etchedly,
ridiculously, fine-ladically _nervous_. Your climate kills me; I
can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days
are listless, and my nights restless; I have very seldom any
society, and when I have, I run out of it. At 'this present
writing,' there are in the next room three ladies, and I have
stolen away to write this grumbling letter.--I don't know that I
sha'n't end with insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging
my thoughts that perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like
silliness than madness, as Scrope Davies would facetiously remark
in his consoling manner. I must try the hartshorn of your company;
and a session of Parliament would suit me well,--any thing to cure
me of conjugating the accursed verb '_ennuyer_.'

"When shall you be at Cambridge? You have hinted, I think, that
your friend Bland is returned from Holland. I have always had a
great respect for his talents, and for all that I have heard of
his character; but of me, I believe he knows nothing, except that
he heard my sixth form repetitions ten months together, at the
average of two lines a morning, and those never perfect. I
remembered him and his 'Slaves' as I passed between Capes Matapan,
St. Angelo, and his Isle of Ceriga, and I always bewailed the
absence of the Anthology. I suppose he will now translate Vondel,
the Dutch Shakspeare, and 'Gysbert van Amstel' will easily be
accommodated to our stage in its present state; and I presume he
saw the Dutch poem, where the love of Pyramus and Thisbe is
compared to the _passion_ of _Christ_; also the love of _Lucifer_
for Eve, and other varieties of Low Country literature. No doubt
you will think me crazed to talk of such things, but they are all
in black and white and good repute on the banks of every canal from
Amsterdam to Alkmaar.

"Yours ever, B."

[Footnote 28: See the extract from one of his journals, vol. i. p. 94.]

[Footnote 29: The verses in vol. ii. p. 73.]

* * * * *

"My poesy is in the hands of its various publishers; but the 'Hints
from Horace,' (to which I have subjoined some savage lines on
Methodism, and ferocious notes on the vanity of the triple Editory
of the Edin. Annual Register,) my '_Hints_,' I say, stand still,
and why?--I hav