I wish to hear that you have enjoyed your health, and shall be glad of any news of you. The season is too late, and the parliament too near opening, for me to propose a winter journey to you. If you should happen to think at all of London, I trust you would do me the favour to call on me. In short, this is only a letter of inquiry after you, and to show you that I am always

Most truly yours.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Strawberry-hill, Sunday, Nov. 1, 1767.

THE house is taken, that you wot of, but I believe you may have general Trapaud's for fifty pounds a year, and a fine of two hundred and fifty, which is less by half, look you, than you was told at first. A jury of matrons, composed of lady Frances, my dame Bramston, lady Pembroke, and lady Carberry, and the merry Catholic lady Brown, have sat upon it, and decide that you should take it. But you must come and treat in person, and may hold the congress here. I hear lord Guildford is much better, so that the exchequer will still find you in funds. You will not dislike to hear, shall you, that Mr. Conway does not take the appointments of secretary of state. If it grows the fashion to give up above five thousand pounds a year, this ministry will last for ever, for I do not think the opposition will struggle for places without salaries. If my lord Ligonier does not go to heaven, or sir Robert Rich to the devil soon, our general will run considerably in debt; but he had better be too poor than too rich. I would not have him die like old Pulteney, loaded with the spoils of other families and the crimes of his own. Adieu! I will not write to you any more, so you may as well come.

Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Strawberry-hill, Dec. 19, 1767.

You are now I reckon settled in your new habitation: I would not interrupt you in your journeyings, dear sir, but am not at all pleased that you are seated so little to your mind; and yet I think you will stay there. Cambridge and Ely are neighbourhoods to your taste, and if you do not again shift your quarters, I shall make them and you a visit: Ely I have never seen. I could have wished that you had preferred this part of the world; and yet, I trust, I shall see you here oftener than I have done of late. This, to my great satisfaction, is my last session of parliament, to which, and to politics, I shall ever bid adieu !

I did not go to Paris for my health, though I found the journey and the sea-sickness, which I had never experienced before, contributed to it greatly. I have not been so well for some years as I am at present, and if I continue to plump up as I do at present, I do not know but by the time we may meet, whether you may not discover, without a microscope, that I am really fatter. I went to make a visit to my dear old blind woman, and to see some things I could not see in winter.

2

For the Catholic religion, I think it very consumptive. With a little patience, if Whitfield, Wesley, my lady Huntingdon, and that rogue Madan live, I do not doubt but we shall have something very like it here. And yet I had rather live at the end of a tawdry religion, than at the beginning; which is always more stern and hypocritic.

I shall be very glad to see your laborious work of the maps; you are indefatigable, I know: I think mapping would try my patience more than any thing.

My Richard the Third will go to press this week, and you shall have one of the first copies, which I think will be in about a month, if you will tell me how to convey it: direct to Arlington-street. Mr. Gray went to Cambridge yesterday se'nnight: I wait for some papers from him for my purpose.

1 Mr. Cole had lately removed from Blecheley, Bucks, to Waterbeach, near Cambridge. [Or.]

2 Madame du Deffand. [Or.]

I grieve for your sufferings by the inundation; but you are not only an hermit, but, what is better, a real philosopher. Let me hear from

you soon.

Yours ever.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Arlington-street, Feb. 1, 1768.

DEAR SIR,

I have waited for the impression of my Richard, to send you the whole parcel together. This moment I have conveyed to Mr. Cartwright a large bundle for you, containing Richard the Third, the four volumes of the new edition of the Anecdotes, and six prints for your relation Tuer. You will find his head very small but the original was too inconsiderable to allow it to be larger. I have sent you no Patagonèans :2 for they are out of print: I have only my own copy, and could not get another. Pray tell me how, or what you heard of it: and tell me sincerely, for I did not know it had made any noise.

:

I shall be much obliged to you for the extract relating to the Academy of which a Walpole was president. I doubt if he was of our branch; and rather think he was of the younger and Roman Catholic branch.

