R-bys of this place. I know you will say you can do all this without flying to the other pole, by shunning the society of such wretches; but what avails it to me, that you are the very man I could wish, when I am separated from you by sea and land? If you will quit Marino, and, sail with me, I will fly from Al mack's, though, whatever evil I may have suffered from my connection with that place, I shall always with gratitude remember, that there I first began my acquaintance with you; and in the very sincerity of truth I can say, that I would rather have such a friend as you, even at three hundred miles distance, than both the Houses of Parliament for my friends in London.-I find when I have once begun to converse with you, I cannot leave off; you have spoiled me, my Lord, and must take the consequence Why should fortune have placed our paltry concerns in two different islands? if we could keep them, they are not worth one hour's conversation at Elmsly's. If life is good for any thing, it is only made so by the society of those whom we love. At all events I will try to come to Ireland, and shall take no excuse from you, for not coming early in the winter to London. The club exists but by your presence; the flourishing of learned men is the glory of the state. Mr. Vesey will tell you, that our club consists of the greatest men in the world, consequently you see there is a good and patriotic reason for you to return to England in the winter, Pray make my best respects to Lady Charlemont, and Miss Hickman, and tell them I wish they were at this moment sitting at the door of our ale-house in Gerard-street. Believe me to be, my dear Lord, T. BEAUCLERK. I delayed writing to you, as I al flattered myself that I should have been able to have paid you a visit at Dublin before this time, but I have been prevented, not by my own negligence and indolence, but by various matters.-I am rejoiced to find by your letter that Lady C. is as you wish. I have yet remaining so much benevolence towards mankind, as to wish, that there may be a son of your's, educated by you, as a specimen of what mankind ought to be.Goldsmith the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers, in praise of Lord Mayor, Townshend. The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne, at Drury Lane; I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him; he said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly, what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says, that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life. Johnson has been confined for some weeks in the Isle of Sky; we hear that he was obliged to swim over to the main land, taking hold of a cow's tail. Be that as it may, Lady Di. has promised to make a drawing of it. Our poor club is in a miserable decay; unless you come, and relieve it, it will certainly expire. Would you imagine that Sir Joshua Reynolds is extremely anxious to be a member of Almack's? You see what noble ambition will make a man attempt, That den is not yet opened, consequently I have not beeu there; so for the present I am clear upon that score. I suppose your confounded Irish politics take up your your whole attention at present. If they could but have obtained the absentee tax, the Irish parliament would have been perfect. They would have voted themselves out of parliament, and lessened their estates one half of the value. This is patriotism with a vengeance.--I have heard nothing of your peacock's eggs. The Duke of N-d tells me, that if they are put into tallow, or butter, they will never hatch. I mention this to you as worthy of your notice. Mr. Walpole promised me to send you a drawing of his frames, but he has been so much engaged with Lord Orford's affairs, that he has probably forgot it. There is nothing new at present in the literary world Mr. Jones, of our club, is going to publish an account, in Latin, of the eastern poetry, with extracts translated verbatim in verse. I will order Elmsly to send it to you when it comes out; I fancy it will be a very pretty book. Goldsmith has written a prologue for Mrs. Yates, which she spoke this evening before the opera. It is very good. You will see it soon in all the newspapers, otherwise I would send it to you. I hope to hear in your next letter that you have fixed your time for returning to England. We cannot do without you If you do not come here, I will bring all the club over to Ireland to live with you, and that will drive you here in your own defence. Johnson shall spoil your books, Goldsmith pull your flowers, and Boswell talk to you; stay then if you can. Adieu, my dear Lord. Pray make my best compliments to Lady Charlemont. Believe me to be, very sincerely, MY DEAR LORD, Enclosed I send you the drawing of Mr. Walpole's frames; which I did not receive till last night. I I am, my dear Lord, Adelphi, Dec. 24, 177). MY DEAR LORD, I have this moment received your letter, and I need not tell you how happy it has made me, by informing me that Lady Charlemont is well, and yourself so much better. I can now give you a better reason for not writing sooner to you, than for any other thing that I ever did in my life. When Sir Charles Bingham came from Ireland, I, as you may easily imagine, immediately inquired after you; he told me that you were very well, but in great affliction, having just lost your child. You cannot conceive how I was shocked with this news; not only by considering what you suffered on this occasion, but recollected that a foolish letter of mine, laughing at your Irish politics, would arrive just at that point of time. A bad joke at any time is a bad thing; but when any attempt at pleasantry happens, at a moment that a person is in great affliction, it certainly is the most odious thing in the world. I could not write to you to comfort you; you will not wonder, therefore, that I did not write at all. I must now entreat you to lay aside your politics for some time, and to consider that the taking care of your health is one of the most public-spirited things you can do; for, notwithstanding your vapour about Ireland, I do not believe that you can very well spare one honest man-Our politicians, on this side of the water, are all asleep; but I hear they are to be awakened next Monday, by a printer, who is ordered to attend the bar of the House, for having abused Sir Fletcher Norton. They have already passed a vote, that Sir Fletcher's character is immaculate, and will most certainly punish the printer very severely, if a trifling circumstance does not prevent them, viz. that the printer should, as he most probably will, refuse to attend. Our club has dwindled away to nothing. Nobody attends but Mr. Chambers, and he is going to the East Indies. Sir Joshua and Goldsmith have got into such a round of pleasures, that they have no time.In my next I will send you a long history of all our friends, and parti cularly an account how twelve thousand pounds may be paid without advancing one single shilling. This is certainly very convenient, and if you can get rid of all your feeling and morality before my next letter arrives, you may put it in practice, as probably it has not yet been introduced into Ireland. Believe me to be, my dear Lord, Adelphi, T. BEAUCLERK, Feb. 12, 1774. MY DEAR LORD; That it was my full intention to visit you in Ireland, and that it still remains so, is as true, as that I love and esteem you more than any man upon this earth; but various accidents have hitherto hindered me, the last of which has been a violent illness, which obliges me to a constant attendance on Doctor Turton; but, in spite of him, or nature itself, I will very soon pay you a visit. Business, it is true, I have none to keep me here; but you forget that I have business in Lancashire, and that I must go there, when I come to you. Now you will please to recollect, that there is nothing in this world I so entirely hate as business of any kind, and that I pay you the greatest compliment I can do, when I risque the meeting with my own confounded affairs, in order to have the pleasure of seeing you; but this I am resolved to do.