(743) Mr. Galfridus Mann left an annuity to his brother Sir Horace, in case he were recalled from Florence.

(744) George Bubb Doddington, Esq.  This report was not confirmed.

(745) “The Test” was written principally by Arthur Murphy.  It forms a thin folio volume,.-E.

(746) “The “Monitor” was commenced in August 1755, and terminated in July 1759.  It is said to have been planned by Alderman Beckford.-E.

(747) He did write himself into a pillory before, the conclusion of that reign, and into a pension at the beginning of the next, for one and the same kind of merit,—­writing against King William and the Revolution.

(748) See an account of his death, and the monument and epitaph erected for him in Mr. Walpole’s fugitive pieces; see also his letter to Sir Horace Mann of the 29th of September, in this year.-E.

358 Letter 209 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Jan. 17, 1757.

I am still, my dear Sir, waiting for your melancholy letters, not one of which has yet reached me.  I am impatient to know how you bear your misfortune, though I tremble at what I shall feel from your expressing it!  Except good Dr. Cocchi, what sensible friend have you at Florence to share and moderate your unhappiness?—­but I will not renew it:  I will hurry to tell you any thing that may amuse it—­and yet what is that any thing; Mr. Pitt, as George Selwyn says, has again taken to his Lit de Justice; he has been once with the King,(749) but not at the House; the day before yesterday the gout flew into his arm, and has again laid him up:  I am so particular in this, because all our transactions, or rather our inactivity, hang upon the progress of his distemper.  Mr. Pitt and every thing else have been forgot for these five days, obscured by the news of the assassination of the King of France.(750) I don’t pretend to tell you any circumstance of it, who must know them better than, at least as well as, I can; war and the sea don’t contribute to dispel the clouds of lies that involve such a business.  The letters of the foreign ministers, and ours from Brussels, say he has been at council; in the city he is believed dead:  I hope not!  We should make a bad exchange in the Dauphin.  Though the King is weak and irresolute, I believe he does not want sense:  weakness, bigotry, and some sense, are the properest materials for keeping alive the disturbances in that country, to which this blow, if the man was any thing but a madman, Will contribute.  The despotic and holy stupidity(751) of the successor would quash the Parliament at once.  He told his father about a year ago, that if he was King, the next day, and the Pope should bid him lay down his crown, he would.  They tell or make a good answer for the father, “And if he was to bid you take the crown from me, would you!” We have particular cause to say masses for the father:  there is invincible aversion between him and the young Pretender, whom, it is believed,