Here I receive your long letter of the 7th, 9th, and 10th, which it is impossible for me to answer now; there is one part to which I wish to reply, but must defer till next post, by which time I hope to have recovered my own pen.  You ask about the house of Argyll.  You know I have no connexion with them, nor any curiosity about them.  Their relations and mine have been in town but four days, so I know little from them:  Mrs. Grenville, to-day, told me the Duke proposes to continue the same life he used to lead, with a cribbage-table and his family.  Every body admires the youngest daughter’s(729) person and understanding.  Adieu!  I will begin to write again myself as soon as I can.

(725) This celebrated wit and amiable man died on the 25th of January, in his seventy-second year.  He was member for Luggershall, surveyor-general of the crown lands, surveyor of the meltings and clerk of the irons in the Mint; “and,” add the newspapers of the day, “receiver-general of wit and stray jokes.”  The following tribute to his memory appeared at the time:—­

“If this gay Fav’rite lost, they yet can live,
A tear to Selwyn let the Graces give! 
With rapid kindness teach Oblivion’s pall
O’er the sunk foibles of the man to fall
And fondly dictate to a faithful Muse
The prime distinction of the Friend they lose:—­
’Twas Social Wit; which, never kindling strife,
Blazed in the small, sweet courtesies of life;
Those little sapphires round the diamond shone,
Lending soft radiance to the richer stone."-E.

(726) Married in 1798, to the Earl of Yarmouth; who, in 1822, succeeded his father as third Marquis of Hertford.-E.

(727) Meaning the strange, imagined history Of a marriage supposed to have been likely to take place between Miss Gunning and the Marquis of Blandford.

(728) Mrs. Gunning was a Miss Minifie, of Fairwater, Somersetshire, and, before her marriage, had published several popular novels.-E.

(729) Lady Charlotte-Susan-Maria; married, first to Colonel John Campbell of Islay and, secondly to the Rev. Mr. Bury.-E.

Letter 366 To Miss Berry.  Berkeley Square, Friday, Feb. 4, 1791. (page 470)

Last post I sent you as cheerful a letter, as I could, to convince you that I was recovering.  This will be less gay; not because I have had a little return in both arms, but because I have much more pain in my mind than in my limbs.  I see and thank you all for the kindness of your intention; but, as it has the contrary effect from what you expect, I am forced, for my own peace, to beseech you not to continue a manoeuvre that only tantalizes and wounds me.  In your last you put together many friendly words to give me hopes of your return; but can I be’ so blind as not to see that they are vague words?  Did you mean to return in autumn, Would you not say so? would the most artful arrangement of words be