fupper to-night, G, I have not had the pleasure of supping with you this great while? With a great deal of pleasure, and-enter waiter withJupper is ferved.

Here's fupper enough, I hope, for us two, George. Where's all the com- . pany to-night, waiter? There's a great ball, please your Honour, to-night at Lady H-n's.

Aye, George, you are no great ball-man, a minuet is too grave a thing for you, and a jiggeting or flirting with the miffes is not, I think, much in your way; you are much better employed in merriment with your friends.*

Give me a glass of Vin de grave, waiter:† Have you seen the last new opera? No, faith, I have been taken up with labourers and carpenters in the country. Aye aye, but you have had better employment than that.‡

Come come, George, I fee what you are at; what fignifies mincing the matter? I am exceffively happy to hear that I could have afforded amusement to my friends; and that it has been with you at the head of them,! makes me particularly fo.

Poh, poh, amusement? I'll promise you, if you have not heard that there are admirers of many things in your book, you are misinformed; I lately heard that Lord Tt had spoken vaftly well of it: as to joking, you know people joke and laugh about every thing, and on fomething or other about the friends they love beft,

Oh! George, George!-Upon my word it is true; perhaps there may be things not quite fo well; nothing is perfect, and if people can lay hold of any thing to laugh, you know they will; but upon my word, I heard but yesterday that Lord T-t had spoken quite well of the work.

[Afide] Looking a little jocularly fignificant.

t [Afide] I fancy he has heard fomething of our jokes.
‡ [Afide] A smile fignificantly merry, cheary and curious.

Now

Now this was very true, and it was a beginning of putting things, a little at leaft, (however true be the "ex nihilo nil fit") in their natural course; I mean, for a judgement of a new work to begin at the right and not the wrong end; and "feniores priores, juniores fequuntur," we all knew before leaving school. The first unusual flow of the tide, of two or three days, had a little ceased; by degrees competency of judgement dropped in, and this fame Lord T-t feemed not to have enfeebled its authority. But what the devil mattered it to other people what Lord T. Lord U. Lord W. even to the end of the alphabet, faid? Yet certainly, if I will talk of fomething I do not understand, I must ask fomebody what to fay. One only reply was wanting for the entire corps of thefe merry critics; viz. it is, "coram non judice;" and it may be feen in the body of these fo fcrutinizing, minute, and inquiring aimings or endeavours, what my own notions, at least, now are of literary, rather of critical, powers, in bodies of men, that this body will not, I perfuade myself, be angry with me for putting in a critical clafs not

inferior to theirs.

But my fubject carries me, I fee, to an appearance I should be very forry to be a true one, as to my any feelings, not only now, but ever about any of these gentlemen, which I have even conscientiously above told: nay, after the conference (I shall in a moment tell) I can moft truly fay, they have even from that time to this leant, if on any fide, to that of pleasure; most certainly of merriment in the reflection.

But away with even this language or wording of gravity; and come on, ye Longinuses, ye Quintilians, of modern date and day, and if Retaliation deign to accompany your flight, and range herself on the oppofite bench, be her airy garments of the most light, nay fantastic and pleasant contexture, that the mirth-inspiring gods ever beftow on their happy votaries; and thou too, Retort, if Justice for once, taking off her bandage, discharge thee as an Attendant, or perhaps fort of Counsel for the Culprit, be it, oh!! goddess, yes, oh! be it-the Retort Courteous!

I'll tell you very fairly, G-, that I and D. E. and G. W. did fit up late a night or two after your work came out, to go quite through its examination; and these are honeftly the principal objections we had to make to it; to be fure we found things we thought very well of; mem.-What they were, is perhaps known elsewhere;. but I felt this, in my own interior self, viz. I wonder what they thought, in the critical march, of this poor little reflective attempt,' viz. " In this country every criminal is tried by his "peers but an author." If on this occafion the fabulous time could have returned, and a real invocation on aërial or heavenly powers had been to be made, and poor humble I been on a confultation of which; what does any one think of my fancy or choice when I fay I should have named what to me appears a very amiable deity, and certainly not the lefs fo from being a female, the title or name of whom is-Modeftia?

But I am really premature;-if all this hap to have any grace, the least in the world, now, I do flatter myself it will have a better, even in a

moment.

