Dear Sir.

Stratton Street. 17 Feb^y. 1790

Captain Grose told me yesterday, you was wondering at my not answering your last letter, and I should have reason to wonder as much at myself, if I had not done it. the date of yours was January 9^th.¹- on January 11^th, I replied, and been ever since expecting a rejoinder, but as you could not have receiv’d my letter, neither could You answer it. the reason is not worth troubling you with, at this distance at large, but it was owing to ^a servant, who has condescended to rob me even of the penny’s with which attended my letters to the post-office. I told you in that, or in a former letter, that Yeakell, and Gardiners map of Sussex, were sold at Fadens, but upon so large a scale, and at so high a price, that I should not buy them without a fresh order. I remember also to have told you, that no impressions of Worsley's Isle of Wight were printed upon large paper, all the copies being of the same size, and in order to dissuade you from buying one at the present advanc’d price, I offer’d to send you down to your house my copy, for present use, and to keep as long as you wanted it, and I suggested the probability that Sir Richard might publish a second Edition e’er long,² including the plates of the Statues, & Jewels he lately imported, some of which are already engrav’d & in a stile of great expence. The quantity of things he has now added to Appuldurcombe is prodigious, the Drawings of places very fine indeed, among the rest of his marbles, Jewels, and paintings, sunt bona – sunt mediocra – sunt mala. –³ There ^are various sets of the Kings of France, from Quarto size to duodecimo. – of some of their kings there are prints from original Portraits, of which I recollect Francis I^st. Charles VII. Louis XI. XII. & XIII, and of Course all the subsequent kings. I have a print with the Plan and elevation of the Music room, said (in M.S.) to have been erected at Holywell 1743. – pray inform me whether such a building does, or did exist there.⁴

M^r. Pitts Portrait is engraving, the same size, as the Drawing you sent me from Moses, which you say he had so bad an opinion of, that it was ^not charg’d in my account, but both him, and his father are charg’d, and so I would have them to be, – for time is the estate of Moses.

I have nothing new to tell you. opposition play their game wretchedly, and are breaking their own faggot into splinters. I receiv’d last night a letter from a relation at Paris, who says every thing there is just now, in the most perfect tranquility, owing to the Kings popular step, in going to the assemblée nationale.⁵ my friend⁶ saw the serment civique⁷ administer’d ^to the several members there on the 4^th. past, in consequence of the Kings appearance there. Mirabeau was very refractory, and absolutely refused to take the oath, till he ^had given the president the trouble of explaining it at large, and then with apparent disgust, roar’d out “Je le Jure donc.⁸

I am Dear Sir, yours always.

Rich^d: Bull

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Editorial notes

1. See 1096.
2. There is no evidence that a second edition of Worsley, A History of the Isle of Wight was ever published.
3. 'some are good – some are mediocre – some are bad'. Bull quotes an epigram by Martial: 'Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura'.
4. See 1094.
5. Louis XVI attended the National Assembly on 4 February 1790. Jones, Longman Companion to the French Revolution, p. 13.
6. It is unclear whether this 'friend' is the same as the 'relation' mentioned earlier in this paragraph. Perhaps the change in terms suggests that the 'relation' was a brother-in-law, husband of the sister mentioned in 1089.
7. 'civic oath'.
8. 'I swear it, then'.