If it had not been for this ball, I don’t know how I should have furnished a decent letter.  Pamphlets on Mr. Pitt[1] are the whole conversation, and none of them worth sending cross the water:  at least I, who am said to write some of them, think so; by which you may perceive I am not much flattered with the imputation.  There must be new personages, at least, before I write on any side.—­Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle!  I should as soon think of informing the world that Miss Chudleigh is no vestal.  You will like better to see some words which Mr. Gray has writ, at Miss Speed’s request, to an old air of Geminiani; the thought is from the French.

    I.

    Thyrsis, when we parted, swore
      Ere the spring he would return. 
    Ah! what means yon violet flower,
      And the bud that decks the thorn! 
    ’Twas the lark that upward sprung,
    ’Twas the nightingale that sung.

    II.

    Idle notes! untimely green! 
      Why this unavailing haste! 
    Western gales and skies serene
      Speak not always winter past. 
    Cease my doubts, my fears to move;
    Spare the honour of my love.

Adieu, Madam, your most faithful servant.

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Pitt had lately resigned the office of Secretary of State, on being outvoted in the Cabinet, which rejected his proposal to declare war against Spain; and he had accepted a pension of L3,000 a year and a peerage for his wife—­acts which Walpole condemns in more than one letter, and which provoked comments in many quarters.]

DEATH OF THE CZARINA ELIZABETH—­THE COCK-LANE GHOST—­RETURN TO ENGLAND OF LADY MARY WORTLEY.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, Jan. 29, 1762.

I wish you joy, sir minister; the Czarina [Elizabeth] is dead.  As we conquered America in Germany,[1] I hope we shall overrun Spain by this burial at Petersburg.  Yet, don’t let us plume ourselves too fast; nothing is so like a Queen as a King, nothing so like a predecessor as a successor.  The favourites of the Prince Royal of Prussia, who had suffered so much for him, were wofully disappointed, when he became the present glorious Monarch; they found the English maxim true, that the King never dies; that is, the dignity and passions of the Crown never die.  We were not much less defeated of our hopes on the decease of Philip V. The Grand Duke[2] [Peter III.] has been proclaimed Czar at the army in Pomerania; he may love conquest like that army, or not know it is conquering, like his aunt.  However, we cannot suffer more by this event.  I would part with the Empress Queen, on no better a prospect.

[Footnote 1:  “We conquered America in Germany.” This is a quotation from a boastful speech of Mr. Pitt’s on the conquest of Canada.]

[Footnote 2:  The Grand Duke (Peter III.) was married, for his misfortune, to Catharine, a princess of Anhalt-Zerbzt, whose lover, Count Orloff, murdered him before the end of the summer, at his wife’s command; and in August she assumed the government, and was crowned with all due solemnity as Czarina or Empress.  Walpole had some reason for saying that “nothing was so like a predecessor as a successor,” since in character Elizabeth closely resembled Catharine.]