...  Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me!  Indeed!  I would see him;... but he is so dull that he would only be troublesome—­and besides, you know I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.  They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and will dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning.  I laugh at all these things, and write only to laugh at them, and divert myself.  None of us are authors of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous of all vanities to be vain of being mediocre.  A page in a great author humbles me to the dust; and the conversation of those that are not superior to myself, reminds me of what will be thought of myself.  I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they would relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings in Shenstone’s and Hughes’s Correspondence, who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who went before them.  Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry Hill; or I would help him to any scraps in my possession, that would assist his publications; though he is one of those industrious who are only re-burying the dead—­but I cannot be acquainted with him.  It is contrary to my system and my humour; and besides, I know nothing of barrows, and Danish intrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and Phoenician characters—­in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew nothing—­how then should I be of use to modern litterati?  All the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works.  I did not read one of them, because I do not understand what is not understood by those that write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers.  I should like to be acquainted with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle—­I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and though the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension.  Don’t think me scornful.  Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray.  Adieu!

TO THE MISS BERRYS

Their first meeting

Tuesday night, 8 o’clock, 17 Sept. 1793.

My beloved spouses,

Whom I love better than Solomon loved his one spouse—­or his one thousand.  I lament that the summer is over; not because of its iniquity, but because you two made it so delightful to me, that six weeks of gout could not sour it.  Pray take care of yourselves—­not for your own sakes, but for mine; for, as I have just had my quota of gout, I may, possibly, expect to see another summer; and, as you allow that I do know my own, and when I wish for anything and have it, am entirely satisfied, you may depend upon it that I shall be as happy with a third summer, if I reach it, as I have been with the two last.