see Strawberry Hill; or
I would help him to any scraps in my possession, that would assist
his publications; though he is one of those industrious who are
only re-burying the dead--but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is
contrary to my system and my humour; and besides, I know nothing
of barrows, and Danish intrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and
Phoenician characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that
knew nothing--how then should I be of use to modern litterati? All the
Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one of
them, because I do not understand what is not understood by those that
write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers.
I should like to be acquainted with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote
Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the _Heroic Epistle_--I have no
thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast
of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter
changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and though the former had
sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't
think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with
Gray. Adieu!

TO THE MISS BERRYS

_Their first meeting_

Tuesday night, 8 o'clock, 17 _Sept._ 1793.

My beloved spouses,

Whom I love better than Solomon loved his one spouse--or his one
thousand. I lament that the summer is over; not because of its
iniquity, but because you two made it so delightful to me, that six
weeks of gout could not sour it. Pray take care of yourselves--not
for your own sakes, but for mine; for, as I have just had my quota of
gout, I may, possibly, expect to see another summer; and, as you allow
that I do know my own, and when I wish for anything and have it, am
entirely satisfied, you may depend upon it that I shall be as happy
with a third summer, if I reach it, as I have been with the two last.

Consider, that I have been threescore years and ten looking for a
society that I perfectly like; and at last there dropped out of the
clouds into Lady Herries's room two young gentlewomen, who I so little
thought were sent thither on purpose for me, that when I was told they
were the charming Miss Berrys, I would not even go to the side of the
chamber where they sat. But, as Fortune never throws anything at one's
head without hitting one, I soon found out that the charming Berrys
were precisely _ce qu'il me fallait_; and that