You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy? he was walking in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was very pretty: they followed them; but the girls ran away, and the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to dog them: the porter hunted them-he the porter. The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre. Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker's wife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers. "Ay," says she, "but if I should, and should lose him by it." However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue: and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park, she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a dinner as a butterwoman's daughter could give him, he should be welcome. Away they walked to Craven Street: the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May-fair. The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did. The mother borrowed a pair of sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day they went to their own palace. In two or three days the scene grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he could bear it no longer. "Bear! bear what?"—"Why, to be teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a butterwoman's daughter. I am determined to go to France, and will leave you a handsome allowance."—"Leave me! why you don't fancy you shall leave me? I will go with you."—"What, you love me then?"—"No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan't go without me." And they are gone! If you know any body that proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in a more commodious method.
I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn. living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.'(1466)
There are still two months to London; if you could discover your own mind for any three or four days of that space, I will either go with you to the Tigers or be glad to see you here; but I positively will ask you neither one nor t'other any more. I have raised seven-and-twenty bantams from the patriarchs you sent me. Adieu!
(1464) Daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers.
(1465) Lord Bolingbroke, in a letter to the Earl of Marchmont of the 1st of November, says, "I hope you heard from me by myself, as well of me by Mr. Whitfield. This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon's, and I should have been curious to hear him. Nothing kept me from going, but an imagination that there was to be a select auditory. That saint, our friend Chesterfield, was there; and I hear from him an extreme good account of the sermon." Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.-E.
(1466) Dr. Beattie says, in a letter to Sir W. Forbes, "Gray's letters very much resemble what his conversation was: he had none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet; and though on those and all other subjects he spoke to me with the utmost freedom, and without any reserve, he was in general company much more silent than one could have wished."-E.
565 Letter 261 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1748.
I have two letters of yours to account for, and nothing to plead but my old insolvency. Oh! yes, I have to scold you, which you find is an inexhaustible fund with me. You sent me your d`em`el`e(1467) with the whole city of Florence, and charged me to keep it secret-and the first person I saw was my Lord Hobart, who was full of the account he had received from you. You might as well have told a woman an improper secret, and expected to have it kept! but you may be very easy, for unless it reaches my Lady Pomfret or my Lady Orford, I dare say it will never get back to Florence; and for those two ladies, I don't think it likely that they should hear it, for the first is in a manner retired from the world, and the world is retired from the second. Now I have vented my anger, I am seriously sorry for you, to be exposed to the impertinence of those silly Florentine women: they deserve a worse term than silly, since they pretend to any characters. How could you act with so much temper? If they had treated me in this manner, I should have avowed ten times more than they pretended you had done; but you are an absolute minister!
I am much obliged to Prince Beauvau for remembering me, and should be extremely pleased to show him all manner of attentions here: you know I profess great attachment to that family for their civilities to me. But how gracious the Princess has been to you! I am quite jealous of her dining with you: I remember what a rout there was to get her for half of half a quarter of an hour to your assembly.
The Bishop of London is dead; having luckily for his family, as it proves, refused the archbishopric.*1468) We owe him the justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and without any resentment or ingratitude.