Dear Madam, As perhaps you have not yet seen the “Botanic Garden” (which I believe I mentioned to you), I lend it you to read.  The poetry, I think, you will allow most admirable; and difficult it was, no doubt.  If you are not a naturalist, as well as a poetess, perhaps you will lament that so powerful a talent has been wasted to so little purpose; for where is the use of describing in verse what nobody can understand without a long prosaic explanation of every article?  It is still more unfortunate that there is not a symptom of plan in the whole poem.  The lady-flowers and their lovers enter in pairs or trios, or etc. as often as the couples in Cassandra. and you are not a whit more interested about one heroine and her swain than about another.  The similes are beautiful, fine, and sometimes sublime:  and thus the episodes will be better remembered than the mass of the poem itself, which one cannot call the subject; for could one call it a subject, if any body had composed a poem on the matches formerly made in the Fleet, where, as Waitwell says, in “The Way of the World,” they stood like couples in rows ready to begin a country-dance?  Still, I flatter myself you will agree with me that the author is a great poet, and could raise the passions, and possesses all the requisites of the art.  I found but a single bad verse; in the last canto one line ends e’er long.  You will perhaps be surprised at meeting a truffle converted into a nymph, and inhabiting a palace studded with emeralds and rubies like a saloon in the Arabian Nights!  I had a more particular motive for sending this poem to you:  you will find the bard espousing your poor Africans.  There is besides, which will please you too, a handsome panegyric on the apostle of humanity, Mr. Howard.(630)

Mrs. Garrick, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in her own box at Mr. Conway’s play, gave me a much better account of your health which delighted me.  I am sure, my good friend, you partake of my joy at the great success of his comedy.  The additional character of the Abb`e pleased much:  it was added by the advice of the players to enliven it; that is, to stretch the jaws of the pit and galleries.  I sighed silently; for it was originally so genteel and of a piece, that I was sorry to have it tumbled by coarse applauses.  But this is a secret.  I am going to Twickenham for two days on an assignation with the spring, and to avoid the riotous devotion of to-morrow.

A gentleman essayist has printed what he calls some strictures on my Royal and Noble Authors, in revenge for my having spoken irreverently (on Bishop Burnet’s authority) of the Earl of Anglesey, who had the honour, it seems, of being the gentleman’s grandfather.  He asks me, by the way, why it was more ridiculous in the Duke of Newcastle to write his two comedies, than in the Duke of Buckingham to write “The Rehearsal?” Alas!  I know but one reason; which is, that it is less ridiculous to write one excellent comedy, than two very bad ones.  Peace be with such answerers!  Adieu, my dear Madam!  Yours most cordially.