"Volage frigate, off Ushant, July 17. 1811.
"My dear Drury,
"After two years' absence (on the 2d) and some odd days, I am
approaching your country. The day of our arrival you will see by the
outside date of my letter. At present, we are becalmed comfortably,
close to Brest Harbour;--I have never been so near it since I left
Duck Puddle. We left Malta thirty-four days ago, and have had a
tedious passage of it. You will either see or hear from or of me, soon
after the receipt of this, as I pass through town to repair my
irreparable affairs; and thence I want to go to Notts. and raise
rents, and to Lanes. and sell collieries, and back to London and pay
debts,--for it seems I shall neither have coals nor comfort till I go
down to Rochdale in person.
"I have brought home some marbles for Hobhouse;--for myself, four
ancient Athenian skulls,[141] dug out of sarcophagi--a phial of Attic
hemlock[142]--four live tortoises--a greyhound (died on the
passage)--two live Greek servants, one an Athenian, t'other a Yaniote,
who can speak nothing but Romaic and Italian--and _myself_, as Moses
in the Vicar of Wakefield says, slily, and I may say it too, for I
have as little cause to boast of my expedition as he had of his to the
fair.
"I wrote to you from the Cyanean Rocks to tell you I had swam from
Sestos to Abydos--have you received my letter? Hodgson I suppose is
four deep by this time. What would he have given to have seen, like
me, the _real Parnassus_, where I robbed the Bishop of Chrissæ of a
book of geography!--but this I only call plagiarism, as it was done
within an hour's ride of Delphi."