"MY DEAR SIR,--I believe I need not inform you how little I have been inclined to solicit the great, or even my own friends, for any thing that regards my own fortune. I may venture to say, that, hitherto, I have never once made any application of this nature: and you may wonder that now, at my years, when the greatest part of life is past, and I may esteem myself, in other respects, pretty much at my ease, I should submit to prefer requests which I declined at an age when ambition ought naturally to be stronger, and when my circumstances much more powerfully called for assistance. But the step I take at present is at Lord Hertford's desire; who, being determined to make it a point that I should have the credentials and appointments of secretary to the embassy, expressed his wish that I should apply to all my own friends on the same subject. My obligations to him are so great, that, even were I more reluctant, I could not have declined compliance; and surely I can have but small reluctance to apply to you, one of my best friends, with whom I have long lived in a course of intimacy and good correspondence. "I remember that the last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, you said, that I no doubt wondered how it happened, that while the prime minister and favourite, who inclined to be a Mæcenas, and who bore me no ill will, was surrounded by all my most particular friends, I should never have experienced any good effects from their credit. I own that I never was surprised; not from any diffidence in them, but from some obvious objections. Now all these objections are removed by Lord Hertford's friendship. Nobody, henceforth, need be afraid to patronize me, either as a Scotchman or a Deist. This circumstance encourages me in my present application to my friends. "Surely it is impossible to give them a juster and more plausible cause to support than mine. I do the functions here of secretary to the embassy: Is it not scandalous that another should live in London and draw the salary? "Is it for the credit of government, that such abuses should appear to foreign nations? Is it good policy to send an ambassador to the most important of all foreign employments, and yet declare that he has so little credit at home, as not to have the choice of his own secretary. "I shall not say that the partiality I meet with here will make these abuses more remarked, than if another person, less known, were concerned. But surely the government puts me in a situation which ought to render me entirely useless to my Lord Hertford, by refusing me a character which should have appeared necessary, in order to gain me admittance into company.