(695) In a letter written in this month to Walpole, Miss More asks, “Where and how are the Berrys?  I hope they are within reach of your great chair, if you are confined, and of your airings, if you go abroad.  I hate their going to Yorkshire:  as Hotspur Says, ’What do they do in the north, when they ought to be in the south?”, Memoirs, vol.ii. p. 235.-E.

(696) Lady Caroline Russell; married, in 1762, to the Duke of Marlborough.

(697) Lord Robert Spencer, brother of the Duke of Marlborough.

Letter 353 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Strawberry Hill, August 9, at night, 1790. (page 452)

Mr. Nicholls has offered to be postman to you; whereof, though I have nothing, or as little as nothing, to say, I thought as how, it would look kinder to send nothing in writing than by word of mouth.

Nothing the first.  So the peace is made, and the stocks drank its health in a bumper; but when they waked the next morning, they found they had reckoned without their host, and that their majesties the King of big Britain and the King of little Spain have agreed to make peace some time or other, if they can agree upon it; and so the stocks drew in their horns:  but, having great trust in some time or other, they only fell two pegs lower.  I, who never believed there would be war, keep my prophetic stocks up to par, and my consolation still higher; for when Spanish pride truckles, and English pride has had the honour of bullying, I dare to say we shall be content with the ostensible triumph, as Spain will be with some secret article that will leave her much where she was before.  Vide Falkland’s Island.

Nothing the second.  Miss Gunning’s match with Lord Blandford.  You asserted it so peremptorily, that, though I doubted it, I quoted you.  Lo! it took its rise solely in poor old Bedford’s dotage, that still harps on conjunctions copulative, but now disavows it, as they say, on a remonstrance from her daughter.

Nothing the third.  Nothing will come of nothing, says King Lear, and your humble servant.

Letter 354 To The Earl Of Strafford.  Strawberry Hill, August 12, 1790. (page 452)

I must not pretend any longer, my dear lord, that this region is void of news and diversions.  Oh! we can innovate as well as neighbouring nations.  If an Earl Stanhope, though he cannot be a tribune, is ambitious of being a plebeian, he may without law be as vulgar as heart can wish; and, though we have not a national assembly to lay the axe to the root of nobility, the peerage have got a precedent for laying themselves in the kennel.  Last night the Earl of Barrymore was so humble as to perform a buffoon-dance and act Scaramouch in a pantomime at Richmond for the benefit of Edwin, Jun. the comedian:(698) and I, like an old fool, but calling myself a philosopher that loves to study human nature in all its disguises, went to see the performance.