“I am much obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken; trouble being, I am sorry to say, the only privilege accruing at present from the title of friend, which you have possessed with me for so many years, and will continue to hold while we retain any remembrance of the past. . . . .
“I have now been returned a week, in which time I have been fully employed in writing letters and correcting proof sheets, except yesterday, when great part of the day was passed upon the sofa, for the sake of putting to sleep a cold in the head. The weather has been wet and stormy; and it is better that I should keep within doors, than continue to brave all weathers, as I was wont to do, till I get into good condition again, if it please God. Shaken as I have been, there is still a reasonable hope of this.
“. . . . . Kate
is at Mr. Rickman’s now. Bertha was very busily employed during my
absence in painting and papering; making alterations which are not the less
melancholy because it was necessary that they should be made. She has made
| 368 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 64. |
“Cuthbert’s vacation is only for a month. He must be at chapel on Sunday the 29th. I shall proceed the more earnestly with my work that I may have the shorter time to pass in solitude and silence. What I have to do is to get through a volume of the Admirals, in which little progress has been made, and a reviewal of Sir Thomas Browne’s works. My Poems require no farther tinkering; I have only to correct the proofs of the remaining three volumes, and to write the prefaces to them. Arranged and dated as the Poems now are, they communicate to those who have known me well much of my history and character; and a great deal has been reserved which there would have been no propriety in telling the public while I am in the land of the living. There is nothing, thank God, which I could wish to be concealed after my death; but the less that a living author says of himself (except in verse) the better. God bless you, dear Miss Charter!
