FRENCH BANKRUPTCY—­FRENCH EPIGRAM.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

ARLINGTON STREET, Nov. 8, 1759.

Your pictures will set out on Saturday; I give you notice, that you may inquire for them.  I did not intend to be here these three days, but my Lord Bath taking the trouble to send a man and horse to ask me to dinner yesterday, I did not know how to refuse; and besides, as Mr. Bentley said to me, “you know he was an old friend of your father.”

The town is empty, but is coming to dress itself for Saturday.  My Lady Coventry showed George Selwyn her clothes; they are blue, with spots of silver, of the size of a shilling, and a silver trimming, and cost—­my lord will know what.  She asked George how he liked them; he replied, “Why, you will be change for a guinea.”

I find nothing talked of but the French bankruptcy;[1] Sir Robert Brown, I hear—­and am glad to hear—­will be a great sufferer.  They put gravely into the article of bankrupts in the newspaper, “Louis le Petit, of the city of Paris, peace-breaker, dealer, and chapman;” it would have been still better if they had said, “Louis Bourbon of petty France.”  We don’t know what is become of their Monsieur Thurot, of whom we had still a little mind to be afraid.  I should think he would do like Sir Thomas Hanmer, make a faint effort, beg pardon of the Scotch for their disappointment, and retire.  Here are some pretty verses just arrived.

    Pourquoi le baton a Soubise,
    Puisque Chevert est le vainqueur?[2]
    C’est de la cour une meprise,
    Ou bien le but de la faveur. 
    Je ne vois rien la qui m’etonne,
    Repond aussitot un railleur;
    C’est a l’aveugle qu’on le donne,
    Et non pas au conducteur.

[Footnote 1:  In 1759 M. Bertin was Finance Minister—­the fourth who had held that office in four years; and among his expedients for raising money he had been compelled to have recourse to the measure of stopping the payment of the interest on a large portion of the National Debt.]

[Footnote 2:  “Chevert est le vainqueur.” He was one of the most brilliant officers in the French army.  It was he who, under the orders of Saxe, surprised Prague in 1744, and it was to him that Marechal d’Estrees was principally indebted for his victory of Hastenbeck.]

Lady Meadows has left nine thousand pounds in reversion after her husband to Lord Sandwich’s daughter. Apropos to my Lady Meadows’s maiden name, a name I believe you have sometimes heard; I was diverted t’other day with a story of a lady of that name,[1] and a lord, whose initial is no farther from hers than he himself is sometimes supposed to be.  Her postillion, a lad of sixteen, said, “I am not such a child but I can guess something:  whenever my Lord Lyttelton comes to my lady, she orders the porter to let in nobody else, and then they call for a pen and ink, and say they are going to write history.”  Is not this finesse so like him?  Do you know that I am persuaded, now he is parted, that he will forget he is married, and propose himself in form to some woman or other.