Harley
will hardly get abroad this week or ten days yet. I reckon, when I send
away this letter, he will be just got into the House of Commons. My last
letter went in twelve days, and so perhaps may this. No it won't, for
those letters that go under a fortnight are answers to one of yours,
otherwise you must take the days as they happen, some dry, some wet,
some barren, some fruitful, some merry, some insipid; some, etc.--I will
write you word exactly the first day I see young gooseberries, and pray
observe how much later you are. We have not had five fine days this five
weeks, but rain or wind. 'Tis a late spring they say here.--Go to bed,
you two dear saucy brats, and don't keep me up all night.

7. Ford has been at Epsom, to avoid Good Friday and Easter Sunday. He
forced me to-day to dine with him; and tells me there are letters from
Ireland, giving an account of a great indiscretion in the Archbishop
of Dublin, who applied a story out of Tacitus very reflectingly on Mr.
Harley, and that twenty people have written of it; I do not believe it
yet.(3) I called this evening to see Mr. Secretary, who has been very
ill with the gravel and pain in his back, by burgundy and champagne,
added to the sitting up all night at business; I found him drinking tea
while the rest were at champagne, and was very glad of it. I have chid
him so severely that I hardly knew whether he would take it well: then
I went and sat an hour with Mrs. St. John, who is growing a great
favourite of mine; she goes to the Bath on Wednesday, for she is much
out of health, and has begged me to take care of the Secretary.

8. I dined to-day with Mr. Secretary St. John; he gave me a letter
to read, which was from the publisher of the newspaper called the
Postboy;(4) in it there was a long copy of a letter from Dublin, giving
an account of what the Whigs said upon Mr. Harley's being stabbed, and
how much they abuse him and Mr. Secretary St. John; and at the end there
were half a dozen lines, telling the story of the Archbishop of Dublin,
and abusing him horribly; this was to be printed on Tuesday. I told the
Secretary I would not suffer that about the Archbishop to be printed,
and so I crossed it out; and afterwards, to prevent all danger, I made
him give me the letter, and, upon further thought, would let none of it
be published: and I sent for the printer, and told him so, and ordered
him, in the Secretary's name, to print nothing reflecting on anybody
in