You who are the apostle of this wise doctrine, receive my confession and my vows never to love, never to seek to be loved by any one; but tell me if it is permitted to desire the return of agreeable persons; if one may long for news of them, and if to be interested in them and to let them know it is to lack virtue, good sense, and proper behavior. I am awaiting enlightenment. I cannot doubt your sincerity; you have given me too many proofs of it; explain yourself without reserve.

WEDNESDAY, 6th.

Of all the things in your letter, what struck me the most yesterday were your moralizings on friendship, which forced me to reply at once. I was interrupted by Monsieur and Madame de Beauvan, who came to take me to supper with them in the country at the good Duchess of Saint-Pierre's. I returned early. I did not close my eyes during the night. I woke up Niart [her secretary] earlier than usual to go on with my letter, and to re-read me yours. I am better pleased with it this morning than I was yesterday. The matter of friendship shocked me less. I find that the conclusion is-let us be friends without friendship. Ah well, so be it; I consent. Perhaps it is agreeable; let us learn by experience, and for that see each other the oftener! In truth, you have only a comic actress, a deaf woman, and some chickens to leave, as you have only a blind woman and many goslings to find; but I promise you that the blind woman will have much to ask and much to tell.

I do not know what to say to you about your ministry. You have entertained me so little with politics, that if others had not informed me, all that goes on with you would be less intelligible to me than the affairs of China. They have told me something of the character of the count; and as for this certain good comrade [Conway], I think I know him perfectly. I am pleased that he has remained, but not that he does not oppose your philosophy. All your opinions are beautiful and praiseworthy; but if I were in his place I should certainly hinder you from making use of them, and not regulate my conduct by your moderation and disinterestedness. Oh! as for my lord, you cannot keep him,- that's the public cry. It seems to me that the brother and sister-in-law are not pleased. Do you not detest the people? From the agrarian law to your monument, your lamps, and your

black standard, its joy, its sadness, its applause, its complaints, are all odious to me. But I am going back to speak to you about yourself. You say that your fortune, instead of augmenting, will suffer diminution. I am much afraid of that. No liberty without a competency. Remember that. If your economy falls upon your trips to France I shall be miserable. But listen to this without getting vexed.

I possess, as you know, a small lodging-room belonging to me, little worthy of the son of Robert Walpole, but which may satisfy the philosopher Horace. If he found it convenient, he could occupy it without incurring the slightest ridicule. He can consult sensible people, and while waiting, be persuaded that it is not my personal interest which induces me to offer it to him. Honestly, my mentor, you could not do better than take it. You would be near me or a hundred leagues from me if you liked it better. It would not engage you to any attention nor any assiduity; we would renew our vows against friendship. It would even be necessary to render more observance to the Idol [Comtesse de Boufflers]; for who could be shocked, if not she? Pont-de-Veyle, who approves and advises this arrangement, claims that even the Idol would find nothing to oppose. Think of that.

Grandmama returned yesterday morning. My favor with her is better established. She will take supper with me Friday; and as the supper was arranged without foreseeing that she would. be there, she will find a company which will not exactly suit her, among others the Idol, and the Archbishop of Toulouse. I shall have many things to tell you when I see you. It may be that they will hardly interest you, but it will be the world of my Strawberry Hill.

You agree with me about the letters, which pleases me. I believe myself a genius when I find myself in agreement with you. This Prince Geoffrin is excellent. Surely heaven is witness that I do not love you, but I am forced to find you very agreeable.

Are you waiting until your arrival here to give a jug to the Maréchale de Luxembourg? I see I see no necessity of making a present to the Idol; incense, incense, that is all it wants!

I have a great desire that you should read a Memoir of La Chalottais; it is very rare, very much "prohibited," but I am intriguing to get it.

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M. de Beauvan begs you to send me a febrifuge for him. It is from Dr. James, I think. There are two kinds; one is mild and the other violent. He requires a louis's worth of each.

You are mightily deceiving yourself if you think Voltaire author of the analysis of the romance of 'Héloise.' The author is a man from Bordeaux, a friend of M. de Secondat. Àpropos of Voltaire, he has had the King of Prussia sounded to know if he would consent to give him asylum at Wesel in case he were obliged to leave his abode. This his Majesty has very willingly granted.

Good-by. I am counting upon being able in future to give you news of your court and your ministry. I have made a new acquaintance, who is a favorite of Lord Bute and the most intimate friend of Lord Holderness. I do not doubt that this lord is aiming at my Lord Rochefort's place, who they say scarcely troubles himself about the embassy.

