MY dear fellow (N.B. mighty familiar of late!) for me to come to Cambridge now is one of God Almighty’s impossibilities. Metaphysicians tell us, even He can work nothing which implies a contradiction. I can explain this by telling you that I am engaged to do double duty (this hot weather!) for a man who has taken advantage of this very weather to go and cool himself in “green retreats all the month of August.
But for you to come to London instead!—muse upon it, revolve it, cast it about in your mind. I have a bed at your command. You shall drink rum, brandy, gin, aqua-vitæ, usquebaugh, or whiskey a’ nights; and for the after-dinner trick I have eight bottles of genuine port, which, if mathematically divided, gives 1/7 for every day you stay, provided you stay a week. Hear John Milton sing,
“Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause.” Twenty-first Sonnet. |
“What neat repast shall feast us, light1 and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine,2 whence we may
rise To hear the lute well touch’d, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?” |
“Veni cito, Domine Manning!” |
N.B.—I lives at No. 27 Southampton Buildings, Holborn.
