Το GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Arlington-street, May 4, 1758.

You are the first person, I believe, that ever thought of a Swiss transcribing Welsh, unless, like some commentator on the scriptures, you have discovered great affinity between those languages, and that both are dialects of the Phoenician. I have desired your brother to call here to-day, and to help us in adjusting the inscriptions. I can find no lady Cutts in your pedigree, and till I do, cannot accommodate her with a coronet.

My book is marvellously in fashion, to my great astonishment. I did not expect so much truth and such notions of liberty would have made their fortune in this our day. I am preparing an edition for publication, and then I must expect to be a little less civilly treated. My lord Chesterfield tells every body that he subscribes to all my opinions; but this mortifies me about as much as the rest flatter me; I cannot, because it is my own case, forget how many foolish books he has diverted himself with commending. The most extraordinary thing I have heard about mine is, that it being talked of at lord Arran's table, doctor King, the doctor King of Oxford, said of the passage on my father; "it is very modest, very genteel, and VERY TRUE." I asked my lady Cardigan if she would forgive my making free with her grandmother; she replied very sensibly, "I am sure she would not have hindered any body from writing against me; why should I be angry at any writing against her?"

The history promised you of Dr. Brown is this. Sir Charles Williams had written an answer to his first silly volume of the Estimate, chiefly before he came over, but finished while he was confined at Kensington. Brown had lately lodged in the same house, not mad now, though he has been so formerly. The landlady told sir Charles, and offered to make affidavit that Dr. Brown was the most profane curser and swearer that ever came into her house. Before I proceed in my history, I will tell you another anecdote of this great performer: one of his antipathies is the opera, yet the only time I ever saw him was in last Passionweek singing the Romish stabat mater with the Mingotti behind a harpsichord at a great concert at my lady Carlisle's; well-in a great apprehension of sir Charles divulging the story of his swearing, Brown went to Dodsley in a most scurrilous and hectoring manner, threatening Dodsley if he should publish any thing personal against him; abusing sir Charles for a coward and most abandoned man, and bidding Dodsley tell the latter that he had a cousin in the army, who would call sir Charles to account for any reflections on him, Brown. Stay; this Christian message from a divine, who by the way has a chapter in his book against duelling, is not all: Dodsley refused to carry any such message, unless in writing. The doctor, enough in his senses to know the consequences of this, refused; and at last a short verbal message, more decently worded, was agreed on. To this sir Charles made Dodsley write down this answer: "that he could not but be surprised at Brown's message, after that, he sir Charles had at Ranby's desire sent Brown a written assurance that he intended to say nothing personal of him -nay nor should yet, unless Brown's impertinence made it necessary." This proper reply Dodsley sent: Brown wrote back, that he should send an answer to sir Charles himself; but bid Dodsley take notice, that printing the works of a supposed lunatic, might be imputed to the printer himself, and which he, the said Dr. should chastise. Dodsley, after notifying this new and unprovoked insolence to me, Fox and Garrick, the one, friend of sir Charles, the other of Brown, returned a very proper, decent, yet firm answer, with assurances of repaying chastisement of any sort. Is it credible? this audacious man sent only a card back, saying, "Footman's language I never return, J. Brown." You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is, how

little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman! but there is no exaggerating this behaviour by reflections. On the same card he tells Dodşley that he cannot now accept, but returns his present of the two last volumes of his collection of poems, and assures him that they are not soiled by the reading. But the best picture of him is his own second volume, which beats all the Scaligers and Scioppius's for vanity and insolent impertinence. What is delightful; in the first volume he had deified Warburton, but the success of that trumpery has made Warburton jealous, and occasioned a coolness-but enough of this jackanapes.

Your brother has been here, and as he is to go to-morrow, and the pedigree is not quite finished, and as you will be impatient, and as it is impossible for us to transcribe Welsh, which we cannot read, without your assistance, who don't understand it neither, we have determined that the colonel should carry the pedigree to you; you will examine it and bring it with you to Strawberry, where it can be finished under your own eye, better than it is possible to do without. Adieu: I have not writ so long a letter this age.

Yours ever,

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Arlington-street, June 4, 1758.

THE habeas corpus is finished, but only for this year. Lord Temple threatened to renew it the next; on which lord Hardwicke took the party of proposing to order the judges to prepare a bill for extending the power of granting the writ in vacation to all the judges. This prevented a division; though lord Temple, who protested alone t'other day, had a flaming protest ready, which was to have been signed by near thirty. They sat last night till past nine. Lord Mansfield spoke admirably for two hours and twenty-five minutes. Except lord Ravensworth and the duke of Newcastle, whose meaning the first never knows himself, and the latter's nobody else, all who spoke, spoke well: they were lord Temple, lord Talbot, lord Bruce, and lord Stanhope, for; lord Morton, lord Hardwicke, and lord Mansfield, against the bill.

The duke of Grafton has resigned. Norborne Berkeley has converted a party of pleasure into a campaign, and is gone with the expedition,1 without a shirt but what he had on, and what is lent him. The night he sailed he had invited women