very likely was the case; but now that the poems have been so much examined, nobody (that has an ear) can get over the modernity of the modulations, and the recent cast of the ideas and phraseology, corroborated by such palpable pillage of Pope and Dryden.  Still the boy remains a prodigy, by whatever means he procured or produced the edifice erected; and still It will be found inexplicable how he found time or materials for operating such miracles.

You are in another error about Sir Harry Englefield, who cannot be going to marry a daughter of Lord Cadogan, unless he has a natural one, of whom I never heard.  Lord Cadogan has no daughter by his first wife, and his oldest girl by My niece is not five years old.(472) The act of the Emperor to which I alluded, is the general destruction of convents in Flanders, and, I suppose, in his German dominions too.  The Pope suppressed the carnival, as mourning and proposes a journey to Vienna to implore mercy.(473) This is a little different from the time when the pontiffs trampled on the necks of emperors, and called it trampling super Aspidem et Draconent.  I hope you have received your cargo back undamaged.  I was much obliged to you, and am yours ever.

(471) It was afterwards published separately, under the title of “Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley, a priest of the fifteenth century."-E.

(472) Lord Cadogan married, in 1747, Frances, daughter of the first Lord Montfort; and secondly, in 1777, Mary, daughter of Charles Churchill, Esq. by Lady Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.-E.

(473) The Emperor Joseph, having been restrained during the lifetime of Maria Theresa from acting as he wished in ecclesiastical matters, upon her death, in November, 1780, issued two ordinances respecting religious orders:  by one forbidding the Roman Catholics to hold correspondence with their chief in foreign parts; and by the other forbidding any bull or ordinance of the Pope from being received in his dominions, until sanctioned by him.  In 1782, he directed the suppression of the religious houses; upon which he was visited at Vienna by the Pope, who was received with great respect, but was unable to procure any intermission in the Emperor’s ecclesiastical reforms.-E.

Letter 243 To The Hon. George Hardinge.  March 8, 1782. (page 309)

It is very pleasing to receive congratulation from a friend on a friend’s success:  that success, however, is not so agreeable as the universal esteem allowed to Mr. Conway’s character, which not only accompanies his triumph,(474) but I believe contributed to it.  To-day, I suppose, all but his character will be reversed; for there must have been a miraculous change if the Philistines do not bear as ample a testimony to their Dagon’s honour, as conviction does to that of a virtuous man.  In truth, I am far from desiring that the Opposition should prevail yet: