Never was any thing so crowded as the house last night for the Prussian cantata; the King was hoarse, and could not go to Sing his own praises.  The dancers seemed transplanted from Sadler’s Wells; there were milkmaids riding on dolphins; Britain and Prussia kicked the King of France off the stage, and there was a petit-maitre with his handkerchief full of holes; but this vulgarism happily was hissed.

I am deeper than ever in Gothic antiquities:  I have bought a monk of Glastonbury’s chair, full of scraps of the Psalms; and some seals of most reverend illegibility.  I pass all my mornings in the thirteenth century, and my evenings with the century that is coming on.  Adieu!

(1001) Now first printed.

475 Letter 302
To John Chute, Esq.(1002)
Arlington Street, Feb. 2, 1759.

My dear sir, I am glad to see your writing again, and can now laugh very cordially at my own fright, which you take a great deal too kindly.  I was not quite sure you would like my proceedings, but just then I could not help it, and perhaps my natural earnestness had more merit than my friendship; and yet it is worth my while to save a friend if I think I can—­I have not so many!  You yourself are in a manner lost to me!  I must not, cannot repine at your having a fortune that delivers you from uneasy connexions with a world that is sure to use ill those that have any dependence on it; but undoubtedly some of the satisfaction that you have acquired is taken out of my scale; I will not, however, moralize, though I am in a very proper humour for it, being just come home from an outrageous crowd at Northumberland-house, where there were five hundred people, that would have been equally content or discontent with any other five hundred.  This is pleasure!  You invite so many people to your house, that you are forced to have constables at your door to keep the peace; just as the royal family, when they hunted, used to be attended by surgeons.  I allow honour and danger to keep company with one another, but diversion and breaking one’s neck are strangely ill-matched.  Mr. Spence’s Magliabechi(1003) is published to-day from Strawberry; I believe you saw it, and shall have it; but ’tis not worth sending you on purpose.  However, it is full good enough for the generality of readers.  At least there is a proper dignity in my saying so, who have been so much abused in all the magazines lately for my Catalogue.  The points in dispute lie in a very narrow compass:  they think I don’t understand English, and I am sure they don’t:  yet they will not be convinced, for I shall certainly not take the pains to set them right.  Who them are I don’t know; the highest, I believe, are Dr. Smollet, or some chaplain of my uncle.