Write me, I beg you, at least once a week.

Tell me if M. Crawford is in Scotland.

It is thought that the first news from Rome will inform us of the death of Chevalier Macdonald.

N°

PORTRAIT OF HORACE WALPOLE

NOVEMBER, 1765.

o, No! I do not want to draw your likeness; nobody knows you less than I. Sometimes you seem to me what I wish you were, sometimes what I fear you may be, and perhaps never what you really are. I know very well that you have a great deal of wit of all kinds and all styles, and you must know it better than any one.

But your character should be painted, and of that I am not a good judge. It would require indifference, or impartiality at least. However, I can tell you that you are a very sincere man, that you have principles, that you are brave, that you pride yourself upon your firmness; that when you have come to a decision, good or bad, nothing induces you to change it, so that your firmness sometimes resembles obstinacy. Your heart is good and your friendship strong, but neither tender nor facile. Your fear of being weak makes you hard. You are on your guard against all sensibility. You cannot refuse to render valuable

services to your friends; you sacrifice your own interest to them, but you refuse them the slightest of favors. Kind and humane to all about you, you do not give yourself the slightest trouble to please your friends in little ways.

Your disposition is very agreeable although not very even. All your ways are noble, easy, and natural. Your desire to please does not lead you into affectation. Your knowledge of the world and your experience have given you a great contempt for men, and taught you how to live with them. You know that all their assurances go for nothing. In exchange you give them politeness and consideration, and all those who do not care about being loved are content with you.

I do not know whether you have much feeling. If you have, you fight it as a weakness. You permit yourself only that which seems virtuous. You are a philosopher; you have no vanity, although you have a great deal of self-love. But your self-love does not blind you; it rather makes you exaggerate your faults than conceal them. You never extol yourself except when you are forced to do so by comparing yourself with other men. You possess discernment, very delicate tact, very correct taste; your tone is excellent.

You would have been the best possible companion in past centuries; you are in this, and you would be in those to come. Englishman as you are, your manners belong to all countries.

You have an unpardonable weakness to which you sacrifice your feelings and submit your conduct-the fear of ridicule. It makes you dependent upon the opinion of fools; and your friends are not safe from the impressions against them which fools choose to give you.

Your judgment is easily confused. You are aware of this weakness, which you control by the firmness with which you pursue your resolutions. Your opposition to any deviation is sometimes pushed too far, and exercised in matters not worth the trouble.

Your instincts are noble and generous. You do good for the pleasure of doing it, without ostentation, without claiming gratitude; in short, your spirit is beautiful and high.

D

DANIEL DEFOE

(1660?-1731)

BY CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON

ANIEL DEFOE, one of the most vigorous and voluminous writers of the last decade of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth centuries, was born in St. Giles parish, Cripplegate, in 1660 or 1661, and died near London in 1731. His father was a butcher named Foe, and the evolution of the son's name through the various forms of D. Foe, De Foe, Defoe, to Daniel Defoe, the present accepted form, did not begin much before he reached the age of forty. He was educated at the dissenting school" of a Mr. Martin in Newington Green, and was intended for the Presbyterian ministry. Although the training at this school was not inferior to that to be obtained at the universities, and indeed superior in one respect, since all the exercises were in English,—the fact that he had never been "in residence" set Defoe a little apart from the literary society of the day. Swift, Pope, Addison, Arbuthnot, and the rest, considered him untrained and uncultured, and habitually spoke of him with the contempt which the regular feels for the volunteer. Swift referred to him as "an illiterate fellow whose name I forget," and Pope actually inserted his name in the 'Dunciad':

"Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe.»

This line is false in two ways, for Defoe's ears were not clipped, though he was condemned to stand in the pillory; and there can hardly be a greater incongruity conceived than there is between our idea of a dunce and the energetic, shifty, wide-awake Defoe, — though for that matter a scholar like Bentley and a wit like Colley Cibber are as much out of place in the poet's ill-natured catalogue. Defoe angrily resented the taunts of the university men and their professional assumption of superiority, and answered Swift that "he had been in his time master of five languages and had not lost them yet," and challenged John Tutchin to "translate with him any Latin, French, or Italian author, and then retranslate them crosswise, for twenty pounds each book.”

Notwithstanding the great activity of Defoe's pen (over two hundred pamphlets and books, most of them of considerable length, are