I have seen, too, the criticism you mention on the Castle of Otranto, in the preface to the Old English Baron.(320) It is not at all oblique, but, though mixed with high compliments, directly attacks the visionary part, which, says the author or authoress, makes one laugh.  I do assure you, I have not had the smallest inclination to return that attack.  It would even be ungrateful, for the work is a professed imitation of mine, only stripped of the marvellous; and so entirely stripped, except in one awkward attempt at a ghost or two, that it is the most insipid dull nothing you ever saw.  It certainly does not make me laugh; but what makes one doze, seldom makes one merry.

I am very sorry to have talked for near three pages on what relates to myself, who should be of no consequence, if people did not make me so, whether I will or not.- My not replying to them, I hope, is a proof I do not seek to make myself the topic of conversation.  How very foolish are the squabbles of authors!  They buzz and are troublesome, to-day, and then repose for ever on some shelf in a college’ library, close by their antagonists, like Henry VI. and Edward iv. at Windsor.

I shall be in town in a few days, and will send You the heads of painters, which I left there; and along with them for yourself a translation of a French play,(321) that I have just printed there.  It is not for your reading, but as one of the Strawberry editions, and one of the rarest; for I have printed but seventy-five copies.  It was to oblige Lady Craven, — the translatress; and will be an aggravation of my offence to Sir Dudley’s State Papers.

I hope this Elysian summer, for it has been above Indian, has dispersed all your complaints.  Yet it does not agree with fruit; the peaches and nectarines are shrivelled to the size of damsons, and half of them drop.  Yet you remember what portly bellies the peaches had at Paris, where it is generally as hot.  I suppose our fruit-trees are so accustomed to rain, that they don’t know how to behave without it.  Adieu!

P. S. I can divert you with a new adventure that has happened to me in the literary way.  About a month ago, I received a letter from Mr. Jonathan Scott, at Shrewsbury, to tell me he was possessed of Ms. of Lord Herbert’s Account of the Court of France,(322) which he designed to publish by subscription, and which he desired me to subscribe to, and to assist in the publication.  I replied, that having been obliged to the late Lord Powis and his widow, I could not meddle with any such thing, without knowing that it had the consent of the present Earl and his mother.

Another letter, commending my reserve, told me Mr. Scott had applied for it formerly, and would again now.  This showed me they did not consent.  I have just received a third letter, owning the approbation has not yet arrived; but to keep me employed in the mean time, the modest Mr. Scott, whom I never saw, nor know more of than I did of Chatterton, proposes to me to get his fourth son a place in the civil department in India:  the father not choosing it should be in the military, his three eldest sons being engaged in that branch already.  If this fourth son breaks his neck, I suppose it will be laid to my charge!  Yours ever.