ARLINGTON STREET, _Dec._ 20, 1764.
... My journey to Paris is fixed for some time in February, where I hear
I may expect to find Madame de Boufflers, Princess of Conti. Her husband
is just dead; and you know the House of Bourbon have an alacrity at
marrying their old mistresses. She was here last year, being extremely
infected with the _Anglomanie_, though I believe pretty well cured by
her journey. She is past forty, and does not appear ever to have been
handsome, but is one of the most agreeable and sensible women I ever
saw; yet I must tell you a trait of her that will not prove my
assertion. Lady Holland asked her how she liked Strawberry Hill? She
owned that she did not approve of it, and that it was not _digne de la
solidité Angloise_. It made me laugh for a quarter of an hour. They
allot us a character we have not, and then draw consequences from that
idea, which would be absurd, even if the idea were just. One must not
build a Gothic house because the nation is _solide_. Perhaps, as
everything now in France must be _à la Grecque_, she would have liked a
hovel if it pretended to be built after Epictetus's--but Heaven forbid
that I should be taken for a philosopher! Is it not amazing that the
most sensible people in France can never help being domineered by sounds
and general ideas? Now everybody must be a _géomètre_, now a
_philosophe_, and the moment they are either, they are to take up a
character and advertise it: as if one could not study geometry for one's
amusement or for its utility, but one must be a geometrician at table,
or at a visit! So the moment it is settled at Paris that the English are
solid, every Englishman must be wise, and, if he has a good
understanding, he must not be allowed to play the fool. As I happen to
like both sense and nonsense, and the latter better than what generally
passes for the former, I shall disclaim, even at Paris, the
_profondeur_, for which they admire us; and I shall nonsense to admire
Madame de Boufflers, though her nonsense is not the result of nonsense,
but of sense, and consequently not the genuine nonsense that I honour.
When she was here, she read a tragedy in prose to me, of her own
composition, taken from "The Spectator:" the language is beautiful and
so are the sentiments.
There is a Madame de Beaumont who has lately written a very pretty
novel, called "Lettres du Marquis du Roselle." It is imitated, too, from
an English standard, and in my opinion a most woful one; I mean the
works of Richardson, who wrote those deplorably tedious lamentations,
"Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison," which are pictures of high life
as conceived by a bookseller, and romances as they would be
spiritualized by a Methodist teacher: but Madame de Beaumont has almost
avoided sermons, and almost reconciled sentiments and common sense. Read
her novel--you will like it.
_DEBATE ON AMERICAN TAXES--PETITION OF THE PERIWIG-MAKERS--FEMALE
HEAD-DRESSES--LORD BYRON'S DUEL--OPENING OF ALMACK'S--NO. 45._