The following letter gives some further account of the course of his thoughts and pursuits at this period:—­

LETTER 72.  TO MR. HODGSON.

     “Newstead Abbey, Oct. 13. 1811.

“You will begin to deem me a most liberal correspondent; but as my letters are free, you will overlook their frequency.  I have sent you answers in prose and verse[29] to all your late communications, and though I am invading your ease again, I don’t know why, or what to put down that you are not acquainted with already.  I am growing nervous (how you will laugh!)—­but it is true,—­really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically nervous.  Your climate kills me; I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else.  My days are listless, and my nights restless; I have very seldom any society, and when I have, I run out of it.  At ’this present writing,’ there are in the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to write this grumbling letter.—­I don’t know that I sha’n’t end with insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like silliness than madness, as Scrope Davies would facetiously remark in his consoling manner.  I must try the hartshorn of your company; and a session of Parliament would suit me well,—­any thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed verb ‘ennuyer.’

“When shall you be at Cambridge?  You have hinted, I think, that your friend Bland is returned from Holland.  I have always had a great respect for his talents, and for all that I have heard of his character; but of me, I believe he knows nothing, except that he heard my sixth form repetitions ten months together, at the average of two lines a morning, and those never perfect.  I remembered him and his ‘Slaves’ as I passed between Capes Matapan, St. Angelo, and his Isle of Ceriga, and I always bewailed the absence of the Anthology.  I suppose he will now translate Vondel, the Dutch Shakspeare, and ‘Gysbert van Amstel’ will easily be accommodated to our stage in its present state; and I presume he saw the Dutch poem, where the love of Pyramus and Thisbe is compared to the passion of Christ; also the love of Lucifer for Eve, and other varieties of Low Country literature.  No doubt you will think me crazed to talk of such things, but they are all in black and white and good repute on the banks of every canal from Amsterdam to Alkmaar.

     “Yours ever, B.”

[Footnote 28:  See the extract from one of his journals, vol. i. p. 94.]

[Footnote 29:  The verses in vol. ii. p. 73.]

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