a little of the _mousquetaire_ still; but if I do not
correct his vivacities, at least I shall not encourage them, like my
dear old friend."

In a letter of about the same date to Mason the poet, he again alludes
to his fondness of Tonton, but adds--"I have no occasion to brag of my
dogmanity."[105]

Horace Walpole, in 1774, thus refers to Margaret, in a letter to Lady
Ossory:--"Who is to have the care of the dear mouse in your absence? I
wish I could spare Margaret, who loves all creatures so well that she
would have been happy in the ark, and sorry when the deluge ceased;
unless people had come to see Noah's old house, which she would have
liked still better than cramming his menagerie."[106] A sly allusion to
the numerous fees Margaret got from visitors. Horace, in another of his
letters, alludes to this, and, in a joke, proposes to marry Margaret to
enrich himself.

HORACE WALPOLE.--DEATH OF HIS DOG TONTON.

Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Ossory, Feb. 24, 1789,[107]
says:--"I delayed telling you that Tonton is dead, and that I comfort
myself. He was grown stone deaf, and very nearly equally blind, and so
weak that the two last days he could not walk up-stairs. Happily he had
not suffered, and died close by my side without a pang or a groan. I
have had the satisfaction, for my dear old friend's sake and his own, of
having nursed him up, by constant attention, to the age of sixteen, yet
always afraid of his surviving me, as it was scarcely possible he could
meet a third person who would study his happiness equally. I sent him to
Strawberry, and went thither on Sunday to see him buried behind the
chapel near Rosette. I shall miss him greatly, and must not have another
dog; I am too old, and should only breed it up to be unhappy when I am
gone. My resource is in two marble kittens that Mrs Damer has given me,
of her own work, and which are so much alive that I talk to them, as I
did to poor Tonton! If this is being superannuated, no matter; when
dotage can amuse itself it ceases to be an evil. I fear my marble
playfellows are better adapted to me, than I am to being your ladyship's
correspondent." Poor Tonton was left to Walpole by "poor dear Madame de
Deffand." In a letter to the Rev. Mr Cole, in 1781, he announces its
arrival, and how "she made me promise to take care of it the last time I
saw her. That I will most religiously, and make it as happy as is
possible."[108]

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY AND HI