Lady Anne Paulett's daughter is eloped with a country clergyman. The Duchess of Argyle Harangues against the Marriage-bill not taking place immediately, and is persuaded that all the girls will go off before next lady-day.
Before I finish, I must describe to you the manner in which I overtook Monsieur le Duc de Mirepoix t'other day, who lives at Lord Dunkeron's house at Turnham-green. It was seven o'clock in the evening of one of the hottest and most dusty days of this summer. He was walking slowly in the beau milieu of Brentford town, without any company, but with a brown lap-dog with long ears, two pointers, two pages, three footmen, and a vis-a-vis following him. By the best accounts I can get, he must have been to survey the ground of the battle of Brentford, which I hear he has much studied, and harangues upon.
Adieu! I enclose a World' to you, which, by a story I shall tell you, I find is called mine. I met Mrs. Clive two nights ago, and told her I had been in the meadows, but would walk no more there, for there was all the world. "Well," says she, "and don't you like the World!(404) I hear it was very clever last Thursday." All I know is, that you will meet with some of your acquaintance there. Good night, with my compliments to Miss Montagu.
(401) The Rev. Sir William Bunbury, father of Sir Charles, and of Henry, the celebrated caricaturist.-E.
(402) Lord Ashburnham succeeded Lord Pomfret as ranger of St. James's and Hyde Parks.
(403) Member for Higham Ferrers.
(404) No. 28, entitled " Old women most proper objects for love." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, says, "Send me no translations, no periodical papers; though I confess some of The World' entertained me very much, particularly Lord Chesterfield and Horry Walpole; but whenever I met Dodsley, I wished him out of the World with all my heart. The title was a very lucky one, being, as you see, productive of puns world without end; which is all the species of wit some people can either practise or understand."-E.
174 Letter 82 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, July 21, 1753.
Though I have long had a letter of yours unanswered, yet I verily think it would have remained so a little longer, if the pretty altar-tomb which you have sent me had not roused my Gratitude. It arrived here—I mean the tomb, not my gratitude—yesterday, and this morning churchyarded itself in the corner of my wood, where I hope it will remain till some future virtuoso shall dig it up, and publish 'it in " A Collection of Roman Antiquities in Britain. It is the very thing I wanted: how could you, my dear Sir, take such exact measure of my idea? By the way, you have never told me the price; don't neglect it, that I nay pay your brother.
I told you how ill disposed I was to write to you, and you must know without my telling you that the only reason of that could be my not knowing a tittle worth mentioning; nay, not a tittle, worth or not. All England is gone over all England electioneering: the spirit is as great now they are all on one side, as when parties ran the highest. You judge how little I trouble myself about all this; especially when the question is not who shall be in the ministry, only who shall be in the House.