505.
To Lord Sheffield.
Lausanne, July 22nd, 1786.
BOOKS LONGER IN MAKING THAN PUDDINGS.
This general order will, I presume, remove all the unforeseen difficulties, which I should have thought must have given way to your name, and the knowledge of our connection. Use the power according to your own discretion, even to the full amount of your £500 which I have not yet violated, but remember not to satisfy Newton till he has disgorged my writings, of which, as you will easily believe, I have no list. *I suppose you have sworn (I have sworn myself) at my long silence and delay. The plena Epistola I have postponed from post to post, and as I see no end of waiting (though I think it will not run beyond the end of the month), it seemed most prudent to dispatch this needful missive. I am well, happy, and diligent; but your kind hint of the London house is perfectly superfluous; as instead of the spring, we must already read the summer of next year.* Do not be childish or passionate; trust me, I wish to appear in England; but it must be with my book in my hand; and a book takes more time in making than a pudding. Adieu. Will my Lady never write?
E. G.
*Since I have another page, and some leisure moments, we may as well employ it in friendly converse; the more so, as the great letter to which I alluded is most wonderfully precarious and uncertain; the more so likewise, as our correspondence for some time past has been of an abrupt, dark and disagreeable cast. Let us first talk of Sheffield's works; they are of two sorts: primo, two nymphs, whom I much desire to see; the stately Maria and the gentle Louisa. I perfectly represent them both in the eye of fancy; each of them accomplished according to her age and character, yet totally different in their external and internal forms. Secundo, three pamphlets; pamphlets I cry you mercy; three weighty treatises, almost as useful as an enquiry into the state of the primitive Church; and here let me justify, if I have not before, my silence on a subject which we authors do not easily forgive. The first, whose first editions had seen the light before I left England, followed me here in a more compleat condition; and that Treatise on the American Trade has been read, judged, approved, and reported. The second, on Ireland, I have seen by accident, the copy you had sent Mr. Trevor, who passed last summer (85) in this [place]. The third, and in my present situation the most interesting, on the French Commerce,[108] I have not yet seen by any means whatsoever, and you who know what orders you have given to Elmsley or others, will best discern on whom should be laid the fault and the blame.* By the bye, Mrs. Trevor is now here without her husband—so much the better—and I am just going to see her, about a mile out of town: she is judged elegant and amiable; but in health and figure most lamentably declined since last year. *But to return to your books, all that I have seen must do you honour, and might do the public service; you are above the trifling decorations of style and order, but your sense is strong, your views impartial, and your industry laudable. I find that your American tract is just translated into German.
HIS CONTEMPLATED VISIT TO ENGLAND.
Do you still correspond with* Eden?[109] *If he could establish a beneficial intercourse between the two first nations in the World, I could excuse him some little political tergiversation. At some distance of time and place, those domestic squabbles lose much of their importance; and though I should not forgive him any breach of private friendship or confidence, I cannot much blame him if he chose rather to serve his family and his country, than to persevere in a hopeless and, as I suspect, an unpopular opposition. You have never told me clearly and correctly how you support your inactive retreat from the house of Commons; whether you have resumed your long forgotten taste for rural and domestic pleasures, and whether you have never cast a look towards Coventry, or some other borough equally pure and respectable. In the short space that is left I will only repeat more distinctly, that in the present contemplation of my work, June or July of next year is the earliest term at which I can hope to see England*; and if I have a fit of the Gout—I have, indeed, been free from the monster this last twelvemonth; but he is most arbitrary and capricious. Of my own situation let me say with truth that it is tranquil, easy, and well adapted to my character. All enthusiasm is now at an end; I see things in their true light, and I applaud the judgment and choice of my retirement.
You see why I have left a blank in the first page; and when I begun I had no design of going beyond it; and now, unless I have some extraordinary fit of diligence and zeal, shall probably wait till the return of your Epistle. A word before we part, about the least unpleasant of my business; my library in Downing-street. Excuse the accidental derangement; I shall send for no more books, and only beg you to give them shelter in your stinking parlour till my arrival. Two or three mornings will suffice for a personal review, and the subsequent steps of sale or travel will most properly be executed under my own eye. Ours and the foreign papers announce the distress and reformation of the P. of W.[110] Are you one of the Noblemen who offer him their houses? As papa is tenacious and poor, I suppose Fox next session will celebrate his economy, and Parliament will pay his debts. Once more adieu.