1 sum of my answers to the great honour done me by express. MR. PITT TO EARL TEMPLE. Bath, May 3, 1754. MY DEAR LORD,-Though I did not hear the departure of my most obliging visitors this morning, I have done nothing but feel it this whole day. Accept this scrawl from a lame hand, addressed to you both, and be assured it conveys, in the few words I can write, the warmest sense of your goodness in coming so far to visit the sick. Sick I retract, for lame is all I can in conscience call myself; and that right to the dear retreat I am so enamoured of, I think is leaving me every day. In a word, I think the cheering countenances and sweet converse I have enjoyed for two days, will go a great way, both literally and figuratively, to set me upon my legs again. I have reconsidered Mr. Hoare's labours of yesterday, and I find it the very best thing he has yet done, in point of likeness. He thinks so himself, and will finish it con amore, as the painters say. For the present, farewell, my dear Lord Temple, and dear Grenville, and may you both have as much pleasure in London as I have had for eight-and-forty hours at Bath. W. PITT. 1 Probably referring to the Duke of Newcastle's letter to Mr. Pitt, of the 2nd instant, and the letters of the 5th and 6th instant, from Mr. Pitt, to the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke; see Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 95-103. MR. PITT TO EARL TEMPLE. Bath, May 23, 1754. MY DEAR LORD, -I am still the same indolent inactive thing your Lordship saw me; insomuch that I can hear unmoved of Parliaments assembling, and Speakers chusing, and all other great earthly things. I live the vernal day on verdant hills or sequestered valleys, where, to be poetical, for me, Health gushes from a thousand springs, and I enjoy the return of Her, and the absence of that thing called Ambition, with no small philosophic delight: in a word, I envy not the favorites of Heaven, the few, the very few, quos æquus amavit Jupiter, the dust of Kensington Causey, or the verdure of Lincoln's Inn Fields 2. I propose to be in London about the 7th or 8th of June, when I must not hope to find your Lordship there. I shall dispatch my necessary business as fast as I can, and pursue you to Stowe, where the charms, so seldom found, of true taste, and the more rare joys and comforts of true friendship, have fixed their happy residence. There it is that I most impatiently long to enjoy you and your works. I lay myself at the feet of Lady Temple and Miss Banks, and am, my dear Lord Temple's truly devoted, WM. PITT. 1 My affectionate remembrances to the Brotherhood. 1 George the Second constantly kept his court at Kensington Palace. 2 The Duke of Newcastle's town residence was in Lincoln's Inn Fields, at that time a more fashionable quarter of the town than it is now considered. LADY HESTER GRENVILLE' TO EARL TEMPLE. (October, 1754.) THE most expressive manner I can find of offering the thanks I would pay to you, my dearest Brother, for what has so lately passed with you on my subject, is to beg you would measure them by the degree of gratitude due to the happiness you have bestowed upon me by the most affectionate conduct in a circumstance so important to my happiness. The receiving the approbation of a brother whom I admire as much as I love, is a heartfelt joy that will not admit of description, though your declared friendship for Mr. Pitt, and his own superior merit secured me from any apprehensions, but such as arose from what prudential views might suggest to you; but you remembered them only to add to your kindness by not urging them to our unhappiness. Every way I have millions of thanks to offer you for your love to him, to me, and for those expressions of affection and regard which give me a double joy, as they will recommend me further to your friend, to whom I wish to be recommended by every endearing circumstance, feeling that pride and pleasure in his partiality for me which his infinite worth not only justifies, but renders right. You will easily imagine, my dear Brother, how great my happiness is, that in taking new engagements, I am, if possible, more closely united to my own family, which I have ever, and must ever, love and honour so highly. I feel my obligation so great to Lady Temple upon 1 It will at once be seen that this and the following letter refer to the intended marriage of Mr. Pitt and Lady Hester Grenville. this occasion, that I must give her the trouble by a letter. I should have preferred coming to Stowe to have repeated more fully what my heart dictates towards you and Lady Temple, but I hear you are immediately to have company, which, for many reasons that you can supply, I should chuse to avoid, and therefore hope, till I am at liberty to see you, you will accept my present acknowledgments and assurances of being, my dear Brother, most faithfully, Your affectionate and obliged Sister, HESTER GRENVILLE. MR. PITT TO EARL TEMPLE. (October, 1754.) MY DEAREST LORD,-I cannot suffer a day to pass without expressing a few of the thousand things I feel from your kindest, most amiable of letters to Lady Hester Grenville. You sent me from Stowe the most blessed of men, and every hour I live only brings me new and touching instances of the unceasing goodness and most affectionate and endearing partiality towards me, of the kind, noble, and generous fraternity to which it is my glory and happiness to be raised. Don't imagine, my dearest Lord, that these are the exaggerations of a heart thinking and talking of the brother of her that for ever fills it. I can say nothing to you that my heart has not always given you before this last transcendant and tender mark of your friendship and highest confidence. Your letter is the kindest that ever glowed from the best pen speaking the best heart. I should say a million of things about the charm of style and manner of it, if I was not too much filled and touched with the endearing matter of it. If it did not look like an expression more of a lover than a friend, I should say, I love, to the very pen that wrote it. What do I read in it, from the first line to the last, not only the same warmth of affection, but the same amiable delicacy of manner that I read in every word, and smallest instance of behaviour while I was at Stowe, and which even the best and kindest friends cannot put into their actions unless their minds are truly Grenville. How generous and how delicate it is in you to state me in the too flattering lights of your own partiality to the eyes of Lady Hester, and to help to furnish her with a kind of justification of, I fear, infinitely too great a sacrifice of her establishment. I see I have run into a long letter, intending only a note. I must yet add one word to Lady Temple, but let that one word imply acknowledgments and gratitudes without number. You cannot read, for I cannot write, as Lady Hester does me the honour to wait for me. Ever, ever your most affectionate, obliged, and happy friend. My best compliments to Miss Banks, and many thanks. EARL TEMPLE TO MR. WILKES. Stowe, October 12, 1754. RETURNED from the expensive delights of Berwick', and all the sweets of Edinburgh, I hope this will find 1 According to his biographer Almon, the "delights" of a Berwick election cost Wilkes between 3000l. and 4000l., and he was besides |