of outward blemishes, she shone
For humour fam'd, and humour all her own.

("Rosciad," 840.)]

My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by the old
President Henault.[1] It was damned many years ago at Paris, and yet I
think is better than some that have succeeded, and much better than any
of our modern tragedies. I print it to please the old man, as he was
exceedingly kind to me at Paris; but I doubt whether he will live till
it is finished. He is to have a hundred copies, and there are to be but
a hundred more, of which you shall have one.

[Footnote 1: M. Henault was President of the Parliament of Paris. His
tragedy was "Cornelie." He died in 1770, at the age of eighty-six.]

Adieu! though I am very angry with you, I deserve all your friendship,
by that I have for you, witness my anger and disappointment. Yours ever.

P.S.--Send me your new direction, and tell me when I must begin to use
it.

_CASE OF WILKES._

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _June_ 9, 1768.

To send you empty paragraphs when you expect and want news is
tantalising, is it not? Pray agree with me, and then you will allow that
I have acted very kindly in not writing till I had something to tell
you. _Something_, of course, means Wilkes, for everything is nothing
except the theme of the day. There has appeared a violent _North
Briton_, addressed to, and written against Lord Mansfield, threatening a
rebellion if he continued to persecute Mr. Wilkes. This paper, they say,
Wilkes owned to the Chevalier de Chastelux, a French gentleman, who went
to see him in the King's Bench, and who knew him at Paris. A rebellion
threatened in print is not very terrible. However, it was said that the
paper was outrageous enough to furnish the Law with every handle it
could want. But modern mountains do not degenerate from their ancestors;
their issue are still mice. You know, too, that this agrees with my
system, that this is an age of abortions. Prosecutions were ordered
against the publishers and vendors, and there, I suppose, it will end.

Yesterday was fixed for the appearance of Wilkes in Westminster Hall.
The Judges went down by nine in the morning, but the mob had done
breakfast still sooner, and was there before them; and as Judges stuffed
out with dignity and lamb-skins are not absolute sprites, they had much
ado to glide through the crowd. Wilkes's counsel argued against the
outlawry, and then Lord Mansfield, in a speech