124 To CHARLES LYTTELTON 23 MARCH 1758

To CHARLES LYTTELTON, Thursday 23 March 1758

Printed from a photostat of the MS in the possession of Cobham, Hall, Stourbridge, Worcs. First printed in N&Q 1869, 4th ser., iii. 3. Reprinted, Toynbee iv. 129-30. The MS descended in the Lyttelton family to the present owner.

Strawberry Hill, March 23d 1758. Dear Sir, YOUR letter1 found Mr Ward2 here, and though a word from you would be strongest recommendation, his own quickness and knowledge had already made such way with me, that I cannot assume the merit of having liked him on any account but his own. I wish I had had more materials worth his notice; what he thought so, I have lent him. Mr Whitworths promised4 to furnish me with the accounts I asked after Easter;s my haste is not immediate; if he is very dilatory, as I expect, I shall trouble you to quicken him again.6 My own book is still likely to drag on for three weeks:7 you may believe I shall trans­ mit one of the first to you, less indeed from thinking it has any merit, than in hopes that you will send me your corrections, in case I should be obliged to make another edition from the faults of the first sketch. Well! there is another Archbishop dead!8 will none of their deaths operate to your deanery?^ Are you always to serve everybody, and are you never to be served? Must some future Mr Ward tell how much you promoted every work of learning, and yet how much

1. Missing. 4. Not in any recorded letter. 2. Caesar Ward (ca 1711-59), printer 5. 26 March in 1758. and bookseller (Robert Davies, A Memoir 6. When Lyttelton 'quickened' him of the York Press, 1868, pp. 247-60; earlier is not known, nor why he was in a CHATTERTON 26 n. 10; MASON ii. 294 n. position to do so. 17)- 7. A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble 3. Probably Charles Whitworth (ca Authors of England was finished by 15 1721-78), of Leybourne, , and Black­ April (Hazen, op. cit. 35). ford, Somerset; Kt, 1768; M.P. He was 8. Matthew Hutton, Abp of Canter­ a nephew of Charles, 1st Bn Whitworth bury, died 19 March 1758 (GM 1758, xxvii'. (1675-1725), and doubtless helped HW 146). with the biographical account of his un­ 9. Lyttelton had been Dean of Exeter cle in HW's advertisement to An Account since 1748. The 'yearly value' of the of Russia as it was in the Year 1710. By deanery in 1762 was £500 (The Corre­ Charles Lord Whitworth, SH, Sept. spondence of King George the Third, ed. 1758 (Hazen, SH Bibl. 42). Sir John Fortescue, 1927-8, i. 36).