To Colonel Rivers, Bellfield, Rutland.
London, Nov. 18.
Fitzgerald is busy, and begs me to write to you.
Your cottagers are arrived; there is something very interesting in
Miss Williams, and the little boy is an infant Adonis.
Heaven send he may be an honester man than his father, or I foresee
terrible devastations amongst the sex.
We have this moment your letter; I am angry with you for blaspheming
the sweet season of nineteen:
"O lovely source
Of generous foibles, youth! when opening minds
Are honest as the light, lucid as air,
As fostering breezes kind, as linnets gay,
Tender as buds, and lavish as the spring."
You will find out I am in a course of Shenstone, which I prescribe
to all minds tinctured with the uncomfortable selfishness of the
present age.
The only way to be good, is to retain the generous mistakes, if they
are such, of nineteen through life.
As to you, my dear Rivers, with all your airs of prudence and
knowing the world, you are, in this respect, as much a boy as ever.
Witness your extreme joy at having married a woman with two thousand
pounds, when you might have had one with twenty times the sum.
You are a boy, Rivers, I am a girl; and I hope we shall remain so as
long as we live.
Do you know, my dear friend, that I am a daughter of the Muses, and
that I wrote pastorals at seven years old?
I am charmed with this, because an old physician once told me it was
a symptom, not only of long life, but of long youth, which is much
better.
He explained this, by saying something about animal spirits, which I
do not at all understand, but which perhaps you may.
I should have been a pretty enough kind of a poetess, if papa had
not attempted to teach me how to be one, and insisted on seeing my
scribbles as I went on: these same Muses are such bashful misses, they
won't bear to be looked at.
Genius is like the sensitive plant; it shrinks from the touch.
So your nabob cousin is arrived: I hope he will fall in love with
Emily; and remember, if he had obligations to Mrs. Rivers's father, he
had exactly the same to your grandfather.
He might spare ten thousand pounds very well, which would improve
your _petits soupers_.
Adieu! Sir William Verville dines here, and I have but just time to
dress.
Yours,
A. Fitzgerald.