261.
To J. B. Holroyd, Esq.
Bentinck Street, August 15th, 1775.
I have not time to hold a long conversation with you: but I want to settle the plan of our visit (Aunt and self) to S. P. According to our last it seemed that you were to go into Bucks the first week in September, and that it would suit us all to attend your return into Sussex. But as I was pacing along the Strand last week, the Baronet arrested me with a friendly laugh and a hearty shake, and told me, among other curious and interesting particulars, that your visit to him would not take place before the 18th: an awkward period, as it intersects the time that we could bestow upon you. Suppose you were to defer it till the first week in October. We could then give you the whole month of September, and come up with you. Siquid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti, sinon——I have nothing to add about the enclosed. Palmer is out of town, and Lovegrove and Matthews appear wonderfully nonchalant. Eliot is stepped down into Gloucestershire. I shall communicate the Lord's portrait,[307] and I think it will please and suit them.