great a share of load, in this general calamity: and remain, with the greatest respect and truth, madam,
Your ladyship's most obedient
and most obliged servant.
TO LORD BOLINGBROKE.
I HAD yours of the third; and our country post is so ordered, that I could acknowledge it no sooner. It is true, my lord, the events of five days last week might furnish morals for another volume of Seneca. As to my lord Oxford, I told him freely my opinion before I left the town, that he ought to resign at the end of the session. I said the same thing often to your lordship and my lady Masham, although you seemed to think otherwise, for some reasons: and said so to him one afternoon, when I met you there with my lord chancellor. But, I remember, one of the last nights I saw him (it was at lady Masham's lodgings) I said to him, "That, upon the foot your lordship and he then were, it was impossible you could serve together two months:" and, I think, I was just a week out in my calculation. I am only sorry, that it was not a resignation, rather than a removal; because the personal kindness and dis-
