TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, May 6, 1788.
My dearest Cousin,—You ask me how I like Smollett's Don Quixote? I answer, Well; perhaps better than any body's: but, having no skill in the original, some diffidence becomes me: that is to say, I do not know whether I ought to prefer it or not. Yet there is so little deviation from other versions which I have seen that I do not much hesitate. It has made me laugh I know immoderately, and in such a case ç'a suffit.
A thousand thanks, my dear, for the new convenience in the way of stowage which you are so kind as to intend me. There is nothing in which I am so deficient as repositories for letters, papers, and litter of all sorts. Your last present has helped me somewhat, but not with respect to such things as require lock and key, which are numerous. A box, therefore, so secured, will be to me an invaluable acquisition. And, since you leave me to my option, what shall be the size thereof, I of course prefer a folio. On the back of the book-seeming box, some artist expert in those matters, may inscribe these words,
Collectanea curiosa,
the English of which is, a collection of curiosities. A title which I prefer to all others, because if I live, I shall take care that the box shall merit it, and because it will operate as an incentive to open that which being locked cannot be opened: for in these cases the greater the baulk the more wit is discovered by the ingenious contriver of it, viz. myself.
The General, I understand by his last letter, is in town. In my last to him I told him news, possibly it will give you pleasure, and ought for that reason to be made known to you as soon as possible. My friend Rowley, who I told you has, after twenty-five years' silence, renewed his correspondence with me, and who now lives in Ireland, where he has many and considerable connexions, has sent to me for thirty subscription papers.[426] Rowley is one of the most benevolent and friendly creatures in the world, and will, I dare say, do all in his power to serve me.
I am just recovered from a violent cold, attended by a cough, which split my head while it lasted. I escaped these tortures all the winter, but whose constitution, or what skin, can possibly be proof against our vernal breezes in England? Mine never were, nor will be.
When people are intimate, we say they are as great as two inkle-weavers, on which expression I have to remark, in the first place, that the word great is here used in a sense which the corresponding term has not, so far as I know, in any other language, and secondly, that inkle-weavers contract intimacies with each other sooner than other people on account of their juxtaposition in weaving of inkle. Hence it is that Mr. Gregson and I emulate those happy weavers in the closeness of our connexion.[427] We live near to each other, and while the Hall is empty are each other's only extraforaneous comfort.
Most truly thine,
W. C.