Mr. Fox is much better than at the beginning of the winter; and both his health and power seem to promise a longer duration than people expected.  Indeed, I think the latter is so established, that poor Lord Bute would find it more difficult to remove him, than he did his predecessors, and may even feel the effects of the weight he has made over to him; for it is already obvious that Lord Bute’s lev`ee is not the present path to fortune.  Permanence is not the complexion of these times—­a distressful circumstance to the votaries of a court, but amusing to us spectators.  Adieu!

(264) The re-embarkation of the British troops from Flanders after the peace.

(265) An ambassador.

(266.  In January, there was a riot at Drury-lane, in consequence of the managers refusing admittance at the end of the third act of a play for half-price; when the glass lustres were broken and thrown upon the stage, the benches torn up, and the performance put a stop to.  The same scene was threatened on the following evening, but was prevented by Garrick’s consenting to give admittance at half-price after the third act, except during the first winter of a new pantomime.  At Covent-garden, the redress demanded having been acceded to, no disturbance took place on that occasion; but a more serious riot happened on the 24th of February, in consequence of a demand for full prices at the opera of Artaxerxes.  The mischief done was estimated at not less than two thousand pounds.-E.

Letter 148 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, March 29, 1763. (page 205)

Though you are a runaway, a fugitive, a thing without friendship or feeling, though you grow tired of your acquaintance in half the time you intended, I will not quite give you up:  I will write to you once a quarter, just to keep up a connexion that grace may catch at, if it ever proposes to visit you.  This is my plan, for I have little or nothing to tell you.  The ministers only cut one another’s throats instead of ours.  They growl over their prey like two curs over a bone, which neither can determine to quit; and the whelps in opposition are not strong enough to beat either way, though like the species, they will probably hunt the one that shall be worsted.  The saddest dog of all, Wilkes, shows most spirit.  The last North Briton is a masterpiece of mischief.  He has written a dedication too to an old play, the Fall of Mortimer, that is wormwood; and he had the impudence t’other day to ask Dyson if he was going to the treasury; “Because,” said he, “a friend of mine has dedicated a play to Lord Bute, and ’It is usual to give dedicators something; I wish you would put his lordship in mind of it.”  Lord and Lady Pembroke are reconciled, and live again together.(267) Mr. Hunter would have taken his daughter too, but upon condition she should give back her settlement to Lord Pembroke and her child:  she replied nobly, that she did not trouble