hensive for her brother’s spirits than happily she need be, I now find that my presence for a little while longer is more material than Mr. M.’s extreme delicacy suffered me to imagine before, and I shall therefore mitigate my impatience to be with you again by reflecting that I am acting at once more rightly and beneficially to the best of friends. And now, my love, that I am disappointed of telling you myself all that I have seen and done so soon as I expected, I will write in continuation what I hoped to have related with the interruption of a thousand kisses. You know to whom my whole heart belongs, and you shall have the rummaging of your own property, and look, as you have a right to do, into every corner of it.
To begin with my reception by Mr. M., I found him in his study at about eight o’clock; his manner was kind, but not remarkably warm. After a little conversation he told me that he began to smell a rat—and that I had been sent over by the Baronston lord and ladies. I assured him that was not the case, but did not tell him exactly that I had come to help him, not liking to place him under an obligation, and quite satisfied with conversing and drawing off his thoughts from melancholy objects. A few days after he received a letter from Miss C. (Catherine Malone). I came into the room, when he seized my hand, and rated me for not telling him how much he was my debtor. This you see was at once the best and most agreeable way of our coming to a right understanding; and the greatest possible degree of cordiality and confidence immediately commenced, which has increased with uniformly accelerated motion ever since.
Our first company was a very lively Mr. Boswell, and Mr. Plumptree, a Cambridge author. The first business I set about was collecting materials for my uncle’s life,[1] and the opportunity, which will not recur, proved such a stimulus that, aided by Mr. M.’s zeal, I have succeeded in point of dates and events completely to my wish. I soon saw Mr. Courtenay, and, added to a good deal of amusement from his conversation,- ↑ Captain (or Mr.) Robert Jephson, the dramatist, who has been already introduced to the reader, and died in 1803
