even on the penalty of coming again.  To have lived three weeks in a fair appears to me a century!  I am not at all in love with their country, which so charms every body.  Mountains are very good frames to a prospect, but here they run against one’s nose, nor can one stir out of the town without clambering.  It is true one may live as retired as one pleases, and may always have a small society.  The place is healthy, every thing is cheap, and the provisions better than ever I tasted.  Still I have taken an insupportable aversion to it, which I feel rather than can account for; I do not think you would dislike it:  so you see I am just in general, though very partial as to my own particular.

You have raised my curiosity about Lord Scarsdale’s, yet I question whether I shall ever take the trouble of visiting it.  I grow every year more averse to stirring from home, and putting myself out of my way.  If I can but be tolerably well at Strawberry, my wishes bounded.  If I am to live at watering-places, and keep what is called good hours, life itself will be very indifferent to me.  I do not talk very sensibly, but I have a contempt for that fictitious character styled philosophy; I feel what I feel, and say I feel what I do feel.  Adieu!  Yours ever.

Letter 318 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Bath, Oct. 18, 1766. (page 491)

You have made me laugh, and somebody else makes me stare.  How can one wonder at any thing he does, when he knows so little of the world?  I suppose the next step will be to propose me for groom of the bedchamber to the new Duke of Cumberland.  But why me?  Here is that hopeful young fellow, Sir John Rushout, the oldest member of the House, and, as extremes meet, very proper to begin again; why overlook him?  However, as the secret is kept from me myself, I am perfectly easy about it.  I shall call to-day or to-morrow to ask his commands, but certainly shall not obey those you mention.(972)

The waters certainly are not so beneficial to me as at first:  I have almost every morning my pain in my stomach.  I do not pretend this to be the cause of my leaving Bath.  The truth is, I cannot bear it any longer.  You laugh at my regularity; but the contrary habit is so strong in me, that I cannot continue such sobriety.  The public rooms, and the loo, where we play in a circle, like the hazard on Twelfth-night, are insupportable.  This coming into the world again, when I am so weary of it, is as bad and ridiculous as moving an address would be.  I have no affectation; for affectation is a monster at nine-and-forty; but if I cannot live quietly, privately, and comfortably, I am perfectly indifferent about living at all.  I would not kill myself, for that is a philosopher’s affectation, and I will come hither again, if I must; but I shall always drive very near, before I submit to do any thing I do not like.  In short, I must be as foolish as I please, as long as I can keep without the limits of absurdity.  What has an old man to do but to preserve himself from parade on one hand, and ridicule on the other?(973) Charming youth may indulge itself in either, may be censured, will be envied, and has time to correct.  Adieu