You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy? he was walking in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was very pretty:  they followed them; but the girls ran away, and the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to dog them:  the porter hunted them-he the porter.  The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them.  He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love.  He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them.  He there made her discover her family, a butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre.  Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker’s wife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers.  “Ay,” says she, “but if I should, and should lose him by it.”  However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue:  and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park, she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation.  She would do nothing she would go nowhere.  At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a dinner as a butterwoman’s daughter could give him, he should be welcome.  Away they walked to Craven Street:  the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May-fair.  The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did.  The mother borrowed a pair of sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day they went to their own palace.  In two or three days the scene grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he could bear it no longer.  “Bear! bear what?”—­“Why, to be teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a butterwoman’s daughter.  I am determined to go to France, and will leave you a handsome allowance.”—­“Leave me! why you don’t fancy you shall leave me?  I will go with you.”—­“What, you love me then?”—­“No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan’t go without me.”  And they are gone!  If you know any body that proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in a more commodious method.

I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world.  From a melancholy turn. living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.’(1466)