gan three hours later than usual, and at quadruple the price. There were bushels of dead flowers, lamps, country-dances and a cold supper. Yet they are not abused as poor Le Texier was last year.

June 8.

I conclude my letter, and I hope our present correspondence, very agreeably; for your brother told me last night, that you have written to Lord Hillsborough for leave to return. If all our governors could leave their dominions in as good plight, it were lucky. Your brother owned, what the Gazette with all its circumstances cannot conceal, that Lord Cornwallis's triumphs have but increased our losses, without leaving any hopes. I am told that his army, which when he parted from Clinton amounted to seventeen thousand men, does not now contain above as many hundred, except the detachments. The Gazette, to my sorrow and your greater sorrow, speaks of Colonel O'Hara having received two dangerous wounds. Princess Amelia was at Marlborough-house last night, and played at faro till twelve o'clock. There ends the winter campaign! I go to Strawberry-hill to-morrow; and I hope, à l'Irlandaise, that the next letter I write to you -will be not to write to you any more.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Strawberry Hill, June 13, 1781.

It was very kind, my dear lord, to recollect me so soon: I wish I could return it by amusing you; but here I know nothing, and suppose it is owing to age that even in town I do not find the transactions of the world very entertaining. One must sit up all night to see or hear anything; and if the town intends to do anything, they never begin to do it till next day. Mr. Conway will certainly be here the end of this month, having thoroughly secured his island from surprise, and it is not liable to be taken any other way. I wish he was governor of this bigger one too, which does not seem quite so well guaranteed.

Your lordship will wonder at a visit I had yesterday: it was from Mr. Storer, who has passed a day and night here. It was not from my being a fellow-scholar of Vestris, but from his being turned antiquary; the last passion I should have thought a macaroni would have taken. I am as proud of such a disciple as of having converted Dicky Bateman from a Chinese to a Goth. Though he was the founder of the Sharawadgi taste in England, I preached so effectually that his every pagoda took the veil. The Methodists say, one must have been very wicked before one can be of the elect—yet is that extreme more distant from the ton, which avows knowing and liking nothing but the fashion of the instant, to studying what were the modes of five hundred years ago? I hope this conversion will not ruin Mr. Storer's fortune under the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. How his Irish majesty will be shocked when he asks how large Prince Boothby's shoebuckles are grown, to be answered, he does not know, but that Charles Brandon's cod-piece at the last birth-day had three yards of velvet in it! and that the Duchess of Buckingham thrust out her chin two inches farther than ever in admiration of it! and that the Marchioness of Dorset had put out her jaw by endeavouring to imitate her!

We have at last had some rains, which I hope extended to Yorkshire, and that your lordship has found Wentworth Castle in the bloom of verdure. I always, as in duty bound, wish prosperity to everybody and everything there, and am your lordship's ever devoted and grateful humble servant.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Strawberry Hill, June 16, 1781.

YOUR last account of yourself was so indifferent, that I am impatient for a better: pray send me a much better.

I know little in your way but that Sir Richard Worseley has just published a History of the Isle of Wight, with many

VOL. VI.

K

views poorly done enough. Mr. Bull is honouring me, at least my Anecdotes of Painting, exceedingly. He has let every page into a pompous sheet, and is adding every print of portrait, building, &c. that I mention, and that he can get, and specimens of all our engravers. It will make eight magnificent folios, and be a most valuable body of our arts. Nichols the printer has published a new Life of Hogarth,3 of near two hundred pages many more, in truth, than it required: chiefly it is the life of his works, containing all the variations, and notices of any persons whom he had in view. I cannot say there are discoveries of many prints which I have not mentioned, though I hear Mr. Gulston' says he has fifteen such; but I suppose he only fancies so. Mr. Nichols says our printsellers are already adding Hogarth's name to several spurious. Mr. Stevens, I hear, has been allowed to ransack Mrs. Hogarth's house for obsolete and unfinished plates, which are to be completed and published. Though she was not pleased with my account of her husband, and seems by these transactions to have encouraged the second, I assure you I have much more reason to be satisfied than she has, the editor or editors being much civiller to living me than to dead Hogarth—yet I should not have complained. Everybody has the same right to speak their sentiments. Nay, in general I have gentler treatment than I expected, and I think the world and I part good friends.

