patience for our faiseurs de Romance when they make a woman court.  It will never enter into my head that ’tis possible any woman can love where she is not first loved, and much less that if they should do that, they could have the face to own it.  Methinks he that writes L’illustre Bassa says well in his epistle that we are not to imagine his hero to be less taking than those of other romances because the ladies do not fall in love with him whether he will or not.  ’Twould be an injury to the ladies to suppose they could do so, and a greater to his hero’s civility if he should put him upon being cruel to them, since he was to love but one.  Another fault I find, too, in the style—­’tis affected. Ambitioned is a great word with him, and ignore; my concern, or of great concern, is, it seems, properer than concernment:  and though he makes his people say fine handsome things to one another, yet they are not easy and naive like the French, and there is a little harshness in most of the discourse that one would take to be the fault of a translator rather than of an author.  But perhaps I like it the worse for having a piece of Cyrus by me that I am hugely pleased with, and that I would fain have you read:  I’ll send it you.  At least read one story that I’ll mark you down, if you have time for no more.  I am glad you stay to wait on your sister.  I would have my gallant civil to all, much more when it is so due, and kindness too.

I have the cabinet, and ’tis in earnest a pretty one; though you will not own it for a present, I’ll keep it as one, and ’tis like to be yours no more but as ’tis mine.  I’ll warrant you would ne’er have thought of making me a present of charcoal as my servant James would have done, to warm my heart I think he meant it.  But the truth is, I had been inquiring for some (as ’tis a commodity scarce enough in this country), and he hearing it, told the baily [bailiff?] he would give him some if ’twere for me.  But this is not all.  I cannot forbear telling you the other day he made me a visit, and I, to prevent his making discourse to me, made Mrs. Goldsmith and Jane sit by all the while.  But he came better provided than I could have imagined.  He brought a letter with him, and gave it me as one he had met with directed to me, he thought it came out of Northamptonshire.  I was upon my guard, and suspecting all he said, examined him so strictly where he had it before I would open it, that he was hugely confounded, and I confirmed that ’twas his.  I laid it by and wished that they would have left us, that I might have taken notice on’t to him.  But I had forbid it them so strictly before, that they offered not to stir farther than to look out of window, as not thinking there was any necessity of giving us their eyes as well as their ears; but he that saw himself discovered took that time to confess to me (in a whispering voice that I could hardly hear myself) that the letter (as