you often, for I am not disposed to communicate myself to any thing that I have not known these thirty years. My mind is such a compound from the vast variety that I have seen, acted, pursued, that it would cost me too much pains to be intelligible to young persons, if I had a mind to open myself to them. They certainly do not desire I should. You like my gossipping to you, though you seldom gossip with me. The trifles that amuse my mind are the only points I value now. I have seen the vanity of every thing serious, and the falsehood of every thing that pretended to be serious. I go to see French plays and buy French china, not to know their ministers, to look into their government, or think of the interests of nations-in short, unlike most people that are growing old, I am convinced that nothing is charming but what appeared important in one's youth, which afterwards passes for follies. Oh, but those follies were sincere ; if the pursuits of age are so, they are sincere alone to self interest. Thus I think, and have no other care but not to think aloud. I would not have respectable youth think me an old fool. For the old knaves, they may suppose me one of their number if they please; I shall not be so-but neither the one nor the other shall know what I am. I have done with them all, shall amuse myself as well as I can, and think as little as I can; a pretty hard task for an active mind!

Direct your letters to Arlington-street, whence Favre will take care to convey them to me. I leave him to manage all my affairs, and take no soul but Louis. I am glad I don't know your Mrs. Anne; her partiality would make me love her; and it is entirely incompatible with my present system to leave even a postern door open to any feeling, which would steal in if I did not double bolt every avenue.

If you send me any parcel to Arlington-street before Monday se'nnight I will take care of it. Many English books I conclude are to be bought at Paris. I am sure Richardson's works are, for they have stupified the whole French nation: I will not answer for our best authors. You may send me your list, and, if I do not find them, I can send you word, and you may convey

1 How much the works of the author of Sir Charles Grandison and Clarissa Harlowe were admired by the French, is perceptible from the frequent mention of them in the celebrated “Correspondence of the Baron de Grimm." [Ed.]

them to me by Favre's means, who will know of messengers, &c. coming to Paris.

I have fixed no precise time for my absence. My wish is to like it enough to stay till February, which may happen, if I can support the first launching into new society. I know four or five very agreeable and sensible people there, as the Guerchys, madame de Mirepoix, madame de Boufflers, and lady Mary Chabot. These intimately, besides the duc de Nivernois, and several others that have been here. Then the Richmonds will follow me in a fortnight or three weeks, and their house will be a sort of home. I actually go into it at first, till I can suit myself with an apartment, but I shall take care to quit it before they come, for, though they are in a manner my children, I do not intend to adopt the rest of my countrymen; nor, when I quit the best company here, to live in the worst there; such are young travelling boys, and, what is still worse, old travelling boys, governors.

Adieu! remember you have defrauded me of this summer; I will be amply repaid the next, so make your arrangements accordingly.

Yours ever.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

MY DEAR LORD,

Arlington-street, September 3, 1765.

I cannot quit a country where I leave any thing that I honour so much as your lordship and lady Strafford, without taking a sort of leave of you. I shall set out for Paris on Monday next the 9th, and shall be happy if I can execute any commission for you there.

A journey to Paris sounds youthful and healthy. I have certainly mended much this last week, though with no pretensions to a recovery of youth. Half the view of my journey is to reestablish my health-the other half, to wash my hands of politics, which I have long determined to do whenever a change should happen. I would not abandon my friends while they were martyrs; but, now they have gained their crown of glory, they are well able to shift for themselves; and it was no part of my com

pact to go to that heaven, St. James's, with them. Unless I dislike Paris very much, I shall stay some time; but I make no declarations, lest I should be soon tired of it, and come back again. At first, I must like it, for lady Mary Coke will be there, as if by assignation. The countess of Carlisle and Berkeley, too, I hear, will set up their staves there for some time; but as my heart is faithful to Lady M ***, they would not charm me if they were forty times more disposed to it.

The emperor' is dead-but so are all the Maximilians and Leopolds his predecessors, and with no more influence on the present state of things. The empress dowager queen will still be master-unless she marries an Irishman, as I wish with all my soul she may.

The duke and duchess of Richmond will follow me in about a fortnight: lord and lady George Lennox go with them; and sir Charles Banbury and lady Sarah are to be at Paris, too, for some time: so the English court there will be very juvenile and blooming. This set is rather younger than the dowagers with whom I pass so much of my summers and autumns; but this is to be my last sally into the world; and when I return, I intend to be as sober as my cat, and purr quietly in my own chimney corner.

Adieu, my dear lord! May every happiness attend you both, and may I pass some agreeable days next summer with you at Wentworth-castle!

Your most devoted and faithful servant.

