My Lady Lincoln,(84) who was ready to be brought to bed, is dead in three hours of convulsions.  It has been a fatal year to great ladies:  within this twelvemonth have gone off Lady Essex, Lady Besborough, Lady Granby, Lady Anson, and Lady Lincoln.  My Lady Coventry is still alive, sometimes at the point of death, sometimes recovering.  They fixed the spring:  now the autumn is to be critical for her.

I set out for my Lord Strafford’s to-morrow se’nnight, so shall not be able to send you any victory this fortnight.

General Clive(85) is arrived all over estates and diamonds.  If a beggar asks charity, be says, “Friend, I have no small brilliants about me.”

I forgot to tell you that Stosch was to dine with General Guise.(86) The latter has notified to Christ Church, Oxford, that in his will he has given them his collection of pictures.  Adieu!

(84) Catherine, eldest daughter of Henry Pelham, wife of Henry Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, afterwards Duke of newcastle.

(85) Afterwards created Lord Clive in Ireland.  It is to him that we in great measure owe our dominion in India; in the acquisition of which he is, however, reproached with having exercised great cruelties.-D.

(86) General Guise did leave his collection as he promised; but the University employing the son of Bonus, the cleaner of pictures, to repair them, he entirely repainted them, and as entirely spoiled them.

Letter 37 To The Earl Of Strafford.  Strawberry Hill, Aug. 7, 1760. (page 78)

My dear lord, You will laugh, but I am ready to cry, when I tell you that I have no notion when I shall be able to wait on you.-Such a calamity!—­My tower is not fallen down, nor Lady Fanny Shirley run away with another printer; nor has my Lady D * * * * insisted on living with me as half way to Weybridge.  Something more disgraceful than all these, and wofully mortifying for a young creature, who is at the same time in love with Lady Mary Coke, and following the Duchess of Grafton and Loo all over the kingdom.  In short, my lord, I have got the gout-yes, the gout in earnest.  I was seized on Monday morning, suffered dismally all night, am now wrapped in flannels like the picture of a Morocco ambassador, and am carried to bed by two servants.  You see virtue and leanness are no preservatives.  I write this now to your lordship, because I think it totally impossible that I should be able to set out the day after to-morrow, as I intended.  The moment I can, I will, but this is a tyrant that will not let one name a day.  All I know is, that it may abridge my other parties, but shall not my stay at Wentworth Castle.  The Duke of Devonshire was so good as to ask me to be at Chatsworth yesterday, but I did not know it time enough.  As it happens, I must have disappointed him.  At present I look like Pam’s father more than one of his subjects; only one of my legs appears:  The rest my parti.colour’d robe conceals.  Adieu! my dear lord.