“With all my pretences, there is no more veracity in me than in a Scotch runner for the Ministry. Here must I send away my letter without a word in it worth a straw. All the good news I know is, that a winter is come in that will send armies and navies to bed, and one may stir out in November without fear of being tanned. I am heartily glad that we shall keep Jamaica and the East Indies another year, that one may have time to lay in a stock of tea and sugar for the rest of one’s days. I think only of the necessaries of life, and do not care a rush for gold and diamonds, and the pleasure of stealing logwood. The friends of Government, who have thought of nothing but of reducing us to our islandhood, and bringing us back to the simplicity of ancient times, when we were the frugal, temperate, virtuous old English, ask how we did before tea and sugar were known. Better, no doubt; but as I did not happen to be born two or three hundred years ago, I cannot recollect precisely whether diluted acorns, and barley bread spread with honey, made a very luxurious breakfast. “I was last night at Lady Lucan’s to hear the Misses Bingham sing Jomelli’s ‘Miserere,’ set for two voices. There were only the Duchess of Bedford, Lady Bute … and half a dozen Irish.… The Duchess told me, that a habit-maker returned from Ampthill is gone stark in love with Lady Ossory, on fitting her with the new dress--I think they call it a Levite--and says he never saw so glorious a figure. I know that; and so you would be in a hop-sack, Madam--but where is the grace in a man’s nightgown bound round with a belt? “Good-night, Lady! I hope I shall have something to tell you in my next, that my letter may be shorter. “Codicil to my to-day’s:--viz. Nov. 15, 1779. “I enclosed the above to Lord Ossory, because it was not worth sixpence, and had sent it to the post, and then went to Bedford House, where, lo! enters Lady Shelburne, looking as fresh and ripe as Pomona. N.B. Her windows were not open yesterday, and to-day there was such a mist, ermined with snow, that I could not see. I find it was not a habit-maker that was smitten with your Ladyship as a pig in a poke, but somebody else; but as her Grace’s mouth has lost one tooth, and my ear, I suspect, another, I have not found out who the unfortunate man is. “Next enters your Ladyship’s letter. I have seen my dignity of Minister to Spain[78]--many a fair castle have I erected in that country, but truly never resided there.… This is long enough for a codicil, in which one has nothing more to give.” In the same lively mood, he writes about the same time to Mason: “Berkeley Square, Nov. I don’t know what day.