Market hill, Woodbridge.
Sept. 29/62.
My dear Thompson,
‘What Cheer, ho!’ I somehow fancy that a Line of Nonsense will catch you before you leave Ely: and yet, now I come to think, you will have left Ely, probably, and will be returning in another Fortnight to Cambridge for the Term. Well, I will direct to Cambridge then; and my Note shall await you there, and you need not answer it till
some very happy hour of Leisure and Inclination. As to Inclination, indeed, I don’t think you will ever have much of that, toward writing such Letters, I mean; what sensible Man after forty has? You have done so much more (in my Eyes, and perhaps so much less in your own) coming all this way to see me! I did wonder at the Goodness of that. I suppose Spedding didn’t tell you that I wrote to him to say so. It was very unlucky I was out when you came: I have often thought of that with vexation.
Well, I have gone on Boating, etc., just the same ever since. And just now I have been applying to Spring Rice to use his Influence to get a larger Buoy laid at the mouth of our River; across which lies a vile Bar of shifting Sand, and such a little Bit of a Buoy to mark it that we often almost miss it going in and out, and are in danger of running on the Shoal; which would break the Boat to Pieces if not drown us. Here is a fine Piece of Information to a Canon of Ely and Professor of Greek at Cambridge!
Spring Rice does not speak well, I think, of his health; not at all well; and his Handwriting looks shaky. What a Loyal Kind Heart it is!
Market hill: Woodbridge,
Nov. 28/62.
My dear Donne,
I talk indignantly against others bothering you, and do worse than all myself, I think, what with Bookbindings, Dressing-gowns, etc. (N.B. You know that the last is only in case when you are going your Rounds to St. James, etc.) Now I have a little Query to make: which, not being even so much out of your way, won’t I hope trouble you. I remember Thompson telling me that, from what he had read and seen of Grecian Geography, he almost thought Clytemnestra’s famous Account of the Line of Signal Fires from Troy to Mycenæ to be possible (I mean you know in the Agamemnon). At least this is what I believe he said: I must not assert from a not very accurate Memory anything that would compromise a Greek Professor: I am so ignorant of Geography, ancient as well as modern, I don’t know exactly, or at all, the Points of the Beacons so enumerated: and Lempriere, the only Classic I have to refer to, doesn’t help me in what I want. Will you turn to the passage, and tell me what, and where, are: