DEAR Field,—Captain Ogilvie, who conveys this note to you, and is now paying for the first time a visit to your remote shores, is the brother of a Gentleman intimately connected with the family of the Whites, I mean of Bishopsgate Street—and you will much oblige them and myself by any service or civilities you can shew him.
I do not mean this for an answer to your warm-hearted
Epistle, which demands and shall have a much fuller return. We received your
Australian First Fruits,
of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to **** of the Examiner,
who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both
Coleridge and
| 1820 | “ON CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS” | 543 |
When do you come back full of riches and renown, with the regret of all the honest, and all the other part of the colony? Mary swears she shall live to see it.
Pray are you King’s or Queen’s men in Sidney? Or have thieves no politics? Man, don’t let this lie about your room for your bed sweeper or Major Domo to see, he mayn’t like the last paragraph.
This is a dull and lifeless scroll. You shall have soon a tissue of truth and fiction impossible to be extricated, the interleavings shall be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible, it shall puzzle you till you return, & [then] I will not explain it. Till then a . . . adieu, with kind rembrces. of me both to you & . . . [Signature and a few words torn off.]
