But now, my good Sir, how could you suffer your prejudiced partiality to me to run away with you so extravagantly, as to call me one of the greatest characters of the age?  You are too honest to flatter, too much a hermit to be interested, and I am too powerless and insignificant to be an object of court, were you capable of paying it from mercenary views.  I know then that it could proceed from nothing but the warmth of your heart; but if you are blind towards me, I am not so to myself.  I know not how others feel on such occasions, but if any one happens to praise me, all my faults rush into my face, and make me turn my eyes inward and outward with horror.  What am I but a poor old skeleton tottering towards the grave, and conscious of a thousand weaknesses, follies, and worse!  And for talents, what are mine but trifling and superficial; and, compared with those of men with real genius, most diminutive!  Mine a great character!  Mercy on me!  I am a composition of Anthony Wood and Madame Danois,(423) and I know not what trumpery writers.  This is the least I can say to refute your panegyric, which I shall burn presently; for I will not have such an encomiastic letter found in my possession, lest I should seem to have been pleased with it.  I enjoin you, as a penance, not to contradict one tittle I have said here; for I am not begging more compliments, and shall take it seriously ill if you ever pay me another.  We have been friends above forty years; I am satisfied of your sincerity and affection; but does it become us, at past threescore each, to be saying fine things to one another?  Consider how soon we shall both be nothing!

I assure you, with great truth, I am at this present very sick of my little vapour of fame.  My tragedy has wandered into the hands of some banditti booksellers, and I am forced to publish it myself to prevent piracy.(424) All I can do is to condemn it myself, and that I shall.  I am reading Mr. Pennant’s new Welsh Tour; he has pleased me by making very handsome mention of you; but I will not do, what I have been blaming.

My poor dear Madame du Deffand’s little dog is arrived.  She made me promise to take care of it the last time I saw her:  that I will most religiously, and make it as happy as is possible.(425) I have not much curiosity to see your Cambridge Raphael, but great desire to see you, and will certainly this summer, accept your invitation,, which I take much kinder than your great character, though both flowed from the same friendship.  Mine for you is exactly what it has been ever since you knew (and few men can boast so uninterrupted a friendship as yours and that of—­) H. W.

(422) In his well-known “Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare."-E.

(423) Madame d’Aulnoy, the contemporary of Perrault, and, like him, a writer of fairy tales.  She was the authoress of “The Lady’s Travels in Spain,” and many other works, which have been translated into English.-E.