is to be seen; for I have not yet exhibited myself to public view, except at the pump, which, at the time I go to it, is the most private place in Bath.
After all the fears and hopes, occasioned severally by the meeting of the parliament, in my opinion, it will prove a very easy session. Mr. Wilkes is universally given up; and if the ministers themselves do not wantonly raise difficulties, I think they will meet with none. A majority of two hundred is a great anodyne. Adieu! God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: Last post brought me your letter of the 29th past. I suppose C——-T——-let off his speech upon the Princess’s portion, chiefly to show that he was of the opposition; for otherwise, the point was not debatable, unless as to the quantum, against which something might be said; for the late Princess of Orange (who was the eldest daughter of a king) had no more, and her two sisters but half, if I am not mistaken.
It is a great mercy that Mr. Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, is out of danger, and may live to fight and write again in support of them; and it is no less a mercy, that God hath raised up the Earl of S———to vindicate and promote true religion and morality. These two blessings will justly make an epoch in the annals of this country.
I have delivered your message to Harte, who waits with impatience for your letter. He is very happy now in having free access to all Lord Craven’s papers, which, he says, give him great lights into the ‘bellum tricenale’; the old Lord Craven having been the professed and valorous knight-errant, and perhaps something more, to the Queen of Bohemia; at least, like Sir Peter Pride, he had the honor of spending great part of his estate in her royal cause:
I am by no means right yet; I am very weak and flimsy still; but the doctor assures me that strength and spirits will return; if they do, ‘lucro apponam’, I will make the best of them; if they do not, I will not make their want still worse by grieving and regretting them. I have lived long enough, and observed enough, to estimate most things at their intrinsic, and not their imaginary value; and, at seventy, I find nothing much worth either desiring or fearing. But these reflections, which suit with seventy, would be greatly premature at two-and-thirty. So make the best of your time; enjoy the present hour, but ‘memor ultimae’. God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter this morning, in which you reproach me with not having written to you this week. The reason was, that I did not know what to write. There is that sameness in my life here, that EVERY DAY IS STILL BUT AS THE FIRST. I see very few people; and, in the literal sense of the word, I hear nothing.
Mr. L———and Mr. C——-I hold to be two very ingenious men; and your image of the two men ruined, one by losing his law-suit, and the other by carrying it, is a very just one. To be sure, they felt in themselves uncommon talents for business and speaking, which were to reimburse them.
Harte has a great poetical work to publish, before it be long; he has shown me some parts of it. He had entitled it “Emblems,” but I persuaded him to alter that name for two reasons; the first was, because they were not emblems, but fables; the second was, that if they had been emblems, Quarles had degraded and vilified that name to such a degree, that it is impossible to make use of it after him; so they are to be called fables, though moral tales would, in my mind, be the properest name. If you ask me what I think of those I have seen, I must say, that ‘sunt plura bona, quaedam mediocria, et quaedam——’
Your report of future changes, I cannot think is wholly groundless; for it still runs strongly in my head, that the mine we talked of will be sprung, at or before the end of the session.
I have got a little more strength, but not quite the strength of Hercules; so that I will not undertake, like him, fifty deflorations in one night; for I really believe that I could not compass them. So good-night, and God bless you!
DEAR FRIEND: I confess I was a good deal surprised at your pressing me so strongly to influence Parson Rosenhagen, when you well know the resolution I had made several years ago, and which I have scrupulously observed ever since, not to concern myself, directly or indirectly, in any party political contest whatsoever. Let parties go to loggerheads as much and as long as they please; I will neither endeavor to part them, nor take the part of either; for I know them all too well. But you say, that Lord Sandwich has been remarkably civil, and kind to you. I am very glad of it, and he can by no means impute to you my obstinacy, folly, or philosophy, call it what you please: you may with great truth assure him, that you did all you could to obey his commands.
I am sorry to find that you are out of order, but I hope it is only a cold; should it be anything more, pray consult Dr. Maty, who did you so much good in your last illness, when the great medicinal Mattadores did you rather harm. I have found a Monsieur Diafoirus here, Dr. Moisy, who has really done me a great deal of good; and I am sure I wanted it a great deal when I came here first. I have recovered some strength, and a little more will give me as much as I can make use of.
