(130) To Hanover.

(131) Mr. Chute.

(132) Sir Dudley Ryder.

(133) Sir Edward Seymour, when he became Duke of Somerset, did not inherit the title of Beauchamp.-D.

(134) Lady Elizabeth Finch, eldest daughter of Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, and widow of Robert Benson, Lord Bingley.

(135) Countess of Egremont.

(136) Miss Margaret Banks, a celebrated beauty.

(137) Charlotte, sister of Lord Howe, and wife of Mr. Fettiplace.

(138) These lines are published in Walpole’s Works.-D.

(139) Madame du Boccage published a poem in imitation of Milton, and another founded on Gesner’s Death of Abel.  She also translated Pope’s Temple of Fame; but her principal work was ,La Columbiade.”  It was at the house of this lady, at Paris, in 1775, that Johnson was annoyed at her footman’s taking the sugar in his fingers and throwing it into his coffee.  “I was going,” says the Doctor, “to put it aside, but hearing it was made on purpose for me, I e’en tasted Tom’s fingers.”  She died in 1802.-E.

65 Letter 23 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, May 15, 1750.

The High-bailiff, after commending himself and his own impartiality for an hour this morning, not unlike your cousin Pelham, has declared Lord Trentham.  The mob declare they will pull his house down to show their impartiality.  The Princess has luckily produced another boy; so Sir George Vandeput may be recompensed with being godfather.  I stand to-morrow, not for a member, but for godfather to my sister’s girl, with Mrs. Selwyn and old Dunch:  were ever three such dowagers? when shall three such meet again?  If the babe has not a most sentimentally yellow complexion after such sureties, I will burn my books, and never answer for another skin.

You have heard, I suppose, that Nugent must answer a little more seriously for Lady Lymington’s child.  Why, she was as ugly as Mrs. Nugent, had had more children, and was not so young.  The pleasure of wronging a woman, who had bought him so dear, could be the only temptation.

Adieu!  I have told you all I know, and as much is scandal, very possibly more than is true.  I go to Strawberry on Saturday, and so shall not know even scandal.

66 Letter 24 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, May 19, 1750.

I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the detail of absurdities that were committed after the earthquake:  I could have filled more paper with such relations, If I had not feared tiring you.  We have swarmed with sermons, essays, relations, poems, and exhortations On that subject.  One Stukely, a parson, has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity—­but that is the fashionable cause, and every thing is resolved into electrical appearances, as formerly every thing was accounted for by Descartes’s vortices, and Sir Isaac’s gravitation.  But they all take care, after accounting for the earthquake systematically,