I should have been a pretty enough kind of a poetess, if papa had not attempted to teach me how to be one, and insisted on seeing my scribbles as I went on: these same Muses are such bashful misses, they won't bear to be looked at. Genius is like the sensitive plant; it shrinks from the touch. So your nabob cousin is arrived: I hope he will fall in love with Emily; and remember, if he had obligations to Mrs. Rivers's father, he had exactly the same to your grandfather. He might spare ten thousand pounds very well, which would improve your _petits soupers_. Adieu! Sir William Verville dines here, and I have but just time to dress. Yours, A. Fitzgerald. LETTER 219. To Captain Fitzgerald. Bellfield, Nov. 17, Morning. I have had a letter from Colonel Willmott myself to-day; he is still quite unacquainted with the state of our domestic affairs; supposes me a batchelor, and talks of my being his son-in-law as a certainty, not attending to the probability of my having other engagements. His history, which he tells me in this letter, is a very romantic one. He was a younger brother, and provided for accordingly: he loved, when about twenty, a lady who was as little a favorite of fortune as himself: their families, who on both sides had other views, joined their interest to get him sent to the East Indies; and the young lady was removed to the house of a friend in London, where she was to continue till he had left England. Before he went, however, they contrived to meet, and were privately married; the marriage was known only to her brother, who was Willmott's friend. He left her in the care of her brother, who, under pretence of diverting her melancholy, and endeavoring to cure her passion, obtained leave of his father to take her with him to France. She was there delivered of this child, and expired a few days after. Her brother, without letting her family know the secret, educated the infant, as the daughter of a younger brother who had been just before killed in a duel in France; her parents, who died in a few years, were, almost in their last moments, informed of these circumstances, and made a small provision for the child. In the mean time, Colonel Willmott, after experiencing a great variety of misfortunes for many years, during which he maintained a constant correspondence with his brother-in-law, and with no other person in Europe, by a train of lucky accidents, acquired very rapidly a considerable fortune, with which he resolved to return to England, and marry his daughter to me, as the only method to discharge fully his obligations to my grandfather, who alone, of all his family, had given him the least assistance when he left England. He wrote to his daughter, letting her know his design, and directing her to meet him in London; but she is not yet arrived. Six in the evening. My mother and Emily went to Temple's to dinner; they are to dress there, and I am to be surprized. Seven.