I have long owed you a letter, and should have long since honestly paid my debt; but we have had a house of sickness. My own health, too, has been very crazy and out of repair, and I have had so much work accumulated on me that I have been like an overtired man roused from insufficient sleep, who sits on his bedside with one stocking on and the other in his hand, doing nothing, and thinking what a deal he has to do.
But I am ever, sick or well, weary or lively, my dear Dyer, your sincere and affectionate friend,
GROVE, HIGHGATE, Thursday, August 14, 1828.
MY DEAR SIR,--I have but this moment received yours of the 13th, and though there are but ten minutes in my power, if I am to avail myself of this day's post, I will rather send you a very brief than not an immediate answer. I shall be much gratified by standing beside the baptismal font as one of the sponsors of the little pilgrim at his inauguration into the rights and duties of Immortality, and he shall not want my prayers, nor aught else that shall be within my power, to assist him in _becoming_ that of which the Great Sponsor who brought light and immortality into the world has declared him an emblem.
There are one or two points of character belonging to me, so, at least, I believe and trust, which I would gladly communicate with the name,--earnest love of Truth for its own sake, and steadfast convictions grounded on faith, not fear, that the religion into which I was baptised is the Truth, without which all other knowledge ceases to merit the appellation. As to other things, which yet I most sincerely wish for him, a more promising augury might be derived from other individuals of the Coleridge race.
_Any_ day, that you and your dear wife (to whom present my kindest remembrances and congratulations) shall find convenient, will suit me, if only you will be so good as to give me two or three days' knowledge of it.
Believe me, my dear sir, with sincere respect and regard,
P. S. I returned from my seven weeks' Continental tour with Mr. Wordsworth and his daughter this day last week. We saw the Rhine as high up as Bingen, Holland, and the Netherlands.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Do you happen among your acquaintances and connections to know any one who knows any one who knows Sir Francis Freeling of the Post Office sufficiently to be authorised to speak a recommendatory word to him? Our Harriet,[206] whose love and willing-mindedness to _me_-ward during my long chain of bodily miserablenesses render it my duty no less than my inclination to shew to her that I am not insensible of her humbly affectionate attentions, has applied to me in behalf of her brother, a young man who can have an excellent character, from Lord Wynford and others, for sobriety, integrity, and discretion, and who is exceedingly ambitious to get the situation of a postman or deliverer of letters to the General Post Office. Perhaps, before I see you next, you will be so good as to tumble over the names of your acquaintances, and if any connection of Sir Francis' should turn up, to tell me, and if it be right and proper, to make my request and its motive.