I have just now finished Coleman's play, and like it very well; it is well conducted, and the characters are well preserved. I own, I expected from the author more dialogue wit; but, as I know that he is a most scrupulous classic, I believe he did not dare to put in half so much wit as he could have done, because Terence had not a single grain; and it would have been 'crimen laesae antiquitatis'. God bless you!
LETTER CCXLVIII
BATH, November 21, 1761.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have this moment received your letter of the 19th. If I find any alterations by drinking these waters, now six days, it is rather for the better; but, in six days more, I think I shall find with more certainty what humor they are in with me; if kind, I will profit of, but not abuse their kindness; all things have their bounds, 'quos ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum'; and I will endeavor to nick that point.
The Queen's jointure is larger than, from SOME REASONS, I expected it would be, though not greater than the very last precedent authorized. The case of the late Lord Wilmington was, I fancy, remembered.
I have now good reason to believe that Spain will declare war to us, that is, that it will very soon, if it has not already, avowedly assist France, in case the war continues. This will be a great triumph to Mr. Pitt, and fully justify his plan of beginning with Spain first, and having the first blow, which is often half the battle.
Here is a great deal of company, and what is commonly called good company, that is, great quality. I trouble them very little, except at the pump, where my business calls me; for what is company to a deaf man, or a deaf man to company?
Lady Brown, whom I have seen, and who, by the way, has got the gout in her eye, inquired very tenderly after you. And so I elegantly rest, Yours, till death.
LETTER CCXLIX
BATH, December 6, 1761.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have been in your debt some time, which, you know, I am not very apt to be: but it was really for want of specie to pay. The present state of my invention does not enable me to coin; and you would have had as little pleasure in reading, as I should have in writing 'le coglionerie' of this place; besides, that I am very little mingled in them. I do not know whether I shall be able to follow, your advice, and cut a winner; for, at present, I have neither won nor lost a single shilling. I will play on this week only; and if I have a good run, I will carry it off with me; if a bad one, the loss can hardly amount to anything considerable in seven days, for I hope to see you in town to-morrow sevennight.
I had a dismal letter from Harte, last week; he tells me that he is at nurse with a sister in Berkshire; that he has got a confirmed jaundice, besides twenty other distempers. The true cause of these complaints I take to be the same that so greatly disordered, and had nearly destroyed the most august House of Austria, about one hundred and thirty years ago; I mean Gustavus Adolphus; who neither answered his expectations in point of profit nor reputation, and that merely by his own fault, in not writing it in the vulgar tongue; for as to facts I will maintain that it is one of the best histories extant.
'Au revoir', as Sir Fopling says, and God bless you!
LETTER CCL
BATH, November 2, 1762.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I arrived here, as I proposed, last Sunday; but as ill as I feared I should be when I saw you. Head, stomach, and limbs, all out of order.
I have yet seen nobody but Villettes, who is settled here for good, as it is called. What consequences has the Duke of Devonshire's resignation had? He has considerable connections and relations; but whether any of them are resigned enough to resign with him, is another matter. There will be, to be sure, as many, and as absurd reports, as there are in the law books; I do not desire to know either; but inform me of what facts come to your knowledge, and of such reports only as you believe are grounded. And so God bless you!
LETTER CCLI
BATH, November 13, 1762.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have received your letter, and believe that your preliminaries are very near the mark; and, upon that supposition, I think we have made a tolerable good bargain with Spain; at least full as good as I expected, and almost as good as I wished, though I do not believe that we have got ALL Florida; but if we have St. Augustin, I suppose that, by the figure of 'pars pro toto', will be called all Florida. We have by no means made so good a bargain with France; for, in truth, what do we get by it, except Canada, with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi! and that is all. As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland, they are very well 'per la predica', and for the Commissary whom we shall employ: for he will have a good salary from hence, to see that those restrictions are complied with; and the French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be broken through. It is plain to me, that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war.
The three Leeward islands, which the French yield to us, are not, all together, worth half so much as that of St. Lucia, which we give up to them. Senegal is not worth one quarter of Goree. The restrictions of the French in the East Indies are as absurd and impracticable as those of Newfoundland; and you will live to see the French trade to the East Indies, just as they did before the war. But after all I have said, the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered that no one single person who carried on this negotiation on our parts was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before. Upon the whole, then, the acquisition of Canada has cost us fourscore millions sterling. I am convinced we might have kept Guadaloupe, if our negotiators had known how to have gone about it.
His most faithful Majesty of Portugal is the best off of anybody in this, transaction, for he saves his kingdom by it, and has not laid out one moidore in defense of it. Spain, thank God, in some measure, 'paye les pots cassis'; for, besides St. Augustin, logwood, etc., it has lost at least four millions sterling, in money, ships, etc.
Harte is here, who tells me he has been at this place these three years, excepting some few excursions to his sister; he looks ill, and laments that he has frequent fits of the yellow jaundice. He complains of his not having heard from you these four years; you should write to him. These waters have done me a great deal of good, though I drink but two-thirds of a pint in the whole day, which is less than the soberest of my countrymen drink of claret at every meal.
I should naturally think, as you do, that this session will be a stormy one, that is, if Mr. Pitt takes an active part; but if he is pleased, as the Ministers say, there is no other AEolus to blow a storm. The Dukes of Cumberland, Newcastle, and Devonshire, have no better troops to attack with than the militia; but Pitt alone is ipse agmen. God bless you!
LETTER CCLII
BATH, November 27, 1762.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter this morning, and return you the ball 'a la volee'. The King's speech is a very prudent one; and as I suppose that the addresses in answer to it were, as usual, in almost the same words, my Lord Mayor might very well call them innocent. As his Majesty expatiates so much upon the great ACHIEVEMENTS of the war, I cannot help hoping that, when the preliminaries shall be laid before Parliament IN DUE TIME, which, I suppose, means after the respective ratifications of all the contracting parties, that some untalked of and unexpected advantage will break out in our treaty with France; St. Lucia, at least. I see in the newspapers an article which I by no means like, in our treaty with Spain; which is, that we shall be at liberty to cut logwood in the Bay of Campeachy, BUT BY PAYING FOR IT. Who does not see that this condition may, and probably will, amount to a prohibition, by the price which the Spaniards may set it at? It was our undoubted right, and confirmed to us by former treaties, before the war, to cut logwood gratis; but this new stipulation (if true) gives us a privilege something like a reprieve to a criminal, with a 'non obstante' to be hanged.
I now drink so little water, that it can neither do me good nor hurt; but as I bathe but twice a-week, that operation, which does my rheumatic carcass good, will keep me here some time longer than you had allowed.
Harte is going to publish a new edition of his 'Gustavus,' in octavo; which, he tells me, he has altered, and which, I could tell him, he should translate into English, or it will not sell better than the former; for, while the world endures, style and manner will be regarded, at least as much as matter. And so, 'Diem vous aye dans sa sainte
