I get more
and more in love with solitude, and proportionately hampered with
company. I hope you have some holidays at this period. I have one
day,--Christmas Day; alas! too few to commemorate the season. All work
and no play dulls me. Company is not play, but many times bard work. To
play, is for a man to do what he pleases, or to do nothing,--to go about
soothing his particular fancies. I have lived to a time of life to have
outlived the good hours, the nine-o'clock suppers, with a bright hour or
two to clear up in afterwards. Now you cannot get tea before that hour,
and then sit gaping, music bothered perhaps, till half-past twelve
brings up the tray; and what you steal of convivial enjoyment after, is
heavily paid for in the disquiet of to-morrow's head.
I am pleased with your liking "John Woodvil," and amused with your
knowledge of our drama being confined to Shakspeare and Miss Baillie.
What a world of fine territory between Land's End and Johnny Groat's
have you missed traversing! I could almost envy you to have so much to
read. I feel as if I had read all the books I want to read. Oh, to
forget Fielding, Steele, etc., and read 'em new!
Can you tell me a likely place where I could pick up cheap Fox's
Journal? There are no Quaker circulating libraries? Elwood, too, I must
have. I rather grudge that Southey has taken up the history of your
people; I am afraid he will put in some levity.
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