I expected that we should have been overrun with elegies and panegyrics:  indeed, I comforted myself, that one word in all of them would atone for the rest—­the late Mr. Pelham.  But the world seems to allow that their universal attachment and submission was universal interestedness; there has not been published a single encomium.  Orator Henley alone has held forth in his praise:-yesterday it was on charming Lady Catherine.  Don’t you think it should have been in these words, in his usual style?  Oratory-chapel,—­Right reason; madness; charming Lady Catherine; hell fire,” etc.

Monday, March 18.

Almost as extraordinary news as our political, is, that it has snowed ten days successively, and most part of each day:  it is living in Muscovy, amid ice and revolutions:  I hope lodgings will begin to let a little dear in Siberia!  Beckford and Delaval, two celebrated partisans, met lately at Shaftesbury, where they oppose one another:  the latter said: 

“Art thou the man whom men famed Beckford call?”

T’other replied,

“Art thou the much more famous Delaval?”

But to leave politics and change of ministries, and to come to something of real consequence, I must apply you to my library ceiling, of which I send you some rudiments.  I propose to have it all painted by Clermont; the principal part in chiaro scuro, on the design which you drew for the Paraclete:  but as that pattern would be surfeiting, so often repeated in an extension of twenty feet by thirty, I propose to break and enliven it by compartments in colours, according to the enclosed sketch, which you must adjust and dimension.  Adieu!

(469) With whom he was at variance.

’202 Letter 95
To George Montagu, Esq. 
Arlington Street, March 19, 1754.

You will live in the country, and then you are amazed that people use you ill.  Don’t mistake me:  I don’t mean that you deserve to be ill-treated for living in the country; at least only by those who love and miss you; but if you inhabited the town a little, you would not quite so much expect uprightness, nor be so surprised at ingratitude, and . neglect.  I am far from disposed to justify the great C`u; but when you had declined being his servant, do you wonder that he will not serve your friends!  I will tell you what, if the news of to-day holds at all, which is what no one piece of news of this last fortnight has done, you may be worse used by your cousin as soon as you please; for he is one of the first upon the list for secretary of state, in the room of the Duke of Newcastle.  Now again, are you such a rusticated animal as to suppose that the Duke is dismissed for inability, on the death of his brother.  So far from it, it is already certainly known that it was he who supported Mr. Pelham, and the impediments and rubs thrown in the way of’ absolute power long ago were the effects of the latter’s timidity and irresolution.  The Duke, freed from that clog, has declared himself sole minister, and the King has kissed his hand upon it.  Mr. Fox, who was the only man in England that objected to this plan, is to be sent to a prison which is building on the coast of Sussex, after the model of Fort l’Ev`eque, under the direction of Mr. Taaffe.