I am quite angry with you: you write me letters so entertaining that they make me almost forgive your not drawing: now, you know, next to being disagreeable, there is nothing so shocking as being too agreeable. However, as I am a true philosopher, and can resist any thing I like better, I declare, that if you don't coin the vast ingot of colours and cloth that I have sent you, I will burn your letters unopened.

Thank you for all your concern about my gout, but I shall not mind you; it shall appear in my stomach before I attempt to keep it out of it by a fortification of wine: I only drank a little two days after being very much fatigued in the House, and the worthy pioneer began to cry succour from my foot the next day. However, though I am determined to feel young still, I grow to take the hints age gives me; I come hither oftener, I leave the town to the young; and though the busy turn that the world has taken draws me back into it, I excuse it to myself, and call it retiring into politics. From hence I must retire, or I shall be drowned; my cellars are four feet under water, the Thames gives itself Rhone airs, and the meadows are more flooded than when you first saw this place and thought it so dreary. We seem to have taken out our earthquake in rain: since the third week in June, there have not been five days together of dry weather. They tell us that at Colnbrook and Stains they are forced to live in the first floor. Mr. Chute is at the Vine, but I don't expect to hear from him: no post but a dove can get from thence. Every post brings new earthquakes; they have felt them in France, Sweden, and Germany: what a convulsion there has been in nature! Sir Isaac Newton, somewhere in his works, has this beautiful expression, "The globe will want manum emendatricem."

I have been here this week with only Mr. Muntz; from whence you may conclude I have been employed—Memoirs thrive apace. He seems to wonder (for he has not a little of your indolence, I am not surprised you took to him) that I am continually occupied every minute of the day, reading, writing, forming plans: in short, you know me. He is an inoffensive, good creature, but had rather ponder over a foreign gazette than a pallet.

I expect to find George Montagu in town to-morrow: his brother has at last got a regiment. Not content with having deserved it, before he got it, by distinguished bravery and indefatigable duty, he persists in meriting it still. He immediately, unasked, gave the chaplainship (which others always sell advantageously) to his brother's parson at Greatworth. I am almost afraid it will make my commendation of this really handsome action look interested, when I add, that he has obliged me in the same way by making Mr. Mann his clothier, before I had time to apply for it. Adieu! I find no news in town.

302 Letter 169 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(652) Arlington Street, Jan. 22, 1756.

As my Lady Ailesbury is so taken up with turnpike-hills, Popish recusants, and Irish politics, and you are the only idle person in the family (for Missy I find is engaged too), I must return to correspond with you. But my letters will not be quite so lively as they have been: the Opposition, like schoolboys, don't know how to settle to their books again after the holidays. We have not had a division: nay, not a debate. Those that like it, are amusing themselves with the Appleby election. Now and then we draggle on a little militia. The recess has not produced even a pamphlet. In short, there are none but great outlines of politics: a memorial in French Billingsgate has been transmitted hither which has been answered very laconically. More agreeable is the guarantee signed with Prussia: M. Michel(653) is as fashionable as ever General Wall was. The Duke of Cumberland has kept his bed with a sore leg, but is better. Oh! I forgot, Sir Harry Erskine is dismissed from the army, and if you will suffer so low a pun, as upon his face, is a rubric martyr for his country: bad as it Is, this is the best bon-mot I have to send you: Ireland, which one did not suspect, is become the staple of wit, and, I find, coins bons-mots for our greatest men. I might not send you Mr. Fox's repartee, for I never heard it, nor has any body here: as you have, pray send it me. Charles Townshend t'other night hearing somebody say, that my Lady Falmouth, who had a great many diamonds on, had a Very fine stomach, replied, "By God! my lord has a better." You will be entertained with the riot Charles makes in the sober house of Argyle: t'other night, on the Duchess's bawling to my Lady Suffolk,(654) he in the very same tone cried out, "Large stewing Oysters!" When he takes such liberties with his new parent, you may judge how little decency he observes with his wife: last week at dinner at Lord Strafford's, on my Lady Dalkeith's mentioning some dish that she loved, he replied before all the servants, "Yes, my Lady Dalkeith, you love it better than any thing but one!"

We were to have had a masquerade to-night, but the Bishops, who you know have always persisted in God's hating dominos, have made an earthquake point of it, and postponed it till after the fast.

Your brother has got a sixth infanta; at the christening night, Mr. Trail had got through two prayers before any body found out that the child was not brought down stairs. You see pauvret`e how little I have to say. Do accept the enclosed World(655) in part of payment for the remainder of a letter. I must conclude with telling you, that though I know her but little, I admire my Lady Kildare as much as you do. She has writ volumes to Lady Caroline Fox in praise of you and your Countess: you are a good soul! I can't say so much for lady Ailesbury. As to Missy, I am afraid I must resign my claim: I never was very proper to contest with an Hibernian hero; and I don't know how, but I think my merit does not improve. Adieu!

(652) Now first printed.

(653) The Prussian charg`e d'affaires.