“Do your absent friends the justice to believe that they can think of you, and admire you, at a distance; those who know you personally and those who know you by your works alone. There is one of the latter description in my neighbourhood just now that must be nameless, whose tribute of respect has been already paid in one of the most extraordinary productions that has been given to the world for a long while (I need not mention the ‘Pursuits of Literature’). I know you were not insensible to it. I have had the pleasure of passing three or four months in the almost uninterrupted society of the very accomplished writer and scholar at whose feet the reputation of this work is generally laid, and with whom the envy and malevolence, as well as the admiration, now rest. I have had more questions asked me about you than I was well able to answer, from that quarter, but I could report nothing that did not seem to confirm the opinion conveyed in his very elegant application of a line from Vida:
“‘Huic Musæ indulgent omnes, hunc
pascit Apollo.’ |
