ceived four thousand pounds; which, with three thousand more, is all I have ever had from my father's family!-yet calumny will not blush, but repeat the lie! My nephew, or Lucas, have acted like themselves, and have jockied me out of six hundred pounds by a finesse in the bond, by dating it three years later than it should have been, and which my negligence had overlooked; and, therefore, I may blame myself. Lucas, who extorted from Mozzi interest upon interest against my opinion, took care not to offer it to me, though the case is similar, except that mine would have been much less; and you may be sure I would not ask for what I would not have excepted, as I disapprove such extortion, and should be sorry to resemble them. The purport too of the bond was curious. Lucas did not know that my eldest brother had paid me one thousand pounds of my fortune, and drew the bond for five thousand. I would not accept it, but made him draw it for four thousand. I will do him the justice to acknowledge that he said, "Oh, my Lord would pay me the whole." I replied, "I would not be paid twice; I knew, if they did not, that I had received one thousand:" and so, because I would not accept of what was not due to me, they curtailed the interest that ought to be my due! Well! I have done with them, and so shall you of hearing of them.

29th.

I have effaced two lines that I had written, because upon recollection I can account better for what happened. There is a gentlewoman in the world who, a very few years ago, tried to captivate your nephew. She has had better success, I believe, lately in another place, though less to her honour. I ascribe to her the coldness; and dare to say, that a third persont did not know any thing of the matter. I imagine you will have this mystery explained, like another.

Signora Piozzi's book is not likely to gratify her expectation of renown. There is a Dr. Woolcot, a burlesque bard, who had ridiculed highly, and most deservedly, another of Johnson's biographic zanies, one Boswell; he has already advertised an eclogue between Bozzi and Piozzi, to be published next week; and, indeed there is ample matter. The Signora talks of her Doctor's expanded mind, and has contributed her mite to show that never mind was narrower. In fact, the poor man is to be pitied: he was mad, and his disciples did not find it out, but have unveiled all his defects; nay, have exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and his lowest conundrums as humour. Judge!-The Piozzi relates, that a young man asking him where Palmyra was, he replied, "In Ireland; it was a bog planted

*Lady Almeria Carpenter, Lady of the Bed-chamber to the Duchess of Gloucester, and mistress of the Duke.

The Duchess, who did not know of Sir H. Mann, jun. being at Genoa, where the Duke would not see him.

The well-known satirist, who wrote under the name of Peter Pindar.—ED.

with palm-trees!" I am now rejoiced, and do not wonder that you was not thought worthy to be mentioned by such a panegyrist! But what will posterity think of us when it reads what an idol we adored.

LETTER CCCCXLVII.

Berkeley Square, April 30, 1786. THE almanack tells me that I ought to write to you; but then it ought to tell me what to say. I know nothing: people have been out of town for Easter, or rather for Newmarket; for our diversions mark the seasons, instead of their proclaiming themselves. We have no more spring than we had last year. I believe the milk-maids to-morrow will be forced to dress their garlands with Christmas nosegays of holly and ivy, for want of flowers.

The tragedy, or rather, I suppose, the farce, of Mr. Hasting's trial is also to commence to-morrow, when he is to make his defence before the House of Commons; where the majority of his judges are ready to be astonished at his eloquence, and the transparency of his innocence, and the lustre of his merit. In the mean time, the charges are enormous, and make numbers, who are not to be his jury, marvel how he will clear himself of half; and, if he does, what he will do with the remainder. I have not yet looked into the charge, which fills a thick octavo. My opinion is formed more summarily Innocence does not pave its way with diamonds, nor has a quarry of them on its estate. All conversation turns on a trio of culprits-Hastings, Fitzgerald, and the Cardinal of Rohan. I have heard so much of all lately that I confound them, and am not sure whether it was not the first who pretended to buy a brilliant necklace for the Queen, or who committed murders in Ireland, not in India; or whether it was not Fitzgerald who did not deal with Cagliostro for the secret of raising the dead, as he may have occasion for it soon. So much for tragedy!Our comic performers are Boswell and Dame Piozzi.* The cock biographer has fixed a direct lie on the hen, by an advertisement in which he affirms that he communicated his manuscript to Madame Thrale, and that she made no objection to what he says of her low opinion of Mrs. Montagu's book. It is very possible that it might not be her real opinion, but was uttered in compliment to Johnson, or for fear he should spit in her face if she disagreed with him; but how will she

