I have never a cold in winter, by any accident or any carelessness; in summer, no attention can preserve me from them; and they come upon me with a violence which is extremely distressing: no determination to the lungs, no cough, merely catarrh, but catarrh which prevents me from hearing, seeing, smelling, or speaking for weeks together, indeed all the summer; and this has been the case for many years. Can you do me any good?
Can you give me any subject, or tell me any book, for the Review? I have sent a long article upon Botany Bay.
Pray tell me how Lord Holland is, and how my brother is. My eldest son Douglas (whom you may remember at Holland House) has succeeded in the trial at Westminster, and Hall* has promised to remember him in the election to Christchurch. This is very well if he does not succeed in the attempt to go to the West Indies,—a much more certain road to independence than any he is likely to get into in this
* Dean of Christchurch, Oxford. |
180 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. |
What are your plans for the summer?
I have read Galiano’s letters, but they are so utterly insignificant, that there is nothing more to be said of them than that they are not worth speaking about. I scarcely ever read a more insignificant collection of letters. He wrote a little tract in the beginning of life about the importation of corn; and the recollection of that is the subject of the letters, for twenty years, to Madame D’Epinay; or, if there is any variation, of his trumpery commissions to the good-natured woman.
‘Lettres à l’auteur d’un ouvrage ayant pour titre, Superstitions et Prestiges des Philosophes du 18 siècle, dans lequel on examine plusieurs opinions qui mettent obstacle à l’entier établissement de la Religion en France; par M. Deleuse. 8vo.’ Do you know anything of this book?—and of ‘Campagne de l’Armée Francaise en Portugal, 1810-11; avec un précis de celles qui l’ont précédé; par un Officier supérieur employé dans l’état-major de cette armée’?