I dined to-day at Garrick’s:  there were the Duke of Grafton, Lord and Lady Rochford, Lady Holderness, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu the Spanish minister; two regents, of which one is lord chamberlain, the other groom of the stole; and the wife of a secretary of state.  This is the being sur un assez bon ton for a player!  Don’t you want to ask me how I like him?  Do want, and I will tell you.  I like her exceedingly; her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too.  I don’t know how, he does not improve so fast upon me:  there is a great deal of parts, and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal too of mimicry and burlesque.  I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly; but unluckily I know it.  I was accustomed to it enough when my father was first minister:  on his fall I lost it all at once:  and since that, I have lived with Mr. Chute, who is all vehemence; with Mr. Fox, who is all disputation; with Sir Charles Williams, who has no time from flattering himself; with Gray, who does not hate to find fault with me; with Mr. Conway, who is all sincerity; and with you and Mr. Rigby, who have always laughed at me in a good-natured way.  I don’t know how, but I think I like all this as well—­I beg his pardon, Mr. Raftor does flatter me; but I should be a cormorant for praise, if I could swallow it whole as he gives it me.

Sir William Yonge, who has been extinct so long is at last dead and the war, which began with such a flirt of vivacity, is I think gone to sleep.  General Braddock has not yet sent over to claim the surname of Americanus.  But why should I take pains to show You in how many ways I know nothing?—­Why; I can tell it you in one word—­why, Mr. Cambridge knows nothing!—­I wish you good-night!  Yours ever.

(595) Hardouin de P`er`efixe’s Histoire du Roi Henri le Grand appeared in 1661.  He is stated, by the editor Of the Biog.  Univ. to be the best historian of that monarch, and the work has been translated in many languages.  He was appointed preceptor to Louis xiv. in 1644, and Archbishop of Paris in 1622.  He died in 1670.-E.

268 Letter 144 To Sir Horace Mann.  Mistley, August 21, 1755. ’

I shall laugh at you for taking so seriously what I said to you about my Lady Orford.  Do you think, my dear Sir, that at this time I can want to learn your zeal for us? or can you imagine that I did not approve for your own sake your keeping fair terms with the Countess?  If I do not much forget, I even recommended it to you—­but let us talk no more of her; she has engrossed more paragraphs in our letters than she deserves.