*On this subject, Mrs. Hannah More thus writes to her sister, April 1786:"The Bozzi, &c., subjects are not exhausted, though every body seems heartily sick of them. Every body, however, conspires not to let them drop. That the 'Cagliostro,' and the Cardinal's necklace,' spoil all conversation, and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepy's last night. The party was snug, and of my own bespeaking; consisting only of Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Montagu, the Burneys and Cambridge."-Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, vol. ii. p. 16.-ED.

VOL. II.-33

get over her not objecting to the passage remaining? She must have known, by knowing Boswell, and by having a similar intention herself, that his anecdotes would certainly be published;—in short, the ridiculous woman will be strangely disappointed. As she must have heard that the whole first impression of her book was sold the first day, no doubt she expects, on her landing, to be received like the Governor of Gibraltar, and to find the road strewed with branches of palm. She, and Boswell, and their Hero, are the joke of the public. A Dr. Woolcot, soi-disant Peter Pindar, has published a burlesque eclogue, in which Boswell and the Signora are the interlocutors, and all the absurdest passages in the works of both are ridiculed. The print-shops teem with satiric prints on them: one, in which Boswell, a monkey, is riding on Johnson, the bear, has this witty inscription, My Friend delineavit,"-But enough of these mountebanks!

The Duchess of Gloucester tells me that Lord Cowper is at Milan, on his way to England: yet, I shall not wonder if he still turns back. I remember Lady Orford came even to Calais, and returned sur ses pas.

May 4th.

I must send my letter to the office to-night, for I go to Strawberry to-morrow for two or three days-not that we have spring or summer yet! I believe both seasons have perceived that nobody goes out of town till July, and that therefore it is not worth while to come over so early as they used to do. The Sun might save himself the same trouble, and has no occasion to rise before ten at night; for all Nature ought, no doubt, to take the ton from people of fashion, unless Nature is willing to indulge them in the opportunity of contradicting her! Indeed, at present, our fine ladies seem to copy her, at least the ancient symbols of her; for, though they do not exhibit a profusion of naked bubbies down to their shoe-buckles, yet they protrude a prominence of gauze that would cover all the dugs of Alma Mater. Don't, however, imagine that I am disposed to be a censor of modes, as most old folks are, who seem to think that they came into the world at the critical moment when every thing was in perfection, and ought to suffer no farther innovation. On the contrary, I always maintain that the ordinances of the young are right. Who ought to invent fashions? Surely not the ancient. I tell my veteran contemporaries that, if they will have patience for three months, the reigning evil, whatever it is, will be cured; whereas, if they fret till things are just as they should be, they may vex themselves to the day of doom. I carry this way of thinking still farther, and extend it to almost all reformations. Could one cure the world of being foolish, it were something: but to cure it of any one folly is only making room for some other, which, one is sure, will succeed to the vacant place.

Mr. Hastings used two days in his defence; which was not thought a very modest one, and rested rather on Machiavel's code than on

that of rigid moralists. The House is now hearing evidence; and as his counsel, Mr. Machiavel, will not challenge many of the jury, I suppose Mr. Hastings will be honourably acquitted. In fact, who but Machiavel can pretend that we have a shadow of title to a foot of land in India; unless, as our law deems that what is done extraparochially is deemed to have happened in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, India must in course belong to the crown of Great Britain. Alexander distrained the goods and chattels of Popes upon a similar plea; and the Popes thought all the world belonged to them, as heirsat-law to one who had not an acre upon earth. We condemned and attainted the Popes without trial, which was not in fashion in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and, by the law of forfeiture, confiscated all their injustice to our own use; and thus, till we shall be ejected, have we a right to exercise all the tyranny and rapine that ever was practised by any of our predecessors any where, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

LETTER CCCCXLVIII.

