I have no doubt their
advice is completely at your service; why then should I intrude mine?
If you will not hear them, it will be vain though one should rise from
the dead to instruct you. Let us have no more nonsense, if you love
me. Mr. --- is going to be married, is he? Well, his wife elect
appeared to me to be a clever and amiable lady, as far as I could
judge from the little I saw of her, and from your account. Now to that
flattering sentence must I tack on a list of her faults? You say it
is in contemplation for you to leave ---. I am sorry for it. --- is
a pleasant spot, one of the old family halls of England, surrounded by
lawn and woodland, speaking of past times, and suggesting (to me at
least) happy feelings. M. thought you grown less, did she? I am not
grown a bit, but as short and dumpy as ever. You ask me to recommend
you some books for your perusal. I will do so in as few words as I
can. If you like poetry, let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakspeare,
Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don't admire him),
Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don't be
startled at the names of Shakspeare and Byron. Both these were great
men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose
the good, and to avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the
purest, the bad are invariably revolting; you will never wish to read
them over twice.
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