Pope is given over with a dropsy, which is mounted into his head:  in an evening he is not in his senses; the other day at Chiswick, he said,- to my Lady Burlington, “Look at our Saviour there! how ill they have crucified him!"(927)

There is a Prince of Ost-Frize(928) dead, which is likely to occasion most unlucky broils:  Holland, Prussia, and Denmark have all pretensions to his succession; but Prussia is determined to make his good.  If the Dutch don’t dispute it, he will be too near a neighbour; if they do, we lose his neutrality, which is now so material.

The town has been in a great bustle about a private match; but which, by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made politics.  Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox;(929) asked her, was refused, and stole her.  His father(930) was a footman; her great grandfather a king:  hinc illae, lachrymae! all the blood royal have been up in arms.  The Duke of Marlborough, who was a friend of the Richmonds, gave her away.  If his Majesty’s Princess Caroline had been stolen, there could not have been more noise made.  The Pelhams, who arc much attached to the Richmonds, but who have tried to make Fox and all that set theirs, wisely entered into the quarrel, and now don’t know how to get out of it.  They were for hindering Williams,(931) who is Fox’s great friend, and at whose house they were married, from having the red riband; but he has got it, with four others, the Viscount Fitzwilliam, Calthorpe, Whitmore, and Harbord.  Dashwood, Lady Carteret’s quondam lover, has stolen a great fortune, a Miss Bateman; the marriage had been proposed, but the fathers could not agree on the terms.

I am much obliged to you for all your Sardinian and Neapolitan journals.  I am impatient for the conquest of Naples, and have no notion of neglecting sure things, which may serve by way of d`edommagement.

I am very sorry I recommended such a troublesome booby to you.  Indeed, dear Mr. Chute, I never saw him, but was pressed by Mr. Selwyn, whose brother’s friend he is, to give him that letter to you.  I now hear that he is a warm Jacobite; I suppose you somehow disobliged him politically.

We are now mad about tar-water, on the publication of a book that I will send you, written by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne.(932) The book contains every subject from tar-water to the Trinity; however, all the women read, and understand it no more than they would if it were intelligible.  A man came into an apothecary’s shop the other day, “Do you sell tar-water?” “Tar-water!” replied the apothecary, “why, I sell nothing else!” Adieu!

(927) Pope died the day after this letter was written; “in the evening,” says Spence, “but they did not know the exact time; for his departure was so easy, that it was imperceptible even to the standers by.”

(928) The Prince of East Friesland.

(929) Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Richmond, grandson of King Charles II.