1782 "I WISH YOU A SINECUEE" 83 



Worcester College candidate for an Oriel Fellowship, 

 in whom he was interested from the fact that the 

 election of this young man at Oriel would facilitate 

 the election of his son John to a Fellowship at 

 Worcester College. He continues in the old strain — 



"Another winter is passed without your Essays. I have 

 no more to say than that you are a timorous provoking 

 man. You defraud yourself of a great credit in the world : 

 as to your labouring at your Antiquities, it is Tnal-a-propos ; 

 the world does not care for such rough work now. Your 

 Porch will be bigger than your House, and you will clap 

 a Gothic Front upon a plan of Palladio.* I mean this, 

 if you labour too much at it. I will give you credit 

 myself that everything that comes from you shall be good. 

 I shall not be quite sorry when you have left Faringdon, 

 but I wish you a Sinecure in its room, if such a thing 

 would not vacate your Fellowship. But perhaps you are 

 like an old prisoner of the Bastille, and would fear to catch 

 cold in your leg, if it had not a chain on." 



To Miss White. ^^g^ 3^ 1782. 



Dear Molly, — Pray desire your father to receive my 

 midsummer dividend, and to bring me down thirty pounds 

 in Cash. 



Mrs. White desires you to bring her down one quire of 

 hlack-edged paper. 



If you have some mushroom-spawn to spare, I should be 

 glad of some. 



* The result shows that this prophecy of Mulso's, like others that he 

 made of his friend's work, was correct. Very few people read the 'An- 

 tiquities' in comparison with those who read the 'Natural History' of 

 Selborne. Yet they are good of their kind, and creditable to their author, 

 as indicating the spirit of thoroughness with which he set about describing 

 his native parish. 