Are you reconciled to your new habitation? Don't you find it too damp? and if you do, don't deceive yourself, and try to surmount it, but remove immediately. Health is the most important of all considerations. Adieu! dear sir,

Yours ever.

"Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third, by Mr. Horace Walpole," London 1768, 4to. Two editions of this work, which occasioned a good deal of historical controversy, were published during the year. [Ed.]

2 "An account of the Giants lately discovered; in a Letter to a Friend in the Country," London 1766, 8vo. It was afterwards translated into French by the Chevalier Redmond, an Irish officer in the French service. [Ed.]

To MR. GRAY.

Arlington-street, Feb. 18, 1768.

You have sent me a long and very obliging letter, and yet I am extremely out of humour with you. I saw Poems by Mr. Gray advertised: I called directly at Dodsley's to know if this was to be more than a new edition? He was not at home himself, but his foreman told me he thought there were some new pieces, and notes to the whole. It was very unkind, not only to go out of town without mentioning them to me, without showing them to me, but not to say a word of them in this letter. Do you think I am indifferent, or not curious, about what you write? I have ceased to ask you, because you have so long refused to show me any thing. You could not suppose I thought that you never write. No; but I concluded you did not intend, at least yet, to publish what you had written. As you did intend it, I might have expected a month's preference. You will do me the justice to own that I had always rather have seen your writings than have shown you mine, which you know are the most hasty trifles in the world, and which, though I may be fond of the subject when fresh, I constantly forget in a very short time after they are published. This would sound like affectation to others, but will not to you. It would be affected, even to you, to say I am indifferent to fame-I certainly am not, but I am indifferent to almost any thing I have done to acquire it. The greater part are mere compilations; and no wonder they are, as you say, incorrect, when they are commonly written with people in the room, as Richard and the Noble Authors were. But I doubt there is a more intrinsic fault in them; which is, that I cannot correct them. If I write tolerably, it must be at once; I can neither mend nor add. The articles of lord Capel and lord Peterborough, in the second edition of the Noble Authors, cost me more trouble than all the rest together: and you may perceive that the worst part of Richard, in point of ease and style, is what relates to the papers you gave me on Jane Shore, because it was tacked on so long afterwards, and when my impetus was chilled. If some time or other you will take the trouble of pointing out the inaccuracies of it, I shall be much obliged to you: at present I

shall meddle no more with it. It has taken its fate; nor did I mean to complain. I found it was condemned. indeed. beforehand, which was what I alluded to. Since publication (as has happened to me before) the success has gone beyond my expectation.

Not only at Cambridge, but here, there have been people wise enough to think me too free with the king of Prussia! A newspaper has talked of my known inveteracy to him.Truly, I love him as well as I do most kings. The greater offence is my reflection on lord Clarendon. It is forgotten that I had overpraised him before. Pray turn to the new State Papers, from which, it is said, he composed his history. You will find they are the papers from which he did not compose his history. And yet I admire my lord Clarendon more than these pretended admirers do. But I do not intend to justify myself. I can as little satisfy those who complain that I do not let them know what really did happen. If this inquiry can ferret out any truth, I shall be glad. I have picked up a few more circumstances. I now want to know what Perkin Warbeck's proclamation was, which Speed in his history says is preserved by bishop Leslie. If you look in Speed, perhaps you will be able to assist me

The duke of Richmond and lord Lyttelton agree with you, that I have not disculpated Richard of the murder of Henry VI. I own to you, it is the crime of which in my own mind I believe him most guiltless. Had I thought he committed it, I should never have taken the trouble to apologize for the rest. I am not at all positive or obstinate on your other objections, nor know exactly what I believe on many points of this story. And I am so sincere, that, except a few notes hereafter, I shall leave the matter to be settled or discussed by others. As you have written much too little, I have written a great deal too much, and think only of finishing the two or three other things I have begun-and of those, nothing but the last volume of Painters is designed for the present public. What has one to do when turned fifty, but really think of finishing?

I am much obliged and flattered by Mr. Mason's approbation, and particularly by having had almost the same thought with him. I said, "People need not be angry at my excusing ichard; I have not diminished their fund of hatred, I have