on't exactly know _when_ Milton wrote; but I dare
say it was at the very time of that notorious merchandize; and don't you
think, sir, that the next edition of Milton ought to have this
alteration? I do. I forgot to say that the gold dust came over in little
barrels too; for no man in his senses would have thought of rolling or
washing dust ashore, excepting in a keg or barrel, and so it was, I make
no doubt."

I perfectly assented to every thing he said, Eusebius, by which happy
concession on my part, having no food for an obstinate discussion, he
soon withdrew. I sat awhile thinking, and now write to you. At least
make a marginal note in your Milton of this criticism; and when
posterity shall discover it, and forget that _Comus_ was written when
Milton was a young man, and had no daughters to write for him, then it
will be adopted, and admired as a specimen of the critical acumen of the
great and learned Eusebius.

It reminds me to tell you, that being the other day at the sea-side, and
wanting a Horace, I borrowed one from a student of Cambridge. It was a
Paris edition. I never should have dreamed of seeing an expurgated or
emasculated edition from French quarters; but so it was. I looked for
that beautiful little piece, the quarrel between Lydia and Horace. It
was not there.

"Donec gratus eram tibi,
Nec quisquam potior brachia candide
Cervici juvenis dabat."

I suppose the offence lay in these lines, which appear no worse than
that old song, (the lovers' quarrel too,)

"I've kiss'd and I've prattled with fifty fair maids."

An American lady must not be shocked with the word _leg_, and we are
told they put flounces upon those pedestals of pianofortes; but that a
lover throwing his arms around his mistress's neck should offend a
Frenchman, is an outrageous prudery from a very unexpected quarter. We
can imagine a scholar tutored to this affected purity, who should escape
from it, and plunge into the opposite immoralities of our modern French
novels, like him

"Qui frigidus AEtnam
Insiluit."

"Plunged cold into AEtnean fires."

There were many emendations, most of which I forget; but I could not
help laughing at an absurdity in the following ode:--

"Vixi puellis nuper idoneus."

The word _puellis_ is altered to _choreis_, which nevertheless, as a
mark of absurdity, ought to be supposed to contain the _puellis_; for to
say,

"I lately lived for dances fit,"

surely implies that the