No. CXLV. TO THE SAME. I HAVE this moment got the song from S***, and I am sorry to see that he has spoilt it a good deal. It shall be a lesson to me how I lend him any thing again. I have sent you Werter, truly happy to have any the smallest opportunity of obliging you. 'Tis true, Madam, I saw you once since I was at W; and that once froze the very life-blood of my heart. Your reception of me was such, that a wretch meeting the eye of his judge, about to pronounce sentence of death on him, could only have envied my feelings and situation. But I hate the theme, and never more shall write or speak on it. One thing I shall proudly say, that I can pay Mrs. — a higher tribute of esteem, and appreciate her amiable worth more truly, than any man whom I have seen approach her. No. CXLVI. TO THE SAME. I HAVE often told you, my dear friend, that you had a spice of caprice in your composition, and you have as often disavowed it: even, perhaps, while your opinions were, at the moment, irrefragably proving it. Could any thing estrange me from a friend such as you?No! To-morrow I shall have the honour of waiting on you. Farewell, thou first of friends, and most accomplished of women; even with all thy little. caprices! No. No. CXLVII. TO THE SAME. MADAM, I RETURN your common-place book: I have perused it with much pleasure, and would have continued my criticisms; but as it seems the critic has forfeited your esteem, his strictures must lose their value. If it is true that "offences come only from the heart," before you I am guiltless. To admire, esteem, and prize you, as the most accomplished of women, and the first of friends-if these are crimes, I am the most offending thing alive. In a face where I used to meet the kind complacency of friendly confidence, now to find cold neglect and contemptuous scorn-is a wrench that my heart can ill bear. It is, how ever, some kind of miserable good luck, that while de haut-en-bas rigour may depress an unoffending wretch to the ground, it has a tendency to rouse a stubborn something in his bosom, which, though it cannot heal the wounds of his soul, is at least an opiate to blunt their poignancy. With the profoundest respect for your abilities; the most sincere esteem and ardent regard for your gentle heart and amiable manners; and the most fervent wish and prayer for your welfare, peace, and bliss, I have the honour to be, Madam, your most devoted humble ser vant. No. No. CXLIII. EXTRACT OF A LETTER To MR. 1794. I AM extremely obliged to you for your kind mention of my interests, in a letter which Mr. S*** shewed me. At present, my situation in life must be in a great measure stationary, at least for two or three years. The statement is this-I am on the supervisors' list; and as we come on there by precedency, in two or three years I shall be at the head of that list, and be appointed of course—then, a Friend might be of service to me in getting me into a place of the kingdom which I would like. A supervisor's income varies from about a hundred and twenty, to two hundred a-year; but the business is an incessant drudgery, and would be nearly a complete bar to every species of literary pursuit. The moment I am appointed supervisor |