comic author more useful than Molière, for both these purposes. Our English play-writers give some vice or affectation, to all their principal characters. I am very well, and careful of my health; all people are fond of novelty and you know health is such to me, but nothing can more recommend it to me, than thinking my welfare of consequence to you. Adieu, Cousin! I must put on a great hoop, and go three miles to dinner; how much better was our gipsey-life! I believe I shall enter myself of the society at Norwood, the rather tempted to it, as I should be your neighbour. I have not heard from Mrs Boscawen, but I am glad she had the pleasure of spending sometime at Wickham.

CLXIX.

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu to Gilbert West.

Hill Street [1754].

My most inestimable cousin,-I am much more satisfied now I find that your indisposition was owing to the rencontre of salt fish, milk, and a strange olio of diet, than when I imagined it was the gout in your stomach. But pity, which sometimes subsides into soft passions, on this occasion warms and hardens into anger. Why, when an invalid, would you be so careless of your diet? However difficult it may be to the strong temper of the budge doctors of the stoic fur, to run mad with discretion, I assure you it is not impossible to the gentle dame in blonde lace and Paris hoop; I followed the precepts of the très-précieuse Lady Grace, and visited 'soberly.' I have not been out since Sunday, Mr. Montagu's cold having given me a reason for staying at home, and my indolence would have been glad even of an excuse. I did not see Sir George Lyttelton till yesterday morning, but the account he gave of your health pleased me very much. The good Dean called in the evening, and unfolded to me the horrid tale of the salt fish and asses' milk. Oh, could the milky mother, who is so often insulted, so much despised and oppressed by man, have known his perverseness of appetite would have turned her salutary milk, the effect of prudent and fit diet, into a kind of poison; how would she have animadverted upon the occasion? I dare say she would have made better observations on the different powers of reason and instinct than have been made by any philosopher on

two legs. I wish I had her critique upon human reason, in black and white, with her modest apology for long ears and walking on four legs. I have just received Mr. Bower's third volume of the Popes, with so polite an Italian epistle, as shews he can play what note he pleases on Apollo's harp. I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Berenger on Monday morning, he has been under discipline for his eyes, but his spirits and vivacity are not abated. Pray has Mr. Birch sent you his Queen Elizabeth? I have not seen it, and I know I shall read it with sorrow. A belle passion at threescore is worse than eating salt fish in the gout. I shall hate these collectors of anecdotes, if they cure one of that admiration of a great character that arises from a pleasing deception of sight. I desire you not to read aloud this part of Queen Bess's story, when the ass is at your door; it would make a bad chapter for us in her history of human reason, sixty odd to twenty-one ! instinct never made such a blunder. An old woman and a young man, a sin against nature, an old queen and a young counsellor, a sin against politics and prudence. 'Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.' I shall begin to believe Madame Scudery's romances, in which Lucretia is adroit at intrigue, the stern Brutus a whining lover, and Cato the censor admirable at writing the billet-doux. I cannot forgive Mr. Birch for bringing this story to light in such a manner; I supposed with Shakspeare that, in spite of Cupid's idle darts, she pass'd on in maiden meditation fancy free.' I should have written to you before if I had not been in hopes Mr. Montagu's cold would have given me some room to flatter myself with a visit to Wickham.

CLXX.

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu to Benjamin Stillingfleet.

Beaufort Square, Bath: July 26, 1757. And so, Sir, your pride and your vanity, and your laziness, and your indolence, and your indifference for your friends, have at length persuaded you, that you are not to write to me again, till I have thank'd you for those letters I have already received! Small trust have you in my gratitude, if you require all bills drawn upon it should be paid at sight. Mr. Stillingfleet can write to me, and where is there a philosopher less desœuvré than one who studies

the infinite folios of divine wisdom, that reads the stars and can rightly spell of every herb that sips the dew? Why! you do not perceive an eclipse of the sun unless, for want of light, you run your head against a post at noon-day; as for simples, I cannot say you are absolutely ignorant of those that are medicinal, I am sensible you make pretty good use of them, but I will be hang'd if you know how many leaves there are in a daisy, or how many fibres in the leaf of a pimpernel; you are neither looking up at the stars nor down at the plants, and therefore why am I overlooked and forgotten? truly I believe, because you sit vis-à-vis Mrs. Garrick; but pray what business have you with Venus or the Graces, or anything so like them as the said Mrs. Garrick?. I think I am a very pretty kind of a sickly woman, that look as if I had sometime had the jaundice, and as if I might sometime or another have it again; and altogether a very proper subject for doctorship's admiration and meditation, and so, Sir, I expect some tokens of your attention by the next post. Have I not given you leave to entertain me out of any corner of your brain, and promis'd to read with equal complaisance what your wisdom or your wit shall suggest, nay even what you may say in your foolishness, if your wit should be at low ebb?

