from nature as well as from the statues, and portrait as well as history, and this frequently.  If you have done all this, as I trust you have, you want nothing but a little prudence, to fulfil all our wishes.  This, let me tell you, is no small matter; for it is impossible for you to find any persons anywhere more truly interested for you; to these dispositions attribute everything which may be a little harsh in this letter.  We are, thank God, all well, and all most truly and sincerely yours.  I seldom write so long a letter.  Take this as a sort of proof how much I am, dear Barry, Your faithful friend.

To LORD AUCKLAND

An old stag at bay

Beaconsfield, 30 Oct. 1795.

My dear Lord,

I am perfectly sensible of the very flattering honour you have done me in turning any part of your attention towards a dejected old man, buried in the anticipated grave of a feeble old age, forgetting and forgotten in an obscure and melancholy retreat.

In this retreat I have nothing relative to this world to do but to study all the tranquillity that in the state of my mind I am capable of.  To that end I find it but too necessary to call to my aid an oblivion of most of the circumstances pleasant and unpleasant of my life; to think as little, and indeed to know as little as I can of everything that is doing about me; and, above all, to divert my mind from all presagings and prognostications of what I must (if I let my speculations loose) consider as of absolute necessity to happen after my death, and possibly even before it.  Your address to the public which you have been so good as to send to me, obliges me to break in upon that plan, and to look a little on what is behind, and very much on what is before me.  It creates in my mind a variety of thoughts, and all of them unpleasant.

It is true, my Lord, what you say, that through our public life, we have generally sailed on somewhat different tacks.  We have so undoubtedly, and we should do so still, if I had continued longer to keep the sea.  In that difference you rightly observe that I have always done justice to your skill and ability as a navigator, and to your good intentions towards the safety of the cargo and of the ship’s company.  I cannot say now that we are on different tacks.  There would be no propriety in the metaphor.  I can sail no longer.  My vessel cannot be said to be even in port.  She is wholly condemned and broken up.  To have an idea of that vessel you must call to mind what you have often seen on the Kentish road.  Those planks of tough and hardy oak that used for years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay, are now turned with their warped grain and empty trunnion holes into very wretched pales for the enclosure of a wretched farmyard.