my lord, you have put me above myself, and if I am to return to myself, I shall return to something very discontented and uneasy I am sure, my lord, you will make the best up you can of this hint for my good. If I am to have any thing, it will certainly be for her majesty's service, and the credit of my friends in the ministry, that it be done before I am recalled from hence, lest the world may think either that I have merited to be disgraced, or that you dare not stand by me: if nothing is to be done fiat voluntas Dei. I have writ to Lord Treasurer on this subject, and having implored your kind intercession, I promise you, it is the last remonstrance of the kind I will ever make. Adieu! my Lord! all honour, health and pleasure to you. MY DEAR LORD, Yours ever, MATT. 1714, Aug. 7. I SHOULD be wanting in my duty and friendship to you, if I were silent upon a point, which for me, of all men, it is most dangerous to touch: you will easily guess it is the differences, and as they are represented here, the open quarrels between my masters at Whitehall. Who is in the wrong, or who is in the right, is not in my power at this distance to determine; but this thing, every one sees at this court, from Torcy to Courtenvaux, as I believe they do in yours, from my Lord Chancellor to Miramont, that the honour of our nation daily diminishes, and the credit of the ministers most particularly suffers. I would expatiate upon this topic, if I did not write to a man of your superior sense, and I need make no excuse for touching upon it, because, I am sure, I write to a man who loves me and knows I love him. I have one reason to wish an end to these misunderstandings, more than any man else, which is, that I foresee my own ruin inevitably fixed in their continuance; but be all that as it will, my Lord Bolingbroke shall never be ashamed of my conduct, or find me behave otherwise than as an honest and an English man. Am I to go to Fontainbleau ? am I to come here? am I to be looked upon? am I to hang myself? From the present prospect of things, the latter begins to look most elegible. Adieu! my Lord, God bless you! I am ever inviolably yours, MATT. Mons. de Torcy has very severe, and I fear very exact accounts of us; we are all frightened out of our wits, upon the Duke of Marlborough's going into England. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LIONEL, EARL OF It looks like no great compliment to your Lordship, that I prefix your name to this epistle; when, in the preface, I declare the book is published almost against my inclination. But, in all cases, my Lord, you have an hereditary right to whatever may be called mine. Many of the following pieces were written by the command of your excellent father; and most of the rest, under his protection and patronage. The particular felicity of your birth, my Lord; the natural endowments of your mind, which, without suspicion of flattery, I may tell you, are very great; the good education with which these parts have been improved; and your coming into the world, and seeing men very early; make us expect from your Lordship all the good, which our hopes can form in favour of a young nobleman. Tu Marcellus eris,—Our eyes and our hearts are turned on you. You must be a judge and master of polite learning; a friend and patron to men of * Afterwards created Duke of Dorset. |