DEAR Manning,—I have forborne writing so long (and so have you, for the
matter of that), until I am almost ashamed either to write or to forbear any
longer. But as your silence may proceed from some worse cause than neglect—from
illness, or some
| 1801 | THE ALBION’S FATE | 221 |
All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to them. They apply to me for the cause. Relieve me from this weight of ignorance, and enable me to give a truly oracular response.
I have been confined some days with swelled cheek and rheumatism—they divide and govern me with a viceroy-headache in the middle. I can neither write nor read without great pain. It must be something like obstinacy that I choose this time to write to you in after many months interruption.
I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an epigram on Mackintosh, the “Vindiciæ Gallicæ”-man—who has got a place at last—one of the last I did for the “Albion”:—
“Though thou’rt like Judas, an
apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack; When he had gotten his ill-purchas’d pelf, He went away, and wisely hanged himself: This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt, If thou hast any Bowels to gush out!”
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Yours, as ever,
