Letter 536 Letter 537

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DXXXVI. — To the Rev. Peard Dickinson.

DEAR SIR, CORK, May 6, 1767.

I AM now come to my second station in Ireland: For here we expect to stay seven days; only with a digression of two out of the seven, to Bandon and Kinsale. I know not that I shall spend two whole days in any other place before I return to Dublin. I am glad you are fairly discharged from Oxford; although there is a little seed left there still. When we were there, we profited much of watching continually against “the lust of finishing;” to mortify which, we broke off writing in the middle of a sentence, if not in the middle of a word; especially the moment we heard the chapel-bell ring, or a knock at our door. If nature reclaimed, we remembered the word of the Heathen: Ejicienda est haec mollities animi. 108

I am glad there is so good an understanding among the Preachers: A great deal depends upon it. But I hope you do not forget gentle T. O. May not you venture to give him a hint, that your Hints were incorrectly printed? If he says, “They were written so, I could hardly read them;” you can tell him, “I hope to write the next better.”

Miss Briggs’s spending so much of her time at Shoreham answers an excellent design. It, in a great measure, supplies the want both of Miss Perronet and of her father, whom I remember with sincere affection. I am, dear Sir,

Your affectionate friend and brother.

DXXXVII. — To the Same.

DEAR SIR, LONDONDERRY, June 5, 1787.

THE Irish posts are not the quickest in the world; though I have known one travel full two miles in an hour. And they are not the most certain, Letters fail here more frequently than they do in England.