There have been balls at the Duchess of Norfolk’s, at Holland-house, and Lord Granville’s, and a subscription masquerade:  the dresses were not very fine, not much invention, nor any very absurd.  I find I am telling you extreme trifles; but you desired me to write; and there literally happens nothing of greater moment.  If I can fill out a sheet even in this way, I will; for at Sligo(385) perhaps I may appear a journalist of consequence.

There is a Madame de Mezi`eres arrived from Paris, who has said a thousand impertinent things to my Lady Albemarle, on my lord’s not letting her come to Paris.(386) I should not repeat this to you, only to introduce George Selwyn’s account of this woman who, he says, is mother to the Princess of Montauban, grandmother to Madame de Brionne, sister to General Oglethorpe, and was laundress to the Duchess of Portsmouth.

Sir Charles Williams, never very happy at panegyric, has made a distich on the Queen of Hungary, which I send you for the curiosity, not the merit of it: 

“O regina orbis prima et pulcherrima, ridens Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens.”

It is infinitely admired at Vienna, but Baron Munchausen has received a translation of it into German in six verses, which are still more applauded.

There is another volume published of Lord Bolinbroke’s:  it contains his famous Letter to Sir William Windham, with an admirable description of the Pretender and hi Court, and a very poor justification of his own treachery to that party; a flimsy unfinished State of the Nation, written at the end of his life, and the commonplace tautology of an old politician, who lives out of the world and writes from newspapers; and a superficial letter to Mr. Pope, as an introduction to his Essays, which are printed, but not yet published.

What shall I say to you more?  You see how I am forced to tack paragraphs together, without any connexion or consequence!  Shall I tell you one more idle story, and will you just recollect that you once concerned yourself enough about the heroine of it, to excuse my repeating such a piece of tittle-tattle?  This heroine is Lady Harrington, the hero is—­ not entirely of royal blood; at least I have never heard that Lodomie, the toothdrawer, was in any manner descended from the house of Bourbon.  Don’t be alarmed:  this plebeian operator is not in the catalogue of your successors.  How the lady was the aggressor is not known; ’tis only conjectured that French politeness and French interestedness could never have gone such lengths without mighty provocation.  The first instance of the toothdrawer’s un-gentle behaviour was on hearing it said that Lady Harrington was to have her four girls drawn by Liotard; which was wondered at, as his price is so great—­“Oh!” said Lodomie, “chacune paie pour la sienne.”  Soon after this insult, there was some dispute about payments and toothpowder, and divers messages passed.  At last the lady wrote a card, to say she did not