Letter 248 To John Nichols, Esq.  Berkeley Square, June 19, 1782. (page 315)

Sir, Just this moment, on opening your fifth volume of Miscellaneous Poems, I find the translation of Cato’s speech into Latin, attributed (by common fame) to Bishop Atterbury.  I can most positively assure you, that that translation was the work of Dr. Henry Bland, afterwards Head-master of Eton school, Provost of the college there, and Dean of Durham.  I have more than once heard my father Sir Robert Walpole say, that it was he himself who gave that translation to Mr. Addison, who was extremely surprised at the fidelity and beauty of it.  It may be worth while, Sir, on some future occasion, to mention this fact in some one of your valuable and curious publications.  I am, Sir, with great regard.

Letter 249 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.  Berkeley Square, June 21, 1782. (page 315)

It is no trouble, my good Sir, to write to you, for I am as well recovered as I generally do.  I am very sorry you do not, and especially in your hands, as your pleasure and comforts so much depend on them.  Age is by no means a burden while it does not subject one to depend on others; when it does, it reconciles one to quitting every thing; at least I believe you and I think so, who do not look on solitude as a calamity.  I shall go to Strawberry to-morrow, and will, as I might have thought of doing, consult Dugdale and Collins for the Duke of Ireland’s inferior titles.  Mr. Gough I shall be glad of seeing when I am settled there, which will not be this fortnight.  I think there are but eleven parts of Marianne, and that it breaks off in the nun’s story, which promised to be very interesting.  Marivaux never finished Marianne, nor the Paysan Parvenu (which was the case too with the younger Cr`ebillon with Les Egaremens.) I have seen two bad conclusions of Marianne by other hands.  Mr. Cumberland’s brusquerie is not worth notice, nor did I remember it.  Mr. Pennant’s impetuosity you must overlook too; though I love your delicacy about your friend’s memory.  Nobody that knows you will suspect you of wanting it; but, in the ocean of books that overflows every day, who will recollect a thousandth part of what is in most of them?  By the number of writers one should naturally suppose there were multitudes of readers; but if there are, which I doubt, the latter read only the productions of the day.  Indeed, if they did read former publications, they would have no occasion to read the modern, which, like Mr. Pennant’s, are borrowed wholesale from the more ancient:  it is sad to say, that the borrowers add little new but mistakes.  I have just been turning over Mr. Nichols’s eight volumes of Select Poems, which he has swelled unreasonably with large collops of old authors, most of whom little deserved revivifying.  I bought them for the biographical notes, in which