To Colonel Bellville.
Saturday.
MY Lord has brought us a thousand
presents, a thousand books, a thousand
trinkets, all in so exquisite a taste–
He is the sweetest man in the world certainly
–Such delight in obliging–'Tis
happy for you he is not thirty years younger
and disengaged; I should infallibly have
a passion–He has brought Harry the divinest
horse; we have been seeing him
ride, "spring from the ground like feather'd
Mercury"–you can have no conception
how handsome he looks on horseback
–poor Lady Julia's little innocent
heart–I can't say I was absolutely insensible
myself–you know I am infinitely fond
of beauty, and vastly above dissembling it:
indeed it seems immensely absurd that one
is allowed to be charmed with living perfection
in every species but our own, and
that there one must admire only dead colours:
one may talk in raptures of a lifeless
Adonis, and not of a breathing Harry
Mandeville. Is not this a despicable kind
of prudery? For my part, I think nature's
colouring vastly preferable to the noblest attempts
of art, and am not the less sensible
to the graces of a fine form because it
is animated. Adieu! we are going to dine
at the hermitage; Lord Belmont is to be
my Cecisbeo.
