As I am idling away some Christmas days here, I begin a letter to you, that perhaps will not set out till next year. Any changes in the ministry will certainly be postponed till that date: it is even believed that no alteration will be made till after the session; they will get the money raised -,And the new treaty ratified in Parliament before they break and part. The German ministers arc more alarmed, and seem to apprehend themselves in as tottering a situation as some of the English: not that any secretary of state is jealous of them—their Countess(208) is on the wane. The housekeeper(209) at Windsor, an old monster that Verrio painted for one of the Furies, is dead. The revenue is large, and has been largely solicited. Two days ago, at the drawing-room, the gallant Orondates strode up to Miss Chudleigh, and told her he was glad to have an opportunity of obeying her commands, that he appointed her mother housekeeper at Windsor, and hoped she would not think a kiss too great a reward—against all precedent he kissed her in the circle. He has had a hankering these two years. Her life, which is now of thirty years' standing, has been a little historic.(210) Why should not experience and a charming face on her side, and near seventy years on his, produce a title?
Madame de Mirepoix is returned: she gives a lamentable account of another old mistress,(211) her mother. She has not seen her since the Princess went to Florence, which she it seems has left with great regret; with greater than her beauty, whose ruins she has not discovered: but with few teeth, few hairs, sore eyes, and wrinkles, goes bare-necked and crowned with jewels! Madame Mirepoix told me a reply of Lord Cornbury, that pleased me extremely. They have revived at Paris old Fontenelle's opera of Peleus and Thetis: he complained of being dragged upon the stage again for one of his juvenile performances, and said he could not bear to be hissed now: Lord Cornbury immediately replied to him out of the very opera,
"Jupiter en courroux
'
Ne peut rien contre vous,
Vous `etes immortel."
Our old laureat has been dying: when he thought himself at the extremity, he wrote this lively, good-natured letter to the Duke of Grafton:-
""May it please your Grace: "I know no nearer way of repaying your favours for these last twenty years than by recommending the bearer, Mr. Henry Jones, for the vacant laurel: Lord Chesterfield will tell you more of him. I don't know the day of my death, but while I live, I shall not cease to be, your Grace's, etc.
"Colley Cibber." '
I asked my Lord Chesterfield who this Jones(212) is; he told me a better poet would not take the post, and a worse ought not to have it. There are two new bon-mots of his lordship much repeated, better than his ordinary. He says, he would not be president, because he would not be between two fires;(213) and that"the two brothers are like Arbuthnot's Lindamira and Indamora;(214) the latter was an able, tractable gentlewoman, but her sister was always quarrelling and kicking and as they grew together, there was no parting them.
You will think my letters are absolute jest-and-story books, unless you will be so good as to dignify them with the title of Walpoliana. Under that hope, I will tell you a very odd new story. A citizen had advertised a reward for the discovery of a person who had stolen sixty guineas out of his scrutoire. He received a message from a condemned criminal in Newgate, with the offer of revealing the thief. Being a cautious grave personage, he took two friends along with him. The convict told him that he was the robber; and when he doubted, the fellow began with these circumstances; You came home such a night, and put the money into your bureau: I was Under your bed: you undressed, and then went to the foot of the garret stairs, and cried, 'Mary, come to bed to me-'" "Hold, hold," said the citizen, "I am convinced." "Nay," said the fellow, "you shell hear all, for our intrigue saved your life. Mary replied, 'If any body wants me, they may come up to me:' you went: I robbed your bureau in the mean time, but should have cut your throat, if you had gone into your bed instead of Mary S."
The conclusion of my letter will be a more serious story, but very proper for the Walpoliana. I have given you scraps of Ashton's history. To perfect his ingratitude, he has struck up an intimacy with my second brother, and done his utmost to make a new quarrel between us, on the merit of having broke with me on the affair of Dr. Middleton. I don't know whether I ever told you that my brother hated Middleton, who was ill with a Dr. Thirlby,(215) a creature of his. He carried this and his jealousy of me so far, that once when Lord Mountford brought Middleton for one night only to Houghton my brother wrote my father a most outrageous letter, telling him that he knew I had fetched Middleton to Houghton to write my father's life, and how much more capable Thirlby was of this task. Can one help admiring in these instances the dignity of human nature! Poor Mrs. Middleton is alarmed with a scheme that I think she very justly suspects as a plot of the clergy to get at and suppress her husband's papers. He died in a lawsuit with a builder, who has since got a monition from the Commons for her to produce all the Doctor's effects and papers. The whole debt is but eight hundred pounds. She offered ten thousand pounds security, and the fellow will not take it. Is there clergy in it, or no? Adieu!
(208) Lady Yarmouth. The new amour did not proceed.