The shrubs shall be sent, but you must stay till the holidays; I shall not have time to go to Strawberry sooner.  I have received your second letter, dated November 22d, about the Gothic paper.  I hope you will by this time have got mine, to dissuade you from that thought.  If you insist upon it, I will send the paper:  I have told you what I think, and will therefore say no more on that head; but I will transcribe a passage which I found t’other day in Petronius, and thought not unapplicable to you:  “Omnium herbarum succos Democritus expressit; et ne lapidum virgultorumque vis lateret, aetatem inter experimenta consumpsit.”  I hope Democritus could not draw charmingly when he threw away his time in extracting tints from flints and twigs!

I can’t conclude my letter without telling you what an escape I had at the sale of Dr. Mead’s library, which goes extremely dear.  In the catalogue I saw Winstanley’s views of Audley-inn, which I concluded was, as it really was, a thin, dirty folio, worth about fifteen shillings.  As I thought it might be scarce, it might run to two or three guineas. however, I bid Graham certainly buy it for me.  He came the next morning in a great fright, said he did not know whether he had done very right or very wrong, that he had gone as far as nine-and-forty guineas—­I started in such a fright!  Another bookseller had luckily had as unlimited a commission, and bid fifty—­when my Graham begged it might be adjourned, till they could consult their principals.  I think I shall never give an unbounded commission again, even for views of Les Rochers!(532) Adieu!  Am I ever to see any more of your hand-drawing?  Adieu!  Yours ever.

(531) The lady of whom the anecdote is told p. 65, ant`e, letter 22.-E.

(532) Madame de S`evign`e’s seat in Bretagne.

231 Letter 119
To Richard Bentley, Esq. 
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 24, 1754. ’

My dear Sir, I received your packet of December 6th last night, but intending to come hither for a few days, and unluckily sent away by the coach in the morning a parcel of things for you; you must therefore wait till another bundle sets out, for the new letters of Madame S`evign`e.  Heaven forbid that I should have said they were bad!  I only meant that they were full of family details, and mortal distempers, to which the most immortal of us are subject:  and I was sorry that the profane should ever know that my divinity was ever troubled with a sore leg, or the want of money; though, indeed, the latter defeats Bussy@s ill natured accusation of avarice; and her tearing herself from her daughter, then at Paris, to go and save money in Bretagne to pay her debts, is a perfection of virtue which completes her amiable character.  My lady Hervey has made me most happy, by bringing me from Paris an admirable copy of the very portrait that was Madame de Simiane’s:  I am going to build an altar for it, under the title of Notre Dame des Rochers!