So I have given you a sketch of our employments, and answered your questions, and will with pleasure as many more as you have about you.  Adieu!  Was ever such a lon@ letter?  But ’tis nothing to what I shall have to say to you.  I shaft scold you for never telling us any news, public or private, no deaths, riiarriages, or mishaps; no account of new books:  Oh, you are abominable!  I could find it in my heart to hate You if I did not love you so well; but we will quarrel now, that we may be the better friends when we meet:  there is no danger of that, is there?  Good night, whether friend or foe!  I am most sincerely Yours.

(215) Though brave, skilful, and enterprising Sir John failed to acquire renown, in consequence of mere accidents.  On the breaking out of the Spanish war, he was ordered to cruise in the Bay of Biscay; but, owing to tempestuous weather, was compelled to put into port for the winter.  The following lines were addressed to him upon this occasion: 

“Homeward, oh! bend thy course; the seas are rough; To the Land’s End who sails has sailed enough.”  E.

(216) Walpole calls the Hercules’ Pillars an alehouse.  Whatever it might have been at the period he wrote, it is very certain that, after the peace of 1762, it was a respectable tavern, where the Marquis of Granby, and other persons of rank, particularly military men, had frequent dinner parties, which were then fashionable.  It was also an inn of great repute among the west-country gentlemen, coming to London for a few weeks, who thought themselves fortunate if they could secure accommodations for their families at the Hercules’ Pillars.  The spot where it once stood, is now occupied by the noble mansion of the Duke of Wellington.-E.

(217) Dr. Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician, resident at Florence, who published a collection of Greek writers upon medicine.  He figures conspicuously in Spence’s Anecdotes.-E.

(218) Margaret Rolle, wife of Robert Walpole, eldest son of Sir Robert Walpole, created Lord Walpole during the lifetime of his father.

(219) Giuseppe Tartini of Padua, whom Viotti pronounced the last great improver of the practice of the violin.  Several of Tartini’s compositions are particularized in that amusing little volume, “The Violin and its Professors,” by Mr. Dubourg, who has recorded in quaint verse the well-known story of the “Devil’s Sonata,” a piece of diablerie, the result of which is that to this day, Tartini’s tale hath made all fiddlers say, A hard sonata is the devil to play!-E.

166 Letter 28 To Richard West, Esq. >From Florence, Nov. 1740.