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 [1] 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 Amsteli_ [2]
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.
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, [3]
and ferocious notes on the vanity of the triple Editory of the _Edin.
Annual Register_ [4]), my _Hints_, I say, stand still, and why?--I have
not a friend in the world (but you and Drury) who can construe Horace's
Latin or my English well enough to adjust them for the press, or to
correct the proofs in a grammatical way.
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