I have been very fortunate lately:  I have met with an extreme good print of M. de Grignan;(1086) I am persuaded, very like; and then it has his toufie `ebouriff`ee; I don’t, indeed, know what that was, but I am sure it Is in the-print.  None of the critics could ever make out what Livy’s Patavinity is though they are confident it is in his writings.  I have heard within these few days, what, for your sake, I wish I could have told you sooner-that there is in Belleisle’s suite the Abb`e Perrin, who published Madame S`evign`e’s letters, and who has the originals in his hands.  How one should have liked to have known him!  The Marshal was privately in london last Friday.  He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton.(1087) Don’t you believe it was to settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come in unto the land to possess it?  I don’t at all wonder at any shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation.  The bringing him here at all—­the sending him away now—­in short, the whole series of our conduct convinces me that, we shall soon see as silent a change as that in the Rehearsal, of King Usher and King Physician.  It may well be so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle—­those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and fluttering and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person.  But there is no describing him, but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t’other day:  “Je ne scais pas,” dit il, “je ne scaurois m’exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage.”  If one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, always wanting to be hung somewhere else, one should have a comparative idea of him.

For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire—­I am but a passenger! if I were not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton’s(1088) geographical resolution of going to China, when Winston told her the world would be burnt in three years.  Have you any philosophy?  Tell me what you think.  It is quite the fashion to talk of the French coming here.  Nobody sees it in any other light but as a thing to be talked of, not to be precautioned against.  Don’t you remember a report of the plague being in the city, and every body went to the house where it was to see it?  You- see I laugh about it, for I would not for the world be so unenglished as to do otherwise.  I am persuaded that when Count Saxe, with ten thousand men, is within a day’s march of London, people will be hiring windows at Charing-cross and Cheapside to see them pass by.  ’Tis our characteristic to take dangers for sights, and evils for curiosities.

Adieu! dear George:  I am laying in scraps of Cato against it may be necessary to take leave of one’s correspondents `a la Romaine, and, before the play itself is suppressed by a lettre de cachet to the booksellers.