Harry, you saw Lord Deskfoord (191) at Geneva; don’t you like him?  He is a mighty sensible man.  There are few young people have so good understandings.  He is mighty grave, and so are you; but you can both be pleasant when you have a mind.  Indeed, one can make you pleasant, but his solemn Scotchery is a little formidable:  before you 1 can play the fool from morning to night, courageously.  Good night.  I have other letters to write, and must finish this.  Yours ever.

(188) John Selwyn, elder brother of George Augustus Selwyn.  He died about 1750.

(189)William Marquis of Hartington.  He succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Devonshire in 1755.-E.

(190) Notwithstanding she laboured under such disadvantages-and want of beauty and want of talent are serious ones to a cantatrice,-it will be seen from Walpole’s letter to Mann, 5th Nov. 1741, that the Moscovita, on her arrival here, received six hundred guineas for the season, instead of four hundred, the salary previously given to the , second woman;” and became, moreover, the mistress of Lord Middlesex, the director of the opera.-E.

(191) Son of the Earl of Findlater and Seafield, who succeeded his father in 1764, and died in 1770.-E.

152 Letter 22 To Richard West, Esq.  Rome, May 7, 1740, N. S.

Dear West, ’Twould be quite rude and unpardonable in one not to wish you joy upon the great conquests that you are all committing all over the world.  We heard the news last night from Naples, that Admiral Haddock (192) had met the Spanish convoy going to Majorca, and taken it all, all; three thousand men, three colonels, and a Spanish grandee.  We conclude it is true, for the Neapolitan Majesty mentioned it at dinner.  We are going thither in about a week, to wish him joy of it too.  ’Tis with some apprehensions we go too, of having a pope chosen in the interim:  that would be cruel, you know.  But, thank our stars, there is no great probability of it. ’ Feuds and contentions run high among the eminences.  A notable one happened this week.  Cardinal Zinzendorff and two more had given their votes for the general of the Capucins:  he is of the Barberini family, not a cardinal, but a worthy man.  Not effecting any thing, Zinzendorff voted for Coscia, and declared it publicly.  Cardinal Petra reproved him; but the German replied, he thought Coscia as fit to be pope as any of them.  It seems, his pique to the whole body is, their having denied a daily admission of a pig into the conclave for his eminence’s use who, being much troubled with the gout, was ordered by his mother to bathe his leg in pig’s blood every morning.

Who should have a vote t other day but the Cardinalino of Toledo!  Were he older, the Queen of Spain might possibly procure more than one for him, though scarcely enough.