I am indebted to your report of Elmsley’s death

for the pleasure which I felt, after speaking, & thinking & dreaming of him as dead, in hearing that he was likely to recover; – a pleasure worth all the previous pain, – & of that kind indeed that I know nothing which can be compared to it. When I was within reach of Elmsley, we saw a great deal of each other; & he is one of those friends from whose society I have derived not merely temporary enjoyment, but permanent benefit. The chances of life have separated us for many years, without in any degree weakening our mutual regard; & upon hearing of his death I felt that I had lost what in declining years we can ill afford to part with, an object of esteem & affection, – one of the friends of my youth. Certainly I never received so much delight from any letter, as from that which told <me> he was alive, & recovering. – He is well enough to have left Oxford for the house of his sister-in-law

near Croydon, where Wynn & Bedford visited him about a fortnight ago, & found him so confident of his own strength as to talk of seeing Keswick this year, as a possible thing.

Had I been less occupied I should have thanked you for a prescription

which looks as if it would have been efficacious, – if I could have taken it. But in one respect my constitution is an unlucky one, –(we talk about constitutions now you know in politics & in medicine without knowing much about them) – the smallest quantity of laudanum deranges the action of the liver, & totally suspends the course of the bile; – & this of course cannot be done with impunity. Therefore I cannot venture upon any prescription which contains laudanum, – tho that medicine, & that alone I believe, would cut short this obstinate catarrhal affection, on its annual appearance. I am tolerably well recovered now, – tho still with some remains of cough; – but it is no longer attended with a feverish pulse. & as a proof that my strength has pretty well returned, I took a six hours walk this morning, & crost Skiddaw on my return at about three parts of its elevation.

You will not be displeased to hear that my second volume

is making good progress in the press, – so that I am once more in the receit of proof sheets, which I am lucky enough to regard as one of the pleasures of life. As to a Book of the State,

there are some weighty objections opposed to a very strong inclination. In the first place I have many works in hand, (– you would think me a most rash & audacious man did you know how many) – & am – this day – fifty years old: it is time therefore seriously to ask myself what upon the common calculations of life I could possibly have time to perform. And secondly were I to undertake such a view of our civil history, the inconvenience of having no great library within reach could only be obviated by an outlay in books which it would be very inconvenient for me to afford: for it has so happened that no mans gains in this generation have been so little in proportion to his reputation & his labour as mine.

I must not conclude without thanking you for setting Sir Walters pen in motion. He wrote me a very friendly letter, to which I returned an immediate answer

All below unite in kind regards. The girls are in expectation of the arrival of a Welsh Uncle tomorrow – (a boy of fifteen, from Westminster,) whom they have never seen. He is coming to pass his holydays with me, & is at this time in the mail coach somewhere about Leming Lane.

I have seldom seen a boy more after my own heart.