=Source.=--_Letters of Horace Walpole._ Edited by P. Cunningham London:
Bentley. Vol. iii., pp. 419-421. 1891.
_To George Montagu, Esq., Strawberry Hill, July 22, 1761._
For my part, I believe Mademoiselle Scuderi drew the plan of this
year. It is all royal marriages, coronations and victories; they come
tumbling so over one another from distant parts of the globe, that
it looks just like the handy-work of a lady romance writer, whom it
costs nothing but a little false geography to make the great Mogul in
love with a princess of ----, and defeat two marshals of France as he
rides post on an elephant to his nuptials. I don’t know where I am. I
had scarce found Mecklenburgh Strelitz with a magnifying glass, before
I am whisked to Pondicherri--well, I take it, and raze it. I begin
to grow acquainted with Colonel Coote, and to figure him packing up
chests of diamonds, and sending them to his wife against the King’s
wedding--thunder go the Tower guns, and behold Broglio and Soubise are
totally defeated; if the mob have not much stronger heads and quicker
conceptions than I have, they will conclude my lord Granby is become
nabob. How the deuce in two days can one digest all this? Why is not
Pondicherri in Westphalia? I don’t know how the Romans did, but I
cannot support two victories every week. Well, but you will want to
know the particulars. Broglio and Soubise, united, attacked our army
on the fifteenth, but were repulsed; the next day, the prince Mahomet
Alli Cawn--no, no, I mean prince Ferdinand, returned the attack, and
the French threw down their arms, and fled, run over my lord Harcourt,
who was going to fetch the new queen; in short, I don’t know how it
was, but Mr. Conway is safe, and I am as happy as Mr. Pitt himself. We
have only lost a lieutenant-colonel Keith; colonel Marlay and Harry
Townshend are wounded.... I dined with your secretary yesterday; there
were Garrick and a young Mr. Burke, who wrote a book in the style of
lord Bolingbroke, that was much admired. He is a sensible man, but has
not worn off his authorism yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming
as writers, and to be one. He will know better one of these days. I
like Hamilton’s little Marly; we walked in the great allée, and drank
tea in the arbour of treillage; they talked of Shakspeare and Booth,
of Swift and my lord Bath, and I was thinking of Madame Sévigné. Good
night! I have a dozen other letters to write; I must tell my friends
how happy I am--not as an Englishman, but as a cousin.
Yours ever.