Dear B. B., -- I have not been able to answer you, for we have had and are having (I just snatch a moment) our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled from society, full of company, -- some staying with us; and this moment as I write, almost, a heavy importation of two old ladies has come in. Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were in a wilderness of apes, tossing cocoa-nuts about, grinning and grinned at!
Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my engraving; 't is a little sixpenny thing, [1] too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been two editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanished from the window where they hung, -- a print-shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's Inn Fields, -- where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (though you _won't understand it_) at Enfield Chase. We have been here near three months, and shall stay two more, if people will let us alone; but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to _Islington_ again till further notice. I am trying my hand at a drama, in two acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," _mutatis mutandis_. You like the Odyssey: did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses," founded on Chapman's old translation of it? For children or men. Chapman is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity.
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