Event Comment: For the correspondence between Aaron Hill and the Duke of Montagu concerning Hill's proposed occupancy of hay see Buccleuch and Queensberry MSS, I, 369-71

Event Comment: At the particular Desire of several Ladies of Quality. Benefit Michael Lally. [Tickets at Lally's House, in Great Russel Street, over-against Montagu-House.] Receipts: money #42 15s.; seals #163 9s. (Account Book); #180 (Rylands MS.). [According to the Account Book, Lally was charged #30 for his benefit.

Event Comment: By Particular Desire of several Ladies of Quality. Positively the last Night. [Intended as satire on the Reverend John Henley's Oratory (eccentric preacher, 1692-1756) and as a puff for The Midwife or Old Woman's Magazine, edited by Christopher Smart and John Newberry, 1751-53. The Old Woman's Oratory written and produced by Smart. See the Gentleman's Magazine, 1752, p. 43; and Horace Walpole's letter to Montagu 12 May 1752, as follows: It appeared the lowest buffoonery in the world, even to me who am used to my uncle Horace. There is a bad oration to ridicule, what is too like, Orator Henley; all the rest is perverted music. There is a man who plays so nimbly on the kettle drums, that he has reduced that noisy instrument to be an object of sight; for if you don't see the tricks with his hands, it is no better than ordinary. Another play on a violin and trumpet together; another mimics a bagpipe with a German flute, and makes it full if disagreeable. There is an admired dulcimer, a favourite saltbox and a really curious Jew's Harp. Two or three men intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, which is drolly brought in, carefully shrouded in a case, so as to be mistaken for a bassoon or bass viol, but they succeed in nothing but the action. The last fellow imitates farting and curtseying to a French horn. There are twenty medley overtures, and a man who speaks a prologue and epilogue, in which he counterfeits all the actors and singers upon earth' (The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, IX, p. 131). [See 3 Dec. 1751.

Event Comment: By Command of his Majesty. The first night the King went to the play, which was civilly on a Friday, not on the opera night, as he used to do, the whole audience sang God Save the King in chorus. For the first act, the press was so great at the door that no ladies could go to the Boxes, and only the servants appeared there, who kept places: at the end of the second act the whole mob broke in and seated themselves; yet all this zeal is not likely to last, though he so well deserves it (Walpole to Montagu, 24 Nov.)