6, 1806.

XLVIII.

TO MANNING

_December_ 5, 1806.

Manning, your letter, dated Hottentots, August the what-was-it? came to
hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China,
Canton,--bless us, how it strains the imagination and makes it ache! I
write under another uncertainty whether it can go to-morrow by a ship
which I have just learned is going off direct to your part of the world,
or whether the despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait;
for if it is detained here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a
five months' voyage coming to you. It will be a point of conscience to
send you none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which will but
grow the better, like oranges, for a sea-voyage. Oh that you should be
so many hemispheres off!--if I speak incorrectly, you can correct me.
Why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be
important to you as news in the old Bastile. There's your friend Tuthill
has got away from France--you remember France? and Tuthill?--ten to one
but he writes by this post, if he don't get my note in time, apprising
him of the vessel sailing. Know, then, that he has found means to obtain
leave from Bonaparte, without making use of any _incredible romantic
pretences_, as some have done, who never meant to fulfil them, to come
home; and I have seen him here and at Holcroft's. An't you glad about
Tuthill? Now then be sorry for Holcroft, whose new play, called "The
Vindictive Man," was damned about a fortnight since. It died in part of
its own weakness, and in part for being choked up with bad actors. The
two principal parts were destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister; but
Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the managers,--they have had some
squabble,--and Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the going off
of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her part, and Mr. De Camp took his. His
part, the principal comic hope of the play, was most unluckily
Goldfinch, taken out of the "Road to Ruin,"--not only the same
character, but the identical Goldfinch; the same as Falstaff is in two
plays of Shakspeare. As the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the
audience did not know that H. had written it, but were displeased at his
stealing from the "Road to Ruin;" and those who might have home a
gentlemanly coxcomb with his "That's your sort," "Go it,"--such as Lewis
is,--did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea
stripped of his m