I am now setting about the completion of my Ædes Strawberrianæ. A painter is to come hither on Monday to make a drawing of the Tribune, and finish T. Sandby's fine view of the gallery, to which I could never get him to put the

1 Sir Richard Worsley is better known by his splendid work, the "Museum Worsleianum; or, a Collection of antique Basso-relievos, Bustos, Statues, and Gems; with views of places in the Levant, taken on the spot, in the years 1785-6-7;" in two volumes, folio. Sir Richard sat many years in Parliament for the borough of Newport, and was governor of the Isle of Wight; where he died in 1805.-E.

2 Richard Bull, Esq. a famous collector of portraits.-E.

3 <

Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth; and a Catalogue of his Works, chronologically arranged; with occasional Remarks."-E. 4 Joseph Gulston, Esq. also an eminent portrait collector.-E.

last hand. They will then be engraved with a few of the chimney-pieces, which will complete the plates. I must add an appendix of curiosities, purchased or acquired since the Catalogue was printed. This will be awkward, but I cannot afford to throw away an hundred copies. I shall take care if I can that Mr. Gough does not get fresh intelligence from my engravers, or he will advertize my supplement, before the book appears. I do not think it was very civil to publish such private intelligence, to which he had no right without my leave; but everybody seems to think he may do what is good in his own eyes. I saw the other day, in a collection of seats (exquisitely engraved), a very rude insult on the Duke of Devonshire. The designer went to draw a view of Chiswick, without asking leave, and was not hindered, for he has given it; but he says he was treated illiberally, the house not being shown without tickets, which he not only censures, but calls a singularity, though a frequent practice in other places, and practised there to my knowledge for these thirty years: so everybody is to come into your house if he pleases, draw it whether you please or not, and by the same rule, I suppose, put anything into his pockets that he likes. I do know, by experience, what a grievance it is to have a house worth being seen, and though I submit in consequence to great inconveniences, they do not save me from many rudenesses. Mr. Southcote1 was forced to shut up his garden, for the savages who came as connoisseurs scribbled a thousand brutalities, in the buildings, upon his religion. I myself, at Canons, saw a beautiful table of oriental alabaster that had been split in two by a buck in boots jumping up backwards to sit upon it.

I have placed the oaken head of Henry the Third over the middle arch of the armoury. Pray tell me what the church of Barnwell, near Oundle, was, which his Majesty endowed, and whence his head came. Dear Sir,

Yours most sincerely.

Philip Southcote, Esq. of Wooburn Farm, Chertsey; one of the first places improved according to the principles of modern gardening.-E.

TO THE EARL OF CHARLEMONT.1

Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1781.

I HAVE been exceedingly flattered, my lord, by receiving a present from your lordship, which at once proves that I retain a place in your lordship's memory, and you think me worthy of reading what you like. I could not wait to give your lordship a thousand thanks for so kind a mark of your esteem till I had gone through the volume, which I may venture to say I shall admire, as I find it contains some pieces which I had seen, and did admire, without knowing their author. That approbation was quite impartial. Perhaps my future judgment of the rest will be not a little prejudiced, and yet on good foundation; for if Mr. Preston has retained my suffrage in his favour by dedicating his poems to your lordship, it must at least be allowed that I am biassed by evidence of his taste. He would not possess the honour of your friendship unless he deserved it; and, as he knows you, he would not have ventured to prefix your name, my lord, to poems that did not deserve your patronage. I dare to say they will meet the approbation of better judges than I can pretend to be. I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, esteem, and gratitude.

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1781. My good Sir, you forget that I have a cousin, eldest son of Lord Walpole, and of a marriageable age, who has the same Christian name as I. The Miss Churchill he has married is my niece, second daughter of my sister, Lady Mary

1 Now first collected.

2 William Preston, Esq. a young Irish gentleman, of whom Lord Charlemont had become the friend and patron. He afterwards published Thoughts on Lyric Poetry, with an Ode to the Moon;" an "Essay on Ridicule, Wit, and Humour;" and a translation of the Argonautics of Appollonius Rhodius. He died in 1807.-E.