LETTERS. 20a 



TO MR M. HARRIS. 



Nottingham, 28tli I\Iarch 1802. 

 Dear Sir, 



I was greatly surprised at your letter of the twenty- 

 seventh, for I had in reality given you up for lost. I 

 should long since have written to you, in answer to your 

 note about the Lexicon, but was perfectly ignorant of 

 the place of your abode. For anything I knew to the 

 contrary, you might have been quaffing the juice of the 

 cocoa-nut under the broad bananes of the Indies, breath- 

 ing the invigorating air of liberty in the broad savannahs 

 of America, or sweltering beneath the line. I had, how- 

 ever, even then some sort of a presentiment that you 

 were not quite so far removed from our foggy atmosphere, 

 but not enough to prevent me from being astonished at 

 finding you so near us as Leicester. You tell me I must 

 not ask you what you are doing ; I am nevertheless very 

 anxious to know ; not so much, I flatter myself, from 

 any inquisitiveness of spirit, as from a desire to hear of 

 your welfare. Why, my friend, did you leave us ? pos- 

 sessing as you did, if not exactly the otium cum digni- 

 tafe, something very like it ; having every comfort and 

 enjoyment at your call, which the pliilosophical mind 

 can find pleasure in ; and above all. blessed with that 

 easy competence, that sweet independence, which renders 

 the fatigues of employment supportable, and even agree- 

 able. 



Quod satis est, cui contingit, nihil amplius optet. 



Certainly, to a man of your disposition, no situation 

 could have more charms than yours at the Trent Bridge. 

 I regard those hours which I spent with you there, while 

 the moonbeam was trembling on the waters, and the 

 harp of Eolus was giving us its divine swells and dying 

 falls, as the most sweetly tranquil of my life. 

 * * * * 



I have applied myself rather more to Latin than to 

 Greek since you left us. I make use of Schrevelius"s 



