That Lord Falkland was a writer of controversy appears by the list of his works, and that he is said to have assisted Chillingworth:  that he wrote against Chillingworth, you see, Sir, depends upon very vague authority; that is, upon the assertion of an anonymous person, who wrote so above a hundred years ago.

James, Earl of Marlborough, is entirely a new author to me—­at present, too late.  Lord Raymond I had inserted, and he will appear in the next edition.

I have been as unlucky, for the present, about Lord Totness.  In a collection published in Ireland, called Hibernica, I found, but too late, that he translated another very curious piece, relating to Richard ii.  However, Sir, with these, and the very valuable helps I have received from you, I shall be able, at a proper time, to enrich another edition much.

(947) Mr. Walpole takes no notice of Richard ii. as an author; but Mr. park inserts this prince as a writer of ballads.  In a letter to Archbishop Usher, Sir Robert Cotton requested his grace to procure for him a poem by Richard ii. which that prelate had pointed out.-C.

(948) Spelman’s is the only English translation of the Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis, known to be printed.-C.

(949) He wrote several papers in the Philosophical Transactions, and also translated Descartes’ Music Compendium.- C.

449 Letter 284 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(950) Arlington Street, Sept. 19, 1758.

I have all my life laughed at ministers in my letters; but at least with the decency of obliging them to break open the seal.  You have more noble frankness, and send your satires to the post with not so much as a wafer, as my Lord Bath did sometimes in my father’s administration.  I scarce laughed more at the inside of your letter than at the cover—­not a single button to the waistband of its beseeches, but all its nakedness fairly laid open! what was worse, all Lady Mary Coke’s nakedness was laid open at the same time.  Is this your way of treating a dainty widow!  What will Mr. Pitt think of all this? will he begin to believe that you have some spirit, when, with no fear of Dr. Shebbeare’s example(951) before your eyes, you speak your Mind so freely, without any modification?  As Mr. Pitt may be cooled a little to his senses, perhaps he may now find out, that a grain of prudence is no bad ingredient in a mass of courage; in short, he and the mob are at last undeceived, and have found, by sad experience that all the cannon of France has not been brought into Hyde Park.  An account, which you will see in the Gazette, (though a little better disguised than your letters,) is come that after our troops had been set on shore, and left there, till my Lord Howe went somewhere else, and cried Hoop! having nothing else to do for four days to amuse themselves, nor knowing whether there was a town within a hundred miles, went staring about the country to see whether there were