“Mrs. Delany tells me Mr. Granville thinks himself very happy in passing some of his hours with you. She says she has great ambition to please you as you are an artist and a connoisseur. She is now copying a portrait of Sacharissa from Vandyck, and I believe it will please you very well.... The Duchess is in better spirits than ever I knew her; time has added accomplishments to her young family, her gardens are much improved, her house is new furnished.” [Page heading: DR. SHAW] The last letter of the year to the duchess mentions-- “I hear there is going to be published a new comedy by Dr. Hoadley[421] and a tragedy by Mr. Thomson. I have no great expectations of the comedy, for Dr. Hoadley is a sober physician, and must be a kind of comedian _malgré lui_. As to Mr. Thomson,[422] we know the pitch of his muse, and with what dignity his buskins tread the Stage.” She winds up with “best respects to the huge ‘Godfather of all Shell-fish,’ who, tho’ not so frisky I presume, as nimble as his Seabrother the Leviathan, or his Hornie palfrey the Seahorse, or his lapdog the Porpoise.” [421] Benjamin Hoadley, born 1706, died 1757. Physician to George II.; wrote “The Suspicious Husband.” [422] “Tancred and Sigismund.” This alludes to Dr. Shaw, the traveller, a constant visitor at Bullstrode, and a connoisseur in shells,[423] which the duchess took great delight in collecting. [423] _Vide_ the Catalogue of the Portland Museum of 1786, in which are hundreds of rare shells. [Year: 1747] An undated letter of Mrs. Montagu’s to the Duchess of Portland of 1747 in my collection, alluding to her visit at Bullstrode, is probably the first of that year. She says-- “I am this instant from the play, where I have been extremely entertained with that most comick of all personages, Sir John Falstaffe; as to Hotspur, he was in a very violent passion in the first act, and I think it is a part not equal to the genius of Garrick.” Garrick and Quin were this season taking alternate parts. Quin was then playing Falstaffe. A letter of Mr. Robinson’s of April 25 describes him giving a Drum in London, “4 card tables and others who did not play, and they were all a Kentish Set.... Dr. and Mrs. Middleton are in town, but they talk of going in a fortnight. I will tell you what I think of her when I see you.” This was Dr. Conyers Middleton’s third wife, Anne Powell, whom he had just married, but the exact date I am uncertain of. [Page heading: YOUNG EDWARD WORTLEY MONTAGU]