Dear C.—­We are going off to Enfield, to Allsop’s, for a day or 2, with some intention of succeeding them in their lodging for a time, for this damn’d nervous Fever (vide Lond.  Mag. for July) indisposes me for seeing any friends, and never any poor devil was so befriended as I am.  Do you know any poor solitary human that wants that cordial to life a—­true friend?  I can spare him twenty, he shall have ’em good cheap.  I have gallipots of ’em—­genuine balm of cares—­a going—­a going—­a going.  Little plagues plague me a 1000 times more than ever.  I am like a disembodied soul—­in this my eternity.  I feel every thing entirely, all in all and all in etc.  This price I pay for liberty, but am richly content to pay it.  The Odes are 4-5ths done by Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islinton one day, an invalid.  The rest are Reynolds’s, whose sister H. has recently married.  I have not had a broken finger in them.

They are hearty good-natured things, and I would put my name to ’em chearfully, if I could as honestly.  I complimented them in a Newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so.  They are generally an excess.  A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight.  You shall read one of the addresses over, and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good and better than when you discover ’em.  A Pun is a Noble Thing per se:  O never lug it in as an accessory.  A Pun is a sole object for reflection (vide my aids to that recessment from a savage state)—­it is entire, it fills the mind:  it is perfect as a Sonnet, better.  It limps asham’d in the train and retinue of Humour:  it knows it should have an establishment of its own.  The one, for instance, I made the other day, I forget what it was.

Hood will be gratify’d, as much as I am, by your mistake.  I liked ‘Grimaldi’ the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown:  and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag.  Ignotum.  Your picture of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confirm’d by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt departure.  Elton borrowed the “Aids” from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about Cupid?  I am Cytherea’s son, if I understand a tittle of it), and returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, when he was pure, he thought as you do now, but that he now thinks as you did 20 years ago.  But E. seems a very honest fellow.  Hood has just come in; his sick eyes sparkled into health when he read your approbation.  They had meditated a copy for you, but postponed it till a neater 2d Edition, which is at hand.

Have you heard the Creature at the Opera House—­Signor Non-vir sed VELUTI Vir?

Like Orpheus, he is said to draw storks &c, after him.  A picked raisin for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics.  Nos DURUM genus, as mellifluous Ovid hath it.