all accessory to the poor lad’s catastrophe; and then, with most sensitive nerves, is shocked to death, and finds me guilty of it, for having, after it happened, dropped, that had he lived he might have fallen into more serious forgeries, though I declare that I never heard that he did.  To be sure, no Irishman ever blundered more than to accuse one of an ex post facto murder!  If this Hibernian casuist is smitten enough with his own miscarriage to preserve it in a magazine phial, I shall certainly not answer it, not even by this couplet which is suggested: 

So fulsome, yet so captious too, to tell you much it grieves me, That though your flattery makes me sick, your peevishness relieves me.

Adieu, my good Sir.  Pray inquire for your books, if you do not receive them:  they go by the Cambridge Fly.

Letter 247 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.  Berkeley Square, June 1, 1782. (page 313)

I thank you much, dear Sir, for your kind intention about Elizabeth of York;. but it would be gluttony and rapacity to accept her:  I have her already in the picture of her marriage,(478) which was Lady Pomfret’s; besides Vertue’s print of her, with her husband, son, and daughter-in-law.  In truth I have not room for any more pictures any where; yet, without plundering you, or without impoverishing myself, I have supernumerary pictures with which I can furnish your vacancies; but I must get well first to look them out.  As yet I cannot walk alone; and my posture, as you see, makes me write ill.  It is impossible to recover in such weather—­never was such a sickly time.

I have not yet seen Bishop Newton’s life.  I will not give three guineas for what I would not give threepence, his Works; his Life,(479) I Conclude, will be borrowed by all the magazines, and there I shall see it.

I know nothing of Acciliator—­I have forgotten some of my good Latin, and luckily never knew any bad; having always detested monkish barbarism.  I have just finished Mr. Pennant’s new volume, parts of which amused me; though I knew every syllable, that was worth knowing before, for there is not a word of novelty; and it is tiresome his giving such long extracts out of Dugdale and other common books, and telling one long stories about all the most celebrated characters in the English history, besides panegyrics on all who showed him their houses:  but the prints are charming; though I cannot conceive why he gave one of the Countess of Cumberland, who never did any thing worth memory, but recording the very night on which she conceived.

“The Fair Circassian” was written by a Mr. Pratt, who has published several works under the name of Courtney Melmoth.(480) The play might have been written by Cumberland, it is bad enough.  I did read the latter’s coxcombical Anecdotes,(481) but saw nothing on myself, except mention of my Painters.  Pray what is the passage you mean on me or Vertue?  Do not write on purpose to answer this, it is not worth while.