what a fine subject would it be for a play if he had killed himself upon recovering the Use of Reason. Setting aside the poetical Fiction, Ajax is Belisarius, and Sophocles has painted the horrors of a great mind so overwhelmed and confounded with shame in a very masterly manner.... I am glad your three Dialogues are well liked in Scotland, where the Author is not known. Those who know you and believe they are yours are hardly fair judges. Your form and manners would seduce Apollo himself in his throne of criticism on Parnassus itself....” [291] Mr. Rust was travelling companion to the son of Mr. Hoare, of Stourhead, the great banker. Alluding to her visit to Tunbridge and the society there, he says-- “There is Envy and Malice enough against Beauty alone, but Beauty, Wit, Wisdom, Learning and Virtue united (to say nothing about Wealth) are sure to excite a Legion of Devils against the Possessor. It is amazing to me that with all these dangerous things about you you have not been driven out of Society a great while ago.” In a fragment of a letter Lord Lyttelton writes, “I presume Lady Hervey really likes them (the Dialogues), Lord Chesterfield’s warmth in their Praise has secured her vote in their favour, in spite of Horace Walpole and of Lord Bath.” [Page heading: GREEN TEA AND SNUFF] From Newcastle, on October 24, Mrs. Montagu writes to Mrs. Carter, telling her she had been suffering from toothache. She mentions a sonnet sent to her by Mrs. Carter, “which would have given me a pleasing melancholy if it had not represented your state and condition as it did; it cost me some tears and obliged me to go from table where I received your letter. Teach me to love you less or imitate you better. I admire the resignation with which you submit to your pain.” Mrs. Carter suffered from excruciating headaches at this period. Lord Bath said that if she would drink less green tea, take less snuff, and not study so much, they would disappear. Mrs. Montagu says the house at Newcastle was very comfortable, and instead of an equipage, she could pay visits to her neighbours in a Sedan chair. “That I might not offend here I enter’d into all the diversions of this town, visits, concerts, plays, and balls. The desire of pleasure and love of dissipation rages here as much as in London. Diversions here are less elegant and conversation less polite, but no one imagines retirement has any comforts, so that in a little while if one would enjoy retired leisure one must dwell amidst inaccessible mountains and unnavigable rivers.”