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when I borrowed the Anecdotes at Bath, there was little quite new, but it seemed to me that Spence was partial.

My paper, the "Morning Post," about three days back, mentions a case in point to the present upon tryal.* What can he mean? I have cudgelled my brains, and turned over Wraxall's "Memoirs" in vain, though the event was in 1780, the editor says, a year I remember but too well. Ask Mrs. Fox if she can guess what story he alludes to, and tell me what wonders Lord Byron is come home to do, for I see his arrival in the paper. His grandmother was my intimate friend, a Cornish lady, Sophia Trevanion, wife to the Admiral pour ses péchès, and we called her Mrs. Biron always, after the French manner. The friends you live among are more likely to know facts concerning Atterbury's tryal than I am, and where to find the letter, for such a letter there is, sure enough. Pope's letter to the Bishop at parting is pretty, and tender, and touchant; but I have not a good edition of Swift here, and the reading people of this town study only what is under ground, neglectful of the superfices. We have a geological school here, and professors; better than Weston-super-Mare, you'll say, where two books only were to be found in the place, a Bible and a Paradise Lost. I bought them both.

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To Sir James Fellowes.

Penzance, 23d Sept. 1820.

My dear Sir James Fellowes should not have been followed up in this shameless manner, but that a letter from his brother Dorset, to whom I owe so much of kindness and obedience, charged me to write immediately to Adbury, and say he was well and happy (as it appears) at Paris. It made me so to understand how quiet all is there; and but that I believe the calm precedes bourrasque, my heart might be easy as to poor Louis Dix-huit, who I must love both as a king and individual. When he shall be removed, much misery will befall that devoted nation, which, having set fire to all Europe, will herself perish first in the flame. You know I cried proximus ardet long ago; but no one listened.

*The Queen's Trial.

Meanwhile, here am I at Penzance.

66

'Ay," says the fool in Shakespear's "As You Like It," "here am I in the Forest of Ardennes, thou fool I." But 't is plain my fancy was not guided by his, who admonishes mortal man not to dwell either in a ditch, or on a terrace; you have always found me either in the one, or on the other. . .

Meanwhile, Charles Shephard has written to me from Santa Lucia, where he is Attorney-General, and where, from the public newspapers, he heard of my octogenary fête, and wished me joy with unabated good-humor.

Prosperity does make, or keep people good-humored, and if I can live to the 10th of July, 1821, I will be good-humored too; unless the radicals break up our funds entirely. For love of the Queen and the country, Cobbett did say in some of his papers three years ago, what a pleasure it would be to see 300,000 people starving; for then we should get rid of six individuals to him very obnoxious. A cheerful calculation! For my own part, however, I hope to come out next year with the swallows, if possible; they, and the sun, and your most humble servant, are all half-torpid, or retired at least during winter; and they tell me there is no winter at Penzance. A lady said here the other day, that she went to Taunton last year to see skaiting, a diversion she had often heard of, and that she was gratified during her absence from home with a heavy fall of snow. I rather fancy there is some truth in all this, because of the shrubs in every little garden-plot: rhododendron now in beauty; myrtles covered with bloom, like Italy; and the arbutus high as an apple-tree, very handsome indeed, sed non omnes arbusta juvant, humilesque myrice; and if I am doomed to six months exile, the finding myself in Botany Bay, will afford small consolation. Old friends in leather jackets, the books, do not desert me, and new friends are civil, send me figs and peaches, and invite me to their little parties, where we play sixpenny whist comfortably enough. Apropos to whist, you see the Duke of Grafton's papers explained nothing concerning who wrote Junius.

To Sir James Fellowes.

*

Penzance, Wednesday, 4 Jan. 1821. MIL Años y mas, viva V. M., my dear Sir James Fellowes, whom I hasten to make again my debtor, as diligently as Tully would hasten to make me so. I owe him but £ 10 now, however, and dividend day is coming. Apropos, my tenant, and your honor's not very near neighbor, but neighbor compared to the distance I live at from all the world, is in arrears £ 91, he did squeeze out £109 of the October money just before Christmas, and promised the rest; but those promises, like Tully's pie-crust, are made to be broken; a pâté vol au vent, I suppose.

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I, and Miss Willoughby, who followed me uninvited, came hither professedly to avoid winter; and never in my sight did winter assume so terrific, so formidable a form: the sea rising to a tremendous height; fogs and snow thickening all around; and when any one is able to stand the storm, and call at the house, tales of shipwreck in every mouth. I will come to Penzance

no more.

