“SIR,

“I received yours, and am sensible of the address and capacity with which you have hitherto transacted the great affair under your management.  You well observe, that our wants here are not to be concealed; and that it is vanity to use artifices with the knowing men with whom you are to deal.  Let me beg you therefore, in this representation of our circumstances, to lay aside art, which ceases to be such when it is seen, and make use of all your skill, to gain us what advantages you can from the enemy’s jealousy of each other’s greatness; which is the place where only you have room for any dexterity.  If you have any passion for your unhappy country, or any affection for your distressed master, come home with peace.  O Heaven!  Do I live to talk of Lewis the Great as the object of pity?  The king shows a great uneasiness to be informed of all that passes; but at the same time, is fearful of every one who appears in his presence, lest he should bring an account of some new calamity.  I know not in what terms to represent my thoughts to you, when I speak of the king, with relation to his bodily health.  Figure to yourself that immortal man, who stood in our public places, represented with trophies, armour, and terrors, on his pedestal:  consider, the Invincible, the Great, the Good, the Pious, the Mighty, which were the usual epithets we gave him, both in our language and thoughts.  I say, consider him whom you knew the most glorious and great of monarchs; and now think you see the same man an unhappy Lazar, in the lowest circumstances of human nature itself, without regard to the state from whence he is fallen.  I write from his bedside:  he is at present in a slumber.  I have many, many things to add; but my tears flow too fast, and my sorrow is too big for utterance.

“I am, etc.”

There is such a veneration due from all men to the persons of princes, that it were a sort of dishonesty to represent further the condition which the king is in; but it is certain, that soon after the receipt of these advices, Monsieur Torcy waited upon his Grace the Duke of Marlborough and the Lord Townshend, and in that conference gave up many points, which he had before said were such, as he must return to France before he could answer.

[Footnote 232:  See No. 13.]

[Footnote 233:  Mrs. Centlivre.  See No. 15.]

[Footnote 234:  Wilks took the part of Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar’s “The Constant Couple; or, A Trip to the Jubilee,” 1699.]

[Footnote 235:  Horatio Walpole, Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague, and brother of Sir Robert Walpole.]

[Footnote 236:  This letter is a pure invention.]

No. 20. [STEELE.

From Tuesday, May 24, to Thursday, May 26, 1709.

* * * * *

White’s Chocolate-house, May 24.

It is not to be imagined how far prepossession will run away with people’s understandings, in cases wherein they are under present uneasiness.  The following narration is a sufficient testimony of the truth of this observation.