“Jupiter en courroux
          
                                                    ’
Ne peut rien contre vous,
Vous `etes immortel.”

Our old laureat has been dying:  when he thought himself at the extremity, he wrote this lively, good-natured letter to the Duke of Grafton:-

“"May it please your Grace:  “I know no nearer way of repaying your favours for these last twenty years than by recommending the bearer, Mr. Henry Jones, for the vacant laurel:  Lord Chesterfield will tell you more of him.  I don’t know the day of my death, but while I live, I shall not cease to be, your Grace’s, etc.

“Colley Cibber.” ’

I asked my Lord Chesterfield who this Jones(212) is; he told me a better poet would not take the post, and a worse ought not to have it.  There are two new bon-mots of his lordship much repeated, better than his ordinary.  He says, he would not be president, because he would not be between two fires;(213) and that"the two brothers are like Arbuthnot’s Lindamira and Indamora;(214) the latter was an able, tractable gentlewoman, but her sister was always quarrelling and kicking and as they grew together, there was no parting them.

You will think my letters are absolute jest-and-story books, unless you will be so good as to dignify them with the title of Walpoliana.  Under that hope, I will tell you a very odd new story.  A citizen had advertised a reward for the discovery of a person who had stolen sixty guineas out of his scrutoire.  He received a message from a condemned criminal in Newgate, with the offer of revealing the thief.  Being a cautious grave personage, he took two friends along with him.  The convict told him that he was the robber; and when he doubted, the fellow began with these circumstances; You came home such a night, and put the money into your bureau:  I was Under your bed:  you undressed, and then went to the foot of the garret stairs, and cried, ‘Mary, come to bed to me-’” “Hold, hold,” said the citizen, “I am convinced.”  “Nay,” said the fellow, “you shell hear all, for our intrigue saved your life.  Mary replied, ‘If any body wants me, they may come up to me:’  you went:  I robbed your bureau in the mean time, but should have cut your throat, if you had gone into your bed instead of Mary S.”

The conclusion of my letter will be a more serious story, but very proper for the Walpoliana.  I have given you scraps of Ashton’s history.  To perfect his ingratitude, he has struck up an intimacy with my second brother, and done his utmost to make a new quarrel between us, on the merit of having broke with me on the affair of Dr. Middleton.  I don’t know whether I ever told you that my brother hated Middleton, who was ill with a Dr. Thirlby,(215) a creature of his.  He carried this and his jealousy of me so far, that once when Lord Mountford brought Middleton for one night only to Houghton my brother