-The D-—— is quite a new acquaintance; he says he is a scholar, and I believed him to be so. He seemed a good-natured man, and a man of parts, and one proof I am sure he gave of his understanding, by expressing a strong desire to be acquainted with you. I had recollection enough, however, not to give him a letter to you, as ! suspect that a certain thing, called politics, might be the cause of a dif ference between you, particularly as he he told me that he was an intimate friend of Rigby's. And if the old proverb is true, Noscitur à Socio, I guessed that he was not a man after your own heart. Why should you be vexed to find that mankind are fools and knaves? I have known it so long, that every fresh instance of it amuses me, provided it does not immediately affect my friends or myself. Politicians do not seem to me to be much greater rogues than other people; and as their actions affect, in general, private persons less than other kinds of villany do, I cannot find that I am so angry with them. It is true that the leading men, in both countries, at present, are, I believe, the most corrupt, abandoned people in the nation; but now that I am upon this worthy subject of human nature, I will inform you of a few particulars relating to the discovery of Otaheite, which Dr. Hawkesworth said placed the King above all the conquerors in the world; and if the glory is to be estimated by the mischief, I do not know whether he is rot right. When Wallis first anchored off the island two natives came along side of the ship, without fear or distrust, to barter their goods with our people. A man, called the boat-keeper, who was in a boat that was tied to the ship, attempted to get the things from them without payment. The savages resisted, and he struck one of them with the boathook, upon which they immediately paddled away. In the morning great numbers came in canoes of all sizes about the ship. They behaved, however, in the most peaceable manner, still offering to exchange their commodities for any thing that they could obtain from us. The same trick was played by attempting to take away their things by force. This enraged them, and they had come prepared to defend themselves with such weapons as they had; they immediately began to fling stones, one of which went into the cabin window. Wallis, on this, ordered that the guns loaded with grape shot, should be fired; this, you may imagine, immediately dispersed them Some were drowned, many killed, and some few got on shore, where numbers of the natives were assembled. Wallis then ordered the great guns to be played, according to his phrase, upon them. This drove them off; when he still ordered the same pastime to be continued, in order to convince them, as he says, that our arms could reach them at such a distance. If you add to this, that the inhabitants of all these islands are eat up with vile disorders, you will find that men may be much worse employed, than by doing the dirtiest job that ever was undertaken by the lowest of our clerk-ministers. These particulars I had from a man who went the last voyage, and had them from the gunner of Wallis's ship. We have one of the natives here who was wounded in that infernal massacre.-There is another curiosity here, Mr. Bruce. His drawings are the most beautiful things you ever saw, and his adventures more wonderful than those of Sinbad the sailor, and perhaps as true, I am much more afflicted with the account you send me of your health, than I am at the corruptiou of your ministers; I always hated politics, and I now hate them ten times worse, as I have reason to think that they contribute towards your ill health. You do me great justice in thinking that whatever concerns you must interest me, but as I wish you most sincerely to be perfectly happy, I cannot bear to think that the villanous proceedings of others should make you miser able; able; for, in that case, undoubtedly you will never be happy-Charles Fox is a member at the Turk's Head, but not till he was a patriot, and you know if one repents, &c.— There is nothing new, but Goldsmith's Retaliation, which you certainly have seen. Pray tell Lady Charlemont from me, that I desire Believe me to be, &c. B CHARACTER OF LORD CHARLEMONT. UT Lord Charlemont's valuable life now drew rapidly to a close. He had attended constantly in the House of Lords, during the discussion of the Union, and the temporary defeat of that measure had given him some transient spirits. But his health declined every hour. His appetite had almost ceased, his limbs swelled, and it was evident to his family, and bis friends, that he could not long survive. He was visited in this his last illness, by his numerous acquaintance, till his strength more and more exhausted, rendered him incapable of seeing but very few. One of the persons whom, I believe, he last saw, was Baron Metge; a gentleman whom, through life, he highly valued, and who was most cordially attached to him. At last, for some days previous to his dissolution, he sunk into a species of stupor, Consanguineus lethi sopor, to make use of the words of one of the respectable physicians who attended him. He at length expired at Charlemont House, Dublin, on the 4th of August, 1799, and in the seventieth year of his age. It was at first intended that his funeral should be public; but, after some consultation, his remains were conveyed to Armagh, and interred in the family vault in that ancient cathedral. Though it was agreed on that the funeral should be strictly private, it was most numerously attended. The burial service wa read by the Lord Primate, Archbishop of Armagh. Among his papers is the following MY OWN EPITAPH. Let his posterity imitate him in that alon His manifold errors. "Thus have I endeavoured to present to the reader, the public, and much of the private, history of Lord Charlemont. To write the life of such a man may be, perhaps, impartially considered, as a matter of some difficulty. Though engaged much, and acting the most honourable part in political life, he could not be strictly called a statesman; though a member of an ancient de. liberative assembly, he was not an orator; though possessed of the purest taste, and distinguished by many literary performances, which do honour to his memory, be cannot, without a violation of historical truth, |