t then to its lucky landing--at Lyons shall
we say?--I have not the map before me--jostled upon four men's
shoulders--baiting at this town--stopping to refresh at t'other
village--waiting a passport here, a license there; the sanction of the
magistracy in this district, the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in
that canton; till at length it arrives at its destination, tired out
and jaded, from a brisk sentiment, into a feature of silly pride or
tawdry senseless affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am
afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea-worthy.

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though contemptible
in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a
right friendly epistle--your puns and small jests are, I apprehend,
extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so far
from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will
scarce endure to be transported by hand from this room to the next.
Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment
for their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the
bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus--the _melior
Lutis_,--whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the _sol pater_
to their equivocal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present
ear-kissing smack with it; you can no more transmit it in its pristine
flavour, than you can send a kiss.--Have you not tried in some
instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has
it answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did not seem
to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up
at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. You have not seen
it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort
of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its
recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk
lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the
link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a
mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface
were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.)
in giving back its copy?

I cannot image to myself where about you are. When I try to fix it,
Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in
the _Hades_ of _Thieves_. I see Diogenes prying among you with his
perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be