Meanwhile, poor Bath has, as you say, been suffering by the other destructive element; what a mercy that I was able to discharge Upham's long bill, before he was burned out of the premises I have often felt happy in. The fire-eaters would have been perhaps no better, they could not have been more active or friendly assistants than that charming Loder, the violin-player; who volunteered his services, and resigned the ruining those delicate fingers, by which alone he lives, to save the property of a man whose prejudices all militate against stage and orchestra. But virtue and genius should go together, and they commonly do.

The Bath newspaper tells of a clergyman at Newbury, who has prayed for the Queen ever since George 4th's accession, but who is now forbidden to do so by his Bishop.

Old Beadon, Bishop of Bath and Wells, is in articulo mortis, I understand, and probably Dr. Hall, if he is the bold man who stept forward with the prohibition, will succeed him. Llandaff was treated very roughly on less provocation by half.

*The Bath confectioner.

Fine times! are they not. The retrospect may be entertaining to the century; but this, young as it is, will smart, I think, before the year 1850.

Pourriture avant maturité, as the great Frederick of Prussia used to deprecate for his own government. I have never had courage to look in "Thraliana" since my arrival; so little does looking backward delight me.

At eighty-one years old 't is time to begin reconnoitring, when we know that retreat is impossible. Twenty years, y mas, have elapsed, since my two quartos were sent out, like Hamblet's father, with all their imperfections on their head. Well! no

matter.

Do you remember the Name Book? it ended with Zenobia, and I must tell you a story of a Cornish gentlewoman hard by here, Zenobia Stevens, who held a lease under the Duke of Bolton by her own life only, -ninety-nine years, and going at the term's end ten miles to give it up. She obtained kind permission to continue in the house as long as she lived, and was asked, of course, to drink a glass of wine. She did take one, but declined the second, saying, she had to ride home in the twilight upon a young colt, and was afraid to make herself giddy headed. Don't I hear you cry, bravo Zenobia?

-'s pretty wife is screaming, I believe; she has outlived two accoucheurs. No wonder; I do think a country practitioner (meaning a medical man of all work) should have an iron constitution.* Our agreeable Dr. Forbes seems so endowed; a Scotchman, a competent scholar, full of country anecdote, and he told me the true tale of Zenobia, whose daughter died the other day, aged ninety-eight only. Those who said no snow was ever seen at Penzance, dealt in fiction and fable; here is a heavy snow this moment, and but that the sea is open enough, God knows, I should call it a polar winter. Dr. Parry's son will go again, it seems, for another £5,000; other inducement there can be none, and the most curious circumstance of the voyage is an account given by one of the officers, how his Irish setter, a tall, smooth

* In one of her marginal notes she quotes the saying of a distinguished lawyer, that a judge should have a face of brass, a constitution of iron, and a bottom of lead.

spaniel, attracted the attentions of a she wolf on Melville Island, who made love to the handsome dandy, and seduced him at length to end his days with her and her rough-haired family, refusing every invitation of return to the ship; a certain proof that dog, fox, jackall, &c., are only accidental varieties; while lupo is head of the house, penkennedil, as Welsh and Cornish people call it.

Adieu! I am going to eat a cod's-head, which you would be happy to give two guineas for when Lord Carnarvon dines with you. My servants have the rest for their dinner to-day and tomorrow. The whole fish cost half a crown. But there is a mermaid coming to England, I hear. That she ends in piscem, I partly believe, but mulier formosa I doubt. No room for more nonsense, scarce enough to say how many wishes for yours and your family's happiness are breathed in this distant region by, dear Sir, yours and their most obliged and grateful and faithful servant,

H. L. PIOZZI.

To William Dorset Fellowes, Esq.

WELL, my dear Sir, —

Penzance, 14 February, 1821.

This day, whate'er the fates decree,
Shall still be kept with joy by me.

Sir James had a long letter from me some weeks ago, but I believe his toothache was so bad he never minded it. There has been a new attack made on my property, of which I gave him an account; but it will end in smoke before I can have time to tell you the tale, which relates to dividends left standing, unclaimed, an immense while, in the names of Thrale and Gifford. Some Mr. K I know not who, flies at me to ask what I did with them? God knows I did nothing with them, nor ever heard a breath concerning the matter, till his letter put me upon inquiry, and having written to Mrs. Merick Hoare, she consoles me by bearing testimony to my innocence of having ever touched this £ 600 which this gentleman believes himself heir to.

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But this comes of too long life. My coadjutors and brethren

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