When I was lately in town I was favoured with yours of the 21st past; but my stay there was so short, and my hurry so great, that I had not time to see you as I intended.  As I am persuaded that nobody is more capable than yourself, in all respects, to set his late Majesty’s reign in a true light, I am sure there is nobody to whom I would more readily give my assistance, as far as I am able:  but, as I have never wrote any thing in a historical way, have now and then suggested hints to others as they were writing, and never published but two pamphlets-one was to justify the taking and keeping in our pay the twelve thousand Hessians, of which I have forgot the title, and have it not in the country; the other was published about two years since, entitled, “The Interest of Great Britain steadily Pursued,” in answer to the pamphlets about the Hanover forces-I can’t tell in what manner, nor on what heads to answer your desire, which is conceived in such general terms:  if you could point out some stated times, and some particular facts, and I had before me a sketch of your narration, I perhaps might be able, to suggest or explain some things that are come but imperfectly to your knowledge, and some anecdotes might occur to my memory relating to domestic and foreign affairs, that are curious, and were never yet made public, and perhaps not proper to, be published yet; particularly with regard to the alteration of the ministry in 1717, by the removal of my relation, and the measures that were pursued in consequence of that alteration; but in order to do this, or any thing else for your service, requires a personal conversation with you, in which I should be ready to let you know what might occur to me.  I am most truly, etc.

(1093) This industrious historian and biographer was born in 1705, and was killed by a fall from his horse, in 1765.  Dr. Johnson said of him, “Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.—­E.

435 Letter 178 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Sept. 6, 1745.

It would have been inexcusable in me, in our present circumstances and after all I have promised you, not to have written to you for this last month, if I had been in London; but I have been at Mount Edgecumbe, and so constantly upon the road, that I neither received your letters, had time to write, or knew what to write.  I came back last night, and found three packets from you, which I have no time to answer, and but just time to read.  The confusion I have found, and the danger we are in, prevent my talking of any thing else.  The young Pretender(1094) at the head of three thousand men, has got a march on General Cope, who is not eighteen hundred strong:  and when the last accounts came away, was fifty miles nearer Edinburgh than Cope, and by this time is there.  The clans will not rise for the Government:  the Dukes of Argyll(1095) and Athol,(1096) are come