(1046) "The Genuine Remains, in prose and verse, of Samuel Butler; with notes by R. Thyer." A very pleasant review of this work, by Oliver Goldsmith, will be found in the fourth volume of Mr. Murray's enlarged edition of his Miscellaneous Works.-E.
500 Letter 325 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, July 26, 1759.
I am dying in a hot street, with my eyes full of dust, and my table full of letters to be answered—yet I must write you a line. I am sorry your first of Augustness is disordered; I'll tell you why. I go to Ragley on the twelfth. There is to be a great party at loo for the Duchess of Grafton, and thence they adjourn to the Warwick races. I have been engaged so long to this, that I cannot put it off; besides, I am under appointments at George Selwyn's, etc. afterwards. If you cannot come before all this to let me have enough of your company, I should wish you to postpone it to the first of September, when I shall be at leisure for ten or twelve days, and could go with you from Strawberry to the Vine; but I could like to know certainly, for as I never make any of my visits while Strawberry is in bloom, I am a little crowded with them at the end of the season.
I came this morning in all this torrent of heat from Lord Waldegrave's at Navestock. It is a dull place, though it does not want prospect backwards. The garden is small, consisting of two French all`ees of old limes, that are comfortable, two groves that are not so, and a green canal; there is besides a paddock. The house was built by his father, and ill finished, but an air seigneurial in the furniture; French glasses in quantities, handsome commodes, tables, screens, etc. goodish pictures in rich frames, and a deal of noblesse `a la St. Germain—James the Second, Charles the Second, the Duke of Berwick, her Grace of Buckingham, the Queen Dowager in the dress she visited Madame Maintenon, her daughter the Princess Louisa, a Lady Gerard that died at Joppa, returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and above all La Goqfrey, and not at all ugly, Though she does not show her thighs. All this is leavened with the late King, the present King, and Queen Caroline. I shall take care to sprinkle a little unholy water from our well.
I am very sorry you have been so ill; take care of yourself. there are wicked sore-throats in vogue; poor Lady Essex and Mrs. Charles Yorke died of them in an instant.
Do let me have a line, and do fix a day; for instead of keeping me at home one by fixing it, you will keep me there five or six days by not fixing it. Adieu!
501 letter 326 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, August 1, 1759.
I have received your two letters about the watch, the first came with surprising celerity. I wish, when the watch is finished, I may be able to convey it to you with equal expedition.
Nothing is talked of here, as you may imagine, but the invasion—yet I don't grow more credulous. Their ridiculous lists of fifty thousand men don't contribute to frighten me— nay, though they specify the numbers of apothecaries and chaplains that are to attend. Fifty thousand men cannot easily steal a march over the sea. Sir Edward Hawke will take care of them till winter, and by that time we shall have a great force at land. The very militia is considerable: the spirit, or at least the fashion of it, catches every day. We are growing such ancient Britons, that I don't know whether I must not mount some popguns upon the battlements of my castle, lest I should not be thought hero enough in these West-Saxon times. Lord Pulteney has done handsomely, and what is more surprising, so has his father. The former has offered to raise a regiment, and to be only lieutenant-colonel, provided the command is given to a Colonel Crawford, an old soldier, long postponed— Lord Bath is at the expense, which will be five thousand pounds. All the country squires are in regimentals —a pedestal is making for little Lord Mountford, that he may be placed at the head of the Cambridgeshire militia. In short, we have two sorts of armies, and I hope neither will be necessary—what the consequences of this militia may be hereafter, I don't know. Indifferent I think it cannot be. A great force upon an old plan, exploded since modern improvements, must make some confusion. If they do not become ridiculous, which the real officers are disposed to make them, the crown or the disaffected will draw considerable consequences, I think, from an establishment popular by being constitutional, and of great weight from the property it will contain.
If the French pursue their vivacity in Germany, they will send us more defenders; our eight thousand men there seem of very little use. Both sides seem in all parts weary of the war; at least are grown so cautious, that a battle will be as great a curiosity in a campaign as in the midst of peace. For the Russians, they quite make one smile; they hover every summer over the north of Germany, get cut to pieces by September, disappear, have a general disgraced, and in winter out comes a memorial of the Czarina's steadiness to her engagements, and of the mighty things she will do in spring. The Swedes follow them like Sancho Panza, and are rejoiced at not being bound by the laws of chivalry to be thrashed too.