long messages every day from Claremont.  I cannot say this fit has alarmed Europe quite so much.  I heard the bell ring at the gate, and asked with much majesty if it was the Duke of Newcastle had sent?  “No, Sir, it was only the butcher’s boy.”  The butcher’s boy is, indeed, the only courier i have had.  Neither the King of France nor King of Spain appears to be under the least concern about me.

My dear Lord, I have had so many of these transitions in my life, that you will not wonder they divert me more than a masquerade.  I am ready to say to most people, “Mask, I know you.”  I wish I might choose their dresses!

’When I have the honour of seeing Lady Strafford, I shall beseech her to tell me all the news:  for I am too nigh and too far to know any.  Adieu, my dear Lord!

(1050) A masquerade given at the Opera-house by the King of Denmark; one of the most magnificent which had ever been given in England.  The jewels worn on the occasion by the maskers were estimated to be of the value of two millions.-E.

Letter 354 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, Nov. 10, 1768. (page 535)

I have not received the cheese, but I thank you as much beforehand.  I have been laid up with a fit of the gout in both feet and a knee; at Strawberry for an entire month, and eight days here:  I took the air for the first time the day before yesterday, and am, considering, surprisingly recovered by the assistance of the bootikins and my own perseverance in drinking water.  I moulted my stick to-day, and have no complaint but weakness left.  The fit came just in time to augment my felicity in having quitted Parliament.  I do not find it so uncomfortable to grow old, when One is not obliged to expose oneself in public.

I neither rejoice nor am sorry at your being accommodated in your new habitation.  It has long been plain to me that you choose to bury yourself in the ugliest spot you can find, at a distance from almost all your acquaintance; so I give it up; and then I am glad you are pleased.

Nothing is stirring but politics, and chiefly the worst kind of politics, elections.  I trouble myself with no sort, but seek to pass what days the gout leaves me or bestows on me, as quietly as I can.  I do not wonder at others, because I doubt I am more singular than they are; and what makes me happy would probably not make them so.  My best compliments to your brother; I shall be glad to see you both when you come; though for you, you don’t care how little time you pass with your friends.  Yet I am, and ever shall be Yours most sincerely.

Letter 355 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1768. (page 535)