lord Lyttelton has received his things, and is much content with them; this leads me to trouble you with another, I hope trifling, commission; will you send me a case of the best drains for Lord Hertford, and let me know the charge?
You must take this short letter only as an instance of my attention to you; I would write, though I knew nothing to tell you.
(743) Mr. Galfridus Mann left an annuity to his brother Sir Horace, in case he were recalled from Florence.
(744) George Bubb Doddington, Esq. This report was not confirmed.
(745) "The Test" was written principally by Arthur Murphy. It forms a thin folio volume,.-E.
(746) "The "Monitor" was commenced in August 1755, and terminated in July 1759. It is said to have been planned by Alderman Beckford.-E.
(747) He did write himself into a pillory before, the conclusion of that reign, and into a pension at the beginning of the next, for one and the same kind of merit,—writing against King William and the Revolution.
(748) See an account of his death, and the monument and epitaph erected for him in Mr. Walpole's fugitive pieces; see also his letter to Sir Horace Mann of the 29th of September, in this year.-E.
358 Letter 209 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 17, 1757.
I am still, my dear Sir, waiting for your melancholy letters, not one of which has yet reached me. I am impatient to know how you bear your misfortune, though I tremble at what I shall feel from your expressing it! Except good Dr. Cocchi, what sensible friend have you at Florence to share and moderate your unhappiness?—but I will not renew it: I will hurry to tell you any thing that may amuse it—and yet what is that any thing; Mr. Pitt, as George Selwyn says, has again taken to his Lit de Justice; he has been once with the King,(749) but not at the House; the day before yesterday the gout flew into his arm, and has again laid him up: I am so particular in this, because all our transactions, or rather our inactivity, hang upon the progress of his distemper. Mr. Pitt and every thing else have been forgot for these five days, obscured by the news of the assassination of the King of France.(750) I don't pretend to tell you any circumstance of it, who must know them better than, at least as well as, I can; war and the sea don't contribute to dispel the clouds of lies that involve such a business. The letters of the foreign ministers, and ours from Brussels, say he has been at council; in the city he is believed dead: I hope not! We should make a bad exchange in the Dauphin. Though the King is weak and irresolute, I believe he does not want sense: weakness, bigotry, and some sense, are the properest materials for keeping alive the disturbances in that country, to which this blow, if the man was any thing but a madman, Will contribute. The despotic and holy stupidity(751) of the successor would quash the Parliament at once. He told his father about a year ago, that if he was King, the next day, and the Pope should bid him lay down his crown, he would. They tell or make a good answer for the father, "And if he was to bid you take the crown from me, would you!" We have particular cause to say masses for the father: there is invincible aversion between him and the young Pretender, whom, it is believed, nothing could make him assist. You may judge what would make the Dauphin assist him! he was one day reading the reign of Nero he said, "Ma foi, c'`etoit le plus grand sc`el`erat qui f`ut jamais; il ne lui manquoit que d'`etre Janseniste." I am grieving for my favourite,(752) the Pope, whom we suppose dead, at least I trust he was superannuated when they drew from him the late Bull enjoining the admission of the Unigenitus on pain of damnation; a step how unlike all the amiable moderation of his life! In my last I told you the death of another monarch, for whom in our time you and I have interested ourselves, King Theodore. He had just taken the benefit of the act of insolvency, and went to the Old Bailey for that purpose: in order to it, the person applying gives up all his effects to his creditors - his Majesty was asked what effects he had? He replied, nothing but the kingdom of Corsica—and it is actually registered for the benefit of the creditors. You may get it intimated to the Pretender, that if he has a mind to heap titles upon the two or three medals that he coins, he has nothing to do but to pay King Theodore's debts, and he may have very good pretensions to Corsica. As soon as Theodore was at liberty, he took a chair and went to the Portuguese minister, but did not find him at home: not having sixpence to pay, he prevailed on the chairman to carry him to a tailor he knew in Soho, whom he prevailed upon to harbour him; but he fell sick the next day, and died in three more.