Letter 98 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.  Strawberry Hill, Dec. 10, 1775. (page 144)

I was very sorry to have been here, dear Sir, the day you called on me in town.  It is so difficult to uncloister you, that I regret not seeing you when you are out of your own ambry.  I have nothing new to tell you that is very old; but you can inform me of something within your own district.  Who is the author, E. B. G. of a version of Mr. Gray’s Latin Odes into English,(237) and of an Elegy on my wolf-devoured dog, poor Tory? a name you will marvel at in a dog of mine; but his godmother was the widow of Alderman Parsons, who gave him at Paris to Lord Conway, and he to me.  The author is a poet; but he makes me blush, for he calls Mr. Gray and me congenial pair.  Alas!  I have no genius; and if any symptom of talent, so inferior to Gray’s, that Milton and Quarles might as well be coupled together.  We rode over the Alps in the same chaise, but Pegasus drew on his side, and a cart-horse on mine.  I am too jealous of his fame to let us be coupled together.  This author says he has lately printed at Cambridge a Latin translation of the Bards; I should be much obliged to you for it.

I do not ask you if Cambridge has produced any thing, for it never does.  Have you made any discoveries?  Has Mr. Lort?  Where is he?  Does Mr. Tyson engrave no more?  My plates for Strawberry advance leisurely.  I am about nothing.  I grow old and lazy, and the present world cares for nothing but politics, and satisfies itself with writing in newspapers.  If they are not bound up and preserved in libraries, posterity will imagine that the art of printing was gone out of use.  Lord Hardwicke(238) has indeed reprinted his heavy volume of Sir Dudley Carleton’s Despatches, and says I was in the wrong to despise it.  I never met with any body that thought otherwise.  What signifies raising the dead so often, when they die the next minute?  Adieu!

(237) Edward Burnaby Greene, formerly of Bennet College, but at that time a brewer in Westminster, He likewise published translations of Pindar, Persius, Apollonius Rhodius, Anacreon, etc.-E.

(238) Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, when Lord Royston, published the “Letters to and from Sir Dudley Carleton, Knight, during his Embassy in Holland, from January 1615-16 to December 1620,” 4to. 1727; and, in 1775, a second edition, “with large additions to the Historical Preface."-E.

Letter 99 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.  Arlington Street, Dec. 11, 1775. (page 145)

Did you hear that scream?—­Don’t be frightened, Madam; it was only the Duchess of Kingston last Sunday was sevennight at chapel:  but it is better to be prepared; for she has sent word to the House of Lords, that her nerves are so bad she intends to scream for these two months, and therefore they must put off her trial.  They are to take her throes into consideration to-day; and that there may be sufficient room for the length of her veil and train, and attendants, have a mind to treat her with Westminster-hall.  I hope so, for I should like to see this com`edie larmoyante; and, besides, I conclude, it would bring your ladyship to town.  You shall have timely notice.