• I do confefs to you, G―, that there were two or three things we three could not make out at all; and upon my foul there is one I fairly own that we could no-how even guess at the drift or meaning of.' My dear friend, tell it me most, aye, moft frankly and freely; and if you give me a grain of offence, fay I am a cut-purse, a devil, or a driveller. Why, it was this then, where you introduce a character whom you give the letter A to, three times repeated, for his name, (Mr. A. A. A.)—it is very true that we could not help laughing a little; Mr. A. A. A! Nor did we fee what he meant to be at when introduced. God Almighty bless thee, my dear facetious friend; I could almost kifs thee for thy kindnefs; Mr. A. A. A.! but pray did not you read what d'ye call it, and what d'ye call 'em, at the end of these strange A.'s? Oh! how much too well this confirms, verifies, my maxim, lately introduced here, about Speaking and hearing?—Are we then mere machines at last?

But

But let me introduce some light again amongst us. The two united characters or portraits have ever been, and now are, with my ownfelf, the very first and best of my entire catalogue. If any where through my picturesque attempts there is at all the main de maitre, there, to me, I fay, it affuredly is; if any of those fine lines or ftrokes of the whether pencil or chizzel, any where, even there. Alas! may I dare to fuppofe that, for that very reason, they had no effect? for the fine touches, the delicate minutiae of nature, that feed the microscopic eye of tafte and intuition, are to the coarfe common eye even invisible. What estimation that article of my book is, in general, in, I know not at all; and indeed I never have afked. It is true that I very lately heard one reader fay he was pleased with it very much, though I cannot reckon from that authority, as from fome others, fince, if I have felt flattered there (as who does not?) at the uncommon praises, almost raptures, towards my work, maxim after maxim, and character after character, I have felt also my drawback even from its excefs, and want of difcrimination of taste in the being ftruck equally in the weakest as the strongest places; nay, as alfo (my reader will grant me that if I can puff, I also can a little mettre de leau dans mon vin) shewed me favourite things of other people's, I thought very lightly of. But in regard to this fame A. A. A. these letters in fact are only (a part of the intended humorous painting) marks of hesitation before the appellation of what d'ye call 'em, or what d'ye call it, given by the man of (proposed and contrafted) extreme elegance and fuperiority of nature, to his very reverse. But to judge here between me and my trio of the attempted drawing, it must itself be seen; and permit me to add, not by one totally unfkilled in painting; so far is certain, viz. that Garrick, by clothing my two perfonages with his powers, abfolutely made Hawkefworth and me laugh fo immoderately that we were ready to drop.

Had the difficulties and doubts of my critics happened to fall on another of my intended paintings of humour, (viz. Pylades and Orefles) 1 could have referred them to explanation in the very realization to the eye on the ftage, in Lord Chalkflone and Bowman; and all-prolix, frightfully fo as I am got to be-(I have not time, reader, to make my writing fhorter, now at Bb 2 leaft,

leaft, as the gentleman faid by his long letter) take this anecdote of puff if you please, of reality however;—that Garrick came to me just after our numerous confultations were all over, and the work was got into the world, to defire me to draw a character for him for his stage; and to continue the puff, (you may recollect fome time back my determination to puff all I could)— Garrick and Hawkefworth continually preffed me to write a comedy, and even a plan was made out, and from the characters of my book, which I however thought not of attempting. Garrick, I fay, defired me to write a character for him; I told him I really was not confcious I could, efpecially when thus to hunt after the matter or materials;-foon after he came to me, and faid he would not give me the trouble; and soon after that, I saw on the ftage Lord Chalkftone and Bowman, which any one may compare with Pylades and Orestes, and with it the advantage of having the characteristic traits, drefs, gefture, look, every thing, realized for you, instead of your doing it for yourself; perhaps even of A. A. A. it's critics would not have seen the appellation fo very unaccountable with that aid and elucidation.

I cannot forbear stopping here a moment to relate a very fimilar fort of reading-faculty in another gentleman, who had a play-book put into his hand to help out a rehearsal of a play, among fome people of fashion, by his reading one of the parts, which he did, and when he came to a line where he saw wrote down the word afide, he read it on in the line, as a part of it; on which (as is concluded) the whole audience and actors burst out a laughing. What the devil do you all laugh at? fays he; here (look only) are the very words. So much then for my poor A. A. A. but what critiques befide? Why, very few indeed; and as to any with the happy finger of applause placed on it, I cannot plume myself with the relation of any; yet we talked 'till three o'clock in the morning about it and about it. This critique, however, I recollect befides, and must relate; nay, it was one, though not equally with A. A. A., of no fmall wonderment too; it was this, that they could

not