Dear Sir -

In the vale of Clwyd.

Your partiality sees more merit in me than I can myself: otherwise you would not so l[...]ood [sic] me with favors I must through vanity & thro’ interest acquiesce in y^r munificence: so accept with mypatience my impudent inclosure,¹

I did last year anticipate much respecting London in Seagos & other shops: so really think my w[...]ants will be very few. Besides, quo me, Bulle, feris plenum tui.² You have infected me with the same rage as yourself. Besides from London to Dover, France spain Portugal, & Africa fill my mind; & my attention is filled with rapacity after prints which interest those countries. In the list inclosed are some that regard the last for example Don Sebastian the Portuguese ^hero or madman (which you please) who fell on the plains of Morocco before Muley Malic.

I have heard of M^r Lyson's design. It will probably wbe well executed. I wish it to extend to windsor.

any brief account of the wooded Country behind Port down will be acceptable. I confess I was not at Southwick house but it sh^d come in. I know a little of its history: but wish for more. also a description or sketch of the house. the deceit of assuming the merit will be very venial: in a book the public is not to see. whose is it now. Is there not a tale of the Devil making one of the Personæ Dramatis at a play there performed in the chappel.³

Moses can send you drawings for the Dover M.S⁴ (we will call it) on marginal sizes if you wish them.

I suppose I have made a pen slip about the Earl of Northampton who really died in 1614.⁵ do I call him Earl of Arundel. was it at Greenwich. – I write now fourteen miles from Downing: for receiving y^r Letter⁶ took it with [sic] on a visiting tour: which we are now. I [...] write from one of my good friends: possibly because I think epistolary conversation with M^r B. [sic] than oral with the good folks I am among. I shall date from home on Thursday⁷ & send this in a frank the last I can get till sir R. M. returns: so please to name an M.P. to whom I can inclose pacquets, for such I have to make up of the scotch heads or portraits.

I fear y^r news of le Duc d’orleans is not true: & hope y^r other news is not. I fear the coalition you mention will never last.⁸ Pray send me some acc^t of the real state of french affairs for I can collect nothing from the papers

Adieu
Y^rs most truely

Th. Pennant

Downing Febr. 17^th -91

Be so good as to send y^r liberality of prints to M^r Mazel N^o 7 Bridges street convent Garden

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Editorial notes

1. The enclosure is not included in the manuscript alongside the letter.
2. 'Take me, Bull, wherever your inspiration leads you'. Pennant appears to be playing on a quotation from Horace, Odes, III.25, 1–2: 'Quo me Bacche rapis tui plenum' ('Where, O Bacchus, are you carrying me off to, so full [of your wine]?')
3. Pennant discusses Southwick house in From Dover to the Isle of Wight (1801), pp. 119–21, where he mentions the fact that the 'great room ... is called the Old Playhouse; I imagine from its having occasionally been applied to that use', but has no anecdote of the type suggested in this letter to Bull.
4. For strong evidence that the text described here as 'the Dover M.S.' refers to the second section of Pennant's 1787 journey 'From the Temple Stairs to the lands end', that between Dover and the Isle of Wight, see 1123, n. 1.
5. See From London to Dover (1801), p. 182, where Pennant discusses notable men buried at 'what is called the Royal Chapel' adjacent to the 'Pharos' (lighthouse) at Dover (not Greenwich) and gives the date of the death of Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, as 1614.
6. This was letter 1120.
7. Pennant is true to his word, and dates this letter 17 February 1791, which was a Thursday.
8. On these items of news, see 1120.