Letter to Thomas Gray (1766) [ ]
… to live, it must be in m y own way, as long as I can: it is not youth I court, but liberty; and I think making one's self tender, is issuing a general warrant against one's own person. I suppose I shall submit to confinement, when I … but ask him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like his very features and very wig, that you … doors for me. That passe-partout, called the fashion, has made them fly open—and what do you think was that fashion?—I myself—Yes, like Queen Elinor in the ballad, I sunk at Charing Cross, and have risen in the Faubourg St Germain. A …
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