He is supposed by those that knew his mother and her
connections to be Mr. Thrale's natural son, and in many things he
resembles him, but not in person: as he is both ugly and awkward. Mr.
Thrale certainly believed he was his son, and once told me as much
when Sophy Streatfield's affair was in question but nobody could
persuade him to court the S.S. Oh! well does the Custom-house officer
Green say,--
"'Coquets! leave off affected arts,
Gay fowlers at a flock of hearts;
Woodcocks, to shun your snares have skill,
You show so plain you strive to kill.'"
"_3rd June_, 1781.--Well! here have I, with the grace of God and the
assistance of good friends, completed--I really think very
happily--the greatest event of my life. I have sold my brewhouse to
Barclay, the rich Quaker, for 135,000_l_., to be in four years' time
paid. I have by this bargain purchased peace and a stable fortune,
restoration to my original rank in life, and a situation undisturbed
by commercial jargon, unpolluted by commercial frauds, undisgraced by
commercial connections. They who succeed me in the house have
purchased the power of being rich beyond the wish of rapacity[1], and
I have procured the improbability of being made poor by flights of
the fairy, speculation. 'Tis thus that a woman and men of feminine
minds always--I speak popularly--decide upon life, and chuse certain
mediocrity before probable superiority; while, as Eton Graham says
sublimely,--
"'Nobler souls,
Fir'd with the tedious and disrelish'd good,
Seek their employment in acknowledg'd ill,
Danger, and toil, and pain.
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