royal kind, in Literature and otherwise. Nor is he slow, far from
it, to advance, to conquer and enjoy. He writes successful
literature, falls in love with women of quality; encourages the
indigent and humble; eclipses, and in case of need tramples down,
the too proud. He elegizes poor Adrienne Lecouvreur, the Actress,
--our poor friend the Comte de Saxe's female friend; who loyally
emptied out her whole purse for him, 30,000 pounds in one sum,
that he might try for Courland, and whether he could fall in love
with her of the Swollen Cheek there; which proved impossible.
Elegizes Adrienne, we slty, and even buries her under cloud of
night: ready to protect unfortunate females of merit. Especially
theatrical females; having much to do in the theatre, which we
perceive to be the pulpit or real preaching-place of cultivated
France in those years. All manner of verse, all manner of prose,
he dashes off with surprising speed and grace: showers of light
spray for the moment; and always some current of graver
enterprise, Siecle de Louis Quatorze or the
like, going on beneath it. For he is a most diligent, swift,
unresting man; and studies and learns amazingly in such a rackety
existence. Victorious enough in some senses; defeat, in
Literature, never visited him. His Plays, coming thick on the
heels of one another, rapid brilliant pieces, are brilliantly
received by the unofficial world; and ought to dethrone dull
Crebillon, and the sleepy potentates of Poetry that now are.
Which in fact is their result with the public; but not yet in the
highest courtly places;--a defect much to be condemned
and lamented.

"Numerous enemies arise, as is natural, of an envious venomous
description; this is another ever-widening shadow in the sunshine.