apparently with
scrivener's cramp, and at any rate had got to write so small, that the
revisal of my MS. tried my eyes, hence my signature alone remains upon
the old model; for it appears that if I changed that, I should be cut
off from my "vivers."

R. L. S.

TO COSMO MONKHOUSE

This amiable and excellent public servant, art-critic, and versifier
was a friend of old Savile Club days; the drift of his letter can
easily be guessed from this reply. The reference to Lamb is to the
essay on the Restoration dramatists.

_La Solitude, Hyeres, March 16, 1884._

MY DEAR MONKHOUSE,--You see with what promptitude I plunge into
correspondence; but the truth is, I am condemned to a complete inaction,
stagnate dismally, and love a letter. Yours, which would have been
welcome at any time, was thus doubly precious.

Dover sounds somewhat shiveringly in my ears. You should see the weather
_I_ have--cloudless, clear as crystal, with just a punkah-draft of the
most aromatic air, all pine and gum tree. You would be ashamed of Dover;
you would scruple to refer, sir, to a spot so paltry. To be idle at
Dover is a strange pretension; pray, how do you warm yourself? If I were
there I should grind knives or write blank verse, or---- But at least
you do not bathe? It is idle to deny it: I have--I may say I nourish--a
growing jealousy of the robust, large-legged, healthy Britain-dwellers,
patient of grog, scorners of the timid umbrella, innocuously breathing
fog: all which I once was, and I am ashamed to say liked it. How
ignorant is youth! grossly rolling among unselected pleasures; and how
nobler, purer, sweeter, and lighter, to sip the choice tonic, to recline
in the luxurious invalid chair, and to tread, well-shawled, the little
round of the constitutional. Seriously, do you like to repose? Ye gods,
I hate it. I never rest with any acceptation; I do not know what people
mean who say they like sleep and that damned bedtime which, since long
ere I was breeched, has rung a knell to all my day's doings and beings.
And when a man, seemingly sane, tells me he has "fallen in love with
stagnation," I can only say to him, "You will never be a Pirate!" This
may not cause any regret to Mrs. Monkhouse; but in your own soul it will
clang hollow--think of it! Never! After all boyhood's aspirations and
youth's immoral day-dreams, you are condemned to sit down, grossly draw
in your chair to the fat board, and be a beastl