My dear friend:  Gravenkop wrote me word, by the last post, that you were laid up with the gout:  but I much question it, that is, whether it is the gout or not.  Your last illness, before you went abroad, was pronounced the gout, by the skillful, and proved at last a mere rheumatism.  Take care that the same mistake is not made this year; and that by giving you strong and hot medicines to throw out the gout, they do not inflame the rheumatism, if it be one.

Mr. Wilkes has imitated some of the great men of antiquity, by going into voluntary exile:  it was his only way of defeating both his creditors and his prosecutors.  Whatever his friends, if he has any, give out of his returning soon, I will answer for it, that it will be a long time before that soon comes.

I have been much out of order these four days of a violent cold which I do not know how I got, and which obliged me to suspend drinking the waters:  but it is now so much better, that I propose resuming them for this week, and paying my court to you in town on Monday or Tuesday seven-night:  but this is ‘sub spe rati’ only.  God bless you!

LETTER CCLXVII

Blackheath, July 20, 1764.

My dear friend:  I have this moment received your letter of the 3d from Prague, but I never received that which you mention from Ratisbon; this made me think you in such rapid motion, that I did not know where to take aim.  I now suppose that you are arrived, though not yet settled, at Dresden; your audiences and formalities are, to be sure, over, and that is great ease of mind to you.

I have no political events to acquaint you with; the summer is not the season for them, they ripen only in winter; great ones are expected immediately before the meeting of parliament, but that, you know, is always the language of fears and hopes.  However, I rather believe that there will be something patched up between the ins and the outs.

The whole subject of conversation, at present, is the death and will of Lord Bath:  he has left above twelve hundred thousand pounds in land and money; four hundred thousand pounds in cash, stocks, and mortgages; his own estate, in land, was improved to fifteen thousand pounds a-year, and the Bradford estate, which he-----is as much; both which, at only five-and twenty years’ purchase, amount to eight hundred thousand pounds; and all this he has left to his brother, General Pulteney, and in his own disposal, though he never loved him.  The legacies he has left are trifling; for, in truth, he cared for nobody:  the words give and bequeath were too shocking for him to repeat, and so he left all in one word to his brother.  The public, which was long the dupe of his simulation and dissimulation, begins to explain upon him; and draws such a picture of him as I gave you long ago.