"Dorant's Hotel, Jan. 13. 1808.
"My dear Sir,
"Though the stupidity of my servants, or the porter of the house, in
not showing you up stairs (where I should have joined you directly),
prevented me the pleasure of seeing you yesterday, I hoped to meet you
at some public place in the evening. However, my stars decreed
otherwise, as they generally do, when I have any favour to request of
them. I think you would have been surprised at my figure, for, since
our last meeting, I am reduced four stone in weight. I then weighed
fourteen stone seven pound, and now only _ten stone and a half_. I
have disposed of my _superfluities_ by means of hard exercise and
abstinence.
"Should your Harrow engagements allow you to visit town between this
and February, I shall be most happy to see you in Albemarle Street. If
I am not so fortunate, I shall endeavour to join you for an afternoon
at Harrow, though, I fear, your cellar will by no means contribute to
my cure. As for my worthy preceptor, Dr. B., our encounter would by no
means prevent the _mutual endearments_ he and I were wont to lavish on
each other. We have only spoken once since my departure from Harrow in
1805, and then he politely told Tatersall I was not a proper associate
for his pupils. This was long before my strictures in verse; but, in
plain _prose_, had I been some years older, I should have held my
tongue on his perfections. But, being laid on my back, when that
schoolboy thing was written--or rather dictated--expecting to rise no
more, my physician having taken his sixteenth fee, and I his
prescription, I could not quit this earth without leaving a memento of
my constant attachment to Butler in gratitude for his manifold good
offices.
"I meant to have been down in July; but thinking my appearance,
immediately after the publication, would be construed into an insult,
I directed my steps elsewhere. Besides, I heard that some of the boys
had got hold of my Libellus, contrary to my wishes certainly, for I
never transmitted a single copy till October, when I gave one to a
boy, since gone, after repeated importunities. You will, I trust,
pardon this egotism. As you had touched on the subject I thought some
explanation necessary. Defence I shall not attempt, 'Hic murus aheneus
esto, nil conscire sibi'--and 'so on' (as Lord Baltimore said on his
trial for a rape)--I have been so long at Trinity as to forget the
conclusion of the line; but though I cannot finish my quotation, I
will my letter, and entreat you to believe me,
gratefully and affectionately, &c.
"P.S. I will not lay a tax on your time by requiring an answer, lest
you say, as Butler said to Tatersall (when I had written his reverence
an impudent epistle on the expression before mentioned), viz. 'that I
wanted to draw him into a correspondence.'"