with is greater merit than its rarity; though there are but two hundred copies printed, of which only half are mine. If it amuses an hour or two of your idle time, I am overpaid. My greatest ambition is to pay that respect, which every Englishman owes to your character and services; and therefore you must not wonder if an inconsiderable man seizes every opportunity, however awkwardly, of assuring you, that he is, Sir,

I TAKE the liberty to send you copies of two letters, which I received yesterday and the day

grief. Gray and I read it to amuse her. We could not get on for laughing and screaming. I begged to have it to print: Lord Powis, sensible of the extravagance, refused I insisted . he resisted. I told my Lady Hertford it was no matter, I would print it, I was determined. I sat down and wrote a flattering dedication to Lord Powis, which I knew he would swallow: he did and gave up his ancestor. But this was not enough; I was resolved the world should not think I admired it seriously, though there are really fine passages in it, and good sense too : I drew up an equivocal preface, in which you will discover my opinion, and sent it with the dedication. The Earl gulped down the one, under the palliative of the other; and here you will have it."

before from Sir George Yonge. (1) The contents of them were entirely new to me, except what I had observed in the printed papers. I send you also my answer to the first. To the last, I have yet made none; and I do not think it requires my immediate answer. The subject of these two letters seems to me to be a delicate one, and to require many explanations, before any fixed opinion or judgment can be made upon it.

I am very unfit, in every respect, for a negociation of this kind to pass through my hands; but as it is an affair of importance, and possibly some advantage to the public might arise from it, I hope you will excuse my troubling you immediately with all I know of it, as I shall do some few of my particular friends, under the strictest caution of secrecy. If you should think proper to honour me with your thoughts, what farther steps, if any at present, should be taken, in consequence of these letters from Sir George Yonge, I should be very much obliged to you, and make no other use of them but such as you shall direct.

I know the regard you had for our great and valuable friend the Duke of Devonshire (2), and I

(1) Sir George Yonge was at this time member for Honiton, and had recently published a letter to his constituents, relative to his conduct in parliament on the questions of general warrants. The subject to which the above letter immediately refers has not been ascertained.

(2) The Duke of Devonshire died on the 2d of October, at the German Spa; whither he had gone for the benefit of his health. "There's a chapter for moralising!" writes Walpole to

cannot but lament with you our public and private loss.

I am very sorry that I have not been able to wait upon you this summer at Hayes, as I fully intended. I desired my Lord Lincoln to acquaint you with the cause of it; namely, the ill state of the poor Duchess of Newcastle's health. The many great losses, both public and private, which we have had this summer, have very greatly affected her; and the last of all, which happened on Monday, of her old friend and companion of above forty-five years, poor Mrs. Spence (1), has added much to the melancholy situation in which she was before. She desires me to make her best compliments to you and Lady Chatham, to whom I beg you would also present mine. I have the honour to be, with the greatest truth and respect, Dear Sir,

Your most affectionate,

and obedient humble servant,

HOLLES NEWCASTLE.

Lord Hertford, "but five and forty, with forty thousand pounds a year, and happiness wherever he turned him! My reflection is, that it is folly to be unhappy at any thing, when felicity itself is such a phantom!"

(1) She was related to the Rev. Joseph Spence, the friend of Pope, and author of "Polymetis," "Anecdotes," &c.; who had been travelling tutor to Henry Earl of Lincoln, afterwards second Duke of Newcastle. In writing to Lord Hertford, on the 3d of November, Horace Walpole says, "Hogarth is dead, and so is Mrs. Spence, who lived with the Duchess of Newcastle. She had saved twenty thousand pounds, which she leaves to her sister, and after her, to Tommy Pelham;"-afterwards third Duke of Newcastle, and father of the present Duke.

MR. PITT TO THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.

[From a draught in Lady Chatham's handwriting.]

MY LORD,

October 1764.

I AM not able to begin my answer to the letter your Grace has honoured me with, by any thing but sincere condolences upon your domestic loss of poor Mrs. Spence, and the continuance of the Duchess of Newcastle's illness, and by expressing how sensibly and deeply I feel the great public loss of the Duke of Devonshire; whose composition and virtues must have endeared him in any times, and which, in my judgment, render the loss irreparable in the present.

As to the letters which your Grace has done me the honour to transmit to me, and which I herewith return inclosed, I can only present my best acknowledgments for the favourable sentiments which moved your Grace to make to me such a communication. As for the matter itself (which I perceive was not intended for my consideration), I must entreat your Grace to excuse me from offering any opinion whatever, as to the steps which you may think proper to take relating thereto. Of that your Grace, who has to consider the various personal attachments which follow you, can be only fit judge. As for my single self, I purpose to continue acting through life upon the best convictions I am able to form, and under the obligation of principles, not by the force of any particular bargains. I presume

not to judge for those, who think they see daylight to serve their country by such means; but shall continue myself, as often as I think it worth the while to go to the House, to go there free from stipulations, about every question under consideration, as well as to come out of the House as free as I entered it. I have some right to hope that your Grace will not attribute this reserve to want of confidence, having declared most explicitly, on all occasions, that whatever I think it my duty to oppose, or to promote, I shall do it independent of the sentiments of others.

Continuing, then, unalterable in the way of thinking your Grace was no stranger to, not to mix myself, nor to suffer others to mix me, in any bargains or stipulations whatever, I could much have wished your Grace had not done me the great honour to ask my advice upon the matter proposed to your Grace; and I humbly and earnestly entreat, that, for the future, the consideration of me may not weigh at all, in any answer your Grace may have to make to propositions of a political nature. Having seen the close of last session, and the system of that great war, in which my share of the ministry was so largely arraigned, given up by silence in a full House, I have little thoughts of beginning the world again upon a new centre of union. Your Grace will not, I trust, wonder, if after so recent and so strange a phenomenon in politics, I have no disposition to quit the free condition of a man standing single, and daring to appeal to his country at large, upon the soundness of his principles and the rectitude of his conduct.