' His imperial majesty Francis I. emperor of Germany, died at Inspruck, on Sunday the 18th August, 1765. He was in good health the greater part of the day, and assisted at divine service; but, between nine and ten in the evening, he was attacked by a fit of apoplexy, and expired in a few minutes afterwards in the arms of his son, the king of the Romans.

He was born December 8th 1708; succeeded to the duchy of Lovain, March 27th 1729; yielded that duchy to king Stanislaus, 24th September 1736; was made grand duke of Tuscany, 9th July, 1738; married, 12th February, 1739, Maria Theresa queen of Hungary and Bohemia; and was elected emperor of Germany, 13th September, 1745, and crowned the 4th October, following. [Ed.]

2 Appointed ambassador to Paris. [Or.]

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY.

Arlington-street, September 3, 1765.

THE trouble your ladyship has given yourself so immediately, makes me, as I always am, ashamed of putting you to any. There is no persuading you to oblige moderately. Do you know, madam, that I shall tremble to deliver the letters you have been so good as to send me? If have said half so you much of me, as you are so partial as to think of me, I shall be undone. Limited as I know myself, and hampered in bad French, how shall I keep up to any character at all? Madame d'Aiguillon' and madame Geoffrin will never believe that I am the true messenger, but will conclude that I have picked Mr. Walpole's portmanteau's pocket. I wish only to present myself to them as one devoted to your ladyship: that character I am sure I can support in any language, and it is the one to which they would pay the most regard Well! I don't care, madam -it is your reputation that is at stake more than mine; and, if they find me a simpleton that don't know how to express myself, it will all fall upon you at last. If your ladyship will risk that, I will, if you please, thank you for a letter to madame d'Egmont, too: I long to know your friends, though at the hazard of their knowing yours. Would I were a jolly old man, to match, at least, in that respect, your jolly old woman! 2-But, alas! I am nothing but a poor worn-out rag, and fear, when I come to Paris, that I shall be forced to pretend that I have had the gout in my understanding. My spirits, such as they are, will not bear translating; and I don't know whether I shall not find it the wisest part I can take to fling myself into geometry or commerce, or agriculture, which the French now esteem, don't understand, and think we do. They took George Selwyn for a poet, and a judge of planting and dancing; why may I not pass for a learned man and a philosopher? If the worst comes to the worst, I will

1 La duchesse Douairiere Aiguillon, née Chabot. She was mother to the duc d'Aiguillon, who succeeded as minister of foreign affairs after the retirement of the duc de Choiseul, whom he, in fact, turned out of the ministry, by supporting and bringing forward madame du Barri. [Ed.] 2 The duchess d'Aiguillon. [Or.]

admire Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; and declare that I have not a friend in the world that is not like my lord Edward Bomston, though I never knew a character like it in my days, and hope I never shall; nor do I think Rousseau need to have gone so far out of his way to paint a disagreeable Englishman.

If you think, madam, this sally is not very favourable to the country I am going to, recollect, that all I object to them is their quitting their own agreeable style, to take up the worst of ours. Heaven knows, we are unpleasing enough: but, in the first place, they don't understand us; and, in the next, if they did, so much the worse for them. What have they gained by leaving Molière, Boileau, Corneille, Racine, La Rochefoucault, Crebillon, Marivaux, Voltaire, &c.? No nation can be another nation. We have been clumsily copying them for these hundred years, and are not we grown wonderfully like them? Come, madam, you like what I like of them; I am going thither, and you have no aversion to going thither-but own the truth; had not we both rather go thither fourscore years ago? Had you rather be acquainted with the charming madame Scarron, or the canting madame de Maintenon? with Louis XIV. when the Montespan governed him, or when Père le Tellier? I am very glad when folks go to heaven, though it is after another body's fashion; but I wish to converse with them when they are themselves. I abominate a conqueror; but I do not think he makes the world much compensation, by cutting the throats of his protestant subjects to atone for the massacres caused by his ambition.

3

The result of all this dissertation, madam-for I don't know how to call it a letter-is, that I shall look for Paris in the midst of Paris, and shall think more of the French that have been than the French that are, except of a few of your friends and mine. Those I know, I admire and honour, and I am sure I will trust to your ladyship's taste for the others; and if they had no other merit, I can but like those that will talk to me of you. They will find more sentiment in me on that chapter, than they can miss parts; and I flatter myself that the one will atone for the other.

3 Madame de Montespan, wife of the marquis de Montespan, one of the mistresses of Louis Quatorze, equally famous for her beauty, her wit, her power, and her fall, was the means of introducing madame de Maintenon to the notice of the king, and was then supplanted by her. She died in 1717. [Ed.]