low spirits, and end your letter sooner than it would end otherwise. Yours entirely, C. HANBURY WILLIAMS. My best services attend Lady Caroline, &c. let the inclosed letter be put in the penny post. TO THE REV. MR. BIRT. DEAR SIR; Dresden, June 22nd, N. S. 1749. Since you complain of my absence from Coldbrook, I am naturally to judge that you wish for my presence there; and as I shall always be glad to contribute to your obtaining whatever you desire, know that I shall be in Monmouthshire in the beginning of August; and that my present resolution is, to call at Newland, to seize upon your person, and force you away from your wife, family, friends, and churches, to detain you prisoner (with the Florilegious Harris for your keeper) at Coldbrook, during the whole time of my residence there. That enlivening spirit, that once made Coldbrook gay, shall again make my friends laugh, for my whole view in coming there is, to unbend * The New Style was not adopted in England till 1752. to the utmost, to forget that there are such things as mails and post-days, and every thing that belongs to a minister and a court, from a secretary of state, down to a courier; I won't so much as permit a newspaper to enter my doors; and if Harris pretends to talk politics, I will have him gagged; I will dedicate my house to the Goddess of Idleness, and DIVE VACUNÆ shall appear in capitals over the Portico. Our discourse shall chiefly turn upon what the venerable Ancients wrote, or Our insignificant modern acquaintance do; you shall bring back all Horace into my head, who has suffered very much by the attacks that have been made upon him in my studies for these two last years by Puffendorff, Rousset, Grotius, and some others, who are the most dull of all dull mortals, that I ever conversed with; but being obliged to be in company with them, I turned them as much as I possibly could to my own information and erudition; but I hope you won't imagine from hence that I have lost my taste for better books I have often in my life time dined with a mayor and alderman, nay, I have eaten with a bishop at a visitation feast ; but yet both these excellent companies did not prevent, at my return to London, my thinking Mr. Winnington and Lord Chesterfield very agreeable companions. I hope, therefore, that you will believe that my fancy is still charmed with an Ulla si juris, and my spirit exalted with a Qualem ministrum. . Now for our modern conversations, I will entertain you with the witty sayings of German princes, and the hardy deeds of Polish palatins; you shall divert me with what Tom Windham says, and Lord Gage does; how the one won't give a dinner to any body though he has it to give, and the other makes a feast upon an empty table, how the one has made himself very unhappy by thinking wrong, while the other sits at perfect ease, by never thinking at all; Tom Windham removed from the sight of mortals, like a Persian monarch, sits enshrined in his long gallery* and looks down upon mankind; Gage is common, hacknied to the eyes of men, he is lavish of his person, and like the Patriarch Abraham sits all day long at his gate, to receive strangers that pass by, you know that he cannot eat at all, unless his table is full, and if his table is full, there is hardly enough for him to eat; sure two such different mortals were never placed so near one another. Such a couple of extremes prove plainly that virtus est medium vitiorum, and afford much mirth and good moral to their neighbours. Duplex dos est quod risum movet Et quod prudenti vitæ consilium monet. What you have heard about my going to Berlin is very true. The king was pleased of his own accord to nominate me to that court, and to give me a very large addition of salary * At Dunraven Castle, Mr. Wyndham's seat. |