reason than to examine the recesses of your escritoire. I am sure, my friend, that that warm brain of yours can never find enjoyment in inaction. The forms of beauty, either moral or personal, solicit it too strongly to suffer it to be at rest. No law jargon, no collection of statutes, not all the Pandects in the world, can even avail to extinguish the passion for the muse when she has taken legal possession. “Naturam expellas Colo, tamen usque recurret,” said one of the best philosophers that ever united that character and the poet’s together. If you resolve to keep them close concealed—I mean those compositions that you most penuriously have hoarded up and concealed from public inspection—Shakspeare’s curse attend you. Never pray more; abandon all remorse; on poems’ heads poems accumulate; and never reap those unfading laurels that their publication would ensure you the possession of.
You inquire about Tom’s[1] mistress. She is not tall, nor yet very low of stature. She is not a beauty, though she has a red and white complexion that I much approve of, and her features are rather delicately formed. She is well made, and brimfull of virgin modesty. When she casts an eye towards her little hero, she blooms like the rosy bosomed morning. But yet I know not whether her happy fortune has destined her to the participation of our friend’s bed. There may be obstacles that tend at least to retard, if not prevent, the union; and Tom, though not in love, is not perfectly at ease on this account. Adieu! God bless you, my dear Malone, is the constant wish of your faithful and affectionate friend.
- ↑ Mr. Thomas Southwell.
