wrote my father a most outrageous letter, telling him that he knew I had fetched Middleton to Houghton to write my father’s life, and how much more capable Thirlby was of this task.  Can one help admiring in these instances the dignity of human nature!  Poor Mrs. Middleton is alarmed with a scheme that I think she very justly suspects as a plot of the clergy to get at and suppress her husband’s papers.  He died in a lawsuit with a builder, who has since got a monition from the Commons for her to produce all the Doctor’s effects and papers.  The whole debt is but eight hundred pounds.  She offered ten thousand pounds security, and the fellow will not take it.  Is there clergy in it, or no?  Adieu!

(208) Lady Yarmouth.  The new amour did not proceed.

(209) Mrs. Marriot.

(210) She was, though maid of honour, privately married to Augustus, second son of the late Lord Hervey, by whom she had two children; but disagreeing, the match was not owned.  She afterwards, still maid of honour, lived very publicly with the Duke of Kingston, and at last married him during Mr. Hervey’s life.

(211) Princess Craon, formerly mistress of Leopold, Duke of Lorraine.

(212) I think he was an Irish bricklayer; he wrote an “Earl of Essex.” ["Having a natural inclination for the Muses,” says his biographer, “he pursued his devotions to them even during the labours of his more mechanical avocations, and composing a line of brick and a line of verse alternately, his wall and poems rose up in growth together.”  His tragedy of the “Earl of Essex” came out at Covent Garden in 1753, and met with considerable success.  He died in great want, in 1770.-E.]

(213) Meaning President of the Council.  The two fires were the Pelham brothers; between whom all private intercourse was at this time suspended.-E.

(214) See the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus in Swift’s Works; Indamora alludes to Mr. Pelham, Lindamira to the Duke of Newcastle.

(215) For a notice of the Doctor, see ant`e.-E.

89 Letter 35
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, Feb. 9, 1751.

You will wonder that I, who am pretty punctual, even when I have little to say, should have been so silent at the beginning of a session:  I will tell you some reasons why; what I had to tell you was not finished; I wished to give you an entire account:  besides, we have had so vigorous an attendance, that with that, and the fatigue, it was impossible to write.  Before the Parliament met, there was a dead tranquillity, and no symptoms of party spirit.  What is more extraordinary, though the Opposition set out vehemently the very first day, there has appeared ten times greater spirit on the court side, a Whig vehemence that has rushed on heartily.  I have been much entertained-what should I have been, if I had lived in the times of the Exclusion-bill, and the end of queen Anne’s reign, when votes and debates really tended to something!