"DEAR SIR,

"Sunday evening next is fixed for our first musical rehearsal, and I was
in great hopes we might have completed the score. The songs you have
sent up of 'Banna's Banks,' and 'Deil take the wars,' I had made words
for before they arrived, which answer excessively well; and this was my
reason for wishing for the next in the same manner, as it saved so much
time. They are to sing 'Wind, gentle evergreen,' just as you sing it
(only with other words), and I wanted only such support from the
instruments, or such joining in, as you should think would help to set
off and assist the effort. I inclose the words I had made for 'Wind,
gentle evergreen,' which will be sung, as a catch, by Mrs. Mattocks,
Dubellamy, [Footnote: Don Antonio.] and Leoni. I don't mind the words
not fitting the notes so well as the original ones. 'How merrily we
live,' and 'Let's drink and let's sing,' are to be sung by a company of
_friars_ over their wine. [Footnote: For these was afterwards
substituted Mr. Linley's lively glee, "This bottle's the sun of our
table."] The words will be parodied, and the chief effect I expect from
them must arise from their being _known_; for the joke will be much
less for these jolly fathers to sing any thing new, than to give what
the audience are used to annex the idea of jollity to. For the other
things Betsey mentioned, I only wish to have them with such
accompaniment as you would put to their _present_ words, and I
shall have got words to my liking for them by the time they reach me.

"My immediate wish at present is to give the performers their parts in
the music (which they expect on Sunday night), and for any assistance
the orchestra can give to help the effect of the glees, &c., that may be
judged of and added at a rehearsal, or, as you say, on inquiring how
they have been done; though I don't think it follows that what Dr.