Desr Sir

Downing Nov^r 23^d - 88.

I should not so soon have troubled you with the nothingness of my Letters was it not to request you to make the enquiries contained in the inclosed:¹ & to bring them up with you to [...] town; for probably we shall reach the capital much about the same time viz: Dec^r 16^th. I shall give you then some account of my that [sic] I have travelled all over London: the coast ^of spain from Font-arabia, & along that of Portugal to Calpe:² crossed over to Barbary, & coasted [...] Africa to the cape which I doubled with less difficulty than Vasco di Gama; kept a long the mosambique coast, turned into the red sea: crossed it with the Israelites & stopped short in sight of the Land of Promise, which I trust I shall reach i[...]n due time.³

This I give you in lieu of country news: for we have none. all minds are filled with moralizing on the uncertainty of human affairs: & in sincere pity of the unhappy state of the poor king:⁴ whose condition we most truely lament. We look up to the young Julus: the young Henry V. & most heartily wish the parallel may hold in the dismission of the misguiding companions of his youth.⁵

Adieu
Y^rs most truely

Tho. Pennant

If you keep y^r Christmas in the isle Pray inclose to our friend T. Hunt south audly street: for I have not heard when my house is taken.

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Editorial notes

1. The enclosure has not been preserved with the manuscript letter.
2. Pennant writes of areas covered in volume VIII of 'Outlines of the Globe'.
3. This refers to work on Africa within Pennant's 'Outlines of the Globe'.
4. George III succumbed to a severe illness during late 1788, but was declared convalescing on 17 February 1789.
5. Pennant gives examples of young princes whom he would wish George, Prince of Wales (later George IV) to emulate. Ascanius, the son of the Trojan prince, Aeneas, also called 'Iulus' or 'Julus' according to Virgil's Aeneid, was portrayed as one of the founders of the Roman race. Henry V's reputation as a wayward youth rests largely on his incarnation as 'Prince Hal' in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. George, Prince of Wales, led a dissolute life, which Pennant clearly saw as comparable to Hal's.
6. Handwritten, not by Pennant, above address.
7. Handwritten, not by Pennant, above address.
8. Handwritten, not by Pennant, above address.
9. Mostyn's name is handwritten.