“After all, my dear Lord, if you can get a decent Address elsewhere, don’t hesitate to put this aside.  Why did you not trust your own Muse?  I am very sure she would have been triumphant, and saved the Committee their trouble—­’’tis a joyful one’ to me, but I fear I shall not satisfy even myself.  After the account you sent me, ’tis no compliment to say you would have beaten your candidates; but I mean that, in that case, there would have been no occasion for their being beaten at all.

“There are but two decent prologues in our tongue—­Pope’s to Cato—­Johnson’s to Drury Lane.  These, with the epilogue to the ‘Distrest Mother,’ and, I think, one of Goldsmith’s, and a prologue of old Colman’s to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, are the best things of the kind we have.

     “P.S.—­I am diluted to the throat with medicine for the stone; and
     Boisragon wants me to try a warm climate for the winter—­but I
     won’t.”

[Footnote 51: 

    “Such are the names that here your plaudits sought,
    When Garrick acted, and when Brinsley wrote.”

At present the couplet stands thus:—­

    “Dear are the days that made our annals bright,
    Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley ceased to write.”
]

* * * * *

LETTER 100.  TO LORD HOLLAND.

     “September 27. 1812.

     “I have just received your very kind letter, and hope you have met
     with a second copy corrected and addressed to Holland House, with
     some omissions and this new couplet,

        “As glared each rising flash[52], and ghastly shone
        The skies with lightnings awful as their own.

As to remarks, I can only say I will alter and acquiesce in any thing.  With regard to the part which Whitbread wishes to omit, I believe the Address will go off quicker without it, though, like the agility of the Hottentot, at the expense of its vigour.  I leave to your choice entirely the different specimens of stucco-work; and a brick of your own will also much improve my Babylonish turret.  I should like Elliston to have it, with your leave.  ‘Adorn’ and ‘mourn’ are lawful rhymes in Pope’s Death of the unfortunate Lady.—­Gray has ‘forlorn’ and ’mourn;’—­and ‘torn’ and ‘mourn’ are in Smollet’s famous Tears of Scotland.

“As there will probably be an outcry amongst the rejected, I hope the committee will testify (if it be needful) that I sent in nothing to the congress whatever, with or without a name, as your Lordship well knows.  All I have to do with it is with and through you; and though I, of course, wish to satisfy the audience, I do assure you my first object is to comply with your request, and in so doing to show the sense I have of the many obligations you have conferred upon me.  Yours ever, B.”

[Footnote 52:  At present, “As glared the volumed blaze.”]