(762) First lord of the admiralty.-]).

306 Letter 95
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 1743.

I could not write you last Thursday, I was so much out of order with a cold; your brother came and found me in bed.  TO-night, that I can write, I have nothing to tell you; except that yesterday the welcome news (to the ministry) came of the accession of the Dutch to the King’s measures.  They are in great triumph; but till it Is clear what part his Prussian Uprightness is acting, other people take the liberty to be still in suspense.  So they are about all our domestic matters too.  It is a general stare! the alteration that must soon happen in the Treasury will put some end to the uncertainties of this winter.  Mr. Pelham is universally named to the head of it; but Messrs. Prince,(263) Carteret, Pultney, and Companies must be a little considered. how they will like it:  the latter the least.

You will wonder, perhaps be peevish, when I protest I have not another paragraph by me in the world.  I want even common conversation; for I cannot persist, like the royal family, in asking people the same questions, “Do you love walking?” “Do you love music’!” “Was you at the opera?” “When do you go into the country!” I have nothing else to say:  nothing happens; scarce the common episodes of a newspaper, of a man falling off a ladder and breaking his leg; or of a countryman cheated out of his leather pouch, with fifty shillings in it.  We are in such a state of sameness, that I shall begin to wonder at the change of seasons, and talk of the spring as a strange accident.  Lord Tyrawley, who has been fifteen years in Portugal, is of my opinion; he says he finds nothing but a fog, whist, and the House of Commons.

In this lamentable state, when I know not what to write even to you, what can I do about my serene Princess Grifoni?  Alas!  I owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I cannot tell!  I believe I may have some by me in an old chest of draws, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom wigs; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten!  Do bow to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and over, I have not been able to write a line.  That will move her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, of my not being able to write-nay, indeed it will not be so ridiculous as you think; for it is ten times worse for the eyes to write in a language one don’t much practise!  I remember a tutor at Cambridge, who had been examining some lads in Latin, but in a little while excused himself, and said he must speak English, for his mouth was very sore.

I had a letter from you yesterday of January 7th, N. S. which has wonderfully excited my compassion for the necessities of the princely family,(764) and the shifts the old Lady’ is put to for quadrille.(765)