(992) The King was much displeased that an adherent of the exiled family should be forced into the service of his own. in consequence of this appointment a caricature was circulated, representing the ministers thrusting Sir John, who was extremely corpulent, down the King’s throat.

(993) John, first Lord Hobart, so created in 1728, by the interest of his sister, Lady Suffolk, the mistress of George the Second.  In 1746 he was created Earl of Buckinghamshire; and died in 1756.-D.

(994) William O’Brien, fourth Earl of Inchiquin, in Ireland.  He died in 1777.-E.

(995) Pitt alone was placeless.  He loftily declared, that he would accept no office except that of secretary at war, and the ministers were not yet able to dispense with Sir William Yonge in that department.  This resolution of Pitt, joined to the King’s pertinacity against him, excluded him, for the present, from any share in power."-Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 315.

(996) The Duchess died on the 8th of December.  The Biog.  Univ. says, that the rumour of her having been poisoned was altogether without foundation.-E.

(997) It was Dr. Jurin’s preparation.

399 Letter 154
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, Jan. 4, 1745.

When I receive your long letters I am ashamed:  mine are notes in comparison.  How do you contrive to roll out your patience into two sheets?  You certainly don’t love me better than I do you; and yet if our loves were to b@ sold by the quire, you would have by far the more magnificent stock to dispose of.  I can only say that age has already an effect on the vigour of my pen; none on yours:  it is not, I assure you, for you alone, but my ink is at low water-mark for all my acquaintance.  My present shame arises from a letter of eight sides, of December 8th, which I received from you last post; but before I say a word to that, I must tell you that I have at last received the cases; three with gesse figures, and one with Lord Conway’s gun- barrels:  I thought there were to be four, besides the guns; but I quite forget, and did not even remember what they were to contain.  Am not I in your debt again?  Tell me, for you know how careless I am.  Look over your list, and see whether I have received all.  There were four barrels, the Ganymede, the Sleeping Cupid, the model of my statue, the Musaeum Florentinum, and some seeds for your brother.  But alas! though I received them in gross, I did not at all in detail; the model was broken into ten thousand bits, and the Ganymede shorn in two:  besides some of the fingers quite reduced to powder.  Rysbrach has undertaken to mend him.  The little Morpheus arrived quite whole, and is charmingly pretty; I like it better in plaster than in the original black marble.