I gave your brother James my new work to send you-I grieve that I must not, as usual, send a set for poor Dr. Cocchi.  Good night!

(900) “Mr. Pitt’s friends exult on the destruction of three French ships of war, and one hundred and thirty privateers and trading ships, and affirm that it stopped the march of three score thousand men, who were going to join the Comte de Clermont’s army.  On the other hand, Mr. Fox and company call it breaking windows with guineas, and apply the fable of the mountain and the mouse.”  Lord Chesterfield.-E.

430 Letter 268 To Sir David Dalrymple.(901) Strawberry Hill, June 29, 1758.

Sir, Inaccurate and careless, as I must own my book is,(902) I cannot quite repent having let it appear in that state, since it has procured me so agreeable and obliging a notice from a gentleman whose approbation makes me very vain.  The trouble you have been so good as to give yourself, Sir, is by no means lost upon me; I feel the greatest gratitude for it, and shall profit not only of your remarks, but with your permission of your very words, wherever they will fall in with my text.  The former are so judicious and sensible, and the latter so well chosen, that if it were not too impertinent to propose myself as an example, I should wish, Sir, that you would do that justice to the writers of your own country, which my ignorance has made me execute so imperfectly and barrenly.

Give me leave to say a few words to one or two of your notes. i should be glad to mention more instances of Queen Elizabeth’s fondness for praise,(903) but fear I have already been too diffuse on her head.  Bufo(904) is certainly Lord Halifax:  the person at whom you hint is more nearly described by the name of Bubo, and I think in one place is even called Bubb.(905) The number of volumes of Parthenissa I took from the list of Lord Orrery’s(906) writings in the Biographia:  it is probable, therefore, Sir, that there were different editions of that romance.  You will excuse my repeating once more, Sir, my thanks for your partiality to a work so little worthy of your favour.  I even flatter myself that whenever you take a journey this way, you will permit me to have the honour of being acquainted with a gentleman to whom I have so particular an obligation.

(901) Now first collected.  This eminent lawyer, antiquary, and historian was born in 1726.  He was educated at Eton, and afterwards studied civil law at Utrecht.  In 1748, he was called to the Scotch bar, and in 1766 made a judge of session, when he assumed the name of Lord Hailes.  Boswell states, that Dr. Johnson, in 1763, drank a bumper to him “as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit.”  His “Annals of Scotland” the Doctor describes as “a work which has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation, that it must always sell.”  He wrote several papers in the World and Mirror.  He died in 1792.-E.