(150) She was afterwards married to Lord Haddington.-E.

(151) A tavern at the end of the wooden bridge at Chelsea, at that period much frequented by his lordship and other men of rank.-E.

(152) Anne, daughter and Heiress of Sir Henry Johnson, widow of Thomas Lord Raby, created Earl of Strafford in 1711.

(153) Lady Frances Seymour, eldest daughter of Charles, Duke of Somerset (known by the name of the Proud Duke), by his second Duchess, Lady Charlotte Finch.  She was married in the following September to the Marquis of Granby.-E.

(154) Warburton, in a letter to Hurd, of the 11th of July, says, “I hear Dr. Middleton has been lately in London, (I suppose, to consult Dr. Heberden about his health,) and is returned in an extreme bad condition.  The scribblers against him will say they have killed him; but by what Mr. Yorke told me, his bricklayer will dispute the honour of his death with them.’,-E.

(155) The Doctor had recently taken a third wife, the relict of a Bristol merchant.  On making her a matrimonial visit, Bishop Gooch told Mrs. Middleton that ,he was glad she did not dislike the Ancients so much as her husband did.”  She replied, “that she hoped his lordship did not reckon her husband among the Ancients yet.”  The Bishop answered, “You, Madam, are the best judge of that” Nichols’s literary Anecdotes, Vol. v. p. 422.-E.

71 Letter 26 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, July 25, 1750.

I told you my idle season was coming on, and that I should have great intervals between my letters; have not I kept my word?  For any thing I have to tell you, I might have kept it a month longer.  I came out of Essex last night, and find the town quite depopulated:  I leave it to-morrow, and go to Mr. Conway’s(156) in Buckinghamshire, with only giving a transient glance on Strawberry Hill.  Don’t imagine I am grown fickle; I thrust all my visits into a heap, and then am quiet for the rest of the season.  It is so much the way in England to jaunt about, that one can’t avoid it; but it convinces me that people are more tired of themselves and the country than they care to own.

Has your brother told you that my Lord Chesterfield has bought the Houghton lantern? the famous lantern, that produced so much patriot Wit;(157) and very likely some of his lordship’s?  My brother had bought a much handsomer at Lord Cholmondeley’s sale; for, with all the immensity of the celebrated one, it was ugly, and too little for the hall.  He would have given it to Lord Chesterfield rather than he should not have had it.

You tell us nothing of your big events, of the quarrel of the Pope and the Venetians, on the Patriarchate of Aquileia.  We look upon it as so decisive that I should not wonder if Mr. Lyttelton, or Whitfield the Methodist, were to set out for Venice, to make them a tender of some of our religions.