Whether you choose Cervantes' serious air,

Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair,

write like the sage Charron or the fantastical Hudibras, I am still your gentle reader: and I have generally observed people of wit choose companions for their patient hearing, rather than their quick reply, and I imagined with such, the more one attended and the less one replied the better; but since you will be answered, I must tell you why I have not sooner complied with that humour of yours. I have been wandering from place to place; I went to Windsor to make a visit to Mrs. Stanley, and there I spent some days very idly and very agreeably; and I have been at this place ever since last Thursday, taking sweet counsel with my sister and Lady Bab Montagu, and in their company thinking but little of the absent. As to your request that you may send my letter to Mr. Affleck, permit me to say, no; I am extremely pleased that he is partial enough to me to desire it, and, if he loves a little nonsense now and then for his recreation, why I own it a harmless

thing, and I would not refuse your sending my letters merely because they are nonsensical; but I have known such disagreeable things arise from a communication of private letters, that I beg to be excused; there is so much envy, malice, and nonsense, in the world, that the most innocent amusement cannot escape; some fool might know my letters were shewn Mr. Affleck; that fool would tell another, who would report to a third fool, that I was vain of my letters, and loved to have them communicated; and to what three fools assert some wise man would assent, and I should be ridiculous. One walks about in this world in as much danger and dread of ridicule as people do in some parts of America of the thread worm, which in spite of all care will imperceptibly get into the heel, and from thence poison the whole body. I had a letter from Mr. Stillingfleet yesterday, in which he speaks much of the virtues of Malvern waters, but does not tell me how they agree with him, which I take ill, for when can they have a subject of more worth to the world and to me? Mrs. Boscawen and a friend of hers will come to me at my return for a few days, and then my house will be pretty well filled. As soon as they leave me, I hope you will favour me with the performance of your promise.

Ever your most obliged,

E. MONTAGU.

CLXXI. .

In one of the most pleasing letters published in the 'Garrick Correspondence,' Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu pleads for assistance and advice for a young playwright.

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu to David Garrick.

Denton: July 24, 1770.

Dear Sir, The liberty I am going to take seems to require many apologies; at the same time I am but too sensible that excuses are but poor alleviations of a fault. There is a certain quality called by the Gods simplicity, by men foolishness which sometimes betrays the owner into transgressions for which goodnature finds an excuse when the invention of the offender cannot frame one. Let my folly therefore find access to your good nature, and thus gently introduce my story.

A friend of mine who has not a foot of land anywhere but in Parnassus, and there pretends not to more than a copyhold, showed me a comedy of his writing, which I thought might at least vie with most of the late productions in that way; but I am a very incompetent judge of this matter. All I would beg is, that you would cast your eye over the piece. If you do not approve it, no angry female muse (such as once assailed you) armed with terrors which belong rather to Tisiphone than Melpomene, will rage and foam. My friend is an honest peaceable man: if his play deserves your approbation, it will be a great piece of good fortune to him to have it under your protection, and will at once realize every good wish I can form for him. Whatever you decide upon the subject I shall know is right and just. I am not perhaps a judge what should please in comedy and have not the least guess what will please. The dialogue of this play seemed to me easy and lively, and I thought the poet touched with good humoured raillery the fashionable follies of the times, which in themselves, though perhaps not in their consequences, appear too frivolous for severe satire.

Great physicians have transmitted to posterity remedies for those disorders to which human nature is addicted in all ages and climates of the world; but though an Hippocrates and a Galen may have assumed a perpetual authority in cases of consumption, dropsy and malignant fevers, the humble under-graduate doctor considers some new epidemical cold as his province, and hastens to publish his cure for Influenza, or to offer an antidote to Hyson tea; advertises his balsam of honey when the fogs of November affect the lungs; and as the spring advances, brings out his tincture of sage to purify those humours that warm weather causes to ferment.

To a Plautus, a Terence, or a Molière, it belongs to attack the dropsy of pride, the feverish thirst of avarice, or the melancholy madness of misanthropy. The minor poet aims no higher than to remove some incidental malady, some new disorder with which the town is infected. Even if he can take off those freckles which pollute the pure roses and lilies of youthful beauty, or can soften the wrinkles on the brow of old age, he has his merit and deserves encouragement. I wish you may have reason to think my friend deserves a place in some of these humble classes. It is improper