224 Letter 114
To Richard Bentley, Esq. 
Arlington Street, November 11, 1754.

If you was dead, to be sure you would have got somebody to tell me so.  If you was alive, to be sure in all this time you would have told me so yourself.  It is a month to-day since I received a line from you.  There was a Florentine ambassador here in Oliver’s reign, who with great circumspection wrote to his court, “Some say the Protector is dead, others say he is not:  for my part, I believe neither one nor t’other.”  I quote this sage personage, to show you that I have a good precedent, in case I had a mind to continue neutral upon the point of your existence.  I can’t resolve to believe you dead, lest I should be forced to write to Mr. S. again to bemoan you; and on the other hand, it is convenient to me to believe you living, because I have just received the enclosed from your sister, and the money from Ely.  However, if you are actually dead, be so good as to order your executor to receive the money, and to answer your sister’s letter.  If you are not dead, I can tell you who is, and at the same time whose death is to remain as doubtful as yours till to-morrow morning Don’t be alarmed! it is only the Queen-dowager of Prussia.  As excessive as the concern for her is at court, the whole royal family, out of great consideration for the mercers, lacemen, etc. agreed not to shed a tear for her till tomorrow morning, when the birthday will be over; but they are all to rise by six o’clock to-morrow morning to cry quarts.  This is the sum of all the news that I learnt to-day on coming from Strawberry Hill, except that Lady Betty Waldegrave was robbed t’other night In Hyde Park, under the very noses of the lamps and the patrol.  If any body is robbed at the ball at court to-night, you shall hear in my next despatch.  I told you in my last that I had just got two new volumes of Madame S`evign`e’s Letters; but I have been cruelly disappointed; they are two hundred letters which had been omitted in the former editions, as having little or nothing worth reading.  How provoking, that they would at last let one see that she could write so many letters that were not worth reading!  I will tell you the truth:  as they are certainly hers, I am glad to see them, but I cannot bear that any body else should.  Is not that true sentiment?  How would you like to see a letter of hers, describing a wild young Irish lord, a Lord P * * * *, who has lately made one of our ingenious wagers, to ride I don’t know how many thousand miles in an hour, from Paris to Fontainebleau?  But admire the politesse of that nation:  instead of endeavouring to lame his horse, or to break his neck, that he might lose the wager, his antagonist and the spectators showed all the attention in the world to keep the road clear, and to remove even pebbles out of his way.  They heaped coals of fire upon his head with all the good breeding of the Gospel.  Adieu!  If my letters are short, at least my notes are long.