It is very lucky that you did not succeed in the expedition to Rochfort.  Perhaps you might have been made a peer; and as Chatham is a naval title, it might have fallen to your share.  But it was reserved to crown greater glory:  and lest it should not be substantial pay enough, three thousand pounds a year for three lives go along with it.  Not to Mr. Pitt—­you can’t suppose it.  Why truly, not the title, but the annuity does, and Lady Hester is the baroness; that, if he should please, he may earn an earldom himself.  Don’t believe me, if you have not a mind.  I know I did not believe those who told me.  But ask the gazette that swears it—­ask the King, who has kissed Lady Hester—­ask the city of London, who are ready to tear Mr. Pitt to pieces—­ask forty people I can name, who are overjoyed at it—­and then ask me again, who am mortified, and who have been the dupe of his disinterestedness.  Oh, my dear Harry!  I beg you on my knees, keep your virtue:  do let me think there is still one man upon earth who despises money.  I wrote you an account last week of his resignation.  Could you have believed that in four days he would have tumbled from the conquest of Spain to receiving’ a quarter’s pension from Mr. West?(193) To-day he has advertised his seven coach-horses to be sold—­Three thousand a year for three lives, and fifty thousand pounds of his own, will not keep a coach and six.  I protest I believe he is mad, and Lord Temple thinks so too; for he resigned the same morning that Pitt accepted the pension.  George Grenville is minister of the House of Commons.  I don’t know who will be Speaker.  They talk of Prowse, Hussey, Bacon, and even of old Sir John Rushout.  Delaval has said an admirable thing:  he blames Pitt not as you and I do; but calls him fool; and says, if he had gone into the city, told them he had a poor wife and children unprovided for, and had opened a subscription, he would have got five hundred thousand pounds, instead of three thousand pounds a year.  In the mean time the good man has saddled us with a war which we can neither carry on nor carry off.  ’Tis pitiful! ’tis wondrous pitiful!  Is the communication stopped, that we never hear from you?  I own ’tis an Irish question.  I am out of humour:  my visions are dispelled, and you are still abroad.  As I cannot put Mr. Pitt to death, at least I have buried him:  here is his epitaph: 

Admire his eloquence—­it mounted higher
Than Attic purity or Roman fire: 
Adore his services-our lions view
Ranging, where Roman eagles never flew: 
Copy his soul supreme o’er Lucre’s sphere;
—­But oh! beware three thousand pounds a-year!(194)

October 13.

Jemmy Grenville resigned yesterday.  Lord Temple is all hostility; and goes to the drawing-room to tell every body how angry he is with the court-but what is Sir Joseph Wittol, when Nol Bluff is pacific?  They talk of erecting a tavern in the city, called The Salutation:  the sign to represent Lord Bath and Mr. Pitt embracing.  These are shameful times.  Adieu!