To DR. DUCAREL.

SIR,

Strawberry-hill, Aug. 8, 1763.

I have been rambling about the country, or should not so long have deferred to answer the favour of your letter. I thank you for the notices in it, and have profited of them. I am much obliged to you too for the drawings you intended me; but I have since had a letter from Mr. Churchill, and he does not mention them.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry-hill, Aug. 9, 1763.

My gallery claims your promise; the painters and gilders finish to-morrow, and next day it washes its hands. You talked of the 15th; shall I expect you then, and the countess,1 and the contessina,2 and the baroness ?3

Lord Digby is to be married immediately to the pretty miss Fielding; and Mr. Boothby, they say, to lady Mary Douglas. What more news I know I cannot send you; for I have had it from lady Denbigh and lady Blandford, who have so confounded names, genders, and circumstances, that I am not sure whether prince Ferdinand is not going to be married to the hereditary prince. Adieu!

Yours ever.

P.S. If you want to know more of me, you may read a whole column of abuse upon me in the Public Ledger of Thursday last; where they inform me that the Scotch cannot be so sensible as the English, because they have not such good writers.

1 Of Ailesbury. [Or.] 2 Miss Anne Seymour Conway. [Or.] 3 Elizabeth Rich, second wife of George lord Lyttelton. [Or.]

♦ Henry Digby, seventh lord Digby in the peerage of Ireland, was created, 13th August 1765, baron Digby of Sherborne, in the county of Dorset, having previously married, on the 5th September 1763, Elizabeth second daughter of the hon. Charles William Fielding, son of Basil fourth earl of Denbigh, who died 19th January 1765. [Ed.]

Alack! I am afraid the most sensible men in any country do not write.

I had writ this last night. This morning I receive your paper of evasions, perfide que vous êtes! You may let it alone, you will never see any thing like my gallery-and then to ask me to leave it the instant it is finished! I never heard such a request in my days!-Why, all the earth is begging to come to see it as Edging says, I have had offers enough from blue and green ribands to make me a falbala-apron. Then I have just refused to let Mrs. K * * * and her bishop be in the house with me, because I expected all you—it is mighty well, mighty fine!-No, sir, no, I shall not come; nor am I in a humour to do any thing else you desire: indeed, without your provoking me, I should not have come into the proposal of paying Giardini. We have been duped and cheated every winter for these twenty years by the undertakers of operas, and I never will pay a farthing more till the last moment, nor can be terrified at their puffs; I am astonished you are. So far from frightening me, the kindest thing they could do would be not to let one have a box to hear their old thread-bare voices and frippery thefts; and as for Giardini himself, I would not go cross the room to hear him play to eternity. I should think he could frighten nobody but lady Bingley" by a refusal.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

MY DEAR LORD,

Strawberry-hill, August 10, 1763.

I have waited in hopes that the world would do something worth telling you it will not, and I cannot stay any longer without asking you how you do, and hoping you have not quite forgot me. It has rained such deluges, that I had some thoughts of turning my gallery into an ark, and began to pack up a pair of bantams, a pair of cats, in short, a pair of every

5 Harriot Benson, daughter and heiress of Robert lord Bingley, was married 12th July 1731, to George Fox Lane, esq. M.P. for York, who was advanced to the dignity of a peer on the 4th May 1762, by the title of baron Bingley, county York, with limitation to his heirs male by the said lady. [Ed.]

living creature about my house: but it is grown fine at last, and the workmen quit my gallery to-day without hoisting a sail in it. I know nothing upon earth but what the ancient ladies in my neighbourhood knew three-score years ago: I write merely to pay you my pepper-corn of affection, and to inquire after my lady, who I hope is perfectly well. A longer letter would not have half the merit: a line in return will however repay all the merit I can possibly have to one to whom I am so much obliged.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Strawberry-hill, August 15, 1763.

