the ham of its inexpressibles, we were made happy by your kind note, mentioning dear Mr. Hastings being "perfectly well," and you gave us no reason to fear but that you are the same, which is meat, drink, and every thing else to us; and we daily implore the Giver of all good, to add to the 75th annniversary of our dearest friend's existence as many more years of health and happiness as human nature, in this sublunary state, is capable of furnishing strength for; May all the best compliments, usually confined to this complimentary season attend you both the whole year through, and every day be a Xmas. in its festivity, though not in its shortness, or its cold. We live in an age of fearful events; and though with you we most fervently wish the calamities of the times may be averted from us, and from all those we esteem, yet we dare not flatter ourselves that the storm is blown over from this country: may it pass unfelt and innoxious over the hospitable roof of our beloved friends and patrons is the heartfelt prayer of, my dearest Madam, Your obliged and affectionate friend, LOUISE HALHED." Daylesford House, 8th January, 1808. "MY DEAR MRS. HALHED,-Mrs. Hastings was so delighted with your letter, that she not only gave it to me to read, and to read it to her; but has insisted upon my taking it, and answering it for her. For the first I have thanked her, as I ought, for I was as much delighted with it as she was: but for the injunction which followed, I have prayed to be excused, conscious of my inability to obey it; for upon holding it up to the light, I saw, or thought I saw, a figure behind, busily employed in illuminating all the characters; and as I feel an humiliating consciousness of a total want of the same illuminative faculty, I have no other way to avoid the disgrace of discomfiture than by declining all attempts to equal or imitate it. But I am commanded to thank you for the oysters which you sent us, and to that I find my talents pretty equal, as the oysters have almost wholly fallen to my share; and I offer you Mrs. Hastings' thanks, and with her's my own, gratefully; assuring you, that they were, and still are (I believe) the best oysters that I have tasted since the year 1767, when from daily practice I was a gourmet in oysters. I am not sure that the praises which you bestow on our piggery were serious. I hope so, because it is my exclusive department, having devoted all that I possess of invention, since my superiors have pronounced me unfit for the higher occupations of life, to the improvement of that article of the agricultural system; with what success it does not become me to pronounce. I do not know the family, or progenitors of the ham. Mr. Halhed's conjectures concerning both may be right: but he is mistaken in the affinity of the brawn, which (I beg your pardon for not apprizing you of it) derives its ancestry from Ajaccio in Corsica, the birth place of the great conqueror and monarch of the western world; and the contiguous sties are shewn to this hour, in which the first squeaks were uttered, the prognostics of their future fortunes." "I thank Mr. Halhed for his couplet, and own that it is ingenious; but I am better pleased with the transcription than the composition of it. Will you have the goodness to shew him the following lines, which I met with lately at the end of an old thesaurus, and desire him to translate, or explain it. I cannot for the life of me, guess what it alludes to. Qualiscunque fluit variæ per viscera terræ, Quicquid habet puri fons, Arethusa facit.' "I cannot describe to you with what a transition from mirth to the most awful and grateful feelings of affection we both read your kind wishes to us both, nor am I sure that though more immediately concerned, I felt them more than my dear Mrs. Hastings. You were not forgotten by us, my dear friends, on the 1st of the month, when by custom we pronounced those fervent wishes which we feel, as for you we do most ardently all the year through. You have not many friends, if any, that love you better than we do. Adieu, and heaven bless you! WARREN HASTINGS." "P. S.—Mrs. Hastings desires me to add, that she received a letter from Lady Imhoff this morning, conveying the most welcome intelligence, that both her son and daughter were in perfect health." "10th January, 1808. "HONOURED SIR,-Between your excellent ham and Mr. Halhed's Latin I have been doubly gratified by the honour and happiness of a most kind entertaining letter from yourself, in addition to that I had the pleasure of receiving from Mrs. Hastings. I must confess I did not myself quite stomach the application of Martial's epigram hashed up with Mr. Halhed's sauce; he says he was aware of the ambiguity you seem to hint at, and indeed was afraid you might turn the tables upon him, and retort by a different application of the same epigram. One ham through winter feeds you téte á téte! Trust me the bore is not upon the plate. But this I myself could have borne; for I look'd at him when I read it as if I thought my own neck had escap'd the collar, and he felt the innuendo. No, says he, I will be a match for you and your sneering look, in coupling me with the ham; for now Mr. Hastings shall imitate it another way, and you shall not save your bacon. On a sole ham while fed the winter through, Where you see but one boar, said ham sees two. When his laugh was over, he said he had anticipated a worse drubbing than this, which he has humbly suggested for you in behalf of so exquisite a joint; as he was afraid you might have exclaimed in anger still more archilochian. Quid tantum fecere boni tibi pessima vina, Convivæ meruere tui for tasse perire Amphora non meruit tam pretiosa mori.' Hence with your ounce, your scruple and your drachm, What harm, at full t'enjoy the wholesome fare? "While he bows in due humility to your just indignation, he is at least comforted in the success of his discernment in having discovered a twang of royalty through all the salt, and pickling, and smoking, and soaking, and stewing, and other processes to which the ham and the brawn had been subjected, before they reached the tip of his tongue; his mistake between Versailles and Corsica was at most but geogra phical, and that is nothing extraordinary in the present blurred and blotted state of the map of Europe. Still he cannot think there could ever be much harmony in the tones of a collar issuing from the sties that you mention. "Twere well for earth's wide regions, sea and shore- Alas! no melody those organs speak Napoleon only grunts-while monarchs squeak. "A man who has but one species of merit is hardly worth a button, because his peculiar talent may happen never to be called into exertion; and yet I must honestly confess, that when I knew you in the full exercise of a hazardous sovereignty over an