[Footnote 1:  “Admiral Hosier’s Ghost” is the title of a ballad by Glover on the death of Admiral Hosier, a distinguished admiral, who had been sent with a squadron to blockade the Spanish treasure-ships in Porto Bello, but was prohibited from attacking them in the harbour.  He died in 1727, according to the account that the poet adopted, of mortification at the inaction to which his orders compelled him; but according to another statement, more trustworthy if less poetical, of fever.]

You see how glad I am to have reasons for not returning; I wish I had no better.

As to “Hosier’s Ghost,” I think it very easy, and consequently pretty; but, from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover’s.  I delight in your, “the patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and down,” and your laconic history of the King and Sir Robert, on going to Hanover, and turning out the Duke of Argyle.  The epigram, too, you sent me on the same occasion is charming.

Unless I sent you back news that you and others send me, I can send you none.  I have left the Conclave, which is the only stirring thing in this part of the world, except the child that the Queen of Naples is to be delivered of in August.  There is no likelihood the Conclave will end, unless the messages take effect which ’tis said the Imperial and French ministers have sent to their respective courts for leave to quit the Corsini for the Albani faction:  otherwise there will never be a pope.  Corsini has lost the only one he could have ventured to make pope, and him he designed; ’twas Cenci, a relation of the Corsini’s mistress.  The last morning Corsini made him rise, stuffed a dish of chocolate down his throat, and would carry him to the scrutiny.  The poor old creature went, came back, and died.  I am sorry to have lost the sight of the Pope’s coronation, but I might have staid for seeing it till I had been old enough to be pope myself.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The contest was caused by the death of Clement XII.  The successful candidate was Benedict XIV.]

Harry, what luck the Chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in himself so great a man; but then in accident:  he is made Chief Justice and peer, when Talbot is made Chancellor and peer.  Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves him the seals at an age when others are scarce made Solicitors:—­then marries his son into one of the first families of Britain, obtains a patent for a Marquisate and eight thousand pounds a year after the Duke of Kent’s death:  the Duke dies in a fortnight, and leaves them all!  People talk of Fortune’s wheel, that is always rolling:  troth, my Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled away with it....  Yours ever.

A FLORENTINE WEDDING—­ADDISON’S DESCRIPTIONS ARE BORROWED FROM BOOKS—­A SONG OF BONDELMONTI’S, WITH A LATIN VERSION BY GRAY, AND AN ENGLISH ONE BY THE WRITER.

TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ.

FLORENCE, Oct. 2, 1740, N.S.