‘Sir,—I give you a thousand thanks for your book, of which I’ve read every word with great pleasure and full as great astonishment. When in the name of God could you have found time to read the ten or twenty thousand authors whom you quote, of all countries and all times, from Hesiod to du Hamel?[33] Where have you ploughed, sowed, harrowed, drilled, and dug the earth for at least these forty years? for less time could not have made you such a complete master of the practical part of husbandry. I can only account for it from the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and the supposition that Hartlib’s soul has animated your body with a small alteration of name; seriously, your book entertains me exceedingly, and has made me quite a _dilettante_, though too late to make me a _virtuoso_, in the useful and agreeable art of agriculture. I own myself ignorant of them all, but am nevertheless sensible of their utility, and the pleasure it must afford to those who pursue them. Moreover, you’ve scattered so many graces over them that one wishes to be better acquainted with them, and that one reads your book with pleasure most exquisite. It is the only prose Georgic that I know, as agreeable, and I dare say much more useful, in this climate than Virgil. Why have you not put your name to it? for though some passages in it point you out to be the author here, they will not do it so in other countries, and as I am persuaded that your book will be translated into most modern languages and be a polyglott of husbandry, I could have wished your name had been to it. How goes the Havabilious complaint: has not the Bath waters washed it away yet? I heartily wish it was, as I sincerely wish you whatever can give you ease or pleasure. ‘For I am with great truth your ‘Faithful friend and servant, ‘CHESTERFIELD. ‘P.S.—Though I can be as partial as another to my friends, I cannot be quite blind to their omissions; for though you have enumerated so many sorts of grass, with a particular panegyrick on your dear Lucern, you have not described, nor so much as mentioned, that particular sort of grass _which while it grows the steed starves_. ‘Your Elève is very well at Dresden. I will send him his book when I can find a good opportunity.’ The following letters Mr. Harte was so good as to address to me:— ‘Bath: February 3, 1765.