I shall finish this vast volume with a very good story, though not so authentic as my sheriff’s.  It is said that General Clive’s father has been with Mr. Pitt, to notify, that if the government will send his son four hundred thousand pounds, and a certain number of ships, the heaven-born general knows of a part of India, where such treasures are buried, that he will engage, to send over enough. to pay the national debt.  “Oh!” said the minister, “that is too much; fifty millions would be sufficient.”  Clive insisted on the hundred millions,—­Pitt, that half would do as well.  “Lord, Sir!” said the old man, “consider, if your administration lasts, the national debt will soon be two hundred millions.”  Good night for a twelvemonth!

(55) Sir William Meredith, Bart. of Hanbury, in Cheshire.  The title is now extinct.-D.

(56) She afterwards married Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle, and was an excellent woman. (She was unfortunately burned to death at Lord Frederick’s seat, Combe Bank, in Kent.-D.)

(57) Zachariah Pearce, translated from the see of Bangor in 1756.  He was an excellent man, and later in life, in the year 1768, finding himself growing infirm, he presented to the world the rare instance of disinterestedness, of wishing to relinquish all his pieces of preferment.  These consisted of the deanery of Westminster and bishopric of Rochester.  The deanery he gave up, but was not allowed to do so by the bishopric, which was said, as a peerage, to be inalienable.-D.

(58) Lady Selina Shirley, daughter of an Earl of Ferrers.  (Selina Shirley, second daughter and coheiress of Washington Earl Ferrers, and widow of Theophilus Hastings, ninth Earl of Huntingdon.  She was the peculiar patroness of enthusiasts of all sorts in religion.-D.)

(59) The Prince of Wales’s.

(60) “The town are reading the King of Prussia’s poetry, and I have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am.  It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe recocta of our worst freethinkers tossed up in German-French rhyme.”  Gray, vol. iii. p. 241.

(61) Strange was a confirmed Jacobite.

(62) The residence of the Pretender.

Letter 25 To Sir David Dalrymple.(63) Arlington Street, May 15, 1760. (page 63)

Sir, I am extremely sensible of your obliging kindness in sending me for Mr. Gray the account of Erse poetry, even at a time when you were so much out of order.  That indisposition I hope is entirely removed, and your health perfectly reestablished.  Mr. Gray is very thankful for the information.(64)

I have lately bought, intending it for Dr. Robertson, a Spanish Ms. called “Annals del Emperador Carlos V. Autor, Francisco Lopez de Gornara.”  As I am utterly ignorant of the Spanish tongue, I do not know whether there is the least merit in my purchase.  It is not very long; if you will tell me how to convey it, I will send it to him.