Monday, 24th.

The King has seen the Prince [of Wales], and received him kindly, but the Queen was present.  Iron Pluto (as Burke called the Chancellor) wept again when with the King; but what is much more remarkable, his Majesty has not asked for Pitt, and did abuse him constantly during his frenzy.  The Chancellor certainly did not put him in mind of Pitt, whom he detests; so there is a pretty portion of hatred to be quaffed amongst them! and swallowed, if they can; yet aurum potabile will make it sit on their stomachs.

"THE ARABIAN NIGHTS”—­THE AENEID—­BOCCALINI—­ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.

TO MISS BERRY.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The lady to whom this letter is addressed was the elder of two sisters who in 1787 came to reside with their father in Walpole’s neighbourhood.  Both the sisters, according to his description of them, were very accomplished and sufficiently good-looking.  He gradually became so enthusiastic in his regard for her, that he proposed to marry her, old as he was, in order that he might have an excuse for leaving her all his fortune; and he wrote the “Reminiscences of the Courts of George I. and II.,” which are among his published works, for the amusement of the two sisters.]

STRAWBERRY HILL, June 30, 1789.

Were there any such thing as sympathy at the distance of two hundred miles, you would have been in a mightier panic than I was; for, on Saturday se’nnight, going to open the glass case in the Tribune, my foot caught in the carpet, and I fell with my whole weight (si weight y a) against the corner of the marble altar, on my side, and bruised the muscles so badly, that for two days I could not move without screaming.  I am convinced I should have broken a rib, but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed, that are gone to Yorkshire.  I am much better both of my bruise and of my lameness, and shall be ready to dance at my own wedding when my wives return.  And now to answer your letter.

If you grow tired of the “Arabian Nights,” you have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury,[1] who huffed Pope for sending him them (or the “Persian Tales"), and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more imagination than Dr. Akenside.  Read “Sinbad the Sailor’s Voyages,” and you will be sick of Aeneas’s.  What woful invention were the nasty poultry that dunged on his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids!  A barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius.  I do not know whether the “Arabian Nights” are of Oriental origin or not:  I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective.  I do not think the Sultaness’s narratives very natural or very probable, but there