One day may be worse than another; but this last month is far
better than the former; if the next should be as much better than this,
I shall run about the town on my own legs.'
October 25. 'You write to me with a zeal that animates, and a tenderness
that melts me. I am not afraid either of a journey to London, or a
residence in it. I came down with little fatigue, and am now not
weaker. In the smoky atmosphere I was delivered from the dropsy, which
I consider as the original and radical disease. The town is my element*;
there are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not yet bid
farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir Joshua told me long ago that
my vocation was to publick life, and I hope still to keep my station,
till God shall bid me Go in peace.'
* His love of London continually appears. In a letter from
him to Mrs. Smart, wife of his friend the Poet, which is
published in a well-written life of him, prefixed to an
edition of his Poems, in 1791, there is the following
sentence:--'To one that has passed so many years in the
pleasures and opulence of London, there are few places that
can give much delight.
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