LETTER CCLX

Blackheath, September 30, 1763

My dear friend:  You will have known, long before this, from the office, that the departments are not cast as you wished; for Lord Halifax, as senior, had of course his choice, and chose the southern, upon account of the colonies.  The Ministry, such as it is, is now settled ’en attendant mieux’; but, in, my opinion cannot, as they are, meet the parliament.

The only, and all the efficient people they have, are in the House of Lords:  for since Mr. Pitt has firmly engaged Charles Townshend to him, there is not a man of the court side, in the House of Commons, who has either abilities or words enough to call a coach.  Lord B——­is certainly playing ‘un dessous de cartes’, and I suspect that it is with Mr. Pitt; but what that ‘dessous’ is, I do not know, though all the coffeehouses do most exactly.

The present inaction, I believe, gives you leisure enough for ‘ennui’, but it gives you time enough too for better things; I mean reading useful books; and, what is still more useful, conversing with yourself some part of every day.  Lord Shaftesbury recommends self-conversation to all authors; and I would recommend it to all men; they would be the better for it.  Some people have not time, and fewer have inclination, to enter into that conversation; nay, very many dread it, and fly to the most trifling dissipations, in order to avoid it; but, if a man would allot half an hour every night for this self-conversation, and recapitulate with himself whatever he has done, right or wrong, in the course of the day, he would be both the better and the wiser for it.  My deafness gives me more than a sufficient time for self-conversation; and I have found great advantages from it.  My brother and Lady Stanhope are at last finally parted.  I was the negotiator between them; and had so much trouble in it, that I would much rather negotiate the most difficult point of the ‘jus publicum Sacri Romani Imperii’ with the whole Diet of Ratisbon, than negotiate any point with any woman.  If my brother had had some of those self-conversations, which I recommend, he would not, I believe, at past sixty, with a crazy, battered constitution, and deaf into the bargain, have married a young girl, just turned of twenty, full of health, and consequently of desires.  But who takes warning by the fate of others?  This, perhaps, proceeds from a negligence of selfconversation.  God bless you.

LETTER CCLXI

Blackheath, October 17, 1763