Dear Sir

Downing April 16^th 1791

Inclosed are instantly fulfilled the last of y^r wishes.¹ The rest shall be completed as soon as possible. I have packed up the print of M^r. Stillingfleet, a few of the Y^r prints which I return, & 53 heads my son brought me from Paris in 1789. Please to keep what you like and return the others. Inclosed is a slate of our account: not sent by way of dun² but that we may know how we stand. it must swell much more before it will be worth receiving. I think the first article is right: if you doubt, pray strike it out.

I must now without ceremony express my wants. a Duke of Wharton. small heads of favorite E. of Essex: & Sir W. Raleigh. a small martin van Tromp.

Heemskirk.

[...] As you run into every odd shop: I shall be vastly happy if you c^d fall on vol [...] of Churchills collection of voyages, or vol. [...] odd volumes.³ The [...]one is much wanted for Guinea:⁴ the other for India. These I mention not as a beggar: but to be put to account: you know my little deserts, so leave it to you to stop y^r bounty when you please.

I shall send the parcel possibly by the Salop coach on monday night for I pass through that proud town that day: I forgot to say that I put up the two curious drawing [sic] of the old London markets.

In [...] d[...] this days paper I see a new system of Natural history publishing by Cadel vol 1^st. Pray get from Faulder for me. if neatly done the prints will be of use to both of us: but I will give my ^[...] opinion of it when it arrives.

If you get any of my desiderata, pray put them between my boards which you will receive by the coach & send them before May 5^th to M^rs Pennant N^o 41 Upper Grosv street.

I lament that I cannot see y^r fair daughters⁵ & yourself this summer: especially as possibly M^r Storer w^d have made one of the party. I am equally grieved that of all things an aberration from the common roads of Great Britain, is the most impossible to Madam Pennant & self

As to the news respecting his royal Highness he is past the age of corrigibility. he a Henry V^th.!!! see my London new Edition p. 40. 41⁶

As to my Lord de Cholmondely: we nice rustics will allow him every fine quality of the Jack-ass & nothing more.

and as to mi Lord de Cardigan: The usual pains & penaltyies of unequal matches will probably add ornaments to his coronet.

I am almost sorry that the Idea of the war lessens. I wish that dreadful woman of the north so cripple[...]d, that she may never stir again, even on [...] crutches. – stained with a husbands blood!!!

Reeking with a three days slaughter of thirty thousand ^gallant Turks at Ismael⁷ fighting pro aris et focis⁸ against an unjust invasion!!!

surrounding Europe with usurped dominions!!!⁹ acquir[...]ing a territory replete with forests of oaks, the magazine of resistless [...] navies, Which, with her infernal ambition, will make all Europe bend beneath her yoke!!!¹⁰

England in pity to the world, in pity to itself, must break her power. ^may the armed neutrality ever remain alta mente repostum: ¹¹ & may the cry of the house echo from every part, DELENDA sit CATHERINA!!! ¹²

Tho. Pennant

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Editorial notes

1. The enclosure is not preserved with the letter in the manuscript, but Bull's receipt of a parcel is acknowledged in 1132.
2. A 'dun' is 'An act of dunning or importuning, esp. for debt; a demand for payment'. OED.
4. Guinea, in north eastern Africa, belongs to the area covered in vol. XI of 'Outlines of the Globe'.
5. Elizabeth and Catherine Bull.
6. Some Account of London (1791), pp. 40–1, relates how Henry, Prince of Wales, later Henry V, was committed to the King's Bench prison for insulting a judge on the bench, a punishment to which he submitted peacefully.
7. This refers to a Russian attack on Izmail in south-western Ukraine, led by the Russian general Suwarrow. According to correspondence printed in the British press, the besieged garrison succumbed on 22 December 1790 with the loss of twenty-four thousand Turkish men and the imprisonment of ten thousand. See Hereford Journal, 2 February 1791; Derby Mercury, 24 February 1791.
8. 'for our altars and our hearths'.
9. During the reign of Catherine the Great, Russia's borders were extended southwards and westwards, with the addition of territories such as the Crimea, Belarus and Lithuania, and sections of Poland. This brought her borders well into central Europe. 'Catherine the Great (1729–1796), here [external link] [accessed 2 October 2018].
10. On British dependence on the Baltic region for wood for armament, see 1022, n. 4.
11. 'stored deep in the mind'. See Virgil, Aeneid, Book I, line 26.
12. 'May Catherine be extirpated!!!'