2796124038

614 TJN DEBAT : LES MENTALITES COLLECTTVES 24

publish his life, inasmuch as within his memory thei-e was one Tristram Shandy ¹ had got a great deal of money by so doing, & he did not believe that Tristram Shandy was half so great a trayeller. Your letter is only dated Sunbury, but I hope that direction will be sufficient to find you. Minę is Rokeby Park, Greta Bridge Yorkshire, & if you will follow the Carlisle road so far, you will find me out easily, Greta Bridge being one of the Stages, & also close to my Park gate. Coine & make the tour of the North. At all everts we shall meet in March till when, believe me

Yrs very sineerely,

[signed] J. B. S. Morritt

Pray if the packet is not unconscionable large and weighty send me the letter you brought me from Yienna from my Painter. I arn not military, except you cali it so to be in a provincial Arm’d Association.

To John Hawkins Esq

Sunbury

Isleworth

Middlesex

Handle Wilbraham to John Hawkins, Moat Hall, Boroughbridge, 22 Decem-ber 1798 (The Hawkins Papers, West Sussex County Record Office, Chichester).

Moat Hall Boroughbridge Saturday Dec^r 22d [1798]

Dear Hawkins,

Whilst I was reflecting with shame and confusion of face upon my neglect to answer your kind letter of the last month & meditating some plausible excuse, arriyes a second eąually welcome & acceptable to me containing congratulations upon my recent marriage.^{2 3} This circumstance which followed so close upon the receipt of yours, will I trust plead for me better than any elaborate apology & with this hope, I shall drop the subject only obserying that we have 1 ived too much together & know too much of each other to exact every observance of strict form & eeremony.

Your expressions of regard, evidently dictated by the feelings of your heart, afforded me the most sincere pleasures, I am eąually gratified & flattered by the approbation of a man for whom upon a very slight

1

Knightage (London, 1967), pp. 2300—2301.

2

•• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was the title of Laurence Sterne's popular nlne-volume work published between 1759 and 1767. It was translated into French and German. The novel groups together a series of humorous characters around the nominał hero of the story, Tristram Shandy.

3

Randle Wilbraham married Letitia Rudd, 5 Dccember 1794. She died in 1805. See Peter Townend, ed._t Burkę³s Genealogical and Heroldie History of the Peerage, Baronetage and