Thames have been and are, I believe, like those of the Manzanares.  The night before last we had some good showers, and to-day a thick fog has dissolved in some as thin as gauze.  Still I am not quite sorry to enjoy the weather of adust climates without their tempests and insects.  Lady Cowper I lately visited, and but lately:  if what I hear is true, I shall be a gainer, for they talk of Lord Duncannon having her house at Richmond:  like your lordship, I confess I was surprised at his choice.  I know nothing to the prejudice of the young lady;(395) but I should not have selected, for so gentle and very amiable a man, a sister of the empress of fashion,(396) nor a daughter of the goddess of wisdom.(397)

They talk of great disssatisfactions in the fleet.  Geary and Barrington are certainly retired.  It looks, if this deplorable war should continue, as if all our commanders by sea and land were to be disgraced or disgusted.

The people here have christened Mr. Shirley’s new house, Spite-hall.(398) It is dismal to think that one may live to seventy-seven, and go out of the world doing as ill-natured an act as possible!  When I am reduced to detail the gazette of Twickenham, I had better release your lordship; but either way it is from the utmost attention and respect for your lordship and Lady Strafford, as I am ever most devotedly and gratefully yours.

(395) In the following November, Lord Duncannon married Henrietta-Frances, second daughter of John first Earl Spencer.-E.

(396) Georgiana, eldest daughter of John first Earl Spencer; married, in 1774, to the Duke of Devonshire.-E.

(397) Margaret-Georgiana, daughter of the Right Hon. Stephen Poyntz; married, in 1755, to John first Earl Spencer.-E.

(398) Because built, it was said, on purpose to intercept a view of the Thames from his opposite neighbour.

letter 199 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.  Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1780. (page 256)

Dear Sir, I must inquire how you do after all your election agitations, which have growled even around your hermitage.  Candidates and their emissaries are like Pope’s authors,

“They pierce our thickets, through our groves they glide.”

However, I have barred my doors; and when I would not go to an election for myself, I would not for any one else.

Has not a third real summer, and so very dry one, assisted your complaints?  I have been remarkably well, and better than for these five years.  Would I could say the same of all my friends—­ but, alas!  I expect every day to hear that I have lost my dear old friend Madame du Deffand.(399) She was indeed near eighty-four, but retained all her interior faculties—­two days ago the letters from Paris forbade all hopes.  So I reckon myself dead as to France, where I have kept up no other connexion.

I am going at last to publish my fourth volume of Painters, which, though printed so long, I have literally treated by Horace’s rule, “Nonumque prematur in nonum.”  Tell me how I shall send it to you.  Yours ever.