nothing I would not give for such a picture. I wish you would hunt it; and if the dame is above temptation, do try if you could obtain a copy in water colours, if there is anybody at Dublin could execute it.

The Duchess of Portland has lately enriched me exceedingly; nine portraits of the court of Louis quatorze! Lord Portland brought them over; they hung in the nursery at Bulstrode, the children amused themselves with shooting at them. I have got them, but I will tell you no more, you don't deserve it; you write to me as if I were your godfather: "Honoured Sir, I am brave and well, my cousin George is well, we drink your health every night, and beg your blessing." This is the sum total of all your letters. I thought in a new country, and with your spirits and humour, you could have found something to tell me. I shall only ask you now when you return; but I declare I will not correspond with you: I don't write letters to divert myself, but in expectation of returns; in short, you are extremely in disgrace with me; I have measured my letters for some time, and for the future will answer you paragraph for paragraph. You yourself don't seem to find letter-writing so amusing as to pay itself. Adieu!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Feb. 2, 1762.

I SCOLDED you in my last, but I shall forgive you if you return soon to England, as you talk of doing; for though you are an abominable correspondent, and only write to beg letters, you are good company, and I have a notion I shall still be glad to see you.

Lady Mary Wortley is arrived;1 I have seen her; I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all increased. Her dress, like her languages, is a galimatias of several countries;

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu remained at Venice till the death of Mr. Wortley in this year; when she yielded to the solicitations of her daughter, the Countess of Bute, and, after an absence of two-and-twenty years, began her journey to England, where she arrived in October.-E.

She

the ground-work rags, and the embroidery nastiness. needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black-laced hood represents the first; the fur of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she was expected there, we were drawing Sortes Virgili anas for her; we literally drew

Insanam vatem aspicies.

It would have been a stronger prophecy now, even than it was then.

You told me not a word of Mr. Macnaughton,1 and I have a great mind to be as coolly indolent about our famous ghost in Cock-lane. Why should one steal half an hour from one's amusements to tell a story to a friend in another island? I could send you volumes on the ghost, and I believe if I were to stay a little, I might send its life, dedicated to my Lord Dartmouth, by the ordinary of Newgate, its two great patrons. A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of revenge, the Methodists have adopted it, and the whole town of London think of nothing else. Elizabeth Canning and the Rabbit-woman were modest impostors in comparison of this, which goes on without saving the least appearances. The Archbishop, who would not suffer the Minor to be acted in ridicule of the Methodists, permits this farce to be played every night, and I shall not be surprised if they perform in the great hall at Lambeth. I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition, but an audition. We set out from the Opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland-house, the Duke of York, Lady Northum

1 John Macnaughton, Esq. executed in December 1761 for the murder of Miss Knox, daughter of Andrew Knox, Esq. of Prehen, member of parliament for Donegal. Macnaughton, who had ruined himself by gambling, sought to replenish his fortune by marriage with this young lady, who had considerable expectations; but as her friends would not consent to their union, and he failed both in inveigling her into a secret marriage, and in compelling her by the suits which he commenced in the ecclesiastical courts to ratify an alleged promise of marriage, he revenged himself by shooting her while riding in a carriage with her father.-E.

berland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney coach, and drove to the spot: it rained torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked, if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts? We had nothing; they told us, as they would at a puppetshow, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when there are only 'prentices and old women. We stayed however till half an hour after one. The Methodists have promised them contributions; provisions are sent in like forage, and all the taverns and ale-houses in the neighbourhood make fortunes. The most diverting part is to hear people wondering when it will be found out as if there was anything to find out as if the actors would make their noises when they can be discovered. However, as this pantomime cannot last much longer, I hope Lady Fanny Shirley will set up a ghost of her own at Twickenham, and then you shall hear one. The Methodists, as Lord Aylesford assured Mr. Chute two nights ago at Lord Dacre's, have attempted ghosts three times in Warwickshire. There, how good I am!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Feb. 6, 1762.

You must have thought me very negligent of your commissions; not only in buying your ruffles, but in never mentioning them; but my justification is most ample and verifiable. Your letters of Jan. 2nd arrived but yesterday with the papers of Dec. 29. These are the mails that have so

long been missing,

the Isle of Man.

and were shipwrecked or something on Now you see it was impossible for me to buy you a pair of ruffles for the 18th of January, when I did not receive the orders till the 5th of February.

You don't tell me a word (but that is not new to you) of Mr. Hamilton's wonderful eloquence, which converted a whole House of Commons on the five regiments. We have no such miracles here; five regiments might work such prodigies, but I never knew mere rhetoric gain above one or two proselytes at a time in all my practice.

We have a Prince Charles here, the Queen's brother; he is like her, but more like the Hows; low, but well made, good eyes and teeth. Princess Emily is very ill, has been blistered, and been blooded four times.

My books appear on Monday se'nnight: if I can find any quick conveyance for them, you shall have them; if not, as you are returning soon, I may as well keep them for you. Adieu! I grudge every word I write to you.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.1

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 1762.

DEAR SIR,

THE little leisure I have to-day will, I trust, excuse my saying very few words in answer to your obliging letter, of which no part touches me more than what concerns your health, which, however, I rejoice to hear is re-establishing itself.

I am sorry I did not save your trouble of catalogueing Ames's heads, by telling you, that another person has actually done it, and designs to publish a new edition ranged in a different method. I don't know the gentleman's name, but he is a friend of Sir William Musgrave, from whom I had this information some months ago.

A distinguished antiquary, better known by the assistance he gave to others than by publications of his own. He was vicar of Burnham, in the county of Bucks; and died December 16th 1782, in his sixtyeighth year.-E.

You will oblige me much by the sight of the volume you mention. Don't mind the epigrams you transcribe on my father. I have been inured to abuse on him from my birth. It is not a quarter of an hour ago since, cutting the leaves of a new dab called Anecdotes of Polite Literature, I found myself abused for having defended my father. I don't know the author, and suppose I never shall, for I find Glover's Leonidas is one of the things he admires and so I leave them to be forgotten together, Fortunati Ambo!

I sent your letter to Ducarel, who has promised me those poems I accepted the promise to get rid of him t'other day, when he would have talked me to death.

SIR,

TO THE REV. HENRY ZOUCH.

Arlington Street, Feb. 13, 1762.

I SHOULD long ago have given myself the pleasure of writing to you, if I had not been constantly in hope of accompanying my letter with the Anecdotes of Painting, &c.; but the tediousness of engravers, and the roguery of a fourth printer, have delayed the publication week after week for months: truly I do not believe that there is such a being as an honest printer in the world.

I sent the books to Mr. Whiston, who, I think you told me, was employed by you: he answered, he knew nothing of the matter. Mr. Dodsley has undertaken now to convey them to you, and I beg your acceptance of them: it will be a very kind acceptance if you will tell me of any faults, blunders, omissions, &c. as you observe them. In a first sketch of this nature, I cannot hope the work is anything like complete. Excuse, Sir, the brevity of this. I am much hurried at this instant of publication, and have barely time to assure you how truly I am your humble servant.