The press goes on as fast as if I printed myself.  I hope in a very few days to send you a specimen, though I could wish you was at the birth of the first produce.  Gray has been gone these five days.  Mr. Bentley has been ill, and is not recovered of the sweating-sickness, which I now firmly believe was only a hot summer and England, being so unused to it, took it for a malady. mr.  Muntz is not gone; but pray don’t think that I keep him:  he has absolutely done nothing this whole summer but paste two chimney-boards.  In short, instead of Claude Lorrain, he is only one of Bromwich’s men.

You never saw any thing so droll as Mrs. Clive’s countenance, between the heat of the summer, the pride in her legacy,(810) and the efforts to appear concerned.

We have given ourselves for a day or two the air of an earthquake, but it proved an explosion of the powder-mills at Epsom.  I asked Louis if it had done any mischief:  he said, “Only blown a man’s head off;” as if that was a part one could spare!

P. S. I hope Dr. Warburton will not think I encroach either upon his commentatorship or private pretension, if I assume these lines of Pope, thus altered, for myself: 

“Some have for wits, and then for poets pass’d turn’d printers next, and proved plain fools at last.”

(809) Daughter of the famous Wilmot Earl of Rochester.

(810) A legacy of fifty pounds, left her by John Robarts, the last Earl of Radnor of that family.

388 Letter 232 To Sir Horace Mann.  Strawberry Hill, August 4, 1757.

Mr. Phelps (who is Mr. Phelps?) has brought me the packet safe, for which I thank you.  I would fain have persuaded him to stay and dine, that I might ask him more questions about you.  He told me how low your immaterial spirits are:  I fear the news that came last night will not exalt them.  The French attacked the Duke for three days together, and at last defeated him.  I find it is called at Kensington an encounter(811) of fourteen squadrons; but any defeat must be fatal to Hanover.  I know few particulars, and those only by a messenger despatched to me by Mr. Conway on the first tidings:  the Duke exposed himself extremely, but is unhurt, as they say, all his small family are.  In what a situation is our Prussian hero, surrounded by Austrians, French, and Muscovites-even impertinent Sweden is stealing in to pull a feather out of his tail!  What devout plunderers will every little Catholic prince of the empire become!  The only good I hope to extract out of this mischief is, that it will stifle our secret expedition, and preserve Mr. Conway from going on it.  I have so ill an opinion of our secret expeditions, that I hope they will for ever remain so.  What a melancholy picture is there of an old monarch at Kensington, who has lived to see such inglorious and fatal days!  Admiral Boscawen is disgraced.  I know not the cause exactly, as ten miles out of town are a