He was not that day in town.  You desired it to be sent, without loss of time.  I therefore lost none.  But unluckily he was on the road, although nobody knew it; he must have received it a few days after, so I suppose by this time he has acknowledged to you the receipt of it.  I shall send your letter to Dr. Warner to-day, and invite him to meet Mr. Gregg’s family at dinner here on Tuesday. . . .I believe him to be a perfectly honest man; he is uncommonly humane and friendly, and most actively so.  But he has such a flow of spirits, and so much the ton de ce monde qu’il a frequente, that, had I been to have chose a profession for him, it should not have been that of the Church.  There is more buckram in that, professionally, than he can digest, or submit to.  The Archbishop, who has been applied to in his favour, by the late Mr. Townshend, said he was too lively, but it was the worst he could say of him.  Lord Besborough served him once essentially, and esteems him.  The family of Mr. Hoare, the banker, has assisted him, and so he has been able to support his mother and his nearest relations, whom his father, with a great deal of literary merit, had left beggars.  I have given you this succinct history of my doctor, whom you have enlisted into your corps.  I was once before obliged to write his character for Lord Ossory, when he settled himself in Bedfordshire, and Lord Ossory has found it true in all particulars.

The K(ing) has told my friend M. that Lord Cadogan(151) wants to sell his house at Caversham, for why, I know not.  Lord Walpole’s eldest son is to marry Lady Cadogan’s sister.  Churchill, du cote du falbala, ne reussit pas mal; his sons, I am afraid, one of them at least, has (have) not managed so well.  But I would myself sooner have been married to (a) Buckhorse, than to that (A)Esop Lord C. The Zarina repents of her bargain, and, it is said, will give no more than 20,000 for the pictures.(152) If that is not accepted, Lord Orford make (may) take them back.  He gets an estate of near 10,000 pounds a year by his mother’s death.  Her will is all wrote in her own hand, and not one word, even her own name, rightly spelt.

(149) George, fourth Viscount Middleton (1754-1836); son of George, third viscount, and Albinia, daughter of the Hon. Thomas Townshend.  He married first, in 1778, Lady Frances Pelham, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Chichester, who died in 1783.

(150) Frederick, second Baron Boston (1749-1825), son of Sir William, first Baron Boston and Albinia, daughter of Henry Selwyn.  He married, in 1775, Christiana, only daughter of’Paul Methuen.

(151) Charles Sloane, third Baron and first Earl Cadogan (1728-1807).  The house at Caversham Park was destroyed by fire in 1850 and re-built.

(152) The gallery of pictures at Houghton, collected by Sir Robert Walpole, was, with some reservations, sold by the third Lord Orford, to the Empress Catharine of Russia in 1779.  “Private news we have none, but what I have long been bidden to expect the completion of the sale of the pictures at Houghton to the Czarina” (Letters of Walpole, vol. vii. p. 234.) The date of the sale and of Selwyn’s gossiping allusion are not reconcilable.