Adieu!
W.C.
TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.
Weston, April 6, 1791.
My dear Johnny,—A thousand thanks for your splendid assemblage of Cambridge luminaries! If you are not contented with your collection, it can only be because you are unreasonable; for I, who may be supposed more covetous on this occasion than anybody, am highly satisfied, and even delighted with it. If indeed you should find it practicable to add still to the number, I have not the least objection. But this charge I give you:
Αλλο δε τοι ερεω, συ δ' ενι φρεσι βαλλεο σησι.
Stay not an hour beyond the time you have mentioned, even though you should be able to add a thousand names by doing so! For I cannot afford to purchase them at that cost. I long to see you, and so do we both, and will not suffer you to postpone your visit for any such consideration. No, my dear boy! In the affair of subscriptions, we are already illustrious enough, shall be so at least, when you shall have enlisted a college or two more; which, perhaps, you may be able to do in the course of the ensuing week. I feel myself much obliged to your university, and much disposed to admire the liberality of spirit which they have shown on this occasion. Certainly I had not deserved much favour at their hands, all things considered. But the cause of literature seems to have some weight with them, and to have superseded the resentment they might be supposed to entertain, on the score of certain censures that you wot of. It is not so at Oxford.
W. C.
TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.
Weston, April 29, 1791.