My dear Rogers,—Very many thanks for the welcome testimony of your
kind remembrance are all that I can offer you in return, unless it be a remark
or two on the subjects noticed by you; for since I came here, nearly three
months ago, I have seen none but my own family; never once been at the distance
of a mile from my hall-door, nor exchanged letters, but once with Lady Spencer and the same with Lord Camden, since I last wrote to you. Though I
know not how in conscience I could have asked you to make us a visit, I should
not have been restrained by that consideration alone. But in truth we have
been, are still, and shall be for some time to come, in a state of so much
confusion and uncertainty as to put all forming of plans out of our power.
Lady Ashburnham will be again obliged
to go to town next week on account of her wrist; the use of which she is still
far from having recovered, though it is now almost six months since the injury
was sustained. And when there, she
| LORD ASHBURNHAM | 49 |
‘You bid me to prepare for a review of my book. I had rather look forward to a view of yours; and this I will have by hook or by crook, long before the next number of “The Edinburgh Review” can make its appearance.1 I think that I might hazard a guess as to who is the anonymous acquaintance of ours, to whom you allude. If I am right, I know him to be in the habit of speaking favorably of me: and therefore trust that he will treat my work with indulgence. Hitherto it has escaped even the hebdomadal critique, or rather notice, of the “Literary Gazette.” When I left London, my publishers, Messrs. Payne and Foss, informed me that I was not much in request. So that, till I received yesterday your notice to brace my nerves to the encounter of a review, I was fortifying myself to endure a similar mortification to that of the late Poet Pybus, who got rid of none but his presentation copies. This was evident from the glut of waste-paper which the market experienced soon after his
1 The review appeared as the second article in the October number of the Edinburgh. Lord Ashburnham’s book consisted of a vindication of his ancestor, John Ashburnham, groom of the bedchamber to Charles the First, from the misrepresentations and aspersions of Lord Clarendon, and of John Ashburnham’s own narrative of his attendance on the King. |
| 50 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
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‘si quid mea earmina possunt,
Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet ævo.
|
|
‘As Qui through all its various cases
The young Grammarian slowly traces,
Declining down to Quibus;
By a like scale our poets try,
And if the first be Laureate Pye,
The last of course is Pybus.
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‘I beg you to pardon me, or, rather, to make in my favour the law’s humane distinction between murder and manslaughter. It is not of malice prepense that, like “the sage Montaigne,” I have deviated from my purpose. It is not in imitation, or from affectation, but because it is as natural to me, as ever it was to him, to write very differently from what I had previously intended. Even more than this—I seldom read with so much perseverance as when I have seated myself at my writing desk: and am most disposed to talk when I have taken up a book.
‘Contrary, therefore, to my declared intention to
comment on the topics of your letter, I shall let you off with observing only
that, of all the changes and chances which you enumerate as having been crowded
together within the narrow compass of a few weeks, the only fact that I
contemplate with pleasure is simply the expulsion of that incorrigible
Charles the Tenth, of whom I verily
think that there is less to say in excuse than of the execrated Charles the Ninth; justification being in either
case equally out of the question. But I have no intention at
| LORD ASHBURNHAM | 51 |
‘I hope that we shall meet ere long. Whenever I can hold out any temptation to you, besides my pictures, which, though as deaf as I am, will not trouble you to repeat the compliments addressed to them, I shall try to tempt you hither. My Lady would not forgive me were I to propose it to you in her absence.
‘Adieu. I can hardly see what I am now writing, but I know what I feel, that
