Chapter 247

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 15, 1782. (page 319)

I congratulate your lordship on the acquisition of a valuable picture by Jameson. The Memoirs of your Society I have not yet received; but when I do, shall read it with great pleasure, and beg your lordship to offer my grateful thanks to the members, and to accept them yourself.

No literature appears here at this time of the year. London, I hear, is particularly empty. Not only the shooting season is begun, but till about seventeen days ago, there was nothing but incessant rains, and not one summer's day. A catalogue, in two quartos, of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, and which thence does not seem to contain great treasures, and Mr. Tyrwhitt's book on the Rowleian controversy, which is reckoned completely victorious, are all the novelties I have seen since I left town. War and politics occupy those who think at all-no great number neither; and most of those, too, are content with the events of the day, and forget them the next. But it is too like an old man to blame the age; and, as I have nothing to do with it, I may as well be silent and let it please itself. I am, with great regard, my lord, yours, etc.

(484) Now first collected.