Chapter 350

November 11, 1790. (page 460)

I had a letter from Mrs. Damer at Falmouth. She suffered much by cold and fatigue, and probably sailed on Saturday evening last, and may be at Lisbon by this time, as you, I trust, are in Italy. Mr. Burke's pamphlet has quite turned Dr. Price's head. He got upon a table at their club, toasted to our Parliament becoming a National Assembly, and to admitting no more peers of their assembly, having lost the only one they had. They themselves are very like the French `Etats: two more members got on the table (their pulpit), and broke it down: so be it!

The Marquisate(711) is just where it was--to be and not to be. The Duchess of Argyll is said to be worse. Della Crusca(712) has published a poem, called "The Laurel of Liberty," which, like the Enrag`es, has confounded and overturned all ideas. There are gossamery tears and silky oceans--the first time, to be sure, that any body ever cried cobwebs, or that the sea was made of paduasoy.(713) There is, besides, a violent tirade against a considerable personage, who, it is supposed, the author was jealous of, as too much favoured a few years ago by a certain Countess. You may guess why I am not more explicit: for the same reason I beg YOU not to mention it at all; it would be exceedingly improper. As the Parliament will meet in a fortnight, and the town be plumper, my letters may grow more amusing; though, unless the weather grows worse, I shall not contribute my leanness to its embonpoint. Adieu!

(711) Meaning the reported marriage of Miss Gunning to the Marquis of Blandford.-B.

(712) Robert Merry, Esq. who, at this time, wrote in the newspapers under this signature, and thereby became the object of the caustic satire of the author of the Baviad and Maviad--

"Lo, Della Crusca in his closet pent, He toils to give the crude conception vent Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound, Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound; False glare, incongruous images combine, And noise and nonsense chatter through the line."-E.

(713) Besides the above, Mr. Gifford instances, from the same poem, "moody monarchs, radiant rivers, cooling cataracts, lazy Loires, gay Garonnes, glossy glass, mingling murder, dauntless day, lettered lightnings, delicious dilatings, sinking sorrows, real reasoning, meliorating mercies, dewy vapours damp that sweep the silent swamps, etc. etc."-E.