“As his vanity descends with his estate to his daughter, I don’t wish to see her my daughter-in-law, though she would make my son one of the richest and consequently, in our present ideas of greatness, one of the great peers of the Realm. But she will probably be the prize of some needy Duke, who will want her estate to repair the disasters of Newmarket and Arthur’s, or if she marries for love, of some ensign of the Guards, or smart Militia captain.” [Page heading: LINDRIDGE] Lord Lyttelton had just lost his clerical friend, Mr. Meadowcourt, of Lindridge, to whom he pays a high tribute. “His house was the abode of Philosophical quiet and disinterested friendship. The scene about it was elegant, mild and beautifull Nature. The Hills on each side and the vale underneath it were covered with orchards, with Hop yards, with corn or fine grazing grounds thro’ which wound a river.... Now the Master is dead it is fall’n to the dullest of all dull Divines, one Stillingfleet, cousin to him you know, who has not taste enough to live there himself, but leaves it to a curate. He desires his compliments to Dr. Gregory, who was staying with the Montagus, and adds, ‘I am glad the Scotch like my Dialogues.’ He also desires if the Bishop of Ossory (Richard Pococke) is with them to send him on to Hagley, and assures Mrs. Montagu he is very well and grown quite plump. His thinness was a constant joke with his friends, who called him nothing but bones, and he contends if weighed in the balance with Lord Bath, he would be found ‘very wanting.’ The Devil take him for having so much witt with so much flesh. He commends his new house and his daughter, now living with him.” Dr. Monsey writes to Mrs. Montagu from St. James’s on October 12, beginning the letter at 10 a.m., continued at 9 p.m., and finished the next day at Claremont. At the end of this letter he says that he has been very unwell and reported dead; he had made his will. “While I am writing I have your letter come in, which gives an account of my death, which is true, but save yourself the trouble of an epitaph for me or your funeral sermon, for I have _really_ given my body away by will to a Surgeon at Cambridge, who is to make a skeleton of my bones for the use of students in Physic, so if you have begun your epitaph with ‘Here he’s interr’d, etc.,’ change it to ‘Here hang the bones, etc.,’ and convert your sermon into an Osteological Lecture.” [Page heading: THE GREEK PLAYS AND SHAKESPEARE] Mrs. Montagu, in a long letter to Lord Lyttelton upon Euripides’ and Sophocles’ plays contrasted with Shakespeare’s, says--