but cramming:  I suppose it will so much become the etiquette, that in the next reign there will be nothing but suppers for my Lord Bute.  I am now come hither to keep my Newmarket, but the weather is cold and damp:  it is uncertain whether the Duke makes that campaign, or against the French.  As the road-bill extinguished the violence about the two operas of next year, and they made the invasion forgot, and the invasion the earthquake, I foresee—­and I go almost upon as sure grounds as prophets that take care to let the event precede the prediction-I foresee that the Hanoverians will swallow up all:  they have already a general named, who ranks before any one of ours; and there are to be two Hanoverian aide-de-camps!

You will hear by this post of the death of Sir William Lowther, whose vast succession falls to Sir James, and makes him Croesus:  he may hire the Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough for led captains.  I am sorry for this young man, though I did not know him; but it is hard to be cut off so young and so rich:  old rich men seldom deserve to live, but he did a thousand generous acts.  You will be diverted with a speech of Lord Shelburne,(669) one of those second-rate fortunes who have not above five-and-thirty thousand pounds a year.  He says, every body may attain some one point if they give all their attention to it; for his part, he knows he has no great capacity, he could not make a figure by his parts; he shall content himself with being one of the richest men in England!  I literally saw him t’other day buying pictures for two-and-twenty shillings, that I would not hang in my garret, while I, who certainly have not made riches my sole point of view, was throwing away guineas, and piquing myself for old tombstones against your father-in-law the General.(670) I hope Lady Ailesbury will forgive my zeal for Strawberry against Coombank!  Are you never to see your Strawberry Hill again’?  Lord Duncannon flatters us that we shall see you in May.  If I did not hope it, I would send you the only two new fashionable pieces; a comic elegy(671) by Richard Owen Cambridge, and a wonderful book by a more wonderful author, Greville.(672) It is called “Maxims and Characters:”  several of the former are pretty:  all the latter so absurd, that one in particular, which at the beginning you take for the character of a man, turns out to be the character of a postchaise.

You never tell me now any of Missy’s bons-mots.  I hope she has not resided in Ireland till they are degenerated into bulls?  Adieu!

(668) Charles Butler, second son of Thomas, Earl of Ossory, created Earl of Arran in 1693.  At his death, in 1759, his title became extinct.-E.

(669) John, fifth son of Thomas Fitzmaurice, first Earl of Kerry.  He inherited, pursuant to the will of his uncle, Henry Petty, Earl of Shelburne, his lordship’s opulent fortune, and assumed his surname in 1751.  He was created Earl of Shelburne in the kingdom of Ireland; and, in 1760, was raised to the dignity of a British peer, by the title Of Lord Wycombe.  He died in 1761.-E.