“My gout has left me, and if he never troubles me with his company again, he has my free leave to keep away. I meditate to take advantage of his absence, and pay a visit to my good brother at the castle before his dinner hour to-morrow, _Deo volente_. I shall bring my live-lumber Mother Richards in the coach with me, as her small wits just serve her to descant with due precision upon warm nightcaps and a well-aired bed: she will pester the poor folks in the castle with her clack, but I shall profit by her care; and you know there is not a more selfish fellow living than your humble servant. As my rascally passion for hoarding money has no longer any object, since you won’t help me off with any of my savings, I shall tack two more dog horses to my scurvy team, and come in state like Sir Francis Wronghead, with Giles Joulter riding postillion: the cattle will get a belly-full in De Lancaster’s stables, and that is what they don’t often meet with in their own. I have bought a flaming fine watch of a pedling Jew, which I dare say won’t go; but it will do for Amelia Jones, if she behaves well, and does not slight me for that puppy John, for whom I do not care a rush, as you well know, having lived in solitude till I am unfit for society, and as cold at heart as the top of a Welch mountain. I am very glad my brother Lancaster has so much abated of his learned dissertations, for I have no reading beyond that of a trumpery story book, and am in as profound a state of blessed ignorance, as any gentleman in Wales can boast of. Yet Robert surely is an incomparable man; his honour is so nice, his nature so divine, that I am almost ready to adore him till he talks Greek, and then it’s over with me; I know no more of the matter than a blind man does of colours.