470 Letter 297 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, Dec. 26th, 1758.

it is so little extraordinary to find you doing what is friendly and obliging, that one don’t take half notice enough of it.  Can’t you let Mr. Conway go to Sluys without taking notice of it?  How would you be hurt, if he continued to be oppressed? what is it to you whether I am glad or sorry?  Can’t you enjoy yourself whether I am happy or not’—­’@ I suppose If I were to have a misfortune, you would immediately be concerned at it!  How troublesome it is to have you sincere and good-natured!  Do be a little more like the rest of the world.

I have been at Strawberry these three days, and don’t know a tittle.  The last thing I heard before I went was that Colonel Yorke is to be married to one or both of the Miss Crasteyns, nieces of the rich grocer that died three years ago.  They have two hundred and sixty thousand pounds apiece.  A marchioness—­ or a grocer—–­nothing comes amiss to the digestion of that family.(991) If the rest of the trunk was filled with money, I believe they would really marry Carafattatouadaht—­what was the lump of deformity called in the Persian Tales, that was sent to the lady in a coffer?  And as to marrying both the girls, it would cost my Lord Hardwicke but a new marriage-bill:  I suppose it is all one to his conscience whether he prohibits matrimony or licenses bigamy.  Poor Sir Charles Williams is relapsed, and strictly confined.

As you come so late, I trust you will stay with us the longer.  Adieu!

(991) Colonel Yorke, afterwards Lord Dover, married in 1783 the Dowager Baroness de Boetzalaer, widow of the first noble of the province of Holland.-E.

471 Letter 298 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.  Strawberry Hill, Jan. 12, 1759.

Sir, I shall certainly be obliged to you for an account of that piece of Lord Lonsdale:(992) besides my own curiosity in any thing that relates to a work in which I have engaged so far, I think it a duty to the public to perfect, as far as one can, whatever one gives to it; and yet I do not think of another edition; two thousand have peen printed, and though nine hundred went off at once, it would be presumption in me to expect that the rest will be sold in any short time.  I only mean to add occasionally to my private copy whatever more I can collect and correct; and shall perhaps, but leave behind me materials for a future edition, in which should be included what I have hitherto omitted.  Yet it is very vain in me to expect that any body should care for such a trifle after the novelty is worn off; I ought to be content with the favourable reception I have found; so much beyond my first expectations, that, except in two Magazines, not a word of censure has passed on me in print.  You may easily believe, Sir, that having escaped a trial, I am not mortified by having dirt thrown at me by children in the kennel.  With regard to the story of Lord Suffolk, I wish I had been lucky enough to have mentioned it to you in time, it should not have appeared:  yet it was told me by Mr. Mallet, who did not seem to have any objection that I should even mention his name as the very person to whom it happened.  I must suppose that Lord Suffolk acted that foolish scene in imitation of Lord Rochester.(993)