h us, and has gone back (in
tolerable health) to her long home, for _she_ comes not again for a
twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to
Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in
a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed man. For twenty miles we
discoursed about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages by
ditto, till all my science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was
thinking of escaping my torment by getting up on the outside, when,
getting into Bishops Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farming land,
put an unlucky question to me: "What sort of a crop of turnips I thought
we should have this year?" Emma's eyes turned to me, to know what in the
world I could have to say; and she burst into a violent fit of laughter,
maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I
replied, that "it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of mutton."
This clench'd our conversation; and my Gentleman, with a face half wise,
half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or
philosophical, for the remainder of the journey. Ayrton was here
yesterday, and as _learned_ to the full as my fellow-traveller. What a
pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is)
by wisdom! He talk'd on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney
recently I was enabled to talk of Names, and show more knowledge than he
had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my
thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him.

FREE THOUGHTS ON SOME EMINENT COMPOSERS

Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites. For my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, or for Handel.
Cannot a man live free and easy,
Without admiring Pergolesi!
Or thro' the world with comfort go
That never heard of Doctor Blow!
So help me God, I hardly have;
And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
Like other people, (if you watch it,)
And know no more of stave and crotchet
Than did the un-Spaniardised Peruvians;
Or those old ante-queer-Diluvians
That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal,
Before that dirty Blacksmith Tubal,
By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at,
Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut.
I care no more for Cimerosa