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Excerpt from The Correspondence of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, and the Rev. William Mason, Vol. 2 of 2: Now First Published From the Original Mss
I did not write to you on our naval skirmish, be cause I had nothing to add to what you saw in the papers. It is evident the French had orders to risk nothing, and accordingly they got out of the scrape as fast as they could, yet they pretend that our ¿eet retired first. If it had, we should have taken as much pains to Charge Mr. Keppel as they could. The consequences are and probably will be good. Their ¿ight will not encourage them, and it has saved our East India ¿eet, which is all come in. I have heard enough to make me change my mind about Spain, who I believe will join in the melee, unless we are awed into peace, which I cannot but suppose is the meaning of the war going on in this equivocal shape. I expect to hear some beau matin that every thing is compromised. There are reasons both good and bad why it ought not to surprise one.
I have lengthened my Chattertonian pamphlet, and now think shall not publish it. It will clear me whenever it does appear, and I have rather more respect for posterity than for the present generations, who have evidently lost all ideas of right and wrong; but I will say no more on two topics of so little worth as the present age and myself.
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