I will not fail to make your compliments to the Pomfrets and Carterets.  I see them seldom, but I am in favour; so I conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night, that I said better things than any body.  I was with them all at a subscription-ball at Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well pleased at her condescending to take it to herself.  My lord stayed with her there till four in the morning.  They are all fondness -walk together, and stop every five steps to kiss.  Madame de Craon is a cypher to her for grandeur.  The ball was on an excessively hot night:  yet she was dressed in a magnificent brocade, because it was new that morning for the inauguration-day.  I did the honours of all her dress:-"How charming your ladyship’s cross is!  I am sure the design was your own."-"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is."-"How fine your ear-rings are!"-"Oh! but they are very heavy.”  Then as much to the mother.  Do you wonder I say better things than any body?

I send you by a ship going to Leghorn the only new books at all worth reading.  The Abuse(938) of Parliaments is by Doddington and Waller, circumstantially scurrilous.  The dedication of the Essay(939) to my father is fine; pray mind the quotation from Milton.  There is Dr. Berkeley’s mad book on tar-water, which has made every body as mad as himself.

I have lately made a great antique purchase of all Dr. Middleton’s collection which he brought from Italy, and which he is now publishing.  I will send you the book as soon as it comes out.  I would not buy the things till the book was half printed, for fear of an `e Museo Walpoliano.-Those honours are mighty well for such known and learned men as Mr. Smith,(940) the merchant of Venice.  My dear Mr. Chute, how we used to enjoy the title-page(941) of his understanding!  Do you remember how angry he was when showing us a Guido, after pompous roomsfull of Sebastian Riccis, which he had a mind to establish for capital pictures, you told him he had now made amends for all the rubbish he had showed us before?

My father has asked, and with some difficulty got, his pension of four thousand pounds a-year, which the King gave him on his resignation and which he dropped, by the wise fears of my uncle and the Selwyns.  He has no reason to be satisfied with the manner of obtaining it now, or with the manner of the man(942) whom he employed to ask it — yet it was not a point that required capacity-merely gratitude.  Adieu!

(937) The celebrated circumnavigator, afterwards a peer, and first lord of the admiralty.-D.

(938) Detection of the Use and Abuse of Parliaments, by Ralph, under the direction of Doddington and Waller.

(939) Essay on Wit, Humour, and Ridicule, by Corbyn Morris.

(940) Mr. Smith, consul at Venice, had a fine library” of which he knew nothing at all but the title-pages.