'
'To MR. HECTOR, IN BIRMINGHAM[461].
'DEAR SIR,
'I hope I do not very grossly flatter myself to imagine that you and
dear Mrs. Careless[462] will be glad to hear some account of me. I
performed the journey to London with very little inconvenience, and came
safe to my habitation, where I found nothing but ill health, and, of
consequence, very little cheerfulness. I then went to visit a little way
into the country, where I got a complaint by a cold which has hung eight
weeks upon me, and from which I am, at the expence of fifty ounces of
blood, not yet free. I am afraid I must once more owe my recovery to
warm weather, which seems to make no advances towards us.
'Such is my health, which will, I hope, soon grow better. In other
respects I have no reason to complain. I know not that I have written
any thing more generally commended than the _Lives of the Poets_; and
have found the world willing enough to caress me, if my health had
invited me to be in much company; but this season I have been almost
wholly employed in nursing myself.
'When summer comes I hope to see you again, and will not put off my
visit to the end of the year.
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