A strong faction, professedly against the treaties,(620) openly against Mr. Fox, and covertly under the banners of the aforesaid lady Prudence, arm from all quarters against the opening of the session.  Her ladyship’s eldest boy declares violently against being bewulfenbuttled,(621) a word which I don’t pretend to understand, as it is not in Mr. Johnson’s new dictionary.  There! now I have been as enigmatic as ever I have accused you of being; and hoping you will not be able to expound my German hieroglyphics, I proceed to tell you in plain English that we are going to be invaded.  I have within this day or two seen grandees of ten, twenty, and thirty thousand pounds a-year, who are in a mortal fright; consequently, it would be impertinent in much less folk to tremble, and accordingly they don’t.  At court there is no doubt but an attempt will be made before Christmas.  I find valour is like virtue:  impregnable as they boast themselves, it is discovered that on the first attack both lie strangely open!  They are raising more men, camps are to be formed in Kent and Sussex, the Duke of Newcastle is frightened out of his wits, which, though he has lost so often, you know he always recovers, and as fresh as ever.  Lord Egmont despairs of the commonwealth; and I am going to fortify my castle of Strawberry, according to an old charter I should have had for embattling and making a deep ditch.  But here am I laughing when I really ought to cry, both with my public eye and my private one.  I have told you what I think ought to sluice my public eye; and your private eye too will moisten, when I tell you that poor Miss Harriet Montagu is dead.  She died about a fortnight ago; but having nothing else to tell you, I would not send a letter so far with only such melancholy news-and so, you will say, I stayed till I could tell still more bad news.  The truth is, I have for some time had two letters of yours to answer:  it is three weeks since I wrote to you, and one begins to doubt whether one shall ever be to write again.  I will hope all my best hopes; for I have no sort of intention at this time of day of finishing either as a martyr or a hero.  I rather intend to live and record both those professions, if need be; and I have no inclination to scuttle barefoot after a Duke of Wolfenbuttle’s army as Philip de Comines says he saw their graces of Exeter and Somerset trudge after the Duke of Burgundy’s.  The invasion, though not much in fashion yet, begins, like Moses’s rod, to swallow other news, both political and suicidical.  Our politics I have sketched out to you, and can only add, that Mr. Fox’s ministry does not as yet promise to be of long duration.  When it was first thought that he had cot the better of the Duke of Newcastle, Charles Townshend said admirably, that he was sure the Duchess, like the old Cavaliers, would make a vow not to shave her beard till the restoration.

I can’t recollect the least morsel of a fess or chevron of the Boynets:  they did not happen to enter into any extinct genealogy for whose welfare I interest myself.  I sent your letter to Mr. Chute, who is still under his own vine:  Mr. Muntz is still with him, recovering of a violent fever.  Adieu!  If memoirs don’t grow too memorable, I think this season will produce a large crop.