sister hopes you will accept of her's; and I flatter myself, you sometimes remember I am entirely your's, E. MONTAGU. To the Same. Tunbridge-Wells, Sep. the 3d, 1745. MY DEAR LADY DUTCHESS, I AM extremely happy in Dr. Young's company; he has dined with me sometimes, and the other day rode out with me; he carried me into places suited to the genius of his muse, sublime, grand, and with a pleasing gloom diffused over them; there I tasted the pleasure of his conversation in its full force: his expressions all bear the stamp of novelty, and his thoughts of sterling sense. think he is in perfect good health; he practises a kind of philosophical abstinence, but seems not obliged to any I rules of physic. All the ladies court him; more because they hear he is a genius, than that they know him to be such. I tell him I am jealous of some ladies that follow him; he says, he trusts my pride will preserve me from jealousy. The Doctor is a true philosopher, and sees how one vice corrects another till an animal, made up of ten thousand bad qualities, by "th' eternal art educing good from ill," grows to be a social creature, tolerable to live with. Your Grace orders me to give an account of spirits, appetite, and all the articles of my constitution. As to the first, they are good enough to laugh at very little jest, to be pleased with indifferent entertainment, and not to be unhappy in dull company; as to the second, I can eat more buttered roll in a morning than a great girl at a boarding-school, and more beef at dinner than a yeoman of the guards; I sleep well, and am indeed in perfect health, and the waters have done me much service. I had, just now, a letter from Mr. Montagu, in which he tells me he leaves his brother, to whom he made a visit in his way to the north,, on this day, and proceeds towards Newcastle; he tells me he met Dr. Courayer at Dunstable, travelling with Mr. Stanhope; he has all the virtues, and almost as much innocence, as would qualify a man for Paradise, and to walk with angels, like our first parents. The little Doctor loves London better than the country. He has not only virtue enough to keep himself from the contagion of vice, but to venture to be the physician, too, of the infected, and the friend of the infirm. It is a hard case that your Grace forgets your correspondents for your Bantam fowl. Though I have not my head so well curled as your Friesland hen, nor hold up my head like your upright duck, do you think I consent to be laid aside for them? Of all fowl I love the goose best, who supplies us with her quill; surely a goose is a goodly bird; if its hiss be insignificant, remember that from its side the engine is taken with which the laws are registered, and history recorded; though not a bird famous for courage, from this same ample wing are the heroes' exploits engraven on the pillar of everlasting Fame; though not an animal of sagacity, yet does it lend its assistance to the precepts of philosophy; if not beautiful, yet with its tender touch in the hands of some inspired lover is Lesbia's blush, Sacharissa's majesty, and Chloe's bloom, made lasting; and locks, which, "curled or uncurled, have turned to grey," by it continue in eternal beauty; and will you forsake this creature for a little pert fowl with a gaudy feather? That merit is little regarded now-a-days, I knew before, but little expected to find your Grace in that disposition. If I don't hear, in a post or two, that you have got an university of goslins, I shall really take it to heart. For my part, I look on them as the worthies of the age, they are impartial historians, unprejudiced philosophers, the great promoters of learning, and assistants of the belles lettres; and, if they fall into good hands, produce things that are admirable. You will say, perhaps, that while I praise them I give you an instance of the impertinence of one of them; but know, Madam, what I write with is a chicken's feather, made into a pen by a stationer's apprentice; the first would never have been a goose, nor the second a man. From the figure of the pen, and its maker, I feared it would scrawl, and be flippant. Sure, when my stationer's youth comes to perfect monkey's estate, he will ape man's works better, else he will starve as a journeyman. I vow this writing engine is more like a tooth-pick than a pen; pray let it make some excuse for my bad writing; it is a pen fit for making apologies, for it is sure to commit a fault the first syllable it attempts. I am your Grace's, &c. &c. E. MONTAGU. |