I believe that soon I shall have a pleasanter tale to tell you; it is said my Lady Anson, not content with the profusion of the absurdities she utters, (by the way, one of her sayings, and extremely in the style of Mr. Lyttelton’s making love, was, as she sat down to play at brag at the corner of a square table:  Lady Fitzwalter said she was sorry she had not better room; “O!  Madam,” said my Lady Anson, “I can sit like a nightingale, with my breast against a thorn;”) in short, that, not content with so much wit, she proposes to entertain the town to the tune of Doctors’ Commons.  She does not mince her disappointments:  here is an epigram that has been made on the subject:-

“As Anson his voyage to my lady was reading,
And recounting his dangers—­thank God she’s not breeding! 
He came to the passage, where, like the old Roman,
He stoutly withstood the temptation of woman;
The Baroness smiled; when continuing, he said,
“Think what terror must there fill the poor lover’s head.” 
“Alack!” quoth my lady, “he had nothing to fear,
Were that Scipio as harmless as you are, my dear.”

(59) Mr. Chute’s.

(60) Francis Ayscough, Dean of Bristol, tutor to Prince George.-E.

36 Letter 9
To George Montagu, Esq. 
Strawberry Hill, July 20th, 1749.

I am returned to my Strawberry, and find it in such beauty, that I shall be impatient till I see you and your sisters here.  They must excuse me if I don’t marry for their reception; for it is said the Drax’s have impeached fifteen more damsels, and till all the juries of matrons have finished their inquest, one shall not care to make one’s choice:  I was going to say, “throw one’s handkerchief,” but at present that term would be a little equivocal.

As I came to town I was extremely entertained with some excursions I made out of the road in search of antiquities.  At Layer Marney is a noble old remnant of the palace of the Lords of Marney, with three very good tombs in the church well preserved.  At Messing I saw an extreme fine window of painted glass in the church; it is the duties prescribed in the Gospel of visiting the sick and prisoners, etc.  I mistook, and called it the seven deadly sins.  There is a very old tomb of Sir Robert Messing, that built the church.  The hall-place is a fragment of an old house belonging to Lord Grimston;(61) Lady Luckyn his mother, of fourscore and six, lives in it with an old son and daughter.  The servant who showed it told us much history of another brother that had been parson there:  this history was entirely composed of the anecdotes of the doctor’s drinking. who, as the man told us, had been a blood.  There are some Scotch arms taken from the rebels in the ’15, and many old coats of arms on glass brought from Newhall, which now belongs to Olmius.  Mr. Conyers bought a window(62) there for only a hundred pounds, on which is painted Harry the Eighth and one of his queens at full length:  he has