e one when you are busy or
disinclined.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_Sept._ 29/62.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

'What Cheer, ho!' I somehow fancy that a Line of Nonsense will catch you
before you leave Ely: and yet, now I come to think, you will have left
Ely, probably, and will be returning in another Fortnight to Cambridge
for the Term. Well, I will direct to Cambridge then; and my Note shall
await you there, and you need not answer it till some very happy hour of
Leisure and Inclination. As to Inclination, indeed, I don't think you
will ever have much of that, toward writing such Letters, I mean; what
sensible Man after forty has? You have done so much more (in my Eyes,
and perhaps so much less in your own) coming all this way to see me! I
did wonder at the Goodness of that. I suppose Spedding didn't tell you
that I wrote to him to say so. It was very unlucky I was out when you
came: I have often thought of that with vexation.

Well, I have gone on Boating, etc., just the same ever since. And just
now I have been applying to Spring Rice to use his Influence to get a
larger Buoy laid at the mouth of our River; across which lies a vile Bar
of shifting Sand, and such a little Bit of a Buoy to mark it that we
often almost miss it going in and out, and are in danger of running on
the Shoal; which would break the Boat to Pieces if not drown us. Here is
a fine Piece of Information to a Canon of Ely and Professor of Greek at
Cambridge!

Spring Rice does not speak well, I think, of his health; not at all well;
and his Handwriting looks shaky. What a Loyal Kind Heart it is!

_To W. B. Donne_.

MARKET HILL: WOODBRIDGE,
_Nov._ 28/62.

MY DEAR DONNE,

I talk indignantly against others bothering you, and do worse than all
myself, I think, what with Bookbindings, Dressing-gowns, etc. (N.B. You
know that the last is only in case when you are going your Rounds to St.
James, etc.) Now I have a little Query to make: which, not being even so
much out of your way, won't I hope trouble you. I remember Thompson
telling me that, from what he had read and seen of Grecian Geography, he
almost thought Clytemnestra's famous Account of the Line of Signal Fires
from Troy to Mycenae to be possible (I mean you know in the Agamemnon).
At least this is what _I believe_ he said: I must not assert from a not
very accurate Memory anything that would compromise a Greek Professor: I
am so ignorant of Geography, ancient as well as modern, I