Lady Brown, whom I saw yesterday, makes you many compliments; and I wish you a merry Christmas, and a good-night. Adieu!
MY DEAR FRIEND: Gravenkop wrote me word, by the last post, that you were laid up with the gout: but I much question it, that is, whether it is the gout or not. Your last illness, before you went abroad, was pronounced the gout, by the skillful, and proved at last a mere rheumatism. Take care that the same mistake is not made this year; and that by giving you strong and hot medicines to throw out the gout, they do not inflame the rheumatism, if it be one.
Mr. Wilkes has imitated some of the great men of antiquity, by going into voluntary exile: it was his only way of defeating both his creditors and his prosecutors. Whatever his friends, if he has any, give out of his returning soon, I will answer for it, that it will be a long time before that soon comes.
I have been much out of order these four days of a violent cold which I do not know how I got, and which obliged me to suspend drinking the waters: but it is now so much better, that I propose resuming them for this week, and paying my court to you in town on Monday or Tuesday seven-night: but this is ‘sub spe rati’ only. God bless you!
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have this moment received your letter of the 3d from Prague, but I never received that which you mention from Ratisbon; this made me think you in such rapid motion, that I did not know where to take aim. I now suppose that you are arrived, though not yet settled, at Dresden; your audiences and formalities are, to be sure, over, and that is great ease of mind to you.
I have no political events to acquaint you with; the summer is not the season for them, they ripen only in winter; great ones are expected immediately before the meeting of parliament, but that, you know, is always the language of fears and hopes. However, I rather believe that there will be something patched up between the INS and the OUTS.
The whole subject of conversation, at present, is the death and will of Lord Bath: he has left above twelve hundred thousand pounds in land and money; four hundred thousand pounds in cash, stocks, and mortgages; his own estate, in land, was improved to fifteen thousand pounds a-year, and the Bradford estate, which he——-is as much; both which, at only five-and twenty years’ purchase, amount to eight hundred thousand pounds; and all this he has left to his brother, General Pulteney, and in his own disposal, though he never loved him. The legacies he has left are trifling; for, in truth, he cared for nobody: the words GIVE and BEQUEATH were too shocking for him to repeat, and so he left all in one word to his brother. The public, which was long the dupe of his simulation and dissimulation, begins to explain upon him; and draws such a picture of him as I gave you long ago.
Your late secretary has been with me three or four times; he wants something or another, and it seems all one to him what, whether civil or military; in plain English, he wants bread. He has knocked at the doors of some of the ministers, but to no purpose. I wish with all my heart that I could help him: I told him fairly that I could not, but advised him to find some channel to Lord B——-, which, though a Scotchman, he told me he could not. He brought a packet of letters from the office to you, which I made him seal up; and keep it for you, as I suppose it makes up the series of your Ratisbon letters.
As for me, I am just what I was when you left me, that is, nobody. Old age steals upon me insensibly. I grow weak and decrepit, but do not suffer, and so I am content.
Forbes brought me four books of yours, two of which were Bielefeldt’s “Letters,” in which, to my knowledge, there are many notorious lies.
Make my compliments to Comte Einsiedel, whom I love and honor much; and so good-night to ‘seine Excellentz’.
Now our correspondence may be more regular, and I expect a letter from you every fortnight. I will be regular on my part: but write oftener to your mother, if it be but three lines.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received, two days ago, your letter of the 11th from Dresden, where I am very glad that, you are safely arrived at last. The prices of the necessaries of life are monstrous there; and I do not conceive how the poor natives subsist at all, after having been so long and so often plundered by their own as well as by other sovereigns.
As for procuring you either the title or the appointments of Plenipotentiary, I could as soon procure them from the Turkish as from the English Ministry; and, in truth, I believe they have it not to give.
Now to come to your civil list, if one may compare small things with great: I think I have found out a better refreshment for it than you propose; for to-morrow I shall send to your cashier, Mr. Larpent, five hundred pounds at once, for your use, which, I presume, is better than by quarterly payments; and I am very apt to think that next midsummer day, he will have the same sum, and for the same use, consigned to him.
