I am glad you receive my letters; as I knew I had been punctual, it mortified me that you should think me remiss.  Thank you for the transcript from Bubb de tribes!(258) I will keep your secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had composed such a funeral oration on his master and himself fully intended that its flowers should not bloom and wither in obscurity.

We have already begun to sell the pictures that had not found place at Houghton:  the sale gives no great encouragement to proceed; (though I fear it must come to that!) the large pictures were thrown away:  the whole length Vandykes went for a song!  I am mortified now at having printed the catalogue.  Gideon the Jew, and Blakiston(259) the independent grocer, have been the chief purchasers of the pictures sold already—­there, if you love moralizing!  Adieu!  I have no more articles to-day for my literary gazette.

(255) Lord Sandwich married Dorothy, sister of Charles, Lord Viscount Fane.

(256) Afterwards Countess of Coventry, and Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll.-D.

(257) David Murray, seventh Viscount Stormont, ambassador at Vienna and Paris, and president of the council.  He died in 1796.-D.

(258) A letter to Mr. Mann from Bubb Doddington on the Prince’s death.  It is dated June 4, and contains the following bombastic and absurd passage:  which, however, proves how great were the expectations of Doddington, if the prince had lived to succeed his father:  ,We have lost the delight and ornament of the age he lived in, the expectations of the public-in this light I have lost more than any subject in England, but this is light; public advantages confined to myself do not, ought not, to weigh with me.  But we have lost the refuge of private distress, the balm of the afflicted heart, the shelter of the miserable against the fang of private calamity; the arts, the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of society have lost their patron and their remedy.  I have lost my protector, my companion, my friend that loved me, that condescended to bear, to communicate, and to share in all the pleasures and pains of the human heart, where the social affections and emotions of the mind only presided, without regard to the infinite disproportion of our rank and condition.  This is a wound that cannot, ought not, to heal—­if I pretended to fortitude here I should be infamous, a monster of ingratitude; and unworthy of all consolation, if I was not inconsolable.-D.

(259) Blakiston has been caught in smuggling, and pardoned by Sir Robert Walpole; but continuing the practice, and being again detected was fined five thousand pounds; on which he grew a violent party man, and a ringleader of the Westminster independent electors, and died an alderman of London.

109 Letter 45 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, July 16, 1751.