Shall I send away a letter with only these three paragraphs!  I must if I write at all.  There are no private news at all! the earthquake, the opposition, and the war, are the only topics; each of those topics will be very fruitful, and you shall hear of their offspring-at present, good night!

(643) The Spanish monarch did not long preserve that spirit of justice.

295 Letter 164 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Arlington Street, Dec. 17, 1755.

After an immense interval, I have at last received a long letter from you, of a very old date (November 5th), which amply indemnifies my patience — nay, almost makes me amends for your blindness; for I think, unless you had totally lost your eyes, you would not refuse me a pleasure so easy to yourself as now and then sending me a drawing.  I can’t call it laziness; one may be too idle to amuse one’s self, but sure one is never so fond of idleness as to prefer it to the power of obliging a person one loves!  And yet I own your letter has made me amends, the wit of your pen recompenses the stupidity of your pencil; the caestus you have taken up supplies a little the artem you have relinquished.  I could quote twenty passages that have charmed me:  the picture of Lady Prudence and her family; your idol that gave you hail when you prayed for sunshine; misfortune the teacher of superstition; unmarried people being the fashion in heaven; the Spectator-hacked phrases; Mr. Spence’s blindness to Pope’s mortality; and, above all, the criticism on the Queen in Hamlet, is most delightful.  There never was so good a ridicule of all the formal commentators on Shakspeare, nor so artful a banter on himself for so improperly making her Majesty deal in double-entendres at a funeral.  In short, I never heard as much wit, except in a speech with which mr.  Pitt concluded the debate t’other day on the treaties.  His antagonists endeavour to disarm him, but as fast as they deprive him of one weapon, he finds a better; I never suspected him of such an universal armoury-I knew he had a Gorgon’s head, composed of bayonets and pistols, but little thought that he could tickle to death with a feather.  On the first debate on these famous treaties, last Wednesday, Hume Campbell, whom the Duke of Newcastle had retained as the most abusive counsel he could find against Pitt (and hereafter perhaps against Fox), attacked the former for eternal invectives.  Oh! since the last philippic of Billingsgate memory you never heard such an invective as Pitt returned-Hume Campbell was annihilated!  Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee.  But think how charming a ridicule must that be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half!  Some day or other, perhaps you will see some of the glittering splinters that I gathered up.  I have written under his print these lines, which are not only full as just as the original, but have not the tautology of loftiness and majesty: