nobody will be so coarse as to tell me so; but if I published dotage, all the world would tell me so.  And who but runs that risk who is an author after seventy?  What happened to the greatest author of this age, and who certainly retained a very considerable portion of his abilities for ten years after my age?[1] Voltaire, at eighty-four, I think, went to Paris to receive the incense, in person, of his countrymen, and to be witness of their admiration of a tragedy he had written, at that Methusalem age.  Incense he did receive till it choked him; and, at the exhibition of his play, he was actually crowned with laurel in the box where he sat.  But what became of his poor play?  It died as soon as he did—­was buried with him; and no mortal, I dare to say, has ever read a line of it since, it was so bad.

[Footnote 1:  Voltaire had for several years been in disgrace at Court, and had been living in Switzerland; but in 1778 he returned to Paris to superintend the performance of a new tragedy, “Irene.”  He was, however, greatly mortified at the refusal of Marie Antoinette to allow him to be presented to her, and was but partly comforted by the enthusiasm of the audience at the theatre, who crowned him on the stage after the performance.  Mme. du Deffand, who, in a letter to Walpole a few days before, had said that if the tragedy did not succeed it would kill him, says in a subsequent letter that its success had been very moderate—­that the enthusiasm of the audience had been for Voltaire himself; and at all events her prophecy was fulfilled, for he died a few weeks afterwards.]

As I am neither by a thousandth part so great, nor a quarter so little, I will herewith send you a fragment that an accidental rencontre set me upon writing, and which I find so flat, that I would not finish it.  Don’t believe that I am either begging praise by the stale artifice of hoping to be contradicted; or that I think there is any occasion to make you discover my caducity.  No; but the fragment contains a curiosity—­English verses written by a French Prince[1] of the Blood, and which at first I had a mind to add to my “Royal and Noble Authors;” but as he was not a royal author of ours, and as I could not please myself with an account of him, I shall revert to my old resolution of not exposing my pen’s grey hairs.

[Footnote 1:  He was the Duc d’Orleans, who was taken prisoner by Henry V. at Agincourt, and was detained in England for twenty-five years.  The verses are published in “Walpole’s Works,” i. 564.]

Of one passage I must take notice; it is a little indirect sneer at our crowd of authoresses.  My choosing to send this to you, is a proof that I think you an author, that is, a classic.  But, in truth, I am nauseated by the Madams Piozzi, &c., and the host of novel-writers in petticoats, who think they imitate what is inimitable, “Evelina” and “Cecilia."[1] Your candour, I know, will not agree with me, when I tell you I am not at all