I have not heard from you for some time, but I don’t pretend to complain:  you have real occupation; my idleness is for its own sake.  The Abb`e Niccolini and Pandolfini are arrived; but I have not yet seen them.  Rinuncini cannot bear England—­and if the Chutes speak their mind, I believe they are not captivated yet with any thing they have found:  I am more and more with them:  Mr. Whithed is infinitely improved:  and Mr. Chute has absolutely more Wit, knowledge, and good-nature, than, to their great surprise, ever met together in one man.(1311) he has a bigotry to you, that even astonishes me, who used to think that I was pretty well in for loving you; but he is very often ready to quarrel with me for not thinking you all pure gold.  Adieu!

(1308) William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, secretary of state.

(1309) The expedition to Quiberon; the troops under General St. Clair, the fleet under Admiral Lestock.  The object was to surprise Port l’Orient, and destroy the stores and ships of the French East India Company, but the result attained was only the plunder and burning of a few helpless villages.  The fleet and troops returned, however, with little loss.  “The truth is,” says Tindal, “Lestock was too old and infirm for enterprise, and, as is alleged, was under the shameful direction of a woman he carried along with him; and neither the soldiers nor the sailors seem to have been under any kind of discipline."-E.

(1310) John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas(1311) Grey, in a letter to Mr. Chute of the 12th of October says, “Mr. Walpole is full, I assure you, of your panegyric.  Never any man had half so much wit as Mr. Chute, (which is saying every thing with him, you know,) and Mr. Whitehead is the finest young man that was ever imported.”  Works, vol. iii. p. 22.-E.

513 Letter 225 To Sir Horace Mann.  Windsor, Nov. 12, 1746.

Here I AM come hither, per saldare; but though the country is excellently convenient, from the idleness of it, for beginning a letter, yet it is not at all commode for finishing one:  the same ingredients that fill a basket by the carrier, will not fill half a sheet of paper; I could send you a cheese, or a hare; but I have not a morsel of news.  Mr. Chute threatened me to tell you the distress I was in last week, when I starved Niccolini and Pandolfini on a fast-day, when I had thought to banquet them sumptuously.  I had luckily given a guinea for two pine-apples, which I knew they had never seen in Italy, and upon which they revenged themselves for all the meat that they dared not touch.  Rinuncini could not come.  How you mistook me, my dear’ child!  I meant simply that you had not mentioned his coming; very far from reproving you for giving him a letter.  Don’t I give letters for you every day to cubs, ten times cubber than Rinuncini! and don’t you treat them as though all their names were Walpole?  If you was to send me all the uncouth productions