m for you.

I will endeavour to learn what you desire; and will answer, in another
letter, that and some other passages in your last. Dr. Hunter is very
good, and calls on me sometimes. You may guess whether we talk you over
or not. Adieu!

_A NEW YEAR'S PARTY AT LADY SUFFOLK'S--LADY TEMPLE POETESS LAUREATE TO
THE MUSES_

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

ARLINGTON STREET, _Jan._ 11, 1764.

It is an age, I own, since I wrote to you: but except politics, what was
there to send you? and for politics, the present are too contemptible to
be recorded by anybody but journalists, gazetteers, and such historians!
The ordinary of Newgate, or Mr. ----, who write for their monthly
half-crown, and who are indifferent whether Lord Bute, Lord Melcombe, or
Maclean [the highwayman], is their hero, may swear they find diamonds on
dunghills; but you will excuse _me_, if I let our correspondence lie
dormant rather than deal in such trash. I am forced to send Lord
Hertford and Sir Horace Mann such garbage, because they are out of
England, and the sea softens and makes palatable any potion, as it does
claret; but unless I can divert _you_, I had rather wait till we can
laugh together; the best employment for friends, who do not mean to pick
one another's pocket, nor make a property of either's frankness. Instead
of politics, therefore, I shall amuse you to-day with a fairy tale.

I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk's on New-year's morn, where I
found Lady Temple and others. On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small
round box. She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of eleven
years. In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring, and a paper in which,
in a hand as small as Buckinger's[1] who used to write the Lord's
Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following lines:--

Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen,
A new-year's gift from Mab our queen:
But tell it not, for if you do,
You will be pinch'd all black and blue.
Consider well, what a disgrace,
To show abroad your mottled face:
Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
And sometimes think of Ob. the king.

[Footnote 1: Buckinger was a dwarf born without hands or feet.]

You will eagerly guess that Lady Temple was the poetess, and that we
were delighted with the gentleness of the thought and execution. The
child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the
present. Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwar