To HANNAH MORE CA IO SEPTEMBER 1789 327 and heat one's reply over again with the same interest that it occasioned at first?Adieu ! I wish you may come to Hampton, before I leave these purlieus! Yours More and More, H. W.

PS. 17th. Mr Pepys has just been here,26 and tells me you are still at Sandleford, and that I may enclose my letter to Mr Montagu.2? Pray salute from me all the casa.

From HANNAH MORE, Monday 2 November 1789

Printed from Roberts, Memoirs of Hannah More ii. 184-7. Misdated in Roberts; dated from HW's reply, which also shows that Roberts omitted part of the letter. Cowslip Green, Sept. [Nov.] 2, 1789. My dear Sir, I DO aver (and a modest asseveration it is) that I am much more amiable, and worthy, and grateful than I appear to be, I mean in the single article of friendship; and though I do not pretend to have quite reached sinless perfection even in that article, yet are my delinquencies on that head more involuntary than on any other. Besides, the abolition of such a gainful traffic as our correspondence is to me, where, as Lord North says, the reciprocity is all on one side,1 would be such a loss to me, as no other literary merchandise I can engage in, could possibly repair. Yet, though it is so much

26. In a letter to Hannah More written in every parish' (A. C. C. Gaussen, A on this day Pepys describes a visit to SH Later Pepys, 1904, ii. 278). a few days earlier: 'Mr Walpole was so 27. Mrs Montagu's nephew and adopted good as to show him [Pepys's son William] son, Matthew Montagu; see ante Sept. his Eagle the other day, and he came 1789, n. 11. He was M.P. for Bossiney home so full of it that he desired he 1786-90 and could receive HW's letter might make his next exercise upon it. free at Sandleford. . . . You will be sorry to hear that Mr Walpole has had a fall and is very much 1. The occasion of this remark has bruised. My situation indeed in this beau­ not been found. For other examples of tiful country and this neighbourhood is North's wit see European Magazine, 1796, all I can wish; two such men to converse xxx. 82-4, and N. W. Wraxall, Historical with whenever I please as Mr Walpole and Posthumous Memoirs, ed. Wheatley, and Mr Cambridge are not to be found 1884, passim.