tial. Mrs. Garrick (who sends her best wishes) and her lord and master set out for Bath the beginning of next month. Though my doctors have extorted a vow from me that I shall neither dine out nor give dinners while I stay at Bath, yet I had a mental reservation with regard to Bristol. However, if I continue sick and peevish, I had better keep my ill-humours at home, and for my wife alone. She is bound to them, and so reconciled to them by long use, that she can go to sleep in the midst of a good scolding, as a good sailor can while the guns are firing. Mrs. Garrick is studying your two acts. We shall bring them with us, and she will criticize you to the bone. A German commentator (Montaigne says) will suck an author dry. She is resolved to dry you up to a slender shape, and has all her wits at work upon you. I am really tired-my thumb is guilty, but my heart is free. I could write till midnight, but if I don't finish directly, I shall be obliged, from pain, to stop short at what I have most pleasure in declaring, that I am, please your Nineship, most truly yours, D. GARRICK. Have you kindly excused me to Dr. Stonehouse? My friend Walker intends trying his lecturing acumen upon you very soon. Why should not come one day, and kill two birds with one stone? The same to the same. Shame! shame! shame! Adelphi, Oct. 17, 1777. You may well say so, my dear madam; but indeed I have been so disagreeably entertained with the gout running all about me, from head to heel, that I have been unfit for the duties of friendship, and very often for those which a good husband, and a good friend, should never fail performing. I must gallop over this small piece of paper: it was the first I snatched up, to tell you that my wife has your letter, and thinks it a fine one and a sweet one. I was at court to-day, and such work they made with me, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Page of the Back Stairs, that I have been suffocated with compliments. We have wanted you at some of our private hours. Where's the Nine? we want the Nine! Silent was every muse. Cambridge said yesterday, in a large company at the Bishop of Durham's, where I dined, that your ode to my house-dog was a very witty production; and he thought there was nothing to be altered or amended except in the last stanza, which he thought the only weak one. I am afraid that you asked me to do something for you about the parliament, which, in my multitude of matters, was overlooked; pray, if it is of consequence, let me know it again, and you may be assured of the intelligence you want. The last new tragedy, "Semiramis," has, though a bare translation, met with great success. The prologue is a bad one, as you may read in the papers by the author; the epilogue is grave, but a sweet pretty elegant morsel, by Mr. Sheridan; it had deservedly great success. Mr. Mason's Caractacus is not crowded, but the men of taste, and classical men, admire it much. Mrs. Garrick sends a large parcel of love to you all. I send mine in the same bundle. Pray write soon, and forgive me all my delinquencies. I really have not time to read over my scrawl, so pray decipher her, and excuse me, Ever yours, most affectionately, D. GARRICK. MADAM, Mr. Mackenzie to Miss H. More. Edinburgh, Oct. 12, 1778. I DON'T know whether I am entitled to continue our correspondence-it is certain I am unwilling to lose it; and I should have much sooner answered yours of a date so distant as the 18th of July, had I not, ever since the receipt of it, been wandering over the Highlands of Scotland, my ideas as unsettled as my residence. When I returned home, I found a good deal of business in arrear; your letter was among other papers. We generally find time soonest to do what we like to do, so I take the ear. liest opportunity of making a return to it. We are perfectly agreed about the pleasure of the pains of sensibility; I may therefore say, without trespassing against the accuracy of a compli ment, that I am proud of having had it in my power to confer that pleasure on you; but you are less in my debt than you imagine; though a man, and a man of business, I too can shed tears and feel the luxury of shedding them; your Percy has cleared scores between us in that respect. I will not say to yourself what I think of that tragedy. Before I knew anything of its author but the name, I could not resist the desire I felt of giving my warmest suffrage in its favour, to somebody who had an interest in it; so, for want of a nearer relation, I communicated my sentiments to Mr. Cadell. Perhaps, however, either from his knowledge of your modesty, or of the insignificance of my opinion, he never informed you of my thoughts of it. They were indeed of no importance; but the public judged as I did, and made amends for their applause of some other plays, by that which they bestowed on Percy. Do write again, that they may once more be in the right, and (since you wish to break my heart) that I may have another opportunity of fooling at a tragedy. To some late ones I can just reverse the answer given to Romeo-"Good Coz, I had rather weep." 99 I will also take comfort, and hope, at some future period, to have the pleasure of paying you my respects at Bristol, though at present I have no prospect of being again in that quarter. I shall not be in the neighbourhood a second time without availing myself of your very obliging invi tation. I beg my best compliments to the Misses Erskine when you see them. I wish them to know the remembrance I entertain of the civilities I received from them at Bath. I am, madam, With much respect and regard, Your most obedient servant, Mrs. Boscawen to Miss H. More. 1784. MACBETH has murdered sleep, and Pitt has murdered scribbling! What becomes of the damsels with ah's! and oh's! who tell some dear Miss Willis all their woes! And what becomes of me when after many delays, I find leisure to scribble to my dear friend at Bristol any nonsense qui plait à ma plume? Why, she will generously tell me that she has postage in her pocket, but we have been used to franks, and besides the post is bewitched, and charges nobody knows what for letters; two shillings and ninepence, I think, Mrs. Leveson says she paid for a letter free, Falmouth, but no date of the day. Now he seems to have got his lesson, and remembers it. The duke is gone to Badminton, with sons of all sizes, and Dr. Penny le fidel Achate, so that I am left chargée d'affair; I am so happy with my two daughters, that I do by no means find out that London is unpleasant in September; indeed, sometimes I rise with the lark, and run down to breakfast at Glanvilla, where I must own that Mrs. Keeble gives me better cream and butter, raspberries, and fruit of all sorts, than I find here. I walk and sit in my garden, get an early dinner, and repair at sunset to the working party (not a bit like a lying-in-room, but with sashes open) in Grosvenor-square. Yesterday we saw there, and the duchess saw it, just as well as if we had been at Moorfields, the great balloon which had so many thousand spectators, that I assure you they were as little to be imagined as counted. Where all came from that I saw running, walking, crawling towards the spot, was to me incomprehensible. Admiral Barrington is hurt to think that no Englishman has gone up yet either in France or England and indeed I thought it so suitable to English daring, that when first I heard of Messrs. Charles and Robert, I affirmed they must have had English mothers. Lunardi's nest, when I saw it yesterday looking like a peg-top, seemed, I assure |