TO LADY HESKETH.
August 29, 1793.
Your question, at what time your coming to us will be most agreeable, is a knotty one, and such as, had I the wisdom of Solomon, I should be puzzled to answer. I will therefore leave it still a question, and refer the time of your journey Weston-ward entirely to your own election: adding this one limitation, however, that I do not wish to see you exactly at present, on account of the unfinished state of my study, the wainscot of which still smells of paint, and which is not yet papered. But to return: as I have insinuated, thy pleasant company is the thing which I always wish, and as much at one time as at another. I believe, if I examine myself minutely, since I despair of ever having it in the height of summer, which for your sake I should desire most, the depth of the winter is the season which would be most eligible to me. For then it is, that in general I have most need of a cordial, and particularly in the month of January, I am sorry, however, that I departed so far from my first purpose, and am answering a question, which I declared myself unable to answer. Choose thy own time, secure of this, that, whatever time that be, it will always to us be a welcome one.
I thank you for your pleasant extract of Miss Fanshaw's letter.
Her pen drops eloquence as sweet
As any muse's tongue can speak;
Nor need a scribe, like her, regret
Her want of Latin or of Greek.[722]
And now, my dear, adieu! I have done more than I expected, and begin to feel myself exhausted with so much scribbling at the end of four hours' close application to study.
W. C.