worst man I know either to convey an idle letter, or deliver what he receives; so that I design, when I trust him with this, to give him a memorial along with it; for if my former has miscarried, I am half persuaded to give him the blame. I find you a little lament your bondage, and indeed in your case it requires a good share of philosophy: but if you will not be angry, I believe I may have been the cause you are still a prisoner; for I imagine my former letter was intercepted by the French court, when the most christian king reading one passage in it, (and duly considering the weight of the person who wrote it) where I said, if the French understood your value as well as we do, he would not exchange you for count Tallard, and all the Debris of Blenheim together; for I must confess, I did not rally when I said so.
I hear your good sister, the queen of Pomunki, waits with impatience till you are restored to your dominions: and that your rogue of a viceroy returns money fast for England, against the time he must retire from his government. Mean time Philips writes verses in a sledge[1], upon the frozen sea, and transmits them hither to thrive in our warmer clime under the shelter of my lord Dorset. I could send you a great deal of news from the Republica Grubstreetaria, which was never in greater altitude, though I have been of late but a small contributor. A cargo of splinters from the Arabian rocks have been lately shipwrecked in the Thames, to the irreparable damage of the virtuosi. Mrs. Long and I
- ↑ Ambrose Philips, esq. See his Lapland, and other pastorals in his poems.
