to old Sarah.  You must know, the ladies of Norfolk universally wear periwigs, and affirm that it is the fashion at London. “lord!  Mrs. White, have you been ill, that you have shaved your head?” Mrs. White, in all the days of my acquaintance with her, had a professed head of red hair:  to-day, she had no hair at all before, and at a distance above her ears, I descried a smart brown bob, from beneath which had escaped some long strands of original scarlet—­so like old Sarazin at two in the morning, when she has been losing at Pharoah, and clawed her wig aside, and her old trunk is shaded with the venerable white ivy of her own locks.

i agree with you, that it would be too troublesome to send me the things now the quarantine exists, except the gun-barrels for Lord Conway, the length of which I know nothing about, being, as you conceive, no sportsman.  I must send you, with the Life of Theodore, a vast pamphlet (859) in defence of’ the new administration, which makes the greatest noise.  It is written, as supposed, by Dr. Pearse,(860) of St. Martin’s, whom Lord Bath lately made a dean; the matter furnished by him.  There is a good deal of useful ]Knowledge of the famous change to be found in it, and much more impudence.  Some parts are extremely fine; in particular, the answer to the Hanoverian pamphlets, where he has collected the flower of all that was said in defence of that measure.(861) Had you those pamphlets?  I will make up a parcel:  tell me what other books you would have:  I will send you nothing else, for if I give you the least bauble, it puts you to infinite expense, which I can’t forgive, and indeed will never bear again:  you would ruin yourself, and there is nothing I wish so much as the contrary.

Here is a good Ode, written on the supposition of that new book being Lord Bath’s; I believe by the same hand as those charming ones which I sent you last year:  the author is not yet known.(862)

The Duke of Argyle is dead-a death of how little moment, and of how much it would have been a year or two ago.(863) It is provoking, if one must die, that one can’t even die a propos!

How does your friend Dr. Cocchi?  You never mention him:  do only knaves and fools deserve to be spoken of?  Adieu!

(858) The Princess of Campoflorido.

(859) Called " Faction Detected.”

(860) Mr. Pearse, afterwards Bishop of Bangor.  He was not the author, but Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont.

(861) Sir John Hawkins says, that Osborne the bookseller, held out to Dr. Johnson a strong temptation to answer this pamphlet; which he refused, being convinced that the charge contained in it was unanswerable.-E.

(862) The Ode by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, beginning, “Your sheets I’ve perused."-D.

(863) “Leaving no male issue, Argyle was succeeded in his titles and estates by his brother, and of late his bitter enemy, the Earl of Islay.  With all his faults and follies, Argyle was still brave, eloquent, and accomplished, a skilful officer, and a princely nobleman."-lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 271.