May 30th, Arlington Street,

See what a country gentleman I am!  One cannot stir ten miles from London without coming to believe what one hears, and without supposing that whatever should be done, will be done.  The Opera-house is still in dispute between Signor Guglielmo and Signor Vanneschi—­and Mr. Ryder(689) will not get the peerage; for coronets are not forfeited by worthlessness, but by misfortune.  My lord Chief Justice misses one by only dying, my uncle gets one by living!

I this moment receive your letter of the 15th.  We had picked up by scrambling accounts pretty much what you tell me of Minorca; but hitherto we only live on comparing dates.

I can add nothing to what I have said in the article of your brother.  I am going to send the papers to Lord Macclesfield.(690) Adieu!

P. S. It is uncertain who will be Chief Justice; Murray could have no competitor, but the Duke of Newcastle cannot part with him from the House of Commons.(691)

(686) Through the zeal of his friend Lord Hardwicke, and the influence of the Cavendish party, the repugnance of the King was overcome, and Horatio Walpole, on the 1st of June, was elevated to the peerage, by the title of Lord Walpole of Wolterton.-E.

(687) On the 24th of May, the King signed a warrant for raising Sir Dudley Ryder to the peerage, but he died before the patent was completed.-E.

(688) “Vanneschi’s difference with Mingotti occasioned as many private quarrels and public feuds as the disputed abilities of Handel and Bononcini, or the talents of Faustina and Cuzzoni, had done thirty years before.  On a toujours tort in these disputes; and addressing the town is but making bad worse:  for not a word which either party says is believed.  These squabbles ended in Vanneschi’s being a bankrupt, a prisoner in the Fleet, and afterwards a fugitive; and in Mingotti’s acquiring for a while the sovereignty in the Opera kingdom, by which gratification of ambition they were soon brought to the brink of ruin, as others had been before them.”  Burney.-E.

(689) In 1776, Mr. Ryder was created Baron Harrowby.-E.

(690) George Parker, second Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society.  He died in 1764.-D.

(691) Mr. Potter, in a letter to Mr. Pitt of the 4th of June, says, “Upon the death of the Chief Justice, all the Attorney-General’s private friends thought the office, on every account, so fit for him, that it would be infatuation to decline it, and that the Attorney-General himself was of the same opinion, but the Duke of Newcastle was frightened at the thoughts of what was to become of the House of Commons.”  Chatham Correspondence, v 1. i. p. 159.-E.

325 Letter 185 To The Earl Of Strafford.(692) Strawberry Hill, June 6, 1756.