The cowslips Mrs. Perceval asked for were doubtless intended for making that delicious but now seldom met with cowslip wine. Few people are aware that a claret glass of cowslip wine before going to bed is an innocent and generally successful soporific. _To Mrs. Donnellan._ “Hayton, April 20, 1741. “DEAR MADAM, “I had the pleasure of your letter yesterday, it made me very happy. If my friends at a distance did not keep my affections awake, I should be lulled into a state of insensibility, divided as I am from all I love.... What’s Cicero to me or I to Cicero? as Hamlet would say; and for myself, though this same little, insignificant self be very dear unto me, yet I have not used to make it my sole object of love and delight.... “I want just such a companion as you would be, and how happy would your kind compliance with that wish make me, if the good old folk here would accommodate you; but they are so fearful of strangers, I know it impossible to persuade them to it. They are not very fine people; they have a little estate, and help it out with a little farming: are very busy and careful, and the old man’s cautionness has dwindled into penuriousness, so that he eats in fear of waste and riot, sleeps with the dread of thieves, denies himself everything for fear of wanting anything, riches give him no plenty, increase no joy, prosperity no ease: he has the curse of covetousness to want the property of his neighbours, while he dare not touch his own: the Harpy Avarice drives him from his own meat, the sum of his wisdom and his gains will be by living poor, to die rich.... “The reason for which you wish I would read Horace does me great honour.... Upon your recommendation I had read it before, but depending on my brother’s having it, I did not bring it with me, and I find he has not got it. I will desire my brothers[152] to bring it down with them the next vacation.... As for some of our squires they read nothing but parish law, and books of Husbandry, or perhaps for their particular entertainment, ‘Quarle’s Emblems,’ ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ and to furnish them with a little ready wit, ‘Joe Miller’s Jests.’”[153] [152] Matthew and Morris were at Cambridge. [153] Joe Miller, born 1684, died 1738; comedian. His “Book of Jests” was published in 1739. [Page heading: THE REV. LAURENCE STERNE] Matthew Robinson had gone to Bath to drink the waters, and on April 19 he writes to Elizabeth from “Colibee’s” in Hall Street, Bath-- “DEAR SISTER, “The order of our Posts at Bath is very strange, the post comes in three times a week, twice of which you may answer your letters the same day you receive them, but the third not till three days afterwards. Last Thursday brought me two letters together from you, in which you informed me that my sister was past the heighth.... I hope next post will tell me that Sally is out of all danger.