I have just received the favour of a letter from Lord Buchan, in which his lordship is so good as to acquaint me with the honour your new Society of Antiquaries have done me in nominating me an honourary member.  I am certainly much flattered by the distinction, but am afraid his lordship’s partiality and patronage will in this only instance do him no credit.  My knowledge even of British antiquity has ever been desultory and most superficial; I have never studied any branch of science deeply and solidly, nor ever but for temporary \amusement, and without any system, suite, or method.  Of late years I have quitted every connexion with societies, not only Parliament, but those of our Antiquaries and of Arts and Sciences, and have not attended the meetings of the Royal Society.  I have withdrawn myself in a great measure from the world, and live in a very narrow circle idly and obscurely.  Still, Sir, I could not decline the honour your Society has been pleased to offer me, lest it should be thought a want of respect and gratitude, instead of a mark of humility and conscious unworthiness.  I am so sensible of this last, that I cannot presume to offer my services in this part of’ our island to so respectable an assembly; but if you, Sir, who know too well my limited abilities, can at any time point out any information that it is in my power to give to the Society, (as in the case of Royal Scottish portraits, on which Lord Buchan was pleased to Consult Me,) I shall be very proud to obey your and their commands, and shall always be with great regard their and your most obedient humble servant.

P. S. I do not know whether I ever mentioned to you or Lord Buchan, Sir, a curious and excellent head in oil of the Lady Margaret Douglas at Mr. Carteret’s, at Hawnes in Bedfordshire, the seat of his grandfather Lord Granville; I know few better portraits.  It is at once a countenance of goodness and cunning, a mixture I think pleasing.  It seems to imply that the person’s virtue was not founded on folly or ignorance of the world; it implies perhaps more, that the person would combat treachery and knavery, and knew how.  I could fancy the head in question was such a character as Margaret Queen of Navarre, sister of Francis the First. who was very free in her conversation and writings, yet strictly virtuous; debonnaire, void of ambition; yet a politician when her brother’s situation required it.  If your Society should give into engraving historic portraits, this head would deserve an early place.  There is at Lord Scarborough’s in Yorkshire, a double portrait, perhaps by Holbein or Lucas de Heere, of Lady Margaret’s mother, Queen Margaret, and her second husband.

(416) Now first collected.

(417) Pope in his second Dialogue for the Year 1738, has transmitted Sir William’s character to posterity—­

“How can I, Pultney, Chesterfield, forget,
While Roman spirit charms, and Attic wit? 
Or Wyndham, just to freedom and the throne,
The master of our passions and his own?”