In England the winter was not memorable for any parliamentary debates; the few of consequence shall be mentioned. Other events, too, I shall not omit. These sheets, I have often declared, were less intended for a history of war than for civil annals. Whatever, therefore, leads to a knowledge of the characters of remarkable persons, of the manners of the age, and of its political intrigues, comes properly within my plan. I am more attentive to deserve the thanks of posterity than their admiration. A great modern author (Voltaire) recommends the omission of small circumstances, and would confine history to its capital outlines. In the first place, mine is not history, but Memoirs. Next, what would be less amusing than such a history? Battles, revolutions, and the wild waste of war, are common to all times; but they are the circumstances that distinguish one age from another. Lastly, future historians may reject the rubbish, and preserve only striking events: yet, for the power of such choice, he must be indebted to us contemporaries. With me, I own, one reflection further has determined me to the course I have pursued. They are the minutiæ of which I have observed Posterity is ever most fond; they are the omissions that historians in their grandeur disdain to record, which the humble reader most painfully labours to recover, and, if recovered, to weave into the materials of which he is already possessed. The patchwork seldom unites well, for want of those lights which contemporaries might have given. Is it not more eligible to have chaff to winnow, than to add to a stack? Lord Bath,[84] assisted by Douglas,[85] his Chaplain, published a piece called “A Letter to Two Great Men,” (Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle.) It contained a plan of the terms which his Lordship thought we ought to demand, if we concluded a peace. It was as little regarded by the persons it addressed as a work of Mr. Pitt’s would have been, if, outliving his patriotism, power, and character, he should twenty years after have emerged in a pamphlet. However, it pleased in coffee-houses more than it deserved, yet made much less noise than a farce written at the same time by an Irish player, one Macklyn,[86] called _Love à la Mode_. The principal characters were a Scotchman and an Irishman; the first, heightened and odious; the latter, softened and amiable, played inimitably by one Moody. What made it memorable was, that Lord Bute[87] interposed to have it prohibited. This intervention made the ridicule on the Scotch the more tasted; and being tasted, it would have been too offensive to the public to have stopped the run. A composition was made that it should not be printed. The King, whose age then kept him from public places, sent for the copy, and ordered it to be read to him.