‘A saint in crape, is twice a saint in lawn.’

Will you then be so good as to have this paragraph put into the Morning Herald, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post, and any other fourth paper you choose?  ’We hear that the Rev. Martin Sherlock, M.A., etc., is collated to the united vicarages of Castleconner and Rilglass, worth 400 a-year.’  Is there any news of me in London?  Am I abused or well-spoken of in print?  Are the writers as uneasy as they used to be about my vanity?  Keep all printed things, reviews, newspapers, etc., about me, till I have an opportunity of sending for them.  I think I shall have something for you by next week; but keep that a secret. wish, for your sake, I was a bishop; for then, I will answer for it, my works would sell well.”  An elegant edition of all Mr. Sherlock’s Letters was published by Mr. Nichols in 1802, in two volumes octavo.  It is now a very scarce book.  In 1788, he was collated to the rectory and vicarage of Streen, and soon afterwards to the archdeaconry of Killala.  He died in 1797.-E.

Letter 241 To The Rev. William Mason. (page 307)

I have been reading a new French translation of the elder Pliny,(469) of whom I never read but scraps before; because, in the poetical manner in which we learn Latin at Eton, we never become acquainted with the names of the commonest things, too undignified to be admitted into verse; and, therefore, I never had patience to search in a dictionary for the meaning of every substantive.  I find I shall not have a great deal less trouble with the translation, as I am not more familiar with their common drogues than with the Latin.  However, the beginning goes off very glibly, as I am not yet arrived below the planets:  but do you know that this study, of which I have never thought since I learnt astronomy at Cambridge, has furnished me with some very entertaining ideas!  I have long been weary of the common jargon of poetry.  You bards have exhausted all the nature we are acquainted with; you have treated us with the sun, moon, and stars, the earth and the ocean, mountains and valleys, etc. etc. under every possible aspect.  In short, I have longed for some American Poetry, in which I might find new appearances of nature, and consequently of art.  But my present excursion into the sky has afforded me more entertaining prospects, and newer phenomena.  If I was as good a poet, as you are, I would immediately compose an idyl, or an elegy, the scene of which should be laid in Saturn or Jupiter:  and then, instead of a niggardly soliloquy by the light of a single moon, I would describe a night illuminated by four or five moons at least, and they should be all in a perpendicular or horizontal line, according as Celia’s eyes (who probably in that country has at least two pair) are disposed in longitude or latitude.  You must allow that this system would diversify poetry amazingly.—­And