Your non-attendance at Corinne’s is very apropos, as I was on the eve of sending you an excuse. I do not feel well enough to go there this evening, and have been obliged to despatch an apology. I believe I need not add one for not accepting Mr. Sheridan’s invitation on Wednesday, which I fancy both you and I understood in the same sense:—with him the saying of Mirabeau, that ‘words are things,’ is not to be taken literally.
“I will call for you at a quarter before seven, if that will suit you. I return you Sir Proteus*, and shall merely add in return, as Johnson said of, and to, somebody or other, ‘Are we alive after all this censure?’
