I receive such packets of thanks of Lady Harry Beauclerc, transmitted to her from Mr. Dick, that you must bear to have some of them returned to you.  I know you enough to believe that you will be still better pleased with new trouble than with my gratitude, therefore I will immediately flounce into more recommendation; but while I do recommend, I must send a bill of discount at the same time:  in short, I have been pressed to mention a Sir Robert Davers to you; but as I have never seen him, I will not desire much more than your usual civility for him; sure he may be content with that!  I remember Sir William Maynard,(674) and am cautious.

Since I began this, I receive yours of April 2d, full of uneasiness for your brother’s quicksilver and its effects.  I did not mention it to you, because, though it put him back, his physicians were persuaded that he would not suffer, and he has not.  As to reasoning with them, my dear child, it is impossible:  I am more ignorant in physic than a child of six years old; if it were not for reverence for Dr. Cocchi, and out of gratitude to Dr. Pringle, who has been of such service to your brother, I should say, I am as ignorant as a physician.  I am really so sensible of the good your brother has received from this doctor, that I myself am arrived so far towards being ill, that I now know, if I was to be ill, who should be my physician.  The weather has been so wet and cold that your brother has received very little benefit from it:  he talked to me again this morning of riding but I don’t yet think him able; if you had seen him as I saw him the day I wrote my first letter to you, you would be as happy as I am now:  without that I fear you would be shocked to see how he is emaciated; but his eyes, his spirits, his attention, give me great hopes, though I absolutely think it a tedious astigmatic case.  Adieu! my dear child; be in better spirits, and don’t expect either sudden amendment or worse change.

(673) Daughter of the Earl of Hopton.-E.

(674) Whom Mr. Walpole recommended to Sir H. Mann, to whom Sir William, who was a Jacobite, behaved very impertinently.

319 Letter 180 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, April 20, 1756.

Your steward called on me just as I was going to keep my Newmarket at Strawberry Hill; he promised to leave me the direction to the statuary, but as I have not heard from him, I wish you would send it me

The cold and the wet have driven me back to London, empty London! where we are more afraid of the deluge than of the invasion.  The French are said to be sailed for Minorca, which I hold to be a good omen of their not coming hither; for if they took England, Port Mahon, I should think, would scarcely hold out.