Chapter 16

TO MISS ----.

"Gordon's Hotel, July 13, 1807.

"You write most excellent epistles--a fig for other correspondents, with their nonsensical apologies for _'knowing nought about it_,'--you send me a delightful budget. I am here in a perpetual vortex of dissipation (very pleasant for all that), and, strange to tell, I get thinner, being now below eleven stone considerably. Stay in town a _month_, perhaps six weeks, trip into Essex, and then, as a favour, _irradiate_ Southwell for three days with the light of my countenance; but nothing shall ever make me _reside_ there again. I positively return to Cambridge in October; we are to be uncommonly gay, or in truth I should _cut_ the University. An extraordinary circumstance occurred to me at Cambridge; a girl so very like ---- made her appearance, that nothing but the most _minute inspection_ could have undeceived me. I wish I had asked if _she_ had ever been at H----.

"What the devil would Ridge have? is not fifty in a fortnight, before the advertisements, a sufficient sale? I hear many of the London booksellers have them, and Crosby has sent copies to the principal watering places. Are they liked or not in Southwell?... I wish Boatswain had _swallowed_ Damon! How is Bran? by the immortal gods, Bran ought to be a _Count_ of the _Holy Roman Empire_.

"The intelligence of London cannot be interesting to you, who have rusticated all your life--the annals of routs, riots, balls and boxing-matches, cards and crim. cons., parliamentary discussion, political details, masquerades, mechanics, Argyle Street Institution and aquatic races, love and lotteries, Brookes's and Buonaparte, opera-singers and oratorios, wine, women, wax-work, and weather-cocks, can't accord with your _insulated_ ideas of decorum and other _silly expressions_ not inserted in _our vocabulary_.

"Oh! Southwell, Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee, and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along, for so many months, among the Mohawks who inhabit your kraals!--However, one thing I do not regret, which is having _pared off_ a sufficient quantity of flesh to enable me to slip into 'an eel skin,' and vie with the _slim_ beaux of modern times; though I am sorry to say, it seems to be the mode amongst _gentlemen_ to grow _fat_, and I am told I am at least fourteen pound below the fashion. However, I _decrease_ instead of enlarging, which is extraordinary, as _violent_ exercise in London is impracticable; but I attribute the phenomenon to our _evening squeezes_ at public and private parties. I heard from Ridge this morning (the 14th, my letter was begun yesterday): he says the poems go on as well as can be wished; the seventy-five sent to town are circulated, and a demand for fifty more complied with, the day he dated his epistle, though the advertisements are not yet half published. Adieu.

"P.S. Lord Carlisle, on receiving my poems, sent, before he opened the book, a tolerably handsome letter:--I have not heard from him since. His opinions I neither know nor care about: if he is the least insolent, I shall enrol him with _Butler_[74] and the other worthies. He is in Yorkshire, poor man! and very ill! He said he had not had time to read the contents, but thought it necessary to acknowledge the receipt of the volume immediately. Perhaps the Earl '_bears no brother near the throne_,'--_if so_, I will make his _sceptre_ totter _in his hands_.--Adieu!"