Do but think of my beginning a third sheet! but as the Parliament is rising, and I shall probably not write you a tolerably long letter again these eight months, I will lay in a stock of merit with you to last me so long Mr. Chute has set me too upon making epigrams; but as I have not his art, mine is almost a copy of verses: the story he told me, and is literally true, of an old Lady Bingley.(134)
Celia now had completed some thirty campaigns,
And for new generations was hammering chains;
When whetting those terrible weapons, her eyes,
To Jennny, her handmaid, in anger she cries,
"Careless creature! did mortal e'er see such a glass!
Who that saw me in this, could e'er guess what I was!
Much you mind what I say! pray how oft have I bid you
Provide me a new one? how oft have I chid you?"
"Lord, Madam!" cried Jane, "you're so hard to be pleased
I am sure every glassman in town I have teased:
I have hunted each shop from Pall-mall to Cheapside:
Both Miss Carpenter's(135) man and Miss Banks's(136) I've
tried."
"Don't tell me of those girls!-all I know, to my cost,
Is, the looking-glass art must be certainly lost!
One used to have mirrors so smooth and so bright,
They did one's eyes justice, they heighten'd one's white,
And fresh roses diffused o'er ones bloom—but, alas!
In the glasses made now, one detests one's own face;
They pucker one's cheeks up and furrow one's brow,
And one's skin looks as yellow as that of Miss(137) Howe!"(138)
After an epigram that seems to have found out the longitude, I shall tell you but one more, and that wondrous short. It is said to be made by a cow. YOU Must not wonder; we tell as many strange stories as Baker and Livy:
"A warm winter, a dry spring,
A hot summer, a new King."
Though the sting is very epigrammatic, the whole of the distitch has more of the truth than becomes prophecy; that is, it is false, for the spring is wet and cold.
There is come from France a Madame Bocage, who has translated Milton. my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.' You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is keeping an assembly, and inviting literally every body to it. She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsey, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your company next Thursday.
Mr. Whithed has taken my Lord Pembroke's house at Whitehall; a glorious situation, but as madly built as my Lord himself was. He has bought some delightful pictures too, of Claude, Gaspar, and good masters, to the amount of four hundred pounds.
Good night! I have nothing more to tell you, but that I have lately seen a Sir William Boothby, who saw you about a year ago, and adores you, as all the English you receive ought to do. He is much in my favour.
(120) Thomas Sherlock, Master of the Temple; first, Bishop of Salisbury, and afterwards of London.
(121) " I remember," says Addison, in the 240th Tatler, "when our whole island was Shaken With an earthquake some years ago, that there was an impudent mountebank, who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were "very good against an earthquake."'-E.