Berkeley Square, May 29, 1786.

I HAVE been very unhappy at your debility, that expressed itself in your last letter-I do not say, that you complained of; for a murmur cannot possibly escape from one who never feels impatience, and whose temper infuses that philosophy which even your good sense could not alone confer. I was made easier last night by Lord Cowper, who had just received a very comfortable letter from you; and, now that my alarm is dissipated, my reason can recover its tone, and tells me that weakness is not danger-and might not my own experience have told me so? A puff of wind could blow me away; and yet here I am still, and have stood many a rough blast. I depend on the sun of Florence, and on the cool pure air of its nights, for rehabilitating your nerves; and I am impatient for Mrs. Damer's return from Rome, because I flatter myself that she will send a good account of your conyalescence.

Well! you find I have seen your principal Earl.* Curiosity carried me to a great concert at Mrs. Conway's t'other night-not to hear Rubinelli, who sung one song at the extravagant price of ten guineas, and whom for as many shillings I have heard sing half a dozen at the Opera House: no, but I was curious to see an English Earl who had passed thirty years at Florence, and is more proud of a pinchbeck Principality and a paltry Order from Wirtemberg, than he was of being a Peer of Great Britain, when Great Britain was something. Had

* Earl Cowper.

I staid till it is not, I would have remained where I was. I merely meant to amuse my eyes; but Mr. Dutens brought the personage to me, and presented us to each other. He answered very well to my idea, for I should have taken his Highness for a Doge of Genoa: he has the awkward dignity of a temporary representative of nominal power. Peace be with him and his leaf-gold!

I believe that, after having often told you that I plead my age and relics of gout to dispense with doing what I don't like, you will conclude I am grown in my dotage as fond of Highnesses as Earl Cowper or Lady Mary Coke. Most certainly it was not the plan of any part of my life to end my career with Princes and Princesses, though I began with them, and was carried to Leicester House in my childhood to play with the late Duke of Cumberland and Princess Mary, Fate has again in my latter days thrown me amongst royalties; and (what is not common,) though I have quitted the world, I seem to have retired into drawing-rooms. Ever since the late King's death, I have made Princess Amelie's parties once or twice a week: then, bien malgré moi, I was plunged into Gloucester House and now by Princess Amelie I have been presented to the Prince of Wales at her house; and by my niece Lady Horatia's marriage with Captain Conway, who is a principal favourite of his Royal Highness, I have dined with the Prince at Lord Hertford's, and since at his own palace, where he was pleased to give a dinner to the two families, who in fact were one family* before.

This parenthesis being passed, I am going to my quiet little hill, after having been in public to-day more than I purposed ever to be again. I attended Princess Amelie to the rehearsal of Handel's Jubilee in Westminster Abbey, which I had been far from meditating; but, as she had the Bishop of Rochester's gallery, it was quite easy, and I had no crowd to limp through. The sight was really very fine, and the performance magnificent; but the chorus and kettledrums for four hours were so thunderful, that they gave me the headach, to which I am not at all subject. Rubinelli's voice sounded divinely sweet, and more distinctly than at the Opera. The Mara's not so well, nor is she so much the fashion. I have been but once at the Opera, and twice at the play, this year. When the gout confines me to my room, it is a grievance: I do not complain of it for curtailing my diversions, for which I have no more taste than for courts; nor shall death surprise me in a theatre or in a drawing

room.

There has been no event of any consequence. I expect every day to hear of the marriage of your nephew and niece; and then I conclude the father will make you another visit, as he told me he should as soon as he had settled his daughter. I love to have him with you; not only for your comfort, but to save you the trouble of doing ho

* Captain Conway's grandmother and Lady Horatia's grandmother were sisters.