I wish you would be so good as to give me a more particular and circumstantial account of the method of passing your time at Paris.  For instance, where it is that you dine every Friday, in company with that amiable and respectable old man, Fontenelle?  Which is the house where you think yourself at home?  For one always has such a one, where one is better established, and more at ease than anywhere else.  Who are the young Frenchmen with whom you are most intimately connected?  Do you frequent the Dutch Ambassador’s.  Have you penetrated yet into Count Caunitz’s house?  Has Monsieur de Pignatelli the honor of being one of your humble servants?  And has the Pope’s nuncio included you in the jubilee?  Tell me also freely how you are with Lord Huntingdon:  Do you see him often?  Do you connect yourself with him?  Answer all these questions circumstantially in your first letter.

I am told that Du Clos’s book is not in vogue at Paris, and that it is violently criticised:  I suppose that is because one understands it; and being intelligible is now no longer the fashion.  I have a very great respect for fashion, but a much greater for this book; which is, all at once, true, solid, and bright.  It contains even epigrams; what can one wish for more?

Mr.------will, I suppose, have left Paris by this time for his residence
at Toulouse.  I hope he will acquire manners there; I am sure he wants
them.  He is awkward, he is silent, and has nothing agreeable in his
address,—­most necessary qualifications to distinguish one’s self in
business, as well as in the polite world!  In truth, these two things are
so connected, that a man cannot make a figure in business, who is not
qualified to shine in the great world; and to succeed perfectly in either
the one or the other, one must be in ‘utrumque paratus’.  May you be that,
my dear friend! and so we wish you a good night.

P. S. Lord and Lady Blessington, with their son Lord Mountjoy, will be at Paris next week, in their way to the south of France; I send you a little packet of books by them.  Pray go wait upon them, as soon as you hear of their arrival, and show them all the attentions you can.

LETTER CXXXIX

London, April 22, O. S. 1751

My dear friend:  I apply to you now, as to the greatest virtuoso of this, or perhaps any other age; one whose superior judgment and distinguishing eye hindered the King of Poland from buying a bad picture at Venice, and whose decisions in the realms of ‘virtu’ are final, and without appeal.  Now to the point.  I have had a catalogue sent me, ’d’une Trente a l’aimable de Tableaux des plus Grands Maitres, appartenans au Sieur Araignon Aperen, valet de chambre de la Reine, sur le quai de la Megisserie, au coin de Arche Marion’.  There I observe two large pictures of Titian, as described in the inclosed page of the catalogue, No. 18, which I should