144 LETTERS TO GILBERT WHITE 



Letter 85. 



Sunbury, 



June 8, 1759. 

 Dear Gil, 



Mrs Mulso & Myself are both very much obliged to You 

 for your friendly Letter. We need not half the Arguments that 

 You make Use of to incline Us to accept your otfer, but Mrs 

 Mulso still desires me to tell You that She cannot absolutely 

 fix a Time, yet that it cannot be before the Middle of July 

 at soonest, & desires to know whether your Fields &c: are 

 passable by a Carriage at that Time of the Year ; I hope by 

 that Time the little Person will be settled in his Mansions, & 

 that a Journey into the Hill Country will do Him as much 

 Service as I think it did his or her Sister Jenny. In the mean 

 Time We shall be glad to see You at Sunbury, If You will let 

 Us know ; for now my Father is wth Us, & next week we expect 

 Mrs James Young, whose Captain is gone out in the Mars : How 

 long She will stay I do not say. The Bishop & Fam : set out 

 for Salisbury next Monday wth my Aunt Donne. My Father 

 (t Sister are to follow them about the Time that We hope to 

 set out for Selbourne, where our Minds are already revelling 

 in the wildest & coolest of Scenes & foretasting of Pleasures 

 that are Pontificum potiora Caenis. When You come here You 

 will miss two Places that You used to like to call in at : Dr 

 Fry's, where we have as yet no Acquaintance ; & poor Mr 

 Trenley's, whose wife now lies dead here ; & He is Himself 

 a dejected & unnerved Man, & very probably will never recover 

 this Shock. Lady Musgrave is brought to Bed of another Son. 

 So much for our Sunbury News. As to the Poetical Turn of 

 your Letter, I cannot answer You in that Way ; I have been 

 looking over Duncombe's Translation of Horace ; He has been 

 so kind as to give Us most of the Satires & Epistles in Blank 

 Lines, for I will not call them Verse. I cannot but say that 

 You did Him great Injustice, but Yourself great Justice, in 

 not letting me insert your Imitations amongst them. They 

 would have been amongst the Things that, if He knows Himself, 

 he desperat tractata nitescere posse, & so leaves them to halt 

 in Blank, but they would have ornamented the Book. Some 

 of his Notes are good ; but it is offensive to me to see so bad 

 a poet set up to fell Mr Pope ; He has had the Audacity to find 

 Fault wth your Favourite Simile of the Moon. 



Dear Gil, let Us hear of You, let Us see You, & I hope in 

 God we shall be able to return your Compliment. I fear about 

 it, because I long for it very heartily. Mrs Mulso is not angry 

 at your applying to Her what was designed for a Horse, for She 

 knows that it is your favourite Animal : My Bones are now 

 aking with two Bides only a Foot Pace upon my Father's Mouse, 



