the smallest inconvenience.  Both the manager and the actors were tractable, I believe, beyond example; and it is my nature to bear some contradiction, when it will carry material points.  The very morning, the only morning, I had to settle the disposition, I had another difficulty to reconcile,-the competition of the two epilogues, which I was so lucky as to compromise too.  I will say nothing of my being three hours each time, on two several days, in a cold theatre with the gout on me; and perhaps it was too natural to give up a few points in order to get home, for which I ask your pardon.  Yet the event shows that I have not injured you and if I was in one instance impatient, I flatter myself that my solicitations to Mr. Harris and Miss Younge, and the zeal I have shown to serve you, will atone for my having in one moment thought of myself, and then only when the reasons that weighed with me were so plausible, that without a totally new scene, which the time would not allow, I do not see how they could have been obviated.  Your tragedy, Sir, has taken such a rank upon the stage, that one may reasonably hope it will hereafter be represented with all the decorations to your mind; and I admire it so truly, that I shall be glad to have it conducted by an abler mechanist than your obedient humble servant.

(457) Now first collected.

Letter 234 To The Earl Of Strafford.  Berkeley Square, Nov. 27, 1781. (page 296)

Each fresh mark of your lordship’s kindness and friendship, calls on me for thanks and an answer:  every other reason would enjoin me silence.  I not only grow so old, but the symptoms of age increase so fast, that, as they advise me to keep out of the world, that retirement makes me less fit to be informing or entertaining.  Those philosophers who have sported on the verge of the tomb, or they who have affected to sport in the same situation, both tacitly implied that it was not out of their thoughts; and however dear what we are going to leave may be, all that is not particularly dear must cease to interest us much.  If those reflections blend themselves with our gayest thoughts, must not their hue grow more dusky when public misfortunes and disgraces cast a general shade?(458) The age, it is true, soon emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as before.  But does not that levity imprint a still deeper melancholy on those who do think?  Have any of our calamities corrected us?  Are we not revelling on the brink of the precipice?  Does administration grow more sage, or desire that we should grow more sober?  Are these themes for letters, my dear lord!  Can one repeat common news with indifference, while our shame is writing for future history by the pens of all our numerous enemies?  When did England see two whole armies lay down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners?  Can venal addresses efface such stigmas, that will be recorded in every country