Pandolfini is gone with Count Harrache; Panciatici goes next week:  I believe he intended staying longer; but either the finances fail, or he does not know how to dispose of these two empty months alone; for Niccolini is gone with the Prince to Cliefden.  I have a notion the latter would never leave England, if he could but bring himself to change his religion; or, which he would like as well, if he could persuade the Prince to change his.  Good night!

(1392) This relates to a request made by the Pope to Cardinal Guadagni, to resign a piece of preferment which he was in possession of.-D.

(1393) So in the MS.-D.

537 Letter 242
To George Montagu, Esq. 
Arlington Street, Oct. 1, 1747.

Dear George, I wish I could have answered your invitation from the Tigress’s with my own person, but it was impossible.  I wish your farmer would answer invitations with the persons of more hens and fewer cocks; for I am raising a breed, and not recruits.  The time before he sent two to one, and he has done so again.  I had a letter from Mr. Conway, who is piteously going into prison again, our great secretary has let the time Slip for executing the cartel, and the French have reclaimed their prisoners.  The Duke is coming back.  I fear his candles are gone to bed to Admiral Vernon’s!  He has been ill; they say his head has been more affected than his body.  Marshal Saxe sent him Cardinal Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius(1393) to send to Lord Chesterfield.  If he won’t let him be a general, at least ’tis hard to reduce him to a courier.

When I saw you at Kyk in de Pot, I forgot to tell you that seven more volumes of the Journals are delivering:  there’s employment for Moreland.  I go back to Kyk in de Pot tomorrow.  Did you dislike it so much that you could not bring yourself to persuade your brother to try it with you for a day or two!  I shall be there till the birthday, if you will come.

George Selwyn says, people send to Lord Pembroke to know how the bridge rested.  You know George never thinks but `a la t`ete tranch`ee:  he came to town t’other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief for the signal.  My compliments to your family.

(1393) In 1757, Anti-Lucretius was rendered into English by Dobson; for whose translation of Paradise Lost into Latin verse, Auditor Benson, who erected a monument to Milton in Westminster Abbey, gave him one thousand pounds.  In 1767, a translation of the first book of the Cardinal’s poem was published by the father of the Right Honourable George Canning.-E.

537 Letter 243 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Oct. 2, 1747.