I WOULD be glad to oblige you and your friend Vertue, by executing your commission with respect to the sketches of Raphael’s cartoons at Hampton-court; but I cannot do it to my satisfaction.  I have, indeed, seen, in the grand duke’s collection, four pieces, in which that wonderful artist had thrown freely from his pencil the first thoughts and rude lines of some of these compositions; and as the first thoughts of a great genius are precious, these pieces attracted my curiosity in a particular manner; but when I went to examine them closely, I found them so damaged and effaced, that they did not at all answer my expectation.  Whether this be owing to negligence or envy, I cannot say; I mention the latter, because it is notorious, that many of the modern painters have discovered ignoble marks of envy at a view of the inimitable productions Of the ancients.  Instead of employing their art to preserve the master-pieces of antiquity, they have endeavoured to destroy and efface many of them.  I have seen with my own eyes an evident proof of this at Bologna, where the greatest part of the paintings in fresco on the walls of the convent of St Michael in Bosco, done by the Carracci, and Guido Rheni, have been ruined by the painters, who, after having copied some of the finest heads, scraped them almost entirely out with nails.  Thus, you see, nothing is exempt from human malignity.

THE word malignity, and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twickenham; his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor.  That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mark of a moralist in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent to his hatred to man and woman kind.—­But I must quit this contemptible subject, on which a just indignation would render my pen so fertile, that, after having fatigued you with a long letter, I would surfeit you with a supplement twice as long.  Besides, a violent head-ach (sic) advertises me that it is time to lay down my pen and get me to bed.  I shall say some things to you in my next, that I would have you to impart to the strange man, as from yourself.  My mind is at present tolerably quiet; if it were as dead to sin, as it is to certain connections, I should be a great saint.  Adieu, my dear madam.  Yours very affectionately, &c.

LET.  LVII.

TO MR P.

I HAVE been running about Paris at a strange rate with my sister, and strange sights have we seen.  They are, at least, strange sights to me; for, after having been accustomed to the gravity of Turks, I can scarce look with an easy and familiar aspect at the levity and agility of the airy phantoms that are dancing about me here; and I often think that I am at a puppet-shew, amidst the representations of real life.  I stare prodigiously, but nobody remarks it, for every body