think that I shall allow thirty days apiece to them.  Next post I shall not be able to write to you; and when I am there shall scarce find any materials to furnish a letter above every other post.  I beg, however, that you will write constantly to me:  it will be my only entertainment, for I neither hunt, brew, drink, nor reap.  When I return in the winter, I will make amends for this barren season of our correspondence.

I carried Sir Robert the other night to Ranelagh for the first time:  my uncle’s prudence, or fear, would never let him go before.  It was pretty full, and all its fulness flocked round us:  we walked with a train at our heels, like two chairmen going to fight; but they were extremely civil, and did not crowd him, or say the least impertinence—­I think he grows popular already!  The other day he got it asked, whether he should be received if he went to Carleton House?-no, truly!-but yesterday morning Lord Baltimore’ came (680) to soften it a little; that his royal highness -did not refuse to see him, but that now the Court was out of town, and he had no drawing-room, he did not see any body.

They have given Mrs. Pultney an admirable name, and one that is likely to stick by her-instead of Lady Bath, they call her the wife of Bath.(681) Don’t you figure her squabbling at the gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny.

Cibber has published a little pamphlet against Pope, which has a great deal of spirit, and, from some circumstances, will notably vex him.(682) I will send it to you by the first opportunity, with a new pamphlet, said to be Doddington’s, called “A Comparison of the Old and New Ministry:”  it is much liked.  I have not forgot your magazines, but will send them and these pamphlets together.  Adieu!  I am at the end of my tell.

P. S. Lord Edgecumbe is just made lord-lieutenant of Cornwall, at which the Lord of Bath looks sour.  He said, yesterday, that the King would give orders for several other considerable alterations; but gave no orders, except for this, which was not asked by that earl.

(680) Lord of the bedchamber to the Prince.

(681) In allusion to the old ballad.

(682) This pamphlet, which was entitled “A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope; inquiring into the motives that might induce him, in his satirical works to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber’s name,” so “notably vexed” the great poet, that, in a new edition of the Dunciad, he dethroned Theobald from his eminence as King of the dunces, and enthroned Cibber in his stead.-E.

279 Letter 80
To Sir Horace Mann. 
(From Houghton.)