be capable of sending to your court, if, after passing two years in a country, you had learned but the two first letters of"a word, that you heard twenty times every day!  I have a bit of paper left, so I will tell you another story.  A certain King, that, whatever airs you may give yourself, you are not at all like, was last week at the play.  The Intriguing Chambermaid in the farce(287) says to the old gentleman, “You are villanously old; you are sixty-six; you can’t have the impudence to think of living above two years.”  The old gentleman in the stage-box turned about in a passion, and said, “This is d-d stuff!” Pray have you got Mr. Conway yet!  Adieu!

(285) “Nov. 14 Parliament opened.  Lord Downe and Sir William Beauchamp Proctor moved and seconded the Address.  No opposition to it.”  Dodington, p. 114.  Tindal says that this session was, perhaps, the most unanimous ever known."-E.

(286) See ant`e.-E.

(287) The Intriguing Chambermaid was performed at Drury-lane on the 6th of November; it was dedicated by Fielding to Mrs. Clive.-E.

119 Letter 51 To Sir Horace Mann.  Dec. 12, 1751.

I have received yours and Mr. Conway’s letters, and am transported that you have met at last, and that you answer so well to one another, as I intended.  I expect that you tell me more and more all that you think of him.  The inclosed is for him; as he has never received one of my letters since he left England, I have exhausted all my news upon him, and for this post you must only go halves with him, who I trust is still at Florence.  In your last, you mentioned Lord Stormont, and commend him; pray tell me more about him.  He is cried up above all the young men of the time-in truth we want recruits!  Lord Bolingbroke is dead, or dying,(288) of a cancer, which was thought cured by a quack plaster; but it is not every body can be cured at seventy-five, like my monstrous uncle.

What is an uomo nero?-neither Mr. Chute nor I can recollect the term.  Though you are in the season of the villegiatura, believe me, Mr. Conway will not find Florence duller than he would London:  our diversions, politics, quarrels, are buried all in our Alphonso’s grave!(289) The only thing talked of is a man who draws teeth with a sixpence, and puts them in again for a shilling.  I believe it; not that it seems probable, but because I have long been persuaded that the most incredible discoveries will be made, and that, about the time, or a little after, I die, the secret will be found out of how to live for ever—­and that secret, I believe, will not be discovered by a physician.  Adieu!

P. S. I have tipped Mr. Conway’s direction with French, in case it should be necessary to send it after him.

(288) lord Bolingbroke died on the 15th.-E.

(289) The late Prince of Wales:  it alludes to a line in The Mourning Bride.”

120 Letter 52
To George Montagu, Esq. 
The st. James’s evening post.
Thursday, Jan. 9, 1752.