My hay and I are drowned; I comfort myself with a fire, but I cannot treat the other with any sun, at least not with one that has more warm than the sun in a harlequin-farce.
I went this morning to see the Duchess of Grafton, who has got an excellent house and fine prospect, but melancholy enough, and so I thought was she herself: I did not ask wherefore.
I go to town to-morrow to see the Devil upon Two Sticks,(1034) as I did last week, but could not get in. I have now secured a place in my niece Cholmondeley's box, and am to have the additional entertainment of Mrs. Macauley in the same company; who goes to see herself represented, and I suppose figures herself very like Socrates.
I shall send this letter by the coach, as it is rather free spoken, and Sandwich may be prying.
Mr. Chute has found the subject of my tragedy, which I thought happened in Tillotson's time, in the Queen of Navarre's Tales; and what is very remarkable, I had laid my plot at Narbonne and about the beginning of the Reformation, and it really did happen in Languedoc and in the time of Francis the First. Is not this singular?(1035)
I hope your canary hen was really with egg by the blue-bird, and that he will not plead that they are none of his and sue for a divorce. Adieu!
(1032) Now first printed. In the preceding January Mr. Conway had resigned his situation of secretary of state for the northern department.-E.
(1033) Mr. Rigby.
(1034) Foote's successful comedy of The Devil upon Two Sticks was first acted at the Haymarket on the 31st of May.-E.
(1035) See vol. i. p. 57.