I received your letter by Holland, and the paper about the Spaniards.  By this time you will conceive that I can speak of nothing to any purpose, for Sir R. does not meddle in the least with business.

As to the Sibyl, I have not mentioned it to him; I still am for the other.  Except that, he will not care, I believe, to buy more pictures, having now so many more than he has room for at Houghton; and he will have but a small house in town when we leave this.  But you must thank the dear Chutes for their new offers; the obligations are too great, but I am most sensible to their goodness, and, were I not so excessively tired now, would write to them.  I cannot add a word more, but to think of the Princess:(475) “Comment! vous avez donc des enfans!” You see how nature sometimes breaks out in spite of religion and prudery, grandeur and pride, delicacy and `epuisements!  Good night!  Yours ever.

(460) See an account of this meeting in Lord Egmonfs “Faction Detected.” [To this meeting at the Fountain tavern Sir Charles Hanbury Williams alludes in his Ode against the Earl of Bath, called the Statesman-

“Then enlarge on his cunning and wit: 
Say, how he harangued at the Fountain;
Say, how the old patriots were bit,
And a mouse was produced by a mountain.”]

(461) Daniel Finch, seventh Earl of Winchilsea and third Earl of Nottingham.  He was made first lord of the admiralty upon the breaking up of Sir R. Walpole’s government.-D.

(462) William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of the lord chancellor of that name and title.-D.

(463) The following is from the Secker ms.-"Feb. 12.  Meeting at the Fountain tavern of above two hundred commoners and thirty-five Lords.  Duke of Argyle spoke warmly for prosecuting Lord Orford, with hints of reflection on those who had accepted.  Mr. Pulteney replied warmly.  Lord Talbot drank to cleansing the Augean stable of the dung and grooms.  Mr. Sandys and Mr. Gibbon there.  Lord Carteret and Lord Winchilsea not.  Lord Chancellor, in the evening, in private discourse to me, strong against taking in any Tories:  owning no more than that some of them, perhaps, were not for the Pretender, or, at least, did not know they were for him; though, when I gave him the account first of my discourse with the Prince, he said, the main body of them were of the same principles with the Tories."-E.

(464) His mother was natural daughter of King James ii.  (James, first Earl Waldegrave, appointed ambassador to the court of France in 1730:  died in 1741.-D.)

(465) banks’s tragedy of “The Unhappy Favourite; or, the Earl of Essex,” was first acted in 1682.  The prologue and epilogue were written by Dryden.  Speaking of this play, in the Tatler, Sir Richard Steele says, “there is in it not one good line, and yet it is a play which was never seen without drawing tears from some part of the audience; a remarkable instance, that the soul is not to be moved by words, but things; for the incidents in the drama are laid together so happily that the spectator makes the play for himself, by the force with which the circumstance has upon his imagination."-E.