LETTER CCLIII.

To Mrs. THRAL E.

DEAR MADAM,

Auguft 18, 1780.

I

LOST no time, and have enclosed our converfation. You write of late very feldom. I wish you would write upon fubjects; any thing to keep alive. You have your beaux, and your flatterers, and here am poor I forced to flatter myself; and any good of myself I am not very easy to believe, fo that I really live but a forry life. What fhall I do with Lyttelton's life? I can make a fhort life, and a fhort criticism, and conclude. Why did not you like Collins, and Gay, and Blackmore, as well as Akenfide?

I am, Madam,

Your, &c,

LETTER CCLIV.

Mrs. THRALE to Dr. JOHNSON.

Auguft zo.

I

you

fome

WILL try, my dear Sir, to make amends, by writing at least one very long letter; but indeed I can think only of one thing, whatever I may fay.

Do

you recollect our laughing fifteen years ago at a gawkee girl of feventeen? who, when her toaft was called for at a city table crowded with coarfe men-they were drinking fentiments-Is not, fays fhe, this a pretty health-What we think on most, and talk on leaft. I am come pretty much to her cafe: for it is not right to speak of that which neverfails to keep preffing upon my spirits, and preying upon my mind. Without frequent bleedings, there is however danger on one fide, and by bleeding frequently, we induce as certain a danger on the other.-We had a visit yesterday from Mr. R-; whom per

haps

haps you remember, perhaps not: but our morning conversation with him will not be eafily forgotten by me, I thought it would drive me wild upon the fpot. In fuch a cafe, can there be any fears of my ftealing away to Italy without you? when I fhould not think you, nor twenty more fuch friends if I could find them, fufficient to guard us from the hazard of wild exploits. Whoever is fick, is furely safest at home; and have we not mortifications enough already, without going where one might be amused, in order to be miferable? Oh no, let us be miferable in the old places, and not pollute scenes of pleasure. with objects of forrow.

Well! as you fay, Queeney is beginning life, and fo far very happily, as it is begun under your tuition: fhe appears to me proud of your partiality; and, I dare fay, will try long to deferve it. You are getting quite well as it appears; and when we meet, we shall fee victor annorum. The Lives will be a ftanding proof of your powers after the grand climacterick; and you make gay impromptus upon the boys, inftead of fitting down like common mortals at feventy, and letting the boys make gay impromptus upon you.

Blackmore's life is admirable; who fays I don't like it? I like all the Whig lives prodigioufly: Akenfide's beft of the little one's, for the fake of a pretty difquifition upon ridicule that pleafed me particularly, and that elegant ftricture on the Pleafures of Imagination; which will probably be much read and admired by every one. It is my fincere opinion that Milton, and Blackmore, and Thomson, would have been all contented with what you have said of them, though the admirers of Lycidas will be angry no doubt.

The cenfures of Milton's republican fpirit would fcarce have fhocked him: he knew hinfelf to be acrimonious and furly; like Young's Bufiris, who called himself the Proud, and gloried in it.

Your account of his domeftick behaviour, however, puts me in mind of the fierce fellow in a droll book called Pompey the Little, who comes home from the publick houfe, where he had been vapouring and ftorming away about liberty of speech-and treats his poor wife with the most brutal tyranny, only becaufe the juft fays, Indeed, my dear, I don't understand politicks. Your harth expreffions. of wrath against the author are, after all, so

7

buried

buried under the majestick praises bestowed upon Paradife Loft, that even I am forced to forgive them. Poor dear Dr. Collier ufed always to bring that poem forward as a teftimony to the excellence of Toryism; for, says he, you may observe that 'tis wholly formed upon our principles of obedience and fubordination; and I half wish, for the fake of my first friend, whofe memory I fhall for ever revere, that his remark had been preferved in this work of your's, which will doubtless be diffeminated far and wide; and, for ought I know, take poffeffion of the lands on which it lights, as Don Sebaftian faid of the duft that his body when dead would be dried into.

And now if you call this flattery, I can leave off in a minute without bidding; for fince you lions have no fkill in dandling the kid, we kids can expect but rough returns for careffes bestowed upon our haughty monarch— So be diligent, dear Sir, and have done with thefe men that have been buried thefe hun

dred years, and don't fit making verses that never will be written, but fit down steadily and finish their lives who did do fomething; and then think a little about mine, which has not been a happy one, for all you teize me fo N 4

con