Dear Sir

Stratton Street. January 21. 1792

Illness, and not Idleness has prevented my writing, to acknowledge the receit of your last. Alas! I have no Glastonbury thorns¹ in my nursery, for we never bloom in the winter. I have enclos’d S^t. Cecilia, which seems to have little more merit than being horridly like, but the Print has had a very rapid sale, for all that.

You mention a small Q^o print of yourself, a new one, as I understand, and ask whether Moses may ornament one for me, and paste it neatly on large paper^for the Arctic Zoology. - to be sure he may, and I shall readily pay him for it, and thank him into the Bargain, as I shall You, for furnishing him with the means of doing it. I am just now set in, with your Dover journey, and litterary life, both which will bear good adornings but I must request Moses to furnish me with an ornamented Title page of some sort, for the litterary life, upon a ^1/2 sheet of Pretty stout paper of this size²

I have been loth to worry him, or to torment you, but I am in dispair about Lusty Packington, of whom you promiss’d to let me have a copy taken, for Greenwich.³ now we are upon Moses's subject, ask him if he can do me a small drawing of the whiff Flounder, upon thin paper for the margin of my Book,⁴ the print being not sufficiently explanatory, or else mine is a bad impression. I thank you, con spirito,⁵ for all your kind intentions, respecting the Artic [sic] Zoology. I won’t say to Moses upon this occasion, what D^r. Radcliffe did to Sir Godfrey Kneller, about a door the latter [...] wanted to be moved in the Garden of the former – tell him^your master (says the D^r. to the messenger) he may do any thing to the door, so he don’t paint it;⁶ on the contrary, I desire he may paint my book as much as he pleases. I congratulate you upon getting safe from abroad, all your articles of virtú, and curiosity;⁷ and very much I felicitate You upon the return of your Son, safe and sound, I hope and trust, in health, principles, and pocket, and not too much, nor too little foreignized. the more he resembles his worthy and respectable Parent, the better it will be for his friends, his Country, and himself.

If you want news you must enquire at the Faro tables, which are abused, and visited, by all the fashion of the town; Martindale finds it worth while to pay the Ladies, where they are weekly establish’d, forty Guineas a night, for the use of their Houses.

I am, Dear Sir, with my usual good wishes to You, and your family,
Your very oblig'd hum: Serv^t

Rich^d: Bull

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Editorial notes

1. A variety of hawthorn. See OED s.v. Glastonbury.
2. A diagram follows, representing the title page mentioned, with the measurements '15 Inches / [...] 1¾.'
3. Bull refers to the section on Greenwich in Pennant's From London to Dover (1801), with John Packington mentioned on pp. 12–13.
4. The whiff ('A name for various flat-fishes or flounders', OED) is illustrated in Pennant, A tour in Wales (2nd edn., 1784), plate III, following a description of the fish most plentiful in the estuary of the River Dee, on ibid., p. 20. This makes it likely that Bull is here writing of his extra-illustration of the Welsh tour.
5. 'with spirit'.
6. This anecdote relating to the physician John Radcliffe (bap. 1650, d. 1714) and Sir Godfrey Keller (1646–1723), history and portrait painter, is related in Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, Medical portrait gallery: biographical memoirs of the most celebrated physicians, surgeons, etc. etc. who have contributed to the advancement of medical science (4 vols., London: Fisher, Son, & Co., n.d.), I, 'John Radcliffe, M.D.', p. 5.
7. On the return of a German and Italian collection shipped home by David Pennant from the continent, see 1145.

i. See 1148 for Pennant's reference to his having 'workd among the burial grounds'.