What pleasure have you to come! there is a new thing published, that will make you split your cheeks with laughing.  It is called the New Bath Guide.(960) It stole into the world, and for a fortnight no soul looked into it, concluding its name was the true name.  No such thing.  It is a set of letters in verse, in all kind of verses, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally every thing else; but so much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much originality, never met together before.  Then the man has a better ear than Dryden or Handel.  Apropos to Dryden, he has burlesqued his St. Cecilia, that you will never read it again without laughing.  There is a description of a milliner’s box in all the terms of landscape, painted lawns and chequered shades, a Moravian ode, and a Methodist ditty, that are incomparable, and the best names that ever were composed.  I can say it by heart, though a quarto, and if I had time would write it you down; for it is not yet reprinted, and not one to be had.

There are two volumes, too, of Swift’s Correspondence, that will not amuse you less in another way, though abominable, for there are letters of twenty persons now alive; fifty of Lady Betty Germain, one that does her great honour in which she defends her friend Lady Suffolk, with all the spirit in the world,(961) against that brute, who hated every body that he hoped would get him a mitre, and did not.  His own Journal sent to Stella during the four last years of the Queen, is a fund of entertainment.  You will see his insolence in full colours, and, at the same time, how daily vain he was of being noticed by the ministers he affected to treat arrogantly.  His panic, at the Mohocks is comical; but what strikes one, is bringing before one’s eyes the incidents of a curious period.  He goes to the rehearsal of Cato, and says the drab that acted Cato’s daughter could not say her part.  This was only Mrs. Oldfield.  I was saying before George Selwyn, that this journal put me in mind of the present time, there was the same indecision, irresolution, and want of system; but I added, “There is nothing new under the sun.”  “No,” said Selwyn, “nor under the grandson.”

My Lord Chesterfield has done me much honour:  he told Mrs. Anne Pitt that he would subscribe to any politics that I should lay down.  When she repeated this to me, I said, “Pray tell him I have laid down politics.”

I am got into puns and will tell you an excellent one of the King of France, though it does not spell any better than Selwyn’s.  You must have heard of Count Lauragais, and his horserace, and his quacking his horse till he killed it.  At his return the King asked him what he had been doing in England?  “Sire, j’ai appris `a Penser”—­“Des chevaux?” replied the King.(962) Good night!  I am tired, and going to bed.  Yours ever.