Papa having made Mr. Dundas promise and repromise not to transmogrify you into a lady (or as once before happened you know my dear friend) & I avail myself of his obliging offer to transmit to you "these presents"--indeed I am impatient to thank you again & again for the delightful kindness of your visit, to tell you how deeply we all regarded its shortness, & with how much pleasure we anticipate a visit into Devonshire--this year. I do hope we shall not be disappointed--only I must try not to set my heart too much on it, for I am unlucky & if I do our plans will be sure to be overturned--I got your kindest of all kind letters Tuesday morning--Mrs. Dickinson was still with us having kept prisoner by the loss of her carriage horses which Papa & I by the way, who were obliged to go in our elegant machine ten miles through the rain to a birthday dinner in the good town of Wokingham as we were coming home Monday night--so I showed her what you said of her, & she laughed & exclaimed & was very much pleased. She is a most excellent person. I assure you I never yet know any human being so perfectly fine & single minded--of so pure & generous & lofty a spirit. She is compared to the common run of accomplished women what sculpture is to paintings--something real & solid & unadorned. I don't say this because I love her very dearly & because she is unutterably good to me but that is my genuine & impartial opinion as to her literary taste I think as badly as you do--this to say my opinion like your Worship's happens to be quite different. I wish you had heard her sing! That is her forte. Such a voice! Such compass! Such power! And as never can happen without power such expression! She will sing the finest highest music of Handel, Haydn or Mozart with an enunciation of the words as just & as perfect, as true to the letter & of meaning as you or I would give in reading them. Nothing but the perfect ease which results from the certainty of power could enable her to do this--Her voice dances on a rope just as securely as one walks on the ground.--though by the way had she sung in your sublime presence this said voice might have got a tumble--but she is more nervous at times than can be conceived & I have seen her obliged to sit down when singing only two or three intimate friends first & not able even to talk all the rest of the evening. Perhaps my dear Sir William, I have said all this before. You talk sometimes of your repetitions whilst the only one you ever make is that fear of repeating yourself--Now to me nothing is more probable than that I should write over & over again the same thing--living constantly at home--seeing so few people--with so little variety of pursuit of & a happy facility of forgetting any nonsense I may write the moment I have sent it off--with all these elements of "tautology of sense" as I once absurdly called it--the probability is that I am as great a repeater as Richardson & nothing but my having the most indulgent Correspondent in the world & administering my tediousness in distant doses prevents my being turned off like Clarissa or Sir Charles Grandison. Having thus apologized for talking of my Mrs. Dickinson & telling you what I had probably told you before I must now talk a little of that very clever very odd man her husband--You would gather from one conversation that Mr. Dickinson not only translate but is the story of the Translations (in which affair you deserted me very treacherously for you must know that I was right, & must I think have admired a little at the modesty which was proved by a desire to publish these poems with a puffing preface a la Mr. Dickinson is besides an original Poet (in that capacity rather baddish) having written an unreadable quarto styled --a sort of didactic Epic--a great patriot--quite an Ultra--one of Major Cartwright's disciples (N.B I don't go so far by ten degrees--I am a very moderate person--very moderate indeed--neither Whig nor Tory nor Reformer--Nothing but a Buonapartiste--a simple Buonapartiste!)--a very accomplished & eloquent man (though sometimes when one wants him to talk especially in a party he won't say a word--I have seen him sit at the bottom of his own table looking just like a whipt schoolboy) & without any "but" or "though" or any parenthesis or compunction whatever the finest reader of Poetry English French or Italian that I ever heard in my life. To hear him read or recite the finest parts of or is a thousand times better than to see Kean in them--It realizes the idea one has of Garrick--the passion is quite aweful. For the rest he is in manner a perfect Gentleman & in mind singularly benevolent & provokingly just, for he will dispute an odd shilling for twelve good years & make twenty quarrels for twenty pence whilst he would think nothing of giving away a hundred pounds of supporting a dozen poor families--From this clear character you may gather that he is respected & beloved by the poor & a little shunned by the Gentry--indeed if it were not for his splendid hospitability & his Wife I don't think one of them would go near him. I like him very much & think him the best reader & the best Translator in the world--only I wish he would publish his Translations quietly without wanting me to intermeddle.--Mem: I shan't.--Mrs. Dickinson was delighted with your promise to read --I don't much think you will find Mr. Edgar Mandlebert (the very name is as stiff as poker) improve on acquaintance--the only persons in that book who much delighted me, were Camilla herself Mr. Dubster, & Sir Hugh--that delightful Sir Hugh! And they are precisely I believe the three whom Mrs. Dickinson would if she could leave out--at least she skips them--just as she does Mr. Dexter & Lady Singleton in . But I always thought poor Camilla's fate so terrible in being joined to that man, that I had hardly patience to read the rest of the book--And to confess to you a truth (which may I believe be more safely said now than it might have been twenty years ago) I do not think very highly of any of Madame D'Arblay's books. The style is so strutting--she does so stalk about on Dr. Johnson's old stilts. What she says wants so much translating into common English & when translated would seem so commonplace, that I have always felt strongly tempted to read all the serious parts with my finger's ends. Comedy is her strong side or rather farce--her Mr. Smith & Miss Branghton, Mr. Dubster & Mr. Briggs are as good as any characters can be which appear always to exemplify one unmixed quality--they are personifications of coxcombry vulgarity & avarice & are compared to the mixed characters the human beings of Miss Austen --something like the comedy of humours introduced by Ben Jonson in opposition to the Comedy of nature which Shakespeare wrote probably unconsciously--or as a picture would be composed of unmixed colours, by the side of one where the tints were properly blended.--Pray forgive this critique--written with even more than usual puzzleheadedness--thought upon paper isntead of being considered in the addled brains of theyour poor little correspondent--& sent to you with the confident carelessness which your too great goodness has encouraged.