“Dear Patmore,—I cannot let your letter, so kind and so gratifying, remain another day unanswered, especially as it relieved my anxiety lest you should think the interest in the first volume of ‘De Clifford’ in danger.
“I wish I could as fully relieve myself from another anxiety, almost as great, to know how far, that is, what proportion, I deserve of the honouring (I might almost say), the pathetic things you say of my lucubrations. Gladly would I compound for a sixth, nay, a tenth part of them, which would have satisfied even my earlier vanities. What must they be now, when vanity itself is fast wearing out with the rest of my frailties, like rats abandoning a falling old body? How I have deserved the partiality you so eloquently indulge, unaffectedly I cannot tell. Yet I cannot believe but that you are an honest man, and too proud to flatter, even were I anything more than a worn-out old Tory, totally without power, and whose interests are almost reduced to the flock of hens and turkeys he beholds from his windows.
“Well, I at least feel sure of your sin-
| 134 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
‘Mittit et optat amans quo mittitur ire,
salutem,
Æmonis, Æmonio, Laodamia viro;’ |
“I wish I could administer better than I do to the delicate appetite of the lady wife. My step-son’s trustees are rather stingy as to the manors here, confining their supply to my own actual table. I cannot blame them, however, as it is to restore the game, which has been during the minority much wasted. I shall be glad, however, to do my possible.
“For the present I will only repeat my thanks, and remain your much obliged
