you remember me, you are very partial to me, I should have said, very just to me. You seem to think, that I do not want to be put in mind of you, which is very true; for I think of you very often, and as often wish to be with you. I have been in Oxfordshire with the duke of Queensberry for these three months, and have had very little correspondence with any of our friends. I have employed my time in new writing a damned play, which I wrote several years ago, called The Wife of Bath[1]. As it is approved or disapproved of by my friends, when I come to town, I shall either have it acted, or let it alone, if weak brethren do not take offence at it. The ridicule turns upon superstition, and I have avoided the very words bribery and corruption. Folly indeed is a word, that I have ventured to make use of; but that is a term, that never gave fools offence. It is a common saying, that he is wise, that knows himself. What has happened of late, I think, is a proof, that it is not limited to the wise.
My lord Bathurst is still our cashier: when I see him, I intend to settle our accounts, and repay myself the five pounds out of the two hundred I owe you. Next week I believe I shall be in town; not at Whitehall, for those lodgings were judged not convenient for me, and were disposed of. Direct to me at the duke of Queensberry's, in Burlington gardens, near Piccadilly. You have often twitted
- ↑ This comedy was the first he wrote, and was unsuccessfully performed at the theatre in Drury lane, in the year 1713. It was altered by the author, and revived several years after [1729-30] at the theatre in Lincoln's inn fields, and damned a second time, although the author's reputation was then at its height, from the uncommon success of his Beggar's Opera.
