STRAWBERRY HILL, _June_ 15, 1768.
No, I cannot be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased with your
situation. You are so apt to take root, that it requires ten years to
dig you out again when you once begin to settle. As you go pitching your
tent up and down, I wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your
quarters perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you; but tell me first,
when do your Duke and Duchess [the Argylls] travel to the North? I know
that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not know that she is not as
amiable a _laddess_, but I had rather see their house comfortably when
they are not there.
I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It began here
but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-forty hours without
intermission. My poor hay has not a dry thread to its back. I have had a
fire these three days. In short, every summer one lives in a state of
mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason: it is because we will
affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our
poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of
their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling
breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise
these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to
enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such
thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a north-east wind, that makes Damon
button up to the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue;
and then they cry, _This is a bad summer_! as if we ever had any other.
The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined
never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over
foreign trees, and making our houses clamber up hills to look at
prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no
being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a
thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us,
and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion again.
There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you say, I
am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the hot-house in St.
Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me very vain, though there was
very little merit in it. I had seen so much of all parties, that I had
little esteem left for any; it is most indifferent to me who is in or
who is out, or which is set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord
Mansfield. I see the country going to ruin, and no man with brains
enough to save it. That is mortifying; but what signifies who has the
undoing it? I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject: _my_
patriotism could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.
I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady Hinchinbrook: I
heard a very bad account of her when I was last in town. Your letter to
Madame Roland shall be taken care of; but as you are so scrupulous of
making me pay postage, I must remember not to overcharge you, as I can
frank my idle letters no longer; therefore, good night!
P.S.--I was in town last week, and found Mr. Chute still confined. He
had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more rheumatism than gout.
_VOLTAIRE'S CRITICISMS ON SHAKESPEARE--PARNELL'S "HERMIT."_