ADDRESS,
SPOKEN BY MISS FONTENELLE ON HER BENEFIT-NIGHT,
DEC. 4, 1795, AT THE THEATRE, DUMFRIES.
Still anxious to secure your partial favour, &c.
25th, Christmas-Morning.
This, my much-loved friend, is a morning of wishes—accept mine—so heaven hear me as they are sincere! that blessings may attend your steps, and affliction know you not! In the charming words of my favourite author, “The Man of Feeling,” “May the Great Spirit bear up the weight of thy gray hairs, and blunt the arrow that brings them rest!”
Now that I talk of authors, how do you like Cowper? Is not the “Task” a glorious poem? The religion of the “Task,” bating a few scraps of Calvinistic divinity, is the religion of God and nature; the religion that exalts, that ennobles man. Were not you to send me your “Zeluco,” in return for mine? Tell me how you like my marks and notes through the book. I would not give a farthing for a book, unless I were at liberty to blot it with my criticisms.
I have lately collected, for a friend’s perusal, all my letters; I mean those which I first sketched, in a rough draught, and afterwards wrote out fair. On looking over some old musty papers, which, from time to time, I had parcelled by, as trash that were scarce worth preserving, and which yet at the same time I did not care to destroy; I discovered many of these rude sketches, and have written, and am writing them out, in a bound MS. for my friend’s library. As I wrote always to you the rhapsody of the moment, I cannot find a single scroll to you, except one about the commencement of our acquaintance. If there were any possible conveyance, I would send you a perusal of my book.
R. B.