with enjoining such tasks to her slaves, what will she do in the full career of her power? The Sphinx was a harmless dicky-bird in comparison. To send one four Quipos, and only a hint at an alphabet, and bid one construe four Peruvian verses, without one's having ever learnt a syllable of the language, is despotism unparalleled. She might as well have ordered me to read an Egyptian obelisk, and tell her what was meant by animals so ill drawn that they are like nothing in the creation. My penance is ten times worse; I am to find out rhymes in colours, and thoughts in knots, and cadence in a jangle of orts and ends! I am a Sibyl if I believe that any being but a lady's chambermaid can understand the sense of minced ribbons, or discover sentiments in a salmagundi of black and blue, and red and purple, and white. A piece of a tippet may be very good poetry in Lima for aught I know; and such a genius as Dryden would soon have written a whole birth-day gown from as small a sample as Lady Anne has sent me; but for my part I cannot unsew a single stitch of such millinery versification; and though I will not contemptuously return such silken lines directly, I despair of unravelling them, and will only retain them till I have effile'd them for a whole morning, since it seems that a mistake in a single shade may occasion a blunder or perhaps a double entendre. Your Ladyship's new year's wishes are infinitely kind, though the molti e felici are compliments I can only accept as I would flowers strewed on my urn. I am well again; but my late disorder was, I believe, a little of the gout in my stomach; and when once the flaw begins there, where my only strength lay, it would be silly not to know how precarious the tenure is. Never deluding myself on that chapter, you will not wonder, Madam, that I am little qualified to resolve any questions about the dawn of the next reign. I attend to what is said about the Prince's family no more than I should to a prophet, who should offer to lay before me a vision of the whole next century. Can I forget that I kissed the hand of this Prince of Wales's great great-grandfather, the night but one before he left England for the last time? and that I was then ten years old? Antiquated dukes may hobble into and out of golden chariots, if they think their corpses look well in them -I should not like to lie in state before I am dead. Methinks the nation itself is fond of a magnificent funeral, and chooses to call in all countries to its burial, or at least to provoke them to despatch it. Et tu, Brute: even Holland is to give us a stab. The elements, too, have joined the armed neutrality. What a catastrophe that of Barbadoes! yet we are all gaiety, nay, delighted with the Dutch war. We lose provinces and islands, and are comforted by barrels of pickled herrings! Then, Madam, what a brave string of Irish peers! they put me in mind of the chain of galley-slaves in Don Quixote.' Like them, I dare swear, their new Lordships would one and all assure one-they are honest men! The ancient sovereigns of this isle are come to a non plus too. The Countess of Albany is retired into a convent. You know they live at Florence. Last St. Andrew's day, who is the favourite saint there too, the Count got so beastly drunk, that at night every filthy consequence ensued. The Countess complaining, he tore her hair, and endeavoured to strangle her. Her screams alarmed the family, and saved her. She privately acquainted the Great Duke, and by his authority and connivance she contrived to take shelter in a convent, declaring she will never return to her husband again, who has in vain reclaimed her from the Great Duke. Having nothing better to offer as a new year's gift, I shall add a Nuptial Ode that I made for Lady Lucan. It would be presumption to hope it, but if Lady Anne would be so good as to translate it into a wisp of party-coloured silk, and stuff a pincushion with it, I should flatter myself with my work being immortal. I. Hymen, O Hymenæe! To Althorp and Bingham Ye bards, come and sing 'em, II. To Althorp and Bingham With this or that thingum, That may call up in Bingham III. Your best wishes bring 'em, Your best roses fling 'em O'er the hammock, where Bingham And Althorpe shall swing 'em, With ding, ding, a dong. P.S. I am sorry to add so serious a P.S., as that poor Lady Foley died this morning. 1 Henrietta, fourth daughter of William, second Earl of Harrington.-CUNNINGHAM. 1991. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. . Jan. 3, 1781. AFTER I had written my note to you last night, I called on *, who gave me the dismal account of Jamaica,' that you will see in the Gazette,' and of the damage done to our shipping. Admiral Rowley is safe; but they are in apprehensions for Walsingham. He told me, too, what is not in the Gazette;' that of the expedition against the Spanish settlements-not a single man survives! The papers to-day, I see, speak of great danger to Gibraltar. Your brother repeated to me his great desire that you should publish your speech,' as he told you. I do not conceive why he is so eager for it, for he professes total despair about America. It looks to me as if there was a wish of throwing the blame somewhere; but I profess I am too simple to dive into the objects of shades of intrigues; nor do I care about them. We shall be reduced to a miserable little island; and from a mighty empire sink into as insignificant a country as Denmark or Sardinia! When our trade. and marine are gone, the latter of which we keep up by unnatural efforts, to which our debt will put a stop, we shall lose the East Indies as Portugal did; and then France will dictate to us more imperiously than ever we did to Ireland, which is in a manner already gone too. These are mortifying reflections, to which an English mind cannot easily accommodate itself. But, alas! we have been pursuing the very conduct that France would have prescribed, and more than with all her presumption she could have dared to expect. Could she flatter herself that we would take no advantage of the dilatoriness and unwillingness of Spain to enter into the war? that we would reject the disposition of Russia to On the 3rd of October occurred one of the most dreadful hurricanes ever experienced in the West Indies. In Jamaica, Savannah La Mar, with three hundred inhabitants, was utterly swept away by an irruption of the sea; and at Barbadoes, on the 10th, Bridge-town, the capital of the island, was almost levelled to the ground, and several thousands of the inhabitants perished.—WRIGHT. 2 Introductory of a motion "for leave to bring in a bill for quieting the troubles that have for some time subsisted between Great Britain and America, and enabling his Majesty to send out commissioners with full power to treat with America for that purpose." The motion was negatived by 123 against 81. For the speech of General Conway, and a copy of his proposed bill, see Parl. History, vol. xxi. pp. 570, 588.-WRIGHT. |