We don’t talk now of any of the Royals passing into Flanders; though the Champion (697) this morning had an admirable quotation, on the supposition that the King would go himself:  it was this line from the Rehearsal:-

“Give us our fiddle; we ourselves will play.”

The lesson for the Day (698) that I sent you, I gave to Mr. Coke, who came in as I was writing it, and by his dispersing it, it has got into print, with an additional one, which I cannot say I am proud should go under my name.  Since that, nothing but lessons are the fashion:  first and second lessons, morning and evening lessons, epistles, etc.  One of the Tory papers published so abusive an one last week on the new ministry, that three gentlemen called on the printer, to know how he dared to publish it.  Don’t you like these men who for twenty years together led the way, and published every thing that was scandalous, that they should wonder at any body’s daring to publish against them!  Oh! it will come home to them!  Indeed, every body’s fame now is published at length:  last week the Champion mentioned the Earl of Orford and his natural daughter, Lady Mary, at length (for which he had a great mind to prosecute the printer).  To-day, the London Evening Post says, Mr. Pane, nephew of Mr. Scrope, is made first clerk of the treasury, as a reward for his uncle’s taciturnity before the Secret Committee.  He is in the room of old Tilson, who was so tormented by that Committee that it turned his brain, and he is dead.

I am excessively shocked at Mr. Fane’s (699) behaviour to you; but Mr. Fane is an honourable man! he lets poor you pay him his salary for eighteen months, without thinking of returning it!  But if he had lost that sum to Jansen,(700) or to any of the honourable men at White’s, he would think his honour engaged to pay it.  There is nothing, sure, so whimsical as modern honour!  You may debauch a woman upon a promise of marriage, and not marry her; you may ruin your tailor’s or your baker’s family by not paying them; you may make Mr. Mann maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out of his own pocket, and still be a man of honour!  But, not to pay a common sharper, or not to murder a man that has trod upon your toe, is such a blot in your scutcheon, that you could never recover your honour, though you had in your veins “all the blood of all the Howards!”

My love to Mr. Chute:  tell him, as he looks on the east front of Houghton, to tap under the two windows in the left-hand wing, up stairs, close to the colonnade-there are Patapan and I, at this instant, writing to you; there we are almost every morning, or in the library; the evenings, we walk till dark; then Lady Mary, Miss Leneve, and I play at comet; the Earl, Mrs. Leneve, and whosoever is here, discourse; car telle est notre vie!  Adieu!

(693) Lady Walpole.  Richcourt, the Florentine minister, was her lover, and both, as has been seen in the former part of these letters, were enemies of Sir .  H. Mann.-D.