extensive empire, I thought it the only employment to which you could turn your hand; but the excellence of your pork has undeceived me; and I find you equally expert and unrivalled in the management of a colony, into which to have introduced even cleanliness, attests more experimental skill than to have civilized all the Rajmahl districts: but, however, you have this advantage in your settlement, that you can confer a favour on one among fifty competitors, sans vous faire quarante neuf ennemis et un ingrat. O that we could but drive the Cabinet and Privy Council into your piggery! but at the end of all your labours you would be forced to confess that hogs were less incorrigible than Yahoos. It is lucky, however, in these times of discontent to have a manageable tribe to deal with, and I hope the doctrine of the rights of swine has not yet been broached in your dynasty-but I beg pardon for the misapplication of the word, as you are determined your pigs shall not die nasty. In this vile town we can only imitate the manners of your quadrupedal government in the subordinate qualifications of grunting and grumbling; but to be clean and well-fed is a luxury not compatible with the actual principles of taxation. The happiness of your hogs will I doubt not, become proverbial, like that of the slaves of a former planter in St. Domingo, where it was customary to say in P describing a happy man, that he was heureux comme un Negre de Galet. "I have obey'd your commands in showing Mr. Halhed the Latin couplet. He bids me reply, his name is Davus not Edipus; and that like the cocket-writer who when called upon to interpret his own scribble, indignantly answered he was not paid to be cocket-reader. He can construe it, and he can imitate it, but for the soul of him he cannot understand it; and Alpheus happens not to live in this parish, to ferret out the Arethusa in question. The lines however are very pretty, and have a delicate meaning, perhaps not unlike the following'Glide as it may life's stream-or slow or fleet, 'Tis Marian gives whate'er it owns of sweet.' "If we rejoiced in the contents of your obliging letter, we encored at the news contained in your welcome postcript, and are very happy to hear of the welfare of Sir Charles and Lady Imhoff. "Your conclusion, my dear Sir, is much too kind not to excite in us the warmest sentiments of gratitude and affection. We are perfectly sure of your friendship, and that of our dear Mrs. Hastings; but if we were not, it is impossible that we should love you as we do, without kindling in your breasts a sympathy bordering upon esteem. Professions are the paper currency of regard, but we pay in sterling cash, and are proof against bankruptcy; so I can only add our sincerest wishes for both your healths and happiness, while I subscribe myself, Honoured Sir, Your affectionate and grateful From Mrs. Halhed to Mr. Hastings, dated 16th January, 1808. "HONOURED SIR,-How shall I express the delight and gratitude with which I received your most kind and entertaining letter, in addition to that I had the pleasure of receiving from Mrs. Hastings this year. If you were amused as you say by the perusal of my scribble, my wishes are filled, and I only regret that when you come to hold this to the light you will not find it illuminated with the same gas, for that is our favourite light now in Pall Mall. But comets you know do not emit their fire every day, and so you must accept the humbler star, who is not less desirous to attract your eyes the less able to contribute to your amusement-we were both I assure you most highly gratified with every line of your incomparable letter, and had it no intrinsic merits, what satisfaction must it not afford to those that love you as we do, to see such a fine steady hand-writing at the age of 75! The surest and most unquestionable proof of a mind perfectly at ease, and of nerves unshaken by intemperance or decay; how many do I know much younger than yourself unable to carry a teacup steady to their lips, much less to guide the pen with comfort to themselves and entertainment to their correspondents. My dearest Sir, do not lament the blindness of your superiors in leaving you to enjoy the rural improvement even of your pigs, but rather say as I find it recorded that Cato did, I had rather it should be asked why I had not a statue, than why I had one. "I rejoice the oysters proved so good, I wish I could make them multiply as fast as you take them out of the barrel till you were tired of eating any." "Pall Mall, 5th March, 1808. "HONOURED SIR,-I have delay'd from day to day to thank you for your kind and affectionate postscript to dear Mrs. Hastings' last favour; in hopes that I might have sent you something to amuse you, but one may as well force a river, as the genius of a poet; it may be led to flow in another course by turning its banks, but nothing else will succeed; therefore my dearest Sir, though there are many fragments ready to amuse you with, when we have the happiness of seeing you again, you must at the present accept only a few lines from my humble pen; as I am truly anxious to know how our dear Mrs. Hastings is, whom I trust and hope is perfectly restored to health, and that you both enjoy the mild opening of spring in your elysian fields, from whence I fear it will not be easy now to entice you to the thick atmosphere of London; yet I will indulge the hope that you and Mrs. Hastings will favour your friends with the satisfaction of seeing you here, and where none will more rejoice to pay their respects to you than Darby and Joan of Pall Mall, who in the mean time beg you will accept for yourself, and present to your beloved wife, the assurance of our most affectionate and unalterable attachment and respect, and allow me to subscribe myself ever, Honoured Sir, Your grateful and affectionate In the following we have a specimen of Mr. Hastings' facility in versifying, not without point. I "Daylesford House, 24th March, 1808. "MY DEAR MRS. HALHED,-My poor Mrs. Hastings is confined to her bed with a most severe cold; and has desired me to request in her name your acceptance of a leg of pork-not Corsican. am sorry for it, remembering what a gainer I was by one of that breed in our last commercial intercourse. This is a Chinese. I hope it will prove as good to the consumers, if not so productive to the manufacturer. "Mrs. Hastings has also enjoined me to make my apology to you for not having long ago returned my acknowledgments for your last kind letter. She knows the cause of this delay; that all my neighbours to whom I used occasionally to apply for franks, have either left the country, or vacated their seats in Parliament and that I have no means of conveyance left for a letter, without a violence inflicted on my conscience, but the belly of a tur 1 |