BATH,December 6,1761.
MY DEAR FRIEND:I have been in your debt some time,which,you know,I am not very apt to be:but it was really for want of specie to pay.
The present state of my invention does not enable me to coin;and you would have had as little pleasure in reading,as I should have in writing 'le coglionerie'of this place;besides,that I am very little mingled in them.I do not know whether I shall be able to follow,your advice,and cut a winner;for,at present,I have neither won nor lost a single shilling.I will play on this week only;and if I have a good run,Iwill carry it off with me;if a bad one,the loss can hardly amount to anything considerable in seven days,for I hope to see you in town to-morrow sevennight.
I had a dismal letter from Harte,last week;he tells me that he is at nurse with a sister in Berkshire;that he has got a confirmed jaundice,besides twenty other distempers.The true cause of these complaints Itake to be the same that so greatly disordered,and had nearly destroyed the most august House of Austria,about one hundred and thirty years ago;I mean Gustavus Adolphus;who neither answered his expectations in point of profit nor reputation,and that merely by his own fault,in not writing it in the vulgar tongue;for as to facts I will maintain that it is one of the best histories extant.
'Au revoir',as Sir Fopling says,and God bless you!