My uncle died yesterday was Se’nnight; his death I really believe hastened by the mortification of the money vainly spent at Norwich.  I neither intend to spend money, nor to die of it, but, to my mortification, am forced to stand for Lynn, in the room of his son.  The corporation still reverence my father’s memory so much, that they will not bear distant relations, while he has sons living.  I was reading the other day a foolish book called “l’Histoire des quatre Cic`erons;” the author, who has taken Tully’s son for his hero, says, he piques himself on out-drinking Antony, his father’s great enemy.  Do you think I shall ever pique myself on being richer than my Lord Bath?

Prince Edward’s pleasures continue to furnish conversation:  he has been rather forbid by the Signora Madre to make himself so common; and he has been rather encouraged by his grandfather to disregard the prohibition.  The other night the Duke and he were at a ball at Lady Rochford’s:(765) she and Lady Essex were singing in an inner chamber when the Princes entered, who insisting on a repetition of the song, my Lady Essex, instead of continuing the same, addressed herself to Prince Edward in this ballad of Lord -Dorset-

“False friends I have as well as you,
Who daily counsel me
Fame and ambition to pursue,
And leave off loving thee—­”

It won’t be unamusing, I hope it will be no more than amusing, when all the Johns of Gaunt, and Clarences, and Humphrys of Gloucester, are old enough to be running about town, and furnishing histories.  Adieu!

(764) Walpole, in his Memoires, vol. it. p. 152, says, that Mr. Pitt moved the King to mercy, but was cut very short; nor did his Majesty remember to ask his usual question, whether there were any favourable circumstances."-E.

(765) Lucy Young, wife of William Henry, Earl of Rochford.

364 Letter 212 To John Chute, Esq.(766) Sunday night, very late, Feb. 27, 1757.

My dear Sir, I should certainly have been with you to-night, as I desired George Montagu to tell you, but every six hours produce such new wonders, that I do not know when I shall have a moment to see you.  Will you, can you believe me, when I tell you that the four persons of the court-martial whom Keppel named yesterday to the House as commissioning him to ask for the bill, now deny they gave him such commission, though Norris, one of them, was twice on Friday with Sir Richard Lyttelton, and once with George Grenville for the same purpose!  I have done nothing but traverse the town tonight from Sir Richard Lyttelton’s to the Speaker’s, to Mr. Pitt’s, to Mr. Fox’s, to Doddington’s, to Lady Hervey’s, to find out and try how to defeat the evil of this, and to extract, if possible, some good from it.  Alas! alas! that what I meant so well, should be likely only to add a fortnight to the poor man’s misery!  Adieu!

(766) Now first published.

365 Letter 213
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, March 3, 1757.