N compliance with your repeated folicitations, I fit down to write to you, as I am indebted to you for fo many hundreds of letters. I muft premife, that it will require your utmost patience to read fo long an anfwer as I fhall have occafion to make it; but as I flatter myself many others will perufe it befides yourself, I fhall prefume to interrupt your parliamentary ftudies; and entreat your attention, as much time and application will be needful for you to digeft fo long an Epistle.

I own, I do not think that a series of facts, relative to fuch infignificant beings as you and myself, can furnish any entertainment to the world; yet as I have had the happiness of being from my youth a favoured child of

the

the public, I fhall beg leave to request that they would decide between us. I should still have borne my injuries in filence, were it not that whilst you were perpetually teizing me with letters, containing the warmest profeffions of unremitting affection, you, and your female Therfites, were propagating the groffeft falfhoods against me to my prejudice. But she has paid the debt of nature. So ends my enmity and her ingratitude; which, as I have been informed, was fully repaid by your's; therefore peace be to her manes.

There was a time, when I fhould have apprehended that you would have been greatly mortified at a public statement of fuch an account, and I fhould have been afraid of putting you to the blush by it; but as you have convinced the world by your recent behaviour, that you are above all mauvaise bonte, and have overleaped the bounds of modefty, my fears are all fubfided, and " I "will a round unvarnished tale deliver." If I advance a falfhood, reproach me freely for it. I will force even you to allow that I ftill am juft.

I am forry to remind you, that when Lord George Sutton first introduced you to me, you was called boneft John Calcraft; an epithet, in my mind, infinitely fuperior to Squire John the parliament man. But as you always had a great deal of the amor patriæ at heart, you may perhaps feel yourself more

happy

happy in your prefent exalted fituation. I beg your pardon for making use of those two Latin words, I forgot you did not understand that language; though, like Bonniface, you may, perhaps, love and honour the found. But not to puzzle or give you more trouble than is abfolutely neceffary, I will inform you, that I mean the love of your country; and a more worthy or learned member than yourself, it must be allowed, is not honoured with a feat in St. Stephen's chapel. If your modesty prompts you to difpute this affertion, ever willing to pleafe you, I will give up the point.

But to return.-You will please likewife to recollect, that the first vifit you paid me after the unhappy difpute between Metham and myself, I candidly told you my fituation. At the fame time I added, that I was fo alarmed at his paffionate difpofition, as to be determined never to marry him, were he willing to carry his promife into execution, though I preferred him to all mankind; nor would I enter into any other connection whatsoever. Confiding in your general character, and induced by your profeffions of friendship, I made no fcruple thus to inform you of the fituation of my heart; for at that period, I did not entertain the most diftant idea of your harbouring a thought of love. Indeed, I could not fuppofe you was capable of fo much prefumption, as to think of ri

VOL. V.

H

valling

valling a man, in every fhape fo infinitely your fuperior.

I then likewife informed you, that I had received ten bank bills of one hundred pounds each, in a blank cover. This gift I faid, I attributed to Lord Downe, whofe friendship for Metham prevented him from. declaring himself my admirer. Notwithftanding the dial fpoke not, it pointed. And as he was evidently the caufe of Metham's rudeness to me, it was more than probable, that his Lordship thought of extricating me by it, from any little difficulties I might have been embarraffed in.

Upon my placing this confidence in honest Jack, you advised me to make use of the money; telling me, you was fure that the perfon, whoever it was, who had fhewn himfelf fo generous, would never expect a return. You then regretted, that it was not in your power to have been equally liberal. For had you not been circumfcribed by fortune, you fhould have esteemed yourfelf happy in fo favourable an opportunity of fhowing yourself my difinterested friend.

I was the more inclined to believe you fincere in this declaration, as the fentiments coincided with my own. For I can with great truth affirm, that I never rendered a fervice with a view of receiving a return; always confidering the perfon who had the power of obliging, overpaid by the internal

fatisfaction