By tomorrow’s coach you will receive a box of Guinea-hens’ eggs, which Lady Ailesbury sent me to-day from Park-place.  I hope they will arrive safe and all be hatched.

I thank you for the account of the sermon and the portrait of the uncle.  They will satisfy me without buying the former.  As I knew Mr. Joseph Spence,(387) I do not think I should have been so much delighted as Dr. Kippis with reading his letters.  He was a good-natured, harmless little soul, but more like a silver penny than a genius.  It was a neat, fiddle-faddle, bit of sterling, that had read good books and kept good company, but was too trifling for use, and only fit to please a child.

I hesitate on purchasing Mr. Gough’s second edition.  I do not think there was a guinea’s worth of entertainment in the first; how can the additions be worth a guinea and a half?  I have been aware of the royal author you tell me of, and have noted him for a future edition; but that will not appear in my own time; because, besides that, it will have the castrations in my original copy, and other editions, that I am not impatient to produce.  I have been solicited to reprint the work, but do not think it fair to give a very imperfect edition when I could print it complete, which I do not choose to do, as I have an aversion to literary squabbles:  one seems to think one’s self too important when one engages in a controversy on one’s writings; and when one does not vindicate them, the answerer passes for victor, as you see Dr. Kippis allots the palm to Dr. Milles, though you know I have so much more to say in defence of my hypothesis.  I have actually some hopes of still more, of which I have heard, but till I see it, I shall not reckon upon it as on my side.

Mr. lort told me of King James’s Procession to St. Paul’s; but they ask such a price for it, and I care so little for James I., that I have not been to look at the picture.

Your electioneering will probably be increased immediately.  Old Mr. Thomas Townshend is at the point of death.(388) The Parliament will probably be dissolved before another session.  We wanted nothing but drink to inflame our madness, which I do not confine to politics; but what signifies it to throw out general censures?  We old folks are apt to think nobody wise but ourselves.  I wish the disgraces of these last two or three years did not justify a little severity more than flows from the peevishness of years!  Yours ever.

(387) See Vol.  I. p, 168, letter 29.-E.

(388) The Right Hon. Thomas Townshend, son of Charles second Viscount Townshend, many years member for the University of Cambridge.  He died a few days after the date of this letter.  He was a most elegant scholar, and lived in acquaintance and familiarity with most of the considerable men of his time.  In early life he entered into the secretary of state’s office under his father, whom he accompanied in his journeys to Germany with George the First and Second.  At the time of his death he was in his seventy-ninth year.-E.