CHAP, ii.] MAKim SHIFT TO EXIST.

connection with this letter.514 What little pleasures he had 1757.

ever tasted in London, he says, Irish memories had soured. ».29.

Signora Columbahad never poured out for him all the mazes

of melody at the opera, that he did not sit and sigh for Lissoy

fireside, and Peggy Grolden's song of Johnny Armstrong's

Last Good Night. " If I climb Hampstead Hill,t tlian

" where Nature never exhibited a more magnificent prospect,

" I confess it fine; but then I had rather be placed on the

" little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to

" me, the most pleasing horizon in nature. Before Charles

" came hither, my thoughts sometimes found refuge from

" severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fanciud

" strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the

" rapidity of my own motion, that gave an imaginary one

" to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Home

" friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich; others

" very fat, but still very poor. Nay, all the news I hear

"from [of] you is that you wally out in visits among 1 ho

" neighbours, and sometimes make a migration from the

" blue bed to the brown.t I could from my heart wish

" that you and she,§ and Lishoy, ami Ballymahon, and all

* See amtfi, 39, 40, for tho pannage here, omitted,

f Printed Flamstead by mistake in tho /Vnv/ MtM*rir, and HO repeated by
Mr, MItford, and some later biographers.

$ This expression is in tho P7wr <>/ WaktfitW. Ooldsmith, an I hav«< already
remarked, repeats himself perpetually in Inn various writings, pnblir and private.
§ Mrs. Hodson, of course. I sxihjoin tho ohwin^ lintw of lh<« U'U<'rt HM prhitvil
in the Percy Memoir: "To Hpeak plain English, as you cannot nrnvrnirntly
*' pay me a visit, if next awtnnier T can contrive to bo absent HIV wt'rKs front
"London, I shall spend throo of thoni amon^ m$ friends in Irelaml, Uut lir;^
"believe me, my design in purely to viwt, and neither to eitt it ft^tn'e n«tr I«ivy
" contributions, neither to excite onvy nor Holieit favour: in 1'net, «iy i*ir«'um
" stances are adapted to neither. T am too poor io be passed at, ion! t«»«» rit'h t«»
"need assistance. You wee, dear Dan, how long f have hern talking *tl»Hut
" myself; but attribute my vanity to my aftwtiou : iw evt»ry niiwt k fowl of
" himself, and 1 consider you OH a noeond nelf, I iiuagiue you will wtnwMjmmlly
" he pleased with these instancoH of oRotiHin," [ftuue mention <»f private famil> »gilJtli»« that slwnlwr in a ttns,ti*» feg», HUJt, tlmngii thw« ImrrbhijiR