[Footnote 2:  Jervas was a fashionable portrait-painter in the first half of the century.  Lady Mary Montague, in one of her letters, speaks of him in terms of the highest praise.]

[Footnote 3:  Dr. Arbuthnot was the author of the celebrated satire on the Partition Treaties, entitled “The History of John Bull,” to which Englishmen have ever since owed their popular nickname.  It is to him also that Pope dedicated the Prologue to his “Satires and Epistles.”]

I fear, Sir, this letter is too long for thanks, and that I have been proving what I have said, of my growing superannuated; but, having made my will in my last volume, you may look on this as a codicil.

P.S.—­I had sealed my letter, Sir, but break it open, lest you should think soon, that I do not know what I say, or break my resolution lightly.  I shall be able to send you in about two months a very curious work that I am going to print, and is actually in the press; but there is not a syllable of my writing in it.  It is a discovery just made of two very ancient manuscripts, copies of which were found in two or three libraries in Germany, and of which there are more complete manuscripts at Cambridge.  They are of the eleventh century at lowest, and prove that painting in oil was then known, above three hundred years before the pretended invention of Van Eyck.  The manuscripts themselves will be printed, with a full introductory Dissertation by the discoverer, Mr. Raspe, a very learned German, formerly librarian to the Landgrave of Hesse, and who writes English surprisingly well.  The manuscripts are in the most barbarous monkish Latin, and are much such works as our booksellers publish of receipts for mixing colours, varnishes, &c.  One of the authors, who calls himself Theophilus, was a monk; the other, Heraclius, is totally unknown; but the proofs are unquestionable.  As my press is out of order, and that besides it would take up too much time to print them there, they will be printed here at my expense, and if there is any surplus, it will be for Raspe’s benefit.

THE PRINCE OF WALES—­HURRICANE AT BARBADOES—­A “VOICE FROM ST. HELENA."

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

BERKELEY SQUARE, Dec. 31, 1780.

I have received, and thank you much for the curious history of the Count and Countess of Albany; what a wretched conclusion of a wretched family!  Surely no royal race was ever so drawn to the dregs!  The other Countess [Orford] you mention seems to approach still nearer to dissolution.  Her death a year or two ago might have prevented the sale of the pictures,—­not that I know it would.  Who can say what madness in the hands of villany would or would not have done?  Now, I think, her dying would only put more into the reach of rascals.  But I am indifferent what they do; nor, but thus occasionally, shall I throw away a thought on that chapter.

All chance of accommodation with Holland is vanished.  Count Welderen and his wife departed this morning.  All they who are to gain by privateers and captures are delighted with a new field of plunder.  Piracy is more practicable than victory.  Not being an admirer of wars, I shall reserve my feux de joie for peace.