O! what arms of recrimination I should be furnished with against my rigidly moral father, should I discover this remote Cassino, (for remote I understand it is) to be the harem of some wild Irish Sultana; for I strongly suspect “that metal more attractive” than the cause he assigns, induces him to pay an annual visit to a country to which, till within these few years, he nurtured the strongest prejudices. You know there are but nineteen years between him and my brother; and his feelings are so unblunted by vicious pursuits, his life has been guided by such epicurian principles of enjoyment, that he still retains much of the first warm flush of juvenile existence, and has only sacrificed to time, its follies and its ignorance. I swear, at this moment he is a younger man than either of his sons; the one chilled by the coldness of an icy temperament into premature old age, and the other!!!———Murtoch has been to see me. I have procured him a little farm, and am answerable for the rent. I sent his wife some rich wine; she is recovering very fast. Murtoch is all gratitude for the wine, but I perceive his faith still lies in the bacon!
LETTER IV.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
I can support this wretched state of non-existence, this articula mortis, no longer. I cannot read—I cannot think—nothing touches, nothing interests me; neither is it permitted me to indulge my sufferings in solitude. These hospitable people still weary me with their attentions, though they must consider me as a sullen misanthropist, for I persist in my invisibility. I can escape them no longer but by flight—professional study is out of the question, for a time at least. I mean, therefore, to “take the wings of” some fine morning, and seek a change of being in a change of place; for a perpetual state of evaga-tion alone, keeps up the flow and ebb of existence in my languid frame. My father’s last letter informs me he is obliged by business to postpone his journey for a month; this leaves me so much the longer master of myself. By the time we meet, my mind may have regained its native tone. Laval too, writes for a longer leave of absence, which I most willingly grant. It is a weight removed off my shoulders; I would be savagely free.
I thank you for your welcome letters, and will do what I can to satisfy your antiquarian taste; and I would take your advice and study the Irish language, were my powers of comprehension equal to the least of the philological excellences of Tom Thumb or Goody Two Shoes,—but alas!
“Se perchetto a me Stesso quale acquisto,
Firo mai che me piaccia.” *
* “Torquatto Tasso.”
Villa di Marino, Atlantic Ocean