Dear Sir

Stratton Street, Nov^r Jan^y: 21.1791

My Rheumatic hand, I hope, will serve me to tell you, that I have sent the Set of Shipping¹ to Faulder's, who says he has a parcell to remit to you, with a Specimen of a very elegant work, now in course of publication, tending to illustrate your history of London, and which, if my wretched Ears did not deceive me, I understood the Editors mean to present you with a copy of, upon large paper.² one number only is yet publish’d and proposed to be continued at 5 shillings each number, on small paper, which I shall prefer for my own use, because it is just the size of your London,³ and I shall bind them together. but perhaps I am talking to you, about what you know much better than I do, who am just risen from the dead, in a manner, and am ignorant of every thing that has passed for the last six weeks. – the weather makes much against an invalid, and this is the second day I have been sufficiently well to go out, even in my Carriage, else I should have procur’d the ships I promiss’d You, before now.

I shall be very glad of Moses's pencil, to proceed in ornamenting the margins of my the Zoological part of my Arctic Zoology, with Birds, beasts, fishes, & all kind of animals, in which line I think he shines with particular elegance, and a peculiar manner of his own, and unrival’d by any body. If he has any views to add, he will insert them of course in their proper places. I will beg you to remember to inform me soon, whether I shall send Moses my copy of the Arctic Zoology to proceed upon accordingly, and how send it, and how direct it to him, whether at your house, or his own. I am very sorry to find He can do nothing towards illuminating my^Journey from London ^to Dover. - - - I shall miss his pencil in every page. I have got your Litterary Life, for which I am desirous of thanking you as well as I am able, but I hope you will allow me to pay the transcriber. Many a mawkish hour of sickness has of late been alleviated by the welch tour, and journey to London, which at last are ready for the binder, I had better have said unready for there are many desiderata to come, but I have turned the Volumes over so often, that they are daub’d sadly; and I wish to get them safely cover’d at any rate. Can you tell me, where I can possibly procure two title plates of your journey from Chester to London, because I make three Volumes of that work. I should wish for them upon large paper, but can make a good shift with small.

You gave me, sometime last spring, two neat etchings, one the Church of S^t. Margarets near Lincoln Cathadral, the other Mapleton Church near Ashbourn Derbyshire. pray remember in your next to say whether they are private etchings, and if so, by whom, and I also wish to know whether they have reference to any work of yours.

pray have the goodness to ask Moses, if he has any drawings of any kind, which refer to any part of your tour in Wales, or journey to Lond, which are not too large to paste onto the Margins of my Volumes, and which I have not already had, and if he can find any, that I shall be very glad to have copies upon thin paper. He knows knows, most likely, what I have already had, if not I can send him a list, without much trouble. Faulder says, the 2^d Edition of London goes off, as well as the first. it is in every bodies hands, and extremely well spoken of. I write with pain, and I am afraid illegibly.

I am always yours, my worthy friend, and always
with truth –

R. B. -

There is a talk to day, that the Chancellor is to resign, with a large pension, and that Baron Eyre is to be a peer, and Chancellor, but not to be speaker of the House of Lords, which is to be given to Lord Grenville.⁴ – I don’t give it you as truth. –

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Editorial notes

1. See 1116, n. 2.
2. This may refer to The environs of London. It was edited by Daniel Lysons, while his brother Samuel contributed many of the illustrations, as both artist and etcher. The first of four volumes appeared in 1792, but it is quite possible that this had initially been published in parts, as indicated here.ODNB.
3. Bull probably refers here to the second edition of Pennant's work on London, which Pennant had been advocating for the purposes of extra-illustration at the expense of the first edition for some time. See 1109, 1110, 1111, 1114.
4. Grenville's likely appointment as Speaker of the Lords was, bewilderingly, reported in the Chelmsford Chronicle on 3 December 1790, immediately beneath the report that Sir James Eyre was spoken of for the same title.