owever, I will be candid (for you seem
to be so with me), and avow to you, that till four-score-and-ten,
whenever the humor takes me, I will write, because I like it; and
because I like myself better when I do so. If I do not write much, it
is because I can not. As you have not this last plea, I see no reason
why you should not continue as long as it is agreeable to yourself,
and to all such as have any curiosity or judgment in the subject you
choose to treat. By the way let me tell you (while it is fresh) that
Lord Sandwich, who was lately dining at Cambridge, speaking (as I am
told) handsomely of your book, said, it was pity you did not know that
his cousin Manchester had a genealogy of Kings, which came down no
lower than to Richard III, and at the end of it were two portraits of
Richard and his son, in which that king appeared to be a handsome man.
I tell you it as I heard it; perhaps you may think it worth inquiring
into....

Mr. Boswell's book[40] I was going to recommend to you, when I
received your letter: it has pleased and moved me strangely, all (I
mean) that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two thousand years after
his time! The pamphlet proves what I have always maintained, that any
fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us
what he heard and saw with veracity. Of Mr. Boswell's truth I have not
the least suspicion, because I am sure he could invent nothing of this
kind. The true title of this part of his work is, a Dialogue between a
Green-Goose and a Hero.

IV

HIS FRIENDSHIP FOR BONSTETTEN[41]

Never did I feel, my dear Bonstetten, to what a tedious length the few
short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and
expectation, till you had left me; nor ever knew before with so strong
a conviction how much this frail body sympathizes with the inquietude
of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks,
like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head
into a vessel of water and take it out again, as the standers by
affirmed, at the command of a Dervish, and found he had passed many
years in captivity, and begot a large family of children.

The strength and spirits that now enable me to write to you, are only
owing to your last letter a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven knows
when it may shine again! I did not conceive till now, I own, what it
was to lose you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own
condition