THE most important piece of news I have to tell you is, that the gallery is finished; that is, the workmen have quitted it. For chairs and tables, not one has arrived yet. Well, how you will tramp up and down in it! Methinks I wish you would. We are in the perfection of beauty: verdure itself was never green till this summer, thanks to the deluges of rain. Our complexion used to be mahogany in August. Nightingales and roses indeed are out of blow, but the season is celestial. I don't know whether we have not even had an earthquake today. Lady Buckingham, lady Waldegrave, the bishop of Exeter, and Mrs. Keppel, and the little Hotham dined here; between six and seven we were sitting in the great parlour; I sat in the window looking at the river; on a sudden I saw it violently agitated, and, as it were, lifted up and down by a thousand hands. I called out; they all ran to the window; it continued: we hurried into the garden, and all saw the Thames in the same violent commotion for I suppose a hundred yards. We fancied at first there must be some barge rope; not one was in sight. It lasted in this manner, and at the farther end, towards Teddington, even to dashing. It did not cease before I got to the middle of the terrace, between the fence and the hill. Yet this is nothing to what is to come. The bishop and I walked down to my meadow by the river. At this end were two fishermen in a boat, but their backs had been turned to the agitation, and they had seen nothing. At the farther end of the

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field was a gentleman fishing, and a woman by him; I had perceived him on the same spot at the time of the motion of the waters, which was rather beyond where it was terminated. I now thought myself sure of a witness, and concluded he could not have recovered his surprise. I ran up to him. "Sir," said I, "did you see that strange agitation of the waters?" When, sir? when, sir?" "Now, this very instant, not two minutes ago." He replied, with the phlegm of a philosopher, or of a man that can love fishing, "Stay, sir, let me recollect if I remember nothing of it." Pray, sir," said I, scarce able to help laughing, "you must remember whether you remember it or not, for it is scarce over." "I am trying to recollect, said he, with the same coolness. "Why, sir," said I, "six of us saw it from my parlour window yonder." "Perhaps, answered he, "you might perceive it better where you were, but I suppose it was an earthquake." His nymph had seen nothing neither, and so we returned as wise as most who inquire into natural phenomena. We expect to hear to-morrow that there has been an earthquake somewhere; unless this appearance portended a state-quake. You see, my impetuosity does not abate much; no, nor my youthfullity, which bears me out even at a sabat. I dined last week at lady Blandford's, with her, the old Denbigh, the old Litchfield, and Methuselah knows who. had stuck some sweet peas in my hair, was playing at quadrille, and singing to my sorcières. The duchess of Argyle' and Mrs. Young came in; you may guess how they stared; at last the duchess asked what was the meauing of those flowers? "Lord, madam," said, I, "don't you know it is the fashion? The duke of Bedford is come over with his hair full." Poor Mrs. Young took this in sober sadness, and has reported, that the duke of Bedford wears flowers. You will not know me less by a precipitation of this morning. Pitt and I were busy adjusting the gallery. Mr. Elliot came in and discomposed us; I was horridly tired of him. As he was going, he said, "Well, this house is so charming, I don't wonder at your being able to live so much alone." I, who shudder at the thought of any body's living with me, replied very innocently, but a little too quick,

I

1 Mary, daughter of John second lord Ballenden, and wife of John fourth duke of Argyle, who succeeded o the dukedom, 15th April 1761, on the death of Archibald third duke. [Ed.]

"No, only pity me when I don't live alone." Pitt was shocked, and said, "To be sure he will never forgive you as long as he lives." Mrs. Leneve used often to advise me never to begin being civil to people I did not care for: "for," says she, "you grow weary of them, and can't help shewing it, and so make it ten times worse than if you had never attempted to please them."

I suppose you have read in the papers the massacre of my innocents. Every one of my Turkish sheep, that I have been nursing up these fourteen years, torn to pieces in one night by three strange dogs! They killed sixteen outright, and mangled the two others in such a manner, that I was forced to have them knocked on the head. However, I bore this better than an interruption.

I have scrawled and blotted this letter so I don't know whether you can read it; but it is no matter, for I percceive it is all about myself; but what has one else in the dead of summer? In return, tell me as much as you please about yourself, which you know is always a most welcome subject to me. One may preserve one's spirits with one's juniors, but I defy any body to care about their cotemporaries. One wants to know about one's predecessors, but who has the least curiosity about their successors? This is abominable ingratitude: one takes wondrous pains to consign one's own memory to them at the same time that one feels the most perfect indifference to whatever relates to them themselves. Well, they will behave just so in their turns. Adieu!

Yours ever.

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Strawberry-hill, Sept. 3, 1673.

I HAVE but a minute's time for answering your letter; my house is full of people, and has been so from the instant I breakfasted, and more are coming; in short, I keep an inn: the sign, the Gothic Castle. Since my gallery was finished, I have not been in it a quarter of an hour together; my whole time is passed in giving tickets for seeing it, and hiding myself while it is Take my advice, never build a charming house for your

seen.