“for 6 or 7 weeks perhaps, and the rest of the summer I shall pass at Sandleford, except my excursion to Bath Easton. Mrs. Carter is to come to Tunbridge to me as soon as I get thither, and, I hope, stay with me the whole season. I was so fortunate as to enjoy her company much longer in town this year than usual, but that only makes me wish the more to have her again. She was not in the house with me in town, preferring the quiet of a lodging to herself, and indeed it would not be any delight to Mr. Montagu to have her in the house; tho’ he says she would be a good sort of woman if she was not so pious.[327] My Lord Bath told me he was to go to Bath on Wednesday, the day we dined with him....
“I shall have Mrs. Boscawen for my neighbour at Tunbridge; she is to be at Sir Sydney Smythe’s, only three miles from the Wells. Lady Frances Williams is in the deepest affliction for Lady Coningsbye.[328] To show the last respect to her, Lady Frances staid in the house with the dead body in spite of all her friends could do; she did not leave Lady Coningsbye’s house till last Saturday; she has been so singularly unfortunate that, had she not the strongest piety and the strongest reason to support her, she must sink under the repeated strokes of affliction.... I suppose you have read Dr. Hawkesworth’s[329] ‘Oriental Tales,’ it is not written with so much spirit as the Oriental tales in ‘the Adventurer’ which were by him, but there are some fine things in it.... I have heard my Lord Bath speak with great regard for you and Lady Bab Montagu. I believe we shall call on him on Monday, on our way to London. We were asked to dine or lye there in our journey down, and at our return. He has recovered his health and spirits and is the most delightfull companion imaginable. I think he has great good qualities, and I do not perceive the least of that covetousness which was attributed to him while his wife lived; he lives nobly, entertains generously, and I know many acts of generosity he has done, and I have known them from the report and acknowledgements of the persons obliged, for by his behaviour to such of them as I have seen at his house you would think he had received favours from them, which nobly enhances the benefit. He seems to have the strongest sense of Religion, and on all occasions to show it without the ostentation of one who wants to be praised for piety, nor does he ever in the gayest of his conversation forget the respect due to every moral duty. It would give one pain to discover any faults in one who has such extraordinary perfections and endowments, and I think his Lordship has outlived the errors which the hustling of a mighty Spirit may in youth have led him: as to his consort, she was, in Milton’s phrase, a cleaving mischief in his way to virtue.
“I am glad Lord Bath is to be at Tunbridge. Mrs. Carter is a great favourite, and I hope we shall have a good deal of his company.”
She winds up her letter with high commendation of Gesner’s “Death of Abel” mentioned before.
[327] Mr. Montagu, though a most moral man and a Church attendant, objected to religious conversation.
[328] Her sister.
[329] John Hawkesworth, LL D., essayist and novelist, died 1773.
BLIND MAN’S BUFF
Dr. Young now writes—
“Dear Madam,