I have a house at Chiswick,
where I rather think this nine-lived box is, and, whether it is or
no, I shall be very glad if you will give me a call to dine, and take
a bed, if convenient to you; and if I cannot introduce you to your
old acquaintance and recollections, I shall have great pleasure in
substituting new ones,--Mrs. Lowth and eleven of our baker's dozen of
olive-branches, our present complement in the house department, my
eldest boy being in the West Indies, and my third having returned to
the military college last Saturday, his vacation furlough having
expired. As the summer begins to borrow now and then an autumn
evening, the sooner you will favour me with your company the surer
you will be of finding me at Grove House, the expiration of other
holidays being the usual signal for weighing anchor and shifting our
moorings to parsonage point. I remember you, or David Curson, had
among your phrases, _quondam_, one of anything being 'd---d
summerly;' I trust, however, having since tasted the delights of the
sweet shady side of Pall Mall, that you have worn out that prejudice,
and will catch the season before it flies us, or give me a line,
naming no distant day, that I may not be elsewhere when you call, and
you will much oblige, yours sincerely,

"ROBERT LOWTH."

"P.S.--In your address to me you must not name _Chiswick_, but Grove
House, Turnham Green, as otherwise it goes into another postman's
walk, who walks it back again to the office, and it does not reach
me, per Turnham Green, peripatetic, till the next day, which is
_toute autre chose_."

Colman seems to have been sincerely delighted at the receipt of this
letter; he answered it immediately, expressing to his old friend how much
he had gratified him, and how readily he accepted the invitation.

"After refreshing my friend's memory," says Colman, "by touching on
some particulars which have already been mentioned, I informed him
that I was of late years in the habit of suburban rustication, and
that I had passed a considerable part of my summers in a house where
I was intimate at Fulham, whither I desired him to direct to me, as
much nearer Chiswick than my own abode, being within a few hundred
yards of his old family residence, where we last parted. Whenever I
was