Owing to my absence from Hampton Court, I have only received the proofs this evening, and return them to you: hoping that you will kindly hasten the printing, in the form decided upon, as I wish to see it completed before I leave town for Dorsetshire.
I trust dining with Adam Blair* did not make you “catch a dislike to me,” as poor Douglas Kinnaird once told me he did, after he had dined with some “friends of his who were not friends of mine.” He was very cross, and when I tried to coax him out of it, he said: “the fact is I caught cold last night where I dined; there was such a draft of air; and I also caught a dislike to you, there was so much abuse and fault-finding.”
Praying that you may be kept from such sickness,
