A month after we find him thus referring to the parent still throbbing in mortal agony on the death-bed, with no chance of amendment:—­

’How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the greatest understanding in the world, not the least impaired, to lie without any use for it! for to keep him from pains and restlessness, he takes so much opiate, that he is scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty; but I will say no more of this.’

On the 29th of March, he again wrote to his friend in the following terms:—­

’I begged your brothers to tell you what it is impossible for me to tell you.  You share in our common loss!  Don’t expect me to enter at all upon the subject.  After the melancholy two months that I have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter, a letter that would grow into a panegyric or a piece of a moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both! a death is only to be felt, never to be talked upon by those it touches.’

Nevertheless, the world soon had Horace Walpole for her own again; during Lord Orford’s last illness, George II.  Thought of him, it seems, even though the ‘Granvilles’ were the only people tolerated at court.  That famous clique comprised the secretly adored of Horace (Lady Granville now), Lady Sophia Fermor.

‘The Granville faction,’ Horace wrote, before his father’s death, ’are still the constant and only countenanced people at court.  Lord Winchelsea, one of the disgraced, played at court at Twelfth-night, and won; the king asked him next morning how much he had for his own share.  He replied, “Sir, about a quarter’s salary.”  I liked the spirit, and was talking to him of it the next night at Lord Granville’s.  “Why yes,” said he, “I think it showed familiarity at least:  tell it your father, I don’t think he will dislike it."’

The most trifling incidents divided the world of fashion and produced the bitterest rancour.  Indeed, nothing could exceed the frivolity of the great, except their impertinence.  For want of better amusements, it had become the fashion to make conundrums, and to have printed books full of them, which were produced at parties.  But these were peaceful diversions.  The following anecdote is worthy of the times of George II. and of Frederick of Wales:—­

‘There is a very good quarrel,’ Horace writes, ’on foot, between two duchesses:  she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox to a ball:  her grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline’s elopement (with Mr. Fox), sent word “she could not determine.”  The other sent again the same night:  the same answer.  The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily’s; but at the bottom of the card wrote, “Too great trust.”  There is no declaration of war come out from the other duchess:  but I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal family.’