"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 get,
And Dicky now for school is fit.'