I was much pleased with the extract you gave me from your sister Eliza's letter; she writes very elegantly, and (if I might say it without seeming to flatter you) I should say much in the manner of her brother. It is well for your sister Sally that gloomy Dis is already a married man, else perhaps finding her, as he found Proserpine, studying botany in the fields, he might transport her to his own flowerless abode, where all her hopes of improvement in that science would be at an end for ever.
What letter of the 10th of December is that which you say you have not yet answered? Consider, it is April now, and I never remember any thing that I write half so long. But perhaps it relates to Calchas, for I do remember that you have not yet furnished me with the secret history of him and his family, which I demanded from you.
Adieu! Yours most sincerely,
W. C.
I rejoice that you are so well with the learned Bishop of Sarum,[637] and well remember how he ferreted the vermin Lauder[638] out of all his hidings, when I was a boy at Westminster.
I have not yet studied with your last remarks before me, but hope soon to find an opportunity.
TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.[639]
Weston, April 15, 1792.
My dear Friend,—I thank you for your remittance; which, to use the language of a song much in use when we were boys,
"Adds fresh beauties to the spring,
And makes all nature look more gay."
What the author of the song had particularly in view when he thus sang, I know not; but probably it was not the sum of fifty pounds: which, as probably, he never had the happiness to possess. It was, most probably, some beautiful nymph,—beautiful in his eyes, at least,—who has long since become an old woman.