(368) Of Mr. Bentley’s designs.

158 Letter 72
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Strawberry Hill, March 4, 1753.

have you got any wind of our new histories?  Is there any account at Rome that Mr. Stone and the Solicitor-general are still thought to be more attached to Egypt than Hanover?  For above this fortnight there have been strange mysteries and reports! the cabinet council sat night after night till two o’clock in the morning:  we began to think that they were empannelled to sit upon a new rebellion, or invasion at least; or that the King of Prussia, had sent his mandate, that we must receive the young Pretender in part payment of the Silesian loan.  At last it is come out that Lord Ravensworth,(369) on the information of one Fawcett, a lawyer, has accused Stone, Murray, and Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, of having had an odd custom of toasting the Chevalier and my Lord Dunbar at one Vernon’s, a merchant, about twenty years ago.  The Pretender’s counterpart ordered the council to examine into it:  Lord Ravensworth stuck to his story:  Fawcett was terrified with the solemnity of the divan, and told his very different Ways, and at last would not sign his deposition.  On the other hand, Stone and Murray took their Bible on their innocence, and the latter made a fine speech into the bargain.  Bishop Johnson scrambled out of the scrape at the very beginning; and the council have reported to the King that the accusation was false and malicious.(370) This is an exact abridgement of the story; the commentary would be too voluminous.  The heats upon it are great:  the violent Whigs are not at all convinced of the Whiggism of the culprits, by the defect of evidence:  the opposite clan affect as much conviction as if they wished them Whigs.

Mr. Chute and I are come hither for a day or two to inspect the progress of a Gothic staircase, which is so pretty and so small, that I am inclined to wrap it up and send it you in my letter.  As my castle is so diminutive, I give myself a Burlington air, and say, that as Chiswick is a model of Grecian architecture, Strawberry Hill is to be so of Gothic.  I went the other morning with Mr. Conway to buy some of the new furniture-paper for you:  if there was any money at Florence, I should expect this manufacture would make its fortune there.

Liotard, the painter, is arrived, and has brought me Marivaux’s picture, which gives one a very different idea from what one conceives of the author of Marianne, though it is reckoned extremely like:  the countenance is a mixture of buffoon and villain.  I told you what mishap I had with Cr`ebillon’s portrait:  he has had the foolish dirtiness to keep it.  Liotard is a G`en`evois; but from having lived at Constantinopole, he wears a Turkish habit, and a beard down to his girdle:  this, and his extravagant prices, which he has raised even beyond what he asked at Paris, will probably get him as much money as he covets, for he is avaricious beyond imagination.  His crayons and his water-colours are very fine; his enamel, hard:  in general, he is too Dutch, and admires nothing but excess of finishing.