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In a Letter to B.F. Esq. at Sydney, New South Wales My dear F. -- When I think how wele the sight of a letter from the world where you were born must be to you in that strange oo which you have been transplanted, I feel some punctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a corresponde our distahe weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to ceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that ohoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity: and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowes superscriptions, "Alder to Strephon, in the shades." Cowleys Post-Angel is no more than would be expedient in su intercourse. One drops a packet at Lombard- street, and iy-four hours a friend in Cumberlas it as fresh as if it came i is only like whispering through a long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down from the moon, with yourself at one end, and the man at the other; it would be some balk to the spirit of versation, if you khat the dialogue exged with that iing theosophist would take two or three revolutions of a higher luminary in its passage. Yet fht I know, you may be some parasangs hat primitive idea -- Platos man -- than we in England here have the honour to re ourselves.Epistolary matter usually priseth three topiews, se, and puns. Iter, I include all non-serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion, nonseriously. -- And first, for news. Ihe most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security I have that what I now send you for truth shall not before you get it unatably turn into a lie? For instanutual friend P. is at this present writing -- my Now -- in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation. Ylad to hear it. This is natural and friendly. But at this present reading -- your Now -- he may possibly be in the Bench, oing to be hanged, whi reason ought to abate something of your transport (i.e. at hearing he was well, &c.), or at least siderably to modify it. I am going to the play this evening, to have a laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, I think you told me, in your land of d---d realities. You naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you will correct the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday m with you, and 1823. This fusion of tehis grand solecism of two presents, is in a degree on to all postage. But if I sent you word to Bath or the Devises, that I was expeg the aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment you received the intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there would be for a day or two after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would give rational encement for you to foster a portion at least of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my iion to produce. But ten months hence your envy or yobbr>?</abbr>ur sympathy would be as useless as a passio upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un-essence herself, but (what is harder) one ot venture a crude fi for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put upon you some three years since -- - of Will Weatherall having married a servant-maid! I remember gravely sulting you hoere to receive her -- for Wills wife was in no case to be rejected; and your no less serious replication iter; how tenderly you advised an abstemious introdu of literary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects; whether the scious avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a worse look thaaking of them casually in our way; in what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs William Weatherall being by; whether we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Wills wife, by treating Becky with our ary chiding before her, or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as to a person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you did me the favour to state with the precision of a lawyer, uo the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when lo! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous possibly of any lie -- children not his own, or w after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not three days sio the ission of a matrimony, which I had only jured up for your diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs Cotterels maid. But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from me must bee history to you; which I her profess to write, nor indeed care<u>藏书网</u> much for reading. No person, under a diviner, with any prospect of veracity duct a corresponde su arms length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus interge intelligeh effect; the epoch of the writer (Habbakuk) falling in with the true present time of the receiver (Daniel); but then we are no prophets.
Then as to se. It fares little better with that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot; or sent off in water-plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all eats. I have often smiled at a ceit of the late Lord C. It seems that travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, or something hung so fantastically and invitingly over a stream -- was it ? or a rock ? -- no matter -- but the stillness and the repose, after a weary jouris likely, in a languid moment of his lordships hot restless life, so took his fancy, that he could imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death, to lay his bones in. This was all very natural and excusable as a se, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But when from a passiiment it came to be an act; and when, by a positive testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all that way from England; who was there, some desperate sealists excepted, that did not ask the question, Why could not his lordship have found a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pe, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon? ceive the se boarded up, freighted, e the House (startling the tide-waiters with the y), hoisted into a ship. ceive it pawed about and handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians -- a thing of its delicate texture -- the salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about ses) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus sn to the devisers purpose!) but it has happily evaded a fishy mation. Trace it then to its lucky landing -- at Lyons shall we say ? -- I have not the map before me -- jostled upon four mens shoulders -- baiting at this town -- stopping to refresh at tother village -- waiting a passport her<q></q>e, a lise there; the san of the magistra this district, the currence of the ecclesiasti that ton; till at length it arrives at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk se, into a feature of silly ride or tawdry senseless affectation. How few ses, my dear F., I am afraid we set down, in the sailors phrase, as quite seaworthy.
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though ptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a right friendly epistle -- your puns and small jests are, I appreheremely circumscribed in their sphere of a. They are so far from a capacity of being packed up a beyohey will scardure to be transported by hand from this room to the . Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment for their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the by-standers or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus -- the melior lutus, -- whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal geion. A pun hath a hearty hind of present ear-kissing smack with it; you o more transmit it in its pristine flavour, than you send a kiss, -- Have you not tried in some instao palm off a yesterdays pun upon a gentleman, and has it answered? Not but it was o his hearing, but it did not seem to e new from you. It did not hit. It was like pig up at a village ale-house a two days old neer. You have not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort of merdise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its reitory laugh, must be stantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moments interval, and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friends face as from a mirror. Who would sult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.) in giving back its copy?
I age to myself whereabout you are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkinss island es ae. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time to give for the sight of an ho man! You must almost have fotten how we look. And tell me, what your Sydes do? are they th**v*ng all day long? Merciful heaven! roperty stand against such a depredation! The kangaroos -- your Abines -- do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind- shifters as the expertest lootor in the y. -- We hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils their sing ? -- It must look very odd; but use reciles. For their ssion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater art of them, vile plagiarists. -- Is there much differeo see to between the son of a th**f, and the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do you blea three or in feions? -- I have many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples. -- Do you grow your own hemp ? -- What is your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your lock-smiths, I take it, are some of yreat capitalists.
I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used to exge good-morrows out of our old co<var>?</var>ntiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare-court iemple. Why did you ever leave that quiet er ? -- Why did I ? -- with its plement of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of lish letters before they reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear me, -- thoughts dallying with vain surmise -
Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores Hold far away.
e back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall hardly know me. e, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left children have bee sage matrons, while you are tarrying there. The blooming Miss W -- r (you remember Sally W -- r) called upon us yesterday, an aged e. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out, -- I stood ramparted about with so mahy friends. The departure of J. W., tws back corrected my delusion. Sihen the old divorcer has been busy. If you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine.
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