I would have sent you word that the King of Portugal coming along the road at midnight, which was in his own room at noon, his foot slipped, and three balls went through his body; which, however, had no other consequence than giving him a stroke of a palsy, of which he is quite recovered, except being dead.(964) Some, indeed, are so malicious as to say, that the Jesuits, who are the most conscientious men in the world, murdered him, because he had an intrigue with another man’s wife:  but all these histories I supposed your ladyship knew better than me, as, till I came to town yesterday, I imagined you was returned.  For my own part, about whom you are sometimes so good as to interest yourself, I am as well as can be expected after the murder of a king and the death of a person of the next consequence to a king, the master of the ceremonies, poor Sir Clement,(965) who is supposed to have been suffocated by my Lady Macclesfield’s(966) kissing hands.

This will be a melancholy letter, for I have nothing to tell your ladyship but tragical stories.  Poor Dr. Shawe(967) being sent for in great haste to Claremont—­(It seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own whisker getting up her nose and making her sneeze)—­the poor Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out, was taken so ill, that he was forced to stop at Kingston; and, being carried to the first apothecary’s, prescribed a medicine for himself which immediately cured him.  This catastrophe so alarmed the Duke of Newcastle, that he immediately ordered all the mushroom beds to be destroyed, and even the toadstools in the park did not escape scalping in this general massacre.  What I tell you is literally true.  Mr. Stanley, who dined there last Sunday, and is not partial against that court, heard the edict repeated, and confirmed it to me last night.  And a voice of lamentation was heard at Ramah in Claremont, Chlo`e(968) weeping for her mushrooms, and they are not!

After all these important histories, I would try to make you smile, If I was not afraid you would resent a little freedom taken with a great name.  May I venture?

“Why Taylor the quack calls himself Chevalier,
’Tis not easy a reason to render;
Unless blinding eyes, that he thinks to make clear,
Demonstrates he’s but a Pretender.

A book has been left at your ladyship’s house; it is Lord Whitworth’s Account of Russia.(969) Monsieur Kniphausen has promised me some curious anecdotes of the Czarina Catherine-so my shop is likely to flourish.  I am your ladyship’s most obedient servant.

(964) Alluding to the incoherent stories told at the time of the assassination of the King of Portugal. [The following is the correct account:—­As the King was taking The air in his coach on the 3d September, attended by only one domestic, he was attacked in a solitary lane near Belem by three men, one of whom discharged his carbine at the coachman, and wounded him dangerously; the other two fired their blunderbusses at the King, loaded with pieces of iron, and wounded him in the face and several parts of his body, but chiefly in the right arm, which disabled him for a long time.