(885) On hearing, at Padua, of Sir Charles’s indisposition, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, on the 17th of July, breaks out into the following striking reflections:—­“I hear that my old acquaintance is much broken, both in his spirits and constitution.  How happy might that man have been, if there had been added to his natural and acquired endowments a dash of morality!  If he had known how to distinguish between false and true felicity; and, instead of seeking to increase an estate already too large, and hunting after pleasures that have made him rotten and ridiculous, he had bounded his desires of wealth, and followed the dictates of his conscience!  His servile ambition has gained him two yards of red riband and an exile into a miserable country, where there is no society, and so little taste, that I believe he suffers under a dearth of flatterers.  This is said for the use of your growing sons, whom I hope no golden temptations will induce to marry women they cannot love, or comply with measures they do not approve.  All the happiness this world can afford is more within reach than is generally supposed.  A wise and honest man lives to his own heart, without that silly splendour that makes him a prey to knaves, and which commonly ends in his becoming one of the fraternity.”  Works, vol. iii. p. 160.-E.

419 Letter 259 To The Rev. Dr. Birch.  Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.

Sir, I thought myself very unlucky in being abroad when you were so good as to call here t’other day.  I not only lost the pleasure of your company, but the opportunity of obtaining from you (what however I will not despair of) any remarks you may have made on the many errors which I fear you found in my book.(886) The hurry in which it was written, my natural carelessness and insufficiency, must have produced many faults and mistakes.  As the curiosity of the world, raised I believe only by the smallness Of the number printed, makes it necessary for me to provide another edition, I should be much obliged to whoever would be enough my friend to point out my wrong judgments and inaccuracies,—­I know nobody, Sir, more capable Of both offices than yourself, and yet I have no pretensions to ask so great a favour, unless your own zeal for the cause of literature should prompt you to undertake a little of this task.  I shall be always ready to correct my faults, never to defend them.

(886) " The Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,” of which Walpole had just printed three hundred copies, at the Strawberry Hill press.-E.

420 Letter 260 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, May 4, 1758.

You are the first person, I believe, that ever thought of a Swiss transcribing Welsh, unless, like some commentator on the Scriptures, you have discovered great affinity between those languages, and that both are dialects of the Phoenician.  I have desired your brother to call here to-day, and to help us in adjusting the inscriptions.  I can find no Lady Cutts in your pedigree, and till I do, cannot accommodate her with a coronet.