Mr. Mason has shown me the relics of poor Mr. Gray.  I am sadly disappointed at finding them so very inconsiderable.  He always persisted, when I inquired about his writings, that he had nothing by him.  I own I doubted.  I am grieved he was so very near exact—­I speak of my own satisfaction; as to his genius, what he published during his life will establish his fame as long as our language lasts, and there is a man of genius left.  There is a silly fellow, I don’t know who, that has published a volume of Letters on the English Nation, with characters of our modern authors.  He has talked such nonsense on Mr. Gray, that I have no patience with the compliments he has paid me.  He must have an excellent taste! and gives me a woful opinion of my own trifles, when he likes them, and cannot see the beauties of a poet that ought to be ranked in the first line.

I am more humbled by any applause in the present age, than by hosts of such critics as Dean Milles.  Is not Garrick reckoned a tolerable actor?  His Cymon, his prologues and epilogues, and forty such pieces of trash, are below mediocrity, and yet delight the mob in the boxes as well as in the footman’s gallery.  I do not mention the things written in his praise; because he writes most of them himself.  But you know any one popular merit can confer all merit.  Two women talking of Wilkes, one said he squinted—­t’other replied, “Squints!—­well, if he does, it is not more than a man should squint.”  For my part, I can see how extremely well Garrick acts, without thinking him six feet high.[1]

[Footnote 1:  He is quoting Churchill’s “Rosciad”—­

    When the pure genuine flame, by nature taught,
    Springs into sense, and every action’s thought;
    Before such merit all objections fly,
    Pritchard’s genteel, and Garrick six feet high—­

the great actor being a short man.]

It is said Shakespeare was a bad actor; why do not his divine plays make our wise judges conclude that he was a good one?  They have not a proof of the contrary, as they have in Garrick’s works—­but what is it to you or me what he is?  We may see him act with pleasure, and nothing obliges us to read his writings.

MARRIAGE OF THE PRETENDER—­THE PRINCESS LOUISE, AND HER PROTECTION OF THE CLERGY—­FOX’S ELOQUENCE.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, April 9, 1772.

It is uncommon for me to send you news of the Pretender.  He has been married in Paris by proxy, to a Princess of Stolberg.  All that I can learn of her is, that she is niece to a Princess of Salm, whom I knew there, without knowing any more of her.  The new Pretendress is said to be but sixteen, and a Lutheran:  I doubt the latter; if the former is true, I suppose they mean to carry on the breed in the way it began, by a spurious child.  A Fitz-Pretender is an excellent continuation of the patriarchal line.  Mr. Chute says, when the Royal Family are prevented from marrying,[1] it is a right time for the Stuarts to marry.  This event seems to explain the Pretender’s disappearance last autumn; and though they sent him back from Paris, they may not dislike the propagation of thorns in our side.