You will see the particulars of old Marlborough’s will in the Evening Posts of this week:  it is as extravagant as one should have expected; but I delight in her begging that no part of the Duke of Marlborough’s life may be written in verse by Glover and Mallet, to whom she gives five hundred pounds apiece for writing it in prose.(984) There is a great deal of humour in the thought:  to be sure the spirit of the dowager Leonidas(985) inspired her with it.

All public affairs in agitation at present go well for us; Prince Charles in Bohemia, the raising of the siege of Coni, and probably of that of Fribourg, are very good circumstances.  I shall be very tranquil this winter, if Tuscany does not come into play, or another scene of invasion.  In a fortnight meets the Parliament; nobody guesses what the turn of the Opposition will be.  Adieu!  My love to the Chutes.  I hope you now and then make my other compliments:  I never forget the Princess, nor (ware hams!) the Grifona.

(983) The Earl of Middlesex married Grace, daughter and sole heiress of Lord Shannon.  On the death of his father in 1765, he succeeded, as second Duke of Dorset, and died without issue, in 1769.-E.

(984) Glover, though in embarrassed circumstances at the time, renounced the legacy; Mallet accepted it, but never fulfilled the terms.-E.

(985) Glover wrote a dull heroic poem on the action of Leonidas at Thermopylae. ["Though far indeed from being a vivid or arresting picture of antiquity, Leonidas,” says Mr. Campbell, “the local descriptions of Leonidas, its pure sentiments, and the classical images which it recalls, render it interesting, as the monument of an accomplished and amiable mind.”]

394 Letter 152 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Nov. 26, 1744.

I have not prepared for you a great event, because it was really, so unlikely to happen, that I was afraid of being the author of a mere political report; but, to keep you no longer in suspense, Lord Granville has resigned:  that is the term “l’honn`ete fa`con de parler;” but, in few words, the truth of the history is, that the Duke of Newcastle (by the way, mind that the words I am going to use are not mine, but his Majesty’s,) “being grown as jealous of Lord Granville(986) as he had been of Lord Orford, and wanting to be first minister himself, which, a puppy! how should he be?” (autre phrase royale) and his brother being as susceptible of the noble passion of jealousy as he is, have long been conspiring to overturn the great lord.  Resolution and capacity were all they wanted to bring it about; for the imperiousness and universal contempt which their rival had for them, and for the rest of the ministry, and for the rest of the nation, had made almost all men his engines; and, indeed, he took no pains to make friends:  his maxim was, “Give any man the Crown on his side, and he can defy every thing.”  Winnington asked him, if that were true, how he came to be minister?  About a