Ever affectionately yours.
Sir James Emerson Tennent.
Gad's Hill, Monday, Aug. 20th, 1866.
My dear Tennent,
I have been very much interested by your extract, and am strongly inclined to believe that the founder of the Refuge for Poor Travellers meant the kind of man to which it refers. Chaucer certainly meant the Pardonere to be a humbug, living on the credulity of the people. After describing the sham reliques he carried, he says:
But with these relikes whawne that he found
A poure personne dwelling up on lond
Upon a day he gat him more monnie
Than that the personne got in monthes time,
And thus, with fained flattering and japes
He made the personne, and the people, his apes.
And the worthy Watts (founder of the charity) may have had these very lines in his mind when he excluded such a man.
When I last heard from my boy he was coming to you, and was full of delight and dignity. My midshipman has just been appointed to the Bristol, on the West Coast of Africa, and is on his voyage out to join her. I wish it was another ship and another station. She has been unlucky in losing men.
Kindest regard from all my house to yours.
Faithfully yours ever.