Dear Sir

a Letter with two or three inclosures was sent I think last Friday sevenight inclosed to y^r friend Sir H., our mentor being absent & I was unwilling to charge you with a doutreble letter. your other favor & the second part of the Bank bill came safe on Friday.

You will oblige me much by sending y^r parcel to M^rs Pennant's upper Grosvenour street. my son continues in town some time & will take care of my virtù Concerns & will certainly pay his respects to you. I got one number of M^r Grose's presnent publication. I see that the prints are of the size which will suit me. therefore he will give himself the trouble of picking one for the present my desiderata for Cumberland and Lancashire¹ only I shall be content. I am going on forming a new set of my scotch tours,² which I am impatient to put into half binding.

My best compli^nts to M^r Burrel. I thank him for his kind Letter: & am convinced of his good intentions. my last recommend[...] is lost: for Johnson hearing of my ill success dropt his request to me.³ I am therefore to beg that M^r Burrel would not strike me out of his books but leave a blank to be filled up hereafter. I am am [sic] a Leech to those whom I fix on with a view to serve my neighbors.

Dear Sir
Yours most faithfully,

T Pennant.

Downing Dec^r 21. 1783.

Be so good as to remind M^r Storer ab[...][?out] the translation of Olaffens travels in Icela[...][?nd] & request him to enquire the Price of Le voyage picturesque de Sicile.

My son will knock at y^r door on Friday at 12: so I hope he will be let in.

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Editorial notes

1. For images relating to both Lancashire and Cumberland in Pennant's extra-illustrated A tour in Scotland, part I, which may have been gifts from Bull, see here [external link], pp. 10/1, 20, 22/1, 44/2, 46/5, 48/1, 50/1 and /3, 64/1, /2 and /4, 66/2 and /4, 74/3 and /5, 76/1, 78/1, 80/1, 74/1 (order as in volumes). Since Pennant goes on to describe his work on his 'scotch tours' it is less likely that these desiderata were wanted for extra-illustrating an account of a tour 'From Alston Moor to Harrowgate'; but see NLW 12708E, which includes line engravings relating to this tour.
2. Pennant may be referring to the most recent editions of his first or second Scottish tours (Part I, Part II), or all of these.
3. Samuel Johnson was impressed with Pennant's Scottish publication, famously retorting to James Boswell, who described Pennant as 'superficial', that 'Here is a man six feet high, and you are angry because he is not seven'. James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson (Dublin, 1785), p. 29.