"Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the--what was it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China--Canton--bless us! how it strains the imagination, and makes it ache. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh that you should be so many hemispheres off--if I speak incorrectly you can correct me--why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile." He then tells him of the acceptance of his farce--_Mr H._; which farce, by the way, was produced, and failed, Lamb turning against his own production, and joining the audience in hissing it off the stage. It certainly deserved its fate. "Now, you'd like to know the subject. The title is, 'Mr H.' No more; how simple, how taking! A great H sprawling over the play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is, a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich--all the ladies dying for him--all bursting to know who he is; but he goes by no other name than Mr H.--a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you any idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that, after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, 'Hogsflesh,' all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change her name for him; that's the idea--how flat it is here--but how whimsical in the farce! And only think how hard upon me it is, that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after. But all China will ring of it by-and-by. Do you find, in all this stuff I have written, anything like those feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend that is gone to wander among Tartars, and may never come again? I don't; but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking. It has come to me when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much; but if I had you here, in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have written.