LETTER X. MR. MADDISON TO POPE. To ALEXT. POPE, at MR. JERVIS'S HOUSE, in CLEVELAND COURT. SIR, My Lady Dutchess being drunk at this present, & not able to write herself, has commanded me to acquaint you that there is to be musick on the water on Thursday next, therefore desires you to be yt evening at her house in Bond Street by Six a Clock at farthest, and her Grace will call of you there to take you in her barge, which she has ordered to be ready at that time at White Hall with Provisions, and shall land you at the wish'd for shoare. I am Yr most humble Servant, East Acton. G. MADDISON. Tuesday Night. † Out of y abundance of y heart ye mouth speaketh, so Pope is the word, a disappointment is not to be endured. * The Duchess of Kingston. †This is written in a different hand. MADAM, LETTER XI. LADY HARCOURT TO POPE'S MOTHER. To MRS. POPE. I send you a letter your son left for you, the charriot will be with you to morrow about eleven, in which you must remember to bring my friend nurse. I am, Madam, Your very humble Servt. LETTER XII. PULTENEY TO POPE. DEAR ST. I cannot call upon you as I promised in my way to Ashley, My Lord Berkeley having sent for me to come to Cranford to him upon some business: after a day or two stay there, I shall go to Causham, & then return to Ashley ab* the 25th, when I shall be extremely obliged to you if you will lett me have the honour of your company for a week; I will send my coach for you, or come and fetch you myself. I am, St. Your most Obedient humble Servant, W PULTENEY.* Arlington Street, Augt. 13th, 1724. * William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, had been persuaded by sir Robert Walpole to apply himself to politicks, in which, soon making a figure, he was appointed Secretary at War, when the Whigs came into power, in the late King's reign; but towards the end of it, he went into the Opposition, at the head of which he continued till the fall of sir Robert Walpole. That Minister persuaded the King, when he took leave of him, to comply with none of Mr. Pulteney's demands, unless he would quit the House of Commons, and accept a Peerage, which he imprudently promising to do, though not without great reluctance, before the patent was passed, and raising his creatures, who were men of the meanest capacities, to the chief places, in preference to all the rest of the Opposition, who had acted with him, they refused to follow him in his politicks, and persecuted him in Parliament, and with innumerable libels and satires. On the death of Lord Wilmington, he asked for the Treasury, to which Mr. Pelham was preferred, but to which he was named in the Ministry of three days. From that time he made no figure. He was immensely rich from great parsimony and great * LETTER XIII. PULTENEY TO POPE. Ashley, Sept. 4th, 1724. Sr. I have ever since my return had my House full of such company as I very little expected and you would very little have liked, which was successions, and had endeavoured to add another to them. The Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter to King James II. designing to take a journey to Rome to promote some Jacobite measures, and apprehending the consequence, made over her estate to Lord Bath, by a deed which he afterwards sunk, and pretended to have lost. On this the Duchess, after forcing a release from him, struck him out of her will as one of her executors; and many years afterwards, on marrying her grandson to Lord Hervey's daughter, she appointed sir Robert Walpole one of her executors. This happening soon after that Minister's fall, he said to Lord Orford in the House of Lords, So, my Lord, I find I have got my Lord Bath's place before he has got mine.' Lord Orford's Memoirs. * "Good-humour and the spirit of society dictated his poetry; ambition and acrimony his political writings; the latter made Pope say, 'How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!' That loss, however, was amply compensated to the world by the Odes to which Lord Bath's political conduct gave birth. The pen of Sir C. Hanbury Williams inflicted deeper wounds in three months on this Lord, than a series of Craftsmen, aided by But at the reason I did not send to you sooner. present, if you have nothing better to do, & will spend a few days with Mrs. Pulteney & me, we shall be obliged to you, and will send the Coach for you when you please. I am, Your most humble Servant, Wm. PULTENEY. Lord Bolingbroke, for several years, could imprint on sir Robert Walpole." Lord Orford. There are some amusing letters from the Earl of Bath published in the Colman Correspondence. The following anecdote is told by the witty Editor of that most interesting collection. "Lord Bath's parsimony in trifling matters, was sometimes laughable. I had the following anecdote from my father:-In a rural lane, through which the Noble Earl often passed, in his carriage, a gate was placed across the road, which was opened for travellers by an ancient female. His Lordship, one day, touched by the appearance of the old woman, gave the word to halt; the outriders echoed the order; the coachman pulled up, the cavalcade stood still,-and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, stretching forth his hand from his coach-and-four, bedecked with coronets, threw the venerable object of his bounty -a halfpenny!" ..In the letters addressed to the elder Colman, his Grace repeatedly gives him instructions how to lessen or obviate the |