w this goldsmith is, he has a head fit for nothing
but horns. I chid him once for a seal he set me just of this fashion and
the same colours. If he were to make twenty they should be all so, his
invention can stretch no further than blue and red. It makes me think of
the fellow that could paint nothing but a flower-de-luce, who, when he
met with one that was so firmly resolved to have a lion for his sign
that there was no persuading him out on't, "Well," says the painter,
"let it be a lion then, but it shall be as like a flower-de-luce as e'er
you saw." So, because you would have it a dolphin, he consented to it,
but it is like an ill-favoured knot of ribbon. I did not say anything of
my father's being ill of late; I think I told you before, he kept his
chamber ever since his last sickness, and so he does still. Yet I cannot
say that he is at all sick, but has so general a weakness upon him that
I am much afraid their opinion of him has too much of truth in it, and
do extremely apprehend how the winter may work upon him. Will you pardon
this strange scribbled letter, and the disorderliness on't? I know you
would, though I should not tell you that I am not so much at leisure as
I used to be. You can forgive your friends anything, and when I am not
the faithfullest of those, never forgive me. You may direct your letters
how you please, here will be nobody to receive it but

Your.

_Letter 27._--Althorp, in Northamptonshire, was the seat of Lady
Sunderland's first husband, Robert Lord Spencer.

SIR,--Your last came safe, and I shall follow your direction for the
address of this, though, as you say, I cannot imagine what should tempt
anybody to so severe a search for them, unless it be that he is not yet
fully satisfied to what degree our friendship is grown, and thinks he
may best inform himself from them. In earnest, 'twould not be unpleasant
to hear our discourse. He forms his with so much art and design, and is
so pleased with the hopes of making some discovery, and I [who] know him
as well as he does himself, cannot but give myself the recreation
sometimes of confounding him and destroying all that his busy head had
been working on since the last conference. He gives me some trouble with
his suspicions; yet, on my conscience, he is a greater to himself, and I
deal with so much _franchise_ as to tell him so; and yet he has no more
the heart to ask me directly what he would so fain know, than a jealous
man has to a