has said of him. Nor will I keep
you longer in suspense.

An hundred wild stories she tells of him from childhood to manhood:
for, as she observed, having never been subject to contradiction, he
was always as mischievous as a monkey. But I shall pass over these whole
hundred of his puerile rogueries (although indicative ones, as I may
say) to take notice as well of some things you are not quite ignorant
of, as of others you know not, and to make a few observations upon him
and his ways.

Mrs. Fortescue owns, what every body knows, 'that he is notoriously,
nay, avowedly, a man of pleasure; yet says, that in any thing he sets
his heart upon or undertakes, he is the most industrious and persevering
mortal under the sun. He rests it seems not above six hours in the
twenty-four--any more than you. He delights in writing. Whether at Lord
M.'s, or at Lady Betty's, or Lady Sarah's, he has always a pen in his
fingers when he retires. One of his companions (confirming his love of
writing) has told her, that his thoughts flow rapidly to his pen:' And
you and I, my dear, have observed, on more occasions than one, that
though he writes even a fine hand, he is one of the readiest and
quickest of writers. He must indeed have had early a very docile genius;
since a person of his pleasurable turn and active spirit, could
never have submitted to take long or great pains in attaining the
qualifications he is master of; qualifications so seldom attained by
youth of quality and fortune; by such especially of those of either,
who, like him, have never known what it was to be controuled.

'He had once it seems the vanity, upon being complimented on these
talents (and on his surprising diligence, for a man of pleasure) to
compare himself to Julius Caesar; who performed great actions by day,
and wrote them down at night; and valued himself, that he only wanted
Caesar's out-setting, to make a figure among his contemporaries.

'He spoke of this indeed, she says, with an air of pleasantry: for
she observed, and so have we, that he has the art of acknowledging his
vanity with so much humour, that it sets him above the contempt which
is due to vanity and self-opinion; and at the same time half persuades
those who hear him, that he really deserves the exultation he gives
himself.'

But supposing it to be true that all his vacant nightly hours are
employed in writing, what can be his subjects? If, like Caesar, his own
actions, he must undoubted