that Daun(978) is retired, thus probably the campaign is finished, and another year of massacre to come.  One could not but be anxious at such a crisis-one felt for Dresden, and pitied the Prince Royal shut up in his own capital, a mere spectator of its destruction; one trembled for the decisive moment of the life of such a man as the King of Prussia.  It is put off—­yet perhaps he will scarce recover so favourable a moment.  He had assembled his whole force, except a few thousands left to check the Swedes.  Next year this force must be again parcelled out against Austrians, Russians, Swedes, and possibly French.  He must be more than a King Of resources if he can for ever weather such tempests!

Knyphausen(979) diverted me yesterday with some anecdotes of the Empress’s college of chastity-not the Russian Empress’s.  The King of Prussia asked some of his Austrian prisoners whether their mistress consulted her college of chastity on the letters she wrote (and he intercepted) to Madame Pompadour.

You have heard some time ago of the death of the Duke of Marlborough.(980) The estate is forty-five thousand pounds a-year—­nine of which are jointured out.  He paid but eighteen thousand pounds a-year in joint lives.  This Duke and the estate save greatly by his death, as the present wants a year of being of age, and would certainly have accommodated his father in agreeing to sell and pay.  Lord Edgcumbe(981) is dead too, one of the honestest and most steady men in the world.

I was much diverted with your histories of our Princess(982) and Madame de Woronzow.  Such dignity as Madame de Craon’s wants a little absolute power to support it!  Adieu! my dear Sir.

(977) Lord Chesterfield, writing on the 21st to his son, says, “The King has been ill; but his illness has terminated in a good fit of the gout.  It was generally thought he would have died, and for a very good reason; for the oldest lion in the Tower, much about the King’s age, died about a fortnight ago.  This extravagancy, I can assure you, was believed by many above people.  So wild and capricious is the human mind!"-E.

(978) “The King of Prussia has just compelled Daun to raise the siege of Dresden, in spite of his (the King’s) late most disastrous defeat by the same general at Bochkirchen, which had taken place on the 14th of October, 1758.-D.

(979) The Prussian minister.

(980) Charles Spencer, second Duke of Marlborough.  He died, on the 28th of October at Munster, in Westphalia.-E.

(981) Richard, first Lord Edgcumbe; an intimate friend of Sir Robert Walpole.

(982) The Princess Craon.

467 Letter 295
To The Rev. Henry Zouch. 
Arlington Street, Dec. 9, 1758.

Sir, I have desired Mr. Whiston to convey to you the second edition of my Catalogue, not so complete as it might have been, if great part had not been printed before I received your remarks, but yet more correct than the first sketch with which I troubled you.  Indeed, a thing of this slight and idle nature does not deserve to have much more pains employed upon it.