call that stratagem a TRICK, you vilify it, and make it comical; but call
that trick a STRATAGEM, or a MEASURE, and you dignify it up to tragedy:
so frequently do ridicule or dignity turn upon one single word. It is
commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule
is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not
just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in
certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become
ridiculous, at least so far that the truth is only remembered and
repeated for the sake of the ridicule. The overturn of Mary of Medicis
into a river, where she was half-drowned, would never have been
remembered if Madame de Vernuel, who saw it, had not said 'la Reine
boit'. Pleasure or malignity often gives ridicule a weight which it does
not deserve. The versification, I must confess, is too much neglected and
too often bad: but, upon the whole, I read the play with pleasure.

If there is but a great deal of wit and character in your new comedy, I
will readily compound for its having little or no plot. I chiefly mind
dialogue and character in comedies. Let dull critics feed upon the
carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing.

I am very glad you went to Versailles to see the ceremony of creating the
Prince de Conde 'Chevalier de l' Ordre'; and I do not doubt but that upon
this occasion you informed yourself thoroughly of the institution and
rules of that order. If you did, you were certainly told it was
instituted by Henry III. immediately after his return, or rather his
flight from Poland; he took the hint of it at Venice, where he had seen
the original manuscript of an order of the 'St. Esprit, ou droit desir',
which had been instituted in 1352, by Louis d'Anjou, King of Jerusalem
and Sicily, and husband to Jane, Queen of Naples, Countess of Provence.
This Order was under the protection of St. Nicholas de Bari, whose image