_Of the Earl of Lonsdale: Virgil: Book-buying: Gifts of Books: Commentaries_.
TWO LETTERS TO THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.
Rydal Mount, Feb.19.

1819.
DEAR WRANGHAM, I received your kind letter last night, for which you will accept my thanks.

I write upon the spur of that mark of your regard, or my aversion to letter-writing might get the better of me.
I find it difficult to speak publicly of good men while alive, especially if they are persons who have power.

The world ascribes the eulogy to interested motives, or to an adulatory spirit, which I detest.
But of LORD LONSDALE, I will say to you, that I do not think there exists in England a man of any rank more anxiously desirous to discharge his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him.
His thought and exertions are constantly directed to that object; and the more he is known the more is he beloved, and respected, and admired.
[94] _Memoirs_, ii.

155-6.
I ought to have thanked you before for your version of VIRGIL'S ECLOGUES, which reached me at last.