“I have waited in vain for the happy dissolution of
the spell which has kept us asunder at a distance less by one quarter than in
general divides us; and since I am finally obliged to depart for the north
to-morrow, I have only to comfort myself with the hope that Bladud will infuse a double influence into his
tepid springs, and that you will feel emboldened, by the quantity of
reinforcement which the radical heat shall have received, to undertake your
expedition to the tramontane region of Reged this
season. My time has been spent very gaily here, and I should have liked very
well to have remained till you came up to town, had it not been for the wife
and bairns at home, whom I confess I am now anxious to see. Accordingly I set
off early to-morrow morning—indeed I expected to have done so to-day, but my
companion, Ballantyne, our Scottish
Bodoni, was afflicted with a violent
diarrhoea, which, though his physician assured him it would serve his health in
general, would certainly have contributed little to his accomplishments as an
agreeable companion in a post-chaise, which are otherwise very respectable. I
own Lord Melville’s misfortunes
affect me deeply. He, at least his nephew, was my early patron, and gave me countenance and
assistance when I had but few friends. I have seen when the streets of
Edinburgh were thought by the inhabitants almost too vulgar for Lord
Melville to walk upon; and now I fear that, with his power and
influence gone, his presence would be accounted by many, from whom he has
deserved other thoughts, an embarrassment, if not something worse. All this is
very vile—it is one of the occasions when Providence, as it were, industriously
| APRIL, 1806. | 97 |
