hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people's countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.
Three mails are now due from Holland, so that I have no letters from you to acknowledge. I therefore conclude with recommending myself to your favor and protection when you succeed. [Same date.]
Congealed Speech.—I find by Mr. Harte's last
letter, that many of my letters to you and him have
been frozen up in their way to Leipsic; the thaw
has, I suppose, by this time set them at liberty to
pursue their journey to you, and you will receive a
glut of them at once. Hudibras alludes, in this verse,
"Like words congeal'd in northern air,"
to a vulgar notion, that in Greenland words were frozen in their utterance, and that upon a thaw a very mixed conversation was heard in the air of all those words set at liberty. [Jan. 29, 1748.]
