It will be proper for me to work pretty diligently now for some time.  I hope to get through, though so many weeks have passed.  Little lives and little criticisms may serve.

Having been in the country so long, with very little to detain me, I am rather glad to look homewards.  I am, &c.

XXXVI.—­To MRS. THRALE.

October 13, 1777.

DEAR MADAM,—­Yet I do love to hear from you:  such pretty, kind letters as you send.  But it gives me great delight to find that my master misses me, I begin to wish myself with you more than I should do, if I were wanted less.  It is a good thing to stay away, till one’s company is desired, but not so good to stay, after it is desired.

You know I have some work to do.  I did not set to it very soon; and if I should go up to London with nothing done, what would be said, but that I was—­who can tell what?  I, therefore, stay till I can bring up something to stop their mouths, and then—­

Though I am still at Ashbourne, I receive your dear letters, that come to Lichfield, and you continue that direction, for I think to get thither as soon as I can.

One of the does died yesterday, and I am afraid her fawn will be starved; I wish Miss Thrale had it to nurse; but the doctor is now all for cattle, and minds very little either does or hens.

How did you and your aunt part?  Did you turn her out of doors, to begin your journey? or did she leave you by her usual shortness of visits?  I love to know how you go on.

I cannot but think on your kindness and my master’s.  Life has, upon the whole, fallen short, very short, of my early expectation; but the acquisition of such a friendship, at an age, when new friendships are seldom acquired, is something better than the general course of things gives man a right to expect.  I think on it with great delight:  I am not very apt to be delighted.  I am, &c.

XXXVII.—­To MRS. THRALE.

Lichfield, October 27, 1777.

DEAR MADAM,—­You talk of writing and writing, as if you had all the writing to yourself.  If our correspondence were printed, I am sure posterity, for posterity is always the author’s favourite, would say that I am a good writer too.—­“Anch’io sono pittore.”  To sit down so often with nothing to say; to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying, and without any remembrance of having said, is a power of which I will not violate my modesty by boasting, but I do not believe that every body has it.

Some, when they write to their friends, are all affection; some are wise and sententious; some strain their powers for efforts of gaiety; some write news, and some write secrets; but to make a letter without affection, without wisdom, without gaiety, without news, and without a secret, is, doubtless, the great epistolick art.