(741) Upon a motion, made by Sir William Yonge, that 534,763 pounds be granted for defraying the charge of 16,259 men, to be employed in Flanders.  The numbers on the division were 280 against 160.-E.

(742) From Toryism.-D.

(743) Hugh Hume, third Earl of Marchmont.

(744) This alludes to the extravagant encomiums bestowed on Glover’s Leonidas by the young patriots.

(745) H. Jansen, a celebrated gamester, who cheated the late Duke of Bedford of an immense sum:  Pope hints at that affair in this line, “Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White’s.”

(746) A famous dancer.

301 Letter 92
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1742.

I have had no letter from you this fortnight, and I have heard nothing this month:  judge now how fit I am to write.  I hope it is not another mark of growing old; but, I do assure you, my writing begins to leave me.  Don’t be frightened!  I don’t mean this as an introduction towards having done with you-I will write to you to the very stump of my pen, and as Pope says,

“Squeeze out the last dull droppings of my sense.”

But I declare, it is hard to sit spinning out one’s brains by the fireside, without having heard the least thing to set one’s hand a-going.  I am so put to it for something to say, that I would make a memorandum of the most improbable lie that could be invented by a viscountess-dowager; as the old Duchess of Rutland (747) does when she is told of some strange casualty, “Lucy, child, step into the next room and set that down."-"Lord, Madam!” says Lady Lucy,(748) “it can’t be true!"-"Oh, no matter, child; it will do for news into the country next post.”  But do you conceive that the kingdom of the Dull is come upon earth-not with the forerunners and prognostics of other to-come kingdoms?  No, no; the sun and the moon go on just as they used to do, without giving us any hints:  we see no knights come prancing upon pale horses, or red horses; no stars, called wormwood, fall into the Thames, and turn a third part into wormwood; no locusts, like horses, with their hair as the hair of women-in short, no thousand things, each of which destroys a third part of mankind:  the only token of this new kingdom is a woman riding on a beast, which is the mother of abominations, and the name in the forehead is whist:  and the four-and-twenty elders, and the woman, and the whole town, do nothing but play with this beast.  Scandal itself is dead, or confined to a pack of cards; for the only malicious whisper I have heard this fortnight, is of an intrigue between the Queen of hearts and the Knave of clubs.  Y our friend Lady Sandwich (749) has got a son; if one may believe the belly she wore, it is a brave one.  Lord Holderness(750) has lately given a magnificent repast to fifteen persons; there were three courses of ten, fifteen, and fifteen, and a sumptuous dessert:  a great saloon illuminated, odours, and violins-and,