I wish you would use yourself to translate, every day, only three or four lines, from any book, in any language, into the correctest and most elegant English that you can think of; you cannot imagine how it will insensibly form your style, and give you an habitual elegance; it would not take you up a quarter of an hour in a day.  This letter is so long, that it will hardly leave you that quarter of an hour, the day you receive it.  So good-night.

LETTER CXCVIII

London, March 8, 1754

My dear friend:  A great and unexpected event has lately happened in our ministerial world.  Mr. Pelham died last Monday of a fever and mortification, occasioned by a general corruption of his whole mass of blood, which had broke out into sores in his back.  I regret him as an old acquaintance, a pretty near relation, and a private man, with whom I have lived many years in a social and friendly way.  He meant well to the public; and was incorrupt in a post where corruption is commonly contagious.  If he was no shining, enterprising minister, he was a safe one, which I like better.  Very shining ministers, like the sun, are apt to scorch when they shine the brightest:  in our constitution, I prefer the milder light of a less glaring minister.  His successor is not yet, at least publicly, ‘designatus’.  You will easily suppose that many are very willing, and very few able, to fill that post.  Various persons are talked of, by different people, for it, according as their interest prompts them to wish, or their ignorance to conjecture.  Mr. Fox is the most talked of; he is strongly supported by the Duke of Cumberland.  Mr. Legge, the Solicitor-General, and Dr. Lee, are likewise all spoken of, upon the foot of the Duke of Newcastle’s, and the Chancellor’s interest.  Should it be any one of the last three, I think no great alterations will ensue; but should Mr. Fox prevail, it would, in my opinion, soon produce changes by no means favorable to the Duke of Newcastle.  In the meantime, the wild conjectures of volunteer politicians, and the ridiculous importance which, upon these occasions, blockheads always endeavor to give themselves, by grave looks, significant shrugs, and insignificant whispers, are very entertaining to a bystander, as, thank God, I now am.  One knows something, but is not yet at liberty to tell it; another has heard something from a very good hand; a third congratulates himself upon a certain degree of intimacy, which he has long had with everyone of the candidates, though perhaps he has never spoken twice to anyone of them.  In short, in these sort of intervals, vanity, interest, and absurdity, always display themselves in the most ridiculous light.  One who has been so long behind the scenes as I have is much more diverted with the entertainment, than those can be who only see it from the pit and boxes.  I know the whole machinery of the interior, and can