You have threatened me with a messenger from the secretary’s office to seize my papers; who would ever have taken you for a prophet?  If Goody Compton ,(320) your colleague, had taken upon her to foretell, there was enough of the witch and prophetess in her person and mysteriousness to have made a superstitious person believe she might be a cousin of Nostradamus, and heiress of some of her visions; but how came you by second sight?  Which of the Cues matched in the Highlands?  In short, not to keep you in suspense, for I believe you are so far inspired as to be ignorant how your prophecy was to be accomplished, as we were sitting at dinner t’other day, word was brought that one of the King’s messengers was at the door.  Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold; Algernon Sidney danced before my eyes, and methought I heard my Lord Chief-Justice Lee, in a voice as dreadful as Jefferies’, mumble out, Scribere est agere.  How comfortable it was to find that Mr. Amyand, who was at table, had ordered this appanage of his dignity to attend him here for orders!  However, I have buried the Memoires under the oak in my garden, where they are to be found a thousand years hence, and taken perhaps for a Runic history in rhyme.  I have part of another valuable ms. to dispose of, which I shall beg leave to commit to your care, and desire it may be concealed behind the wainscot in Mr. Bentley’s Gothic house, whenever you build it.  As the great person is living to whom it belonged, it would be highly dangerous to make it public; as soon as she is in disgrace, I don’t know whether it Will not be a good way of making court to her successor, to communicate it to the world, as I propose doing, under the following title:  “The Treasury of Art and Nature, or a Collection of inestimable Receipts, stolen out of the Cabinet of Madame de Pompadour, and now first published for the use of his fair Countrywomen, by a true born Englishman and philomystic.” * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So the pretty Miss Bishop,(321) instead of being my niece, is to be Mrs. Bob Brudenel.  What foolish birds are turtles when they have scarce a hole to roost in!  Adieu!

(320) The Hun.  George Compton. son of Lord Northampton, Mr. Montagu’s colleague for Northampton.-E.

(321) Daughter of Sir Cecil Bishop.

134 Letter 63
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, July 27, 1752.

What will you say to me after a silence of two months?  I should be ashamed, if I were answerable for the whole world, who will do nothing worth repeating.  Newspapers have horse-races, and can invent casualties, but I can’t have the confidence to stuff a letter with either.  The only casualty that is of dignity enough to send you, is a great fire at Lincoln’s Inn, which is likely to afford new work for the lawyers, in consequence of the number of deeds and writings it has consumed.  The Duke of Kingston has lost many of his:  he is unlucky with fires:  Thoresby, his seat, was burnt a few years ago, and in it a whole room of valuable letters and manuscripts.  There has been a Very considerable loss of that kind at this fire:  Mr. Yorke, the Chancellor’s son, had a great collection of Lord Somers’s papers, many relating to the assassination plot; and by which, I am told, it appeared that the Duke of Marlborough was deep in the schemes of St. Germain’s.