“You write most excellent epistles—a fig for other correspondents, with their nonsensical apologies for ‘knowing nought about it,’—you send me a delightful budget. I am here in a perpetual vortex of dissipation (very pleasant for all that), and, strange to tell) I get thinner, being now below 11 stone considerably. Stay in town a month, perhaps 6 weeks, trip into Essex, and then, as a favour, irradiate Southwell for 3 days with the light of my countenance; but nothing shall ever make me reside there again. I positively return to Cambridge in October; we are to be uncommonly gay, or in truth I should cut the University. An extraordinary circumstance occurred to me at Cambridge, a girl so very like ** made her appearance, that nothing but the most minute inspection could have undeceived me. I wish I had asked if she had ever been at H * * *.
“What the devil would Ridge have? is not 50 in a fortnight, before the advertisements, a sufficient sale? I hear many of the London booksellers have them, and Crosby, has sent copies to the principal watering-places. Are they liked or not in Southwell? * * * * * I wish Boatswain had swallowed Damon! How is Bran? by the immortal gods, Bran ought to be a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. * * *
“The intelligence of London cannot be interesting to you, who have rusticated all your life—the annals of routs, riots, balls and boxing-matches, cards and crim. cons, parliamentary discussion, political details, masquerades, mechanics, Argyle-street Institution and aquatic races, love and lotteries, Brooks’s and Buonaparte, opera-singers and oratorios, wine, women, wax-work, and weathercocks, can’t accord with your insulated ideas of decorum and other silly expressions not inserted in our vocabulary.
“Oh! Southwell, Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee,
and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along, for so many months, amongst the Mohawks
who inhabit your kraals!—However, one thing I do not regret, which is having pared off a sufficient quantity of flesh to
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“P.S. Lord Carlisle, on receiving my Poems, sent, before he opened the book, a tolerably handsome letter:—I have not heard from him since. His opinions I neither know nor care about; if he is the least insolent, I shall enroll him with Butler* and the other worthies. He is in Yorkshire, poor man! and very ill! He said he had not had time to read the contents, but thought it necessary to acknowledge the receipt of the volume immediately. Perhaps the earl ‘bears no brother near the throne,’—if so, I will make his sceptre totter in his hands.—Adieu!”
