tion but nobody could
persuade him to court the S.S. Oh! well does the Custom-house officer
Green say,--

"'Coquets! leave off affected arts,
Gay fowlers at a flock of hearts;
Woodcocks, to shun your snares have skill,
You show so plain you strive to kill.'"

"_3rd June_, 1781.--Well! here have I, with the grace of God and the
assistance of good friends, completed--I really think very
happily--the greatest event of my life. I have sold my brewhouse to
Barclay, the rich Quaker, for 135,000_l_., to be in four years' time
paid. I have by this bargain purchased peace and a stable fortune,
restoration to my original rank in life, and a situation undisturbed
by commercial jargon, unpolluted by commercial frauds, undisgraced by
commercial connections. They who succeed me in the house have
purchased the power of being rich beyond the wish of rapacity[1], and
I have procured the improbability of being made poor by flights of
the fairy, speculation. 'Tis thus that a woman and men of feminine
minds always--I speak popularly--decide upon life, and chuse certain
mediocrity before probable superiority; while, as Eton Graham says
sublimely,--

"'Nobler souls,
Fir'd with the tedious and disrelish'd good,
Seek their employment in acknowledg'd ill,
Danger, and toil, and pain.'

"On this principle partly, and partly on worse, was dear Mr. Johnson
something unwilling--but not much at last--to give up a trade by
which in some years 15,000_l._ or 16,000_l._ had undoubtedly been
got, but by which, in some years, its possessor had suffered agonies
of terror and tottered twice upon the verge of bankruptcy. Well! if
thy own conscience acquit, who shall condemn thee? Not, I hope, the
future husbands of our daughters, though I should think it likely
enough; however, as Johnson says very judiciously, they must either
think right or wrong: if they think right, let us now think with
them; if wrong, let us never care what they think. So adieu to
brewhouse, and borough wintering; adieu to trade, and tradesmen's
frigid approbation; may virtue and wisdom sanctify our contract, and
make buyer and seller happy in the bargain!"

[Footnote 1: There is a curious similarity here to Johnson's phrase,
"the potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice."]

After mentioning some friends who disapproved of the sale, she adds:
"Mrs. Montagu has sent me her approbation in a letter exceedingly
affect