155 — To Francis Hodgson
Volage
Frigate, at sea, June 29, 1811.
In a week, with a fair wind, we shall be at Portsmouth, and on the 2d of July I shall have completed (to a day) two years of peregrination, from which I am returning with as little emotion as I set out. I think, upon the whole, I was more grieved at leaving Greece than England, which I am impatient to see, simply because I am tired of a long voyage.
Indeed, my prospects are not very pleasant. Embarrassed in my private affairs, indifferent to public, solitary without the wish to be social, with a body a little enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but a spirit I trust, yet unbroken, I am returning
home
without a hope, and almost without a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter will be a lawyer, the next a creditor, then colliers, farmers, surveyors, and all the agreeable attachments to estates out of repair, and contested coal-pits. In short, I am sick and sorry, and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence.
I trust to meet, or see you, in town, or at Newstead, whenever you can make it convenient — I suppose you are in love and in poetry as usual.
That
husband, H. Drury, has never written to me, albeit I have sent him more than one letter; — but I dare say the poor man has a family, and of course all his cares are confined to his circle.
"For children fresh expenses yet,
And Dicky now for school is fit."
Warton
1
.
If you see him, tell him I have a letter for him from Tucker, a regimental chirurgeon and friend of his, who prescribed for me, — — and is a very worthy man, but too fond of hard words. I should be too late for a speech-day, or I should probably go down to Harrow. I regretted very much in Greece having omitted to carry the
Anthology
with me — I mean Bland and Merivale's. — What has
Sir Edgar
done? And the
Imitations and Translations
— where are they? I suppose you don't mean to let the public off so easily, but charge them home with a quarto.
For
me, I am "sick of fops, and poesy, and prate," and shall leave the "whole Castalian state" to Bufo, or any body else
. But you are a sentimental and sensibilitous person, and will rhyme to the end of the chapter. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, of one kind or another, on my travels.
I need not repeat that I shall be happy to see you. I shall be in town about the 8th, at Dorant's Hotel, in Albemarle Street, and proceed in a few days to Notts., and thence to Rochdale on business.
I am, here and there, yours, etc.
Footnote 1:
Warton's
Progress of Discontent
, lines 109, 110.
Footnote 2:
"But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state."
Pope,
Prologue to the Satires
, lines 229, 230.
