I am a contradiction, yet very naturally so; I wish you not to write yourself, and yet am delighted when I receive a letter in your own hand:  however, I don’t desire it should be of four pages, like this last of the 11th.  When I have had the gout, I have always written by proxy.  You will make me ashamed, if you don’t use the precedent.  Your account of yourself is quite to my satisfaction.  I approve, too, of your not dining with your company.  Since I must be old and have the gout, I have long turned those disadvantages to my own account, and plead them to the utmost when they will save me from doing anything I dislike.  I am so lame, or have such a sudden pain, when I do not care to do what is proposed to me!  Nobody can tell how rapidly the gout may be come, or be gone again; and then it is so pleasant to have had the benefit, and none of the anguish!

I did send you a line last week in the cover of a letter to Lady Craven,[1] which I knew would sufficiently tell your quickness how much I shall be obliged to you for any attentions to her.  I thought her at Paris, and was surprised to hear of her at Florence.  She has, I fear, been infinitamente indiscreet; but what is that to you or me?  She is very pretty, has parts, and is good-natured to the greatest degree; has not a grain of malice or mischief (almost always the associates, in women, of tender hearts), and never has been an enemy but to herself.  For that ridiculous woman Madame Piozzi,[2] and t’other more impertinent one, of whom I never heard before, they are like the absurd English dames with whom we used to divert ourselves when I was at Florence.  As to your little knot of poets, I do not hold the cocks higher than the hens; nor would I advise them to repatriate.  We have at present here a most incomparable set, not exactly known by their names, but who, till the dead of summer, kept the town in a roar, and, I suppose, will revive by the meeting of Parliament.  They have poured forth a torrent of odes, epigrams, and part of an imaginary epic poem, called the “Rolliad,"[3] with a commentary and notes, that is as good as the “Dispensary"[4] and “Dunciad,” with more ease.  These poems are all anti-ministerial, and the authors very young men, and little known or heard of before.  I would send them, but you would want too many keys:  and indeed I want some myself; for, as there are continually allusions to Parliamentary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained; and besides, I do not know several of the satirised heroes even by sight:  however, the poetry and wit make amends, for they are superlative.

[Footnote 1:  Lady Craven, nee Berkeley, had given abundant cause for scandal during her husband’s life, which did not abate when, a month after his death, she married the Margrave of Anspach.]