No. 33. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1785.

I MENTIONED in my last paper, that my friend Colonel Caustic and I had accepted an invitation to dine with his neighbour, Lord Grubwell. Of that, dinner I am now to take the liberty of giving some account to my readers. It is one advantage of that habit of observation, which, as a thinking Lounger, I have acquired, that from most entertainments I can carry something more than the mere dinner away. I remember an old acquaintance of mine, a jolly carbuncle-faced fellow, who used to give an account of a company by the single circumstance of the liquor they could swallow. At such a dinner was one man of three bottles, four of two, six of a bottle and a half, and so on; and as for himself, he kept a sort of journal of what he had pouched, as he called it, at every place to which he had been invited during a whole winter. My reckoning is of another sort; I have sometimes carried off from a dinner one, two, or three characters, swallowed half a dozen anecdotes, and tasted eight or ten insipid things that were not worth the swallowing. I have one advantage over my old friend; I can digest what, in his phrase, I have pouched, without a headach.

When we sat down to dinner at Lord Grubwell's, I found that the table was occupied in some sort by two different parties, one of which belonged to my lord, and the other to my lady. At the upper end my lord's sat Mr. Placid, a man agreeable by profession, who has no corner in his mind, no prominence in his feelings, and, like certain chemical liquors, has the property of coalescing with every

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thing. He dines with every body that gives a dinner, has seventeen cards for the seven days of the week, cuts up a fowl, tells a story, and hears a story told with the best grace of any man in the world. Mr. Placid had been brought by my lord, but seemed inclined to desert to my lady, or rather to side with both, having a smile on the right cheek for the one, and a simper on the left for the other.

Lord Grubwell being a patron of the fine arts, had at his board end, besides the layer-out of his grounds, a discarded fiddler from the opera-house, who allowed that Handel could compose a tolerable chorus; a painter, who had made what he called fancy-portraits of all the family, who talked a great deal about Corregio; a gentleman on one hand of him, who seemed an adept in cookery; and a little blear-eyed man on the other, who was a connoisseur in wine. On horse-flesh, hunting, shooting, cricket, and cockfighting, we had occasional dissertations, from several young gentlemen at both sides of his end of the table, who, though not directly of his establishment, seemed, from what occurred in conversation, to be pretty constantly in waiting.

Of my lady's division, the most conspicuous person was a gentleman who sat next her, Sir John'

who seemed to enjoy the office of her cicisbeo, or cavaliere servente, as nearly as the custom of this country allows. There was, however, one little difference between him and the Italian cavaliere, that he did not seem so solicitous to serve as to admire the lady, the little attentions being rather directed from her to him. Even his admiration was rather understood than expressed. The gentleman, indeed, to borrow a phrase from the grammarians, appeared to be altogether of the passive mood, and to consider every exertion as vulgar and unbecoming. He spoke

mincingly, looked something more delicate than man; liad the finest teeth, the whitest hand, and sent a perfume around him at every motion. He had travelled, quoted Italy very often, and called this a tramontane Country, in which, if it were not for one or two fine women, there would be no possibility of existing.

Besides this male attendant, Lady Grubwell had several female intimates, who seemed to have profited extremely by her patronage and instructions, who had. learned to talk on all town subjects with such ease and confidence, that one could never have supposed they had been bred in the country, and had, as Colonel Caustic informed me, only lost their bashfulness about three weeks before. One or two of them, I could see, were in a professed and particular manner imitators of my lady, used all her phrases, aped all her gestures, and had their dress made so exactly after her pattern, that the colonel told me a blunt country gentleman, who dined there one rainy day, and afterwards passed the night at his house, thought they had got wet to the skin in their way, and had been refitted from her ladyship's wardrobe. 'But he was mistaken,' said the colonel; they only borrowed a little of her complexion.'

The painter had made a picture, of which he was very proud, of my lady attended by a group of those young friends, in the character of Diana, surrounded by her nymphs, surprised by Acteon. My lady, when she was showing it to me, made me take notice how very like my lord, Acteon was. Sir John, who leaned over her shoulder, put on as broad a smile as his goodbreeding would allow, and said it was one of the most monstrous clever things he had ever heard her ladyship say.

Of my lord's party there were some young men, brothers and cousins of my lady's nymphs, who

showed the same laudable desire of imitating him, as their kinswoman did of copying her. But each end of the table made now and then interchanges with the other: some of the most promising of my lord's followers were favoured with the countenance and regard of her ladyship; while on the other hand, some of her nymphs drew the particular attention of Acteon, and seemed, like those in the picture, willing to hide his Diana from him. Amidst those different, combined, or mingled parties, I could not help admiring the dexterity of Placid, who contrived to divide himself among them with wonderful address. To the landscape-gardener he talked of clumps and swells; he spoke of harmony to the musician, of colouring to the painter, of hats and feathers to the young ladies, and even conciliated the elevated and unbending baronet, by appeals to him about the key at Marseilles, the corso at Rome, and the gallery of Florence. He was once only a little unfortunate in a reference to Colonel Caustic, which he meant as a compliment to my lady, 'how much more elegant the dress of the ladies was now-a-days than formerly when they remembered it?' Placid is but very little turned of fifty.

Caustic and I were nearly 'mutes and audience to this act.' The colonel, indeed, now and then threw in a word or two of that dolce piccante, that sweet and sharp sort in which his politeness contrives to convey his satire. I thought I could discover that the company stood somewhat in awe of him; and even my lady endeavoured to gain his good-will by a very marked attention. She begged leave to drink his sister's health in a particular manner after dinner, and regretted exceedingly not being favoured with her company. She hardly ever stirs abroad, my lady,' answered the colonel; besides (looking slyly at some of her ladyship's female friends,) she is not

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young, nor I am afraid bashful enough for one of Diana's virgins.'

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When we returned home in the evening, Caustic began to moralize on the scene of the day. We were talking,' said he to me, 't'other morning, when you took up a volume of Cook's Voyages, of the advantages and disadvantages arising to newlydiscovered countries from our communication with them; of the wants we show them along with the conveniencies of life, the diseases we communicate along with the arts we teach. I can trace a striking analogy between this and the visit of Lord and Lady Grubwell to the savages here, as I am told they often call us. Instead of the plain wholesome fare, the sober manners, the filial, the parental, the family virtues, which some of our households possessed, these great people will inculcate extravagance, dissipation, and neglect of every relative duty; and then in point of breeding and behaviour, we shall have petulance and inattention, instead of bashful civility, because it is the fashion with fine folks to be easy; and rusticity shall be set off with impudence, like a grogram waistcoat with tinsel binding, that only makes its coarseness more disgusting.'

'But you must set them right, my good sir,' I replied, in these particulars. You must tell your neighbours, who may be apt, from some spurious examples, to suppose that every thing contrary to the natural ideas of politeness is polite, that in such an opinion they are perfectly mistaken. Such a caricature is indeed, as in all other imitations, the easiest to be imitated; but it is not the real portraiture and likeness of a high-bred man or woman. As good dancing is like a more dignified sort of walk, and as the best dress hangs the easiest on the shape; so the highest good-breeding, and the most highly polished fashion, is the nearest to nature, but to nature in its