I thought you would have written me a line upon your first coming, but I thought also you were ill; and as I get older, I make more and more allowance for the omnipotence of indolence, under whose dominion friend, lover, client, patron, satirist, and sycophant so often yield up their respective energies.
| MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 123 |
I am not always confident of your friendship for me, at particular times; but I have great confidence in it, from one end of the year to another: above all, I am confident that I have a great affection for you.
I hear that Ward is in London. He follows you across Europe, and you him, but you never meet; I suppose your mutual gratification is to be in the same city;—the purest and least sensual passion I ever heard of, and such as I did not suppose to exist but in the books of knights-errant.