[_August_ 1, 1745.]
Dear George,--I cannot help thinking you laugh at me when you say such
very civil things of my letters, and yet, coming from you, I would fain
not have it all flattery:
So much the more, as, from a little elf,
I've had a high opinion of myself,
Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb.
With this modest prepossession, you may be sure I like to have you
commend me, whom, after I have done with myself, I admire of all men
living. I only beg that you will commend me no more: it is very
ruinous; and praise, like other debts, ceases to be due on being paid.
One comfort indeed is, that it is as seldom paid as other debts.
I have been very fortunate lately: I have met with an extreme good print
of M. de Grignan;[1] I am persuaded, very like; and then it has his
_touffe ébourifée_; I don't, indeed, know what that was, but I am sure
it is in the print. None of the critics could ever make out what Livy's
Patavinity is; though they are all confident it is in his writings. I
have heard within these few days what, for your sake, I wish I could
have told you sooner--that there is in Belleisle's suite the Abbé
Perrin, who published Madame Sévigné's letters, and who has the
originals in his hands. How one should have liked to have known him! The
Marshal[2] was privately in London last Friday. He is entertained to-day
at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton. Don't you believe it was to
settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French
shall come in unto the land to possess it? I don't at all wonder at any
shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation. The bringing
him here at all--the sending him away now--in short, the whole series of
our conduct convinces me, that we shall soon see as silent a change as
that in "The Rehearsal," of King Usher and King Physician. It may well
be so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of
Newcastle--those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and
fluttering, and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But
there is no describing him but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did
t'other day: "Je ne scais pas," dit il, "je ne scaurois m'exprimer, mais
il a un certain tatillonage." If one could conceive a dead body hung in
chains, always wanting to be hung somewhere else, one should have a
comparative idea of him.
[Footnote 1: M. de Grignan son-in-law to Mme. de Sévigné, the greater
part of whose letters are to his wife.]
[Footnote 2: The Maréchal de Belleisle and his younger brother, the
Comte de Belleisle, were the grandsons of Fouquet, the Finance Minister
treated with such cruelty and injustice by Louis XIV. The Parisians
nicknamed the two brothers "Imagination" and "Common Sense." The Marshal
was joined with the Marshal de Broglie in the disastrous expedition
against Prague in the winter of 1742; when, though they succeeded in
taking and occupying the city for a time, they were afterwards forced to
evacuate it; and though Belleisle conducted the retreat with great
courage and skill, the army, which had numbered fifty thousand men when
it crossed the Rhine, scarcely exceeded twelve thousand when it regained
the French territory. (See the Editor's "History of France under the
Bourbons," c. xxv.)]
For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the
Irishman in the ship that was on fire--I am but a passenger! If I were
not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late
Duchess of Bolton's geographical resolution of going to China, when
Whiston told her the world would be burnt in three years. Have you any
philosophy? Tell me what you think. It is quite the fashion to talk of
the French coming here. Nobody sees it in any other light but as a thing
to be talked of, not to be precautioned against. Don't you remember a
report of the plague being in the City, and everybody went to the house
where it was to see it? You see I laugh about it, for I would not for
the world be so unenglished as to do otherwise. I am persuaded that
when Count Saxe,[1] with ten thousand men, is within a day's march of
London, people will be hiring windows at Charing-cross and Cheapside to
see them pass by. 'Tis our characteristic to take dangers for sights,
and evils for curiosities.
[Footnote 1: The great Maréchal Saxe, Commander-in-chief of the French
army in Flanders during the war of the Austrian succession.]
Adieu! dear George: I am laying in scraps of Cato against it may be
necessary to take leave of one's correspondents _à la Romaine_, and
before the play itself is suppressed by a _lettre de cachet_ to the
book-sellers.
P.S.--Lord! 'tis the first of August,[1] 1745, a holiday that is going
to be turned out of the almanack!
[Footnote 1: August 1 was the anniversary of the accession of George I.]
_INVASION OF SCOTLAND BY THE YOUNG PRETENDER--FORCES ARE SAID TO BE
PREPARING IN FRANCE TO JOIN HIM._