Thomas Gray to Thomas Wharton, 4 June 1762
I have no other apprehension, if I should come into the North, than that of somehow incommoding you & your family; & yet I believe my strong inclination to see you & your Carthage will prevail over so reasonable an apprehension. as to all the inconveniences, that regard myself, & wch you are so kindly providing against, I set them at nought. however you shall know of my motions before I stir.
You are not to take this for a letter: it is a message, that I am forced to send. there is a Mr. Tho: Hornsby, an Apothecary at Durham, who makes a sort of Lozenges said to be good in a gouty cough, & indigestions. a relation of mine, a poor girl, who is exceedingly ill, having had some of these from the Abdy-family (whose stock is nearly exhausted) fancies they do her great service. I therefore must beg you would send to Mr Hornsby, & let him put up a quarter of a pound in as little compass as he can, & send it to the Post-Master (directed to Mrs Antrobus, Post-Mistress at Cambridge) & let him put it in the mail. the sooner this can be done the better, & you will oblige me & the Patient.
I am sorry, you are forced to complain of this untoward suffocating season: but who has escaped without illness? for me I have felt neither cold nor fever: but I have had two slight attacks of the Gout after near three years intermission: it is well, if I escape so.
I am just return'd hither from London, where I have been these two months.
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Egerton MS 2400, f. 153, Manuscripts collection, British Library , London, UK <http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/manuscr/>
Print Versions
- The Works of Thomas Gray, 5 vols. Ed. by John Mitford. London: W. Pickering, 1835-1843, section IV, letter CXII, vol. iii, 295-296
- The Letters of Thomas Gray, including the correspondence of Gray and Mason, 3 vols. Ed. by Duncan C. Tovey. London: George Bell and Sons, 1900-12, letter no. CCXLI, vol. ii, 259-260
- Correspondence of Thomas Gray, 3 vols. Ed. by the late Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley, with corrections and additions by H. W. Starr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971 [1st ed. 1935], letter no. 358, vol. ii, 779-780