It is reported here, and I believe not without some foundation, that the queen of Hungary has acceded to the Family Compact between France and Spain: if so, I am sure it behooves us to form in time a counter alliance, of at least equal strength; which I could easily point out, but which, I fear, is not thought of here.
The rage of marrying is very prevalent; so that there will be probably a great crop of cuckolds next winter, who are at present only ‘cocus en herbs’. It will contribute to population, and so far must be allowed to be a public benefit. Lord G———, Mr. B———-, and Mr. D———-, are, in this respect, very meritorious; for they have all married handsome women, without one shilling fortune. Lord must indeed take some pains to arrive at that dignity: but I dare say he will bring it about, by the help of some young Scotch or Irish officer. Good-night, and God bless you!
DEAR FRIEND: I have received your letter of the 13th past. I see that your complete arrangement approaches, and you need not be in a hurry to give entertainments, since so few others do.
Comte Flemming is the man in the world the best calculated to retrieve the Saxon finances, which have been all this century squandered and lavished with the most absurd profusion: he has certainly abilities, and I believe integrity; I dare answer for him, that the gentleness and flexibility of his temper will not prevail with him to yield to the importunities of craving and petulant applications. I see in him another Sully; and therefore I wish he were at the head of our finances.
France and Spain both insult us, and we take it too tamely; for this is, in my opinion, the time for us to talk high to them. France, I am persuaded, will not quarrel with us till it has got a navy at least equal to ours, which cannot be these three or four years at soonest; and then, indeed, I believe we shall hear of something or other; therefore, this is the moment for us to speak loud; and we shall be feared, if we do not show that we fear.
Here is no domestic news of changes and chances in the political world; which, like oysters, are only in season in the R months, when the parliament sits. I think there will be some then, but of what kind, God knows.
I have received a book for you, and one for myself, from Harte. It is upon agriculture, and will surprise you, as I confess it did me. This work is not only in English, but good and elegant English; he has even scattered graces upon his subject; and in prose, has come very near Virgil’s “Georgics” in verse. I have written to him, to congratulate his happy transformation. As soon as I can find an opportunity, I will send you your copy. You (though no Agricola) will read it with pleasure.
I know Mackenzie, whom you mention. ‘C’est une delie; sed cave’.
Make mine and Lady Chesterfield’s compliments to Comte et Comtesse Flemming; and so, ‘Dieu vous aye en sa sainte garde’!
MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter of the 30th past, by which I find that you had not then got mine, which I sent you the day after I had received your former; you have had no great loss of it; for, as I told you in my last, this inactive season of the year supplies no materials for a letter; the winter may, and probably will, produce an abundant crop, but of what grain I neither know, guess, nor care. I take it for granted, that Lord B———‘surnagera encore’, but by the assistance of what bladders or cork-waistcoats God only knows. The death of poor Mr. Legge, the epileptic fits of the Duke of Devonshire, for which he is gone to Aix-la-Chapelle, and the advanced age of the Duke of Newcastle, seem to facilitate an accommodation, if Mr. Pitt and Lord Bute are inclined to it.
You ask me what I think of the death of poor Iwan, and of the person who ordered it. You may remember that I often said, she would murder or marry him, or probably both; she has chosen the safest alternative; and has now completed her character of femme forte, above scruples and hesitation. If Machiavel were alive, she would probably be his heroine, as Caesar Borgia was his hero. Women are all so far Machiavelians, that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation. She will, perhaps, meet, before it is long, with some Scythian as free from prejudices as herself. If there is one Oliver Cromwell in the three regiments of guards, he will probably, for the sake of his dear country, depose and murder her; for that is one and the same thing in Russia.
You seem now to have settled, and ‘bien nippe’ at Dresden. Four sedentary footmen, and one running one, ‘font equipage leste’. The German ones will give you, ‘seine Excellentz’; and the French ones, if you have any, Monseigneur.
My own health varies, as usual, but never deviates into good. God bless you, and send you better!