428 
Lhe Marchioness of Rockingham to J. E. Smith. 
August 28, 1790. 
I must interrupt your agreeable studies for one 
moment, just to thank you for the letter you wrote 
me before you set out for Yorkshire. I ought not, 
even ina dream, to have had the faintest apprehen- 
sion of Dr. Smith’s ever writing a satire. His ele- 
gant and concise Dedication has relieved my foolish 
fancies; but if a certain Lady's name, and the 
word botany, had appeared in the same page, he 
will allow that it would have been a complete one. 
I dare not dispute with a Dr. Goodenough, other- 
wise, as it is in the form of the address of a letter, 
I should have supposed that Most Honourable was 
dignified enough; and that the Moble Duchesses 
might think his decision rather an infringement of 
their rights: if so, I hope my neighbour Duchess * 
will make him stoop, if that is possible, to ask pardon. 
I ought to be ashamed that I have noi before 
acknowledged your being so good as to add to my 
library the engravings of Rudbeck. 
Mr. Lee brought me a plant he calls the Red 
Palm,—dquite a new thing, and, to my taste, remark- 
ably elegant. I shall long to hear what beautiful 
plants are flourishing and flowering where you are. 
My largest Portlandia is beginning again ; four flow- 
ers in a cluster upon almost every branch, and there 
is also a fine fruit upon it; at the same time it is 
in such health, that one grieves to unload it of any 
* Duchess of Portland. 
