492 Letter 317 To George Montagu, Esq.  June 2, 1759.

Strawberry Hill is grown a perfect Paphos; it is the land of beauties.  On Wednesday the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond and Lady Ailesbury dined there; the two latter stayed all night.  There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in the shell; a thousand years hence, when I begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that event, and tell young people how much handsomer the women of my time were than they will be then:  I shall say, “Women alter now; I remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her daughter, the pretty Duchess of Richmond, as they were sitting in the shell on my terrace with the Duchess of Hamilton, one of the famous Gunnings.”  Yesterday t’other more famous Gunning(1036) dined there.  She has made a friendship with my charming niece, to disguise her jealousy of the new Countess’s beauty:  there were they two, their lords, Lord Buckingham, and Charlotte.  You will think that I did not choose men for my parties so well as women.  I don’t include Lord Waldegrave in this bad election.

Loo is mounted to its zenith; the parties last till one and two in the morning.  We played at Lady Hertford’s last week, the last night of her lying-in, till deep into Sunday morning, after she and her lord were retired.  It Is now adjourned to Mrs. Fitzroy’s, whose child the town called “Pam—­ela’.  I proposed, that instead of receiving cards for assemblies, one should send in a morning to Dr. Hunter’s, the man-midwife, to know where there is loo that evening.  I find poor Charles Montagu is dead:(1037) is it true, as the papers say, that his son comes into Parliament?  The invasion is not half so much in fashion as loo, and the King demanding the assistance of’ the militia does not add much dignity to it.  The great Pam of Parliament, who made the motion, entered into a wonderful definition of the several sorts of fear; from fear that comes from pusillanimity, up to fear from magnanimity.  It put me in mind of that wise Pythian, My Lady Londonderry, who, when her sister, Lady DOnnegal was dying, pronounced, that if it were a fever from a fever, she would live; but if it were a fever from death, she would die.

Mr. Mason has published another drama, called Caractacus; there are some incantations poetical enough, and odes so Greek as to have very little meaning.  But the whole is laboured, uninteresting, and no more resembling the manners of Britons than of Japanese.  It is introduced by a piping elegy; for Mason, in imitation of Gray, “will cry and roar all night"(1038) without the least provocation.

Adieu!  I shall be glad to hear that your Strawberry tide is fixed.

(1036) Lady Coventry.

(1037) Only son of the Hon. James Montagu, son of Henry Earl of Manchester.-E.

(1038) An expression of Mr. Montagu’s.

493 Letter 318
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, June 8, 1759.