Her face has beauty, we must all confess,
But beauty on the brink of ugliness:
Her mouth's a rabbit feeding on a rose;
With eyes--ten times too good for such a nose!
Her blooming cheeks--what paint could ever draw 'em?
That paint, for which no mortal ever saw 'em.
Air without shape--of royal race divine--
'Tis Emily--oh! fie!--'tis Caroline.
Do but think of my beginning a third sheet! but as the Parliament is
rising, and I shall probably not write you a tolerably long letter again
these eight months, I will lay in a stock of merit with you to last me
so long. Mr. Chute has set me too upon making epigrams; but as I have
not his art mine is almost a copy of verses: the story he told me, and
is literally true, of an old Lady Bingley:
Celia now had completed some thirty campaigns,
And for new generations was hammering chains;
When whetting those terrible weapons, her eyes,
To Jenny, her handmaid, in anger she cries,
"Careless creature! did mortal e'er see such a glass!
Who that saw me in this, could e'er guess what I was!
Much you mind what I say! pray how oft have I bid you
Provide me a new one? how oft have I chid you?"
"Lord, Madam!" cried Jane, "you're so hard to be pleased!
I am sure every glassman in town I have teased:
I have hunted each shop from Pall Mall to Cheapside:
Both Miss Carpenter's man, and Miss Banks's I've tried."
"Don't tell me of those girls!--all I know, to my cost,
Is, the looking-glass art must be certainly lost!
One used to have mirrors so smooth and so bright,
They did one's eyes justice, they heightened one's white,
And fresh roses diffused o'er one's bloom--but, alas!
In the glasses made now, one detests one's own face;
They pucker one's cheeks up and furrow one's brow,
And one's skin looks as yellow as that of Miss Howe!"
After an epigram that seems to have found out the longitude, I shall
tell you but one more, and that wondrous short. It is said to be made by
a cow. You must not wonder; we tell as many strange stories as Baker and
Livy:
A warm winter, a dry spring,
A hot summer, a new King.
Though the sting is very epigrammatic, the whole of the distich has more
of the truth than becomes prophecy; that is, it is false, for the spring
is wet and cold.
There is come from France a Madame Bocage,[1] who has translated Milton:
my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not
uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors.
She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's
approbation. You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose
passion is keeping an assembly, and inviting literally everybody to it.
She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsey,
and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire
your company next Thursday.
[Footnote 1: Madame du Boccage published a poem in imitation of Milton,
and another founded on Gesner's "Death of Abel." She also translated
Pope's "Temple of Fame;" but her principal work was "La Columbiade." It
was at the house of this lady, at Paris, in 1775, that Johnson was
annoyed at her footman's taking the sugar in his fingers and throwing it
into his coffee. "I was going," says the Doctor, "to put it aside, but
hearing it was made on purpose for me, I e'en tasted Tom's fingers." She
died in 1802.]
Mr. Whithed has taken my Lord Pembroke's house at Whitehall; a glorious
situation, but as madly built as my lord himself was. He has bought some
delightful pictures too, of Claude, Caspar and good masters, to the
amount of four hundred pounds.
Good night! I have nothing more to tell you, but that I have lately seen
a Sir William Boothby, who saw you about a year ago, and adores you, as
all the English you receive ought to do. He is much in my favour.
_DEATH OF WALPOLE'S BROTHER, AND OF THE PRINCE OF WALES--SPEECH OF THE
YOUNG PRINCE--SINGULAR SERMON ON HIS DEATH._