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No. I.
You do me a great deal too much honour, in supposing me either a competent judge or an useful patron of polite literature. From an inordinate deafness, and various infirmities that attend old age, I have been out of the world these two and twenty years: I have almost forgot it, and am quite forgotten by it.
If the managers of our two theatres here had had half the pleasure in reading your comedy that it gave me, they would gladly have accepted and acted it: but they are to be considered as tradesmen, who deal in plays for profit, and who will purchase no goods but such as they think they can retail with advantage; of which they pretend to be, and perhaps are, the best judges, from long knowledge of the taste of the public; which taste is of late years so vitiated, that musical nonsense triumphs over dramatic sense. Whatever fate may attend your Comedy, you may justly have the satisfaction of knowing, that the dialogue, the sentiment, and the moral of it, do honour to a young and virgin muse.
I am, with the greatest esteem, Madam, your most obedient humble
servant,
July 16, 1770
CHESTERFIELD.
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