From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   23 Feb 1812

Yarmouth 23^rd February 1812

I would fain have waited, my dear Madam, for the arrival of your parcel before I wrote to you. The letter from yourself which informed me of its having been sent off from Ballylickey has already been more than a fortnight in my hands, & a week has now nearly passed since I also received from Mr Mackay the news of its safe arrival in Dublin, & of its being put on board the packet for England. Another week’s delay will make me not a little anxious for its safety, & I shall in such case write to our Dublin friend, & beg enquiries may be set on foot respecting it. In the meantime I am far from sure that I am not doing wisely in writing to you before it comes; for, as often as anything of this kind does come, I regularly find myself so overpowered with the magnitude of what it gives me to do compared with the time I have to do it in, that, strive as I can, procrastination beats me and gains an odious ascendancy. And yet, my dear Madam, though I seem to be making a boast of having set about writing to you, I scarcely know why I am doing so, except that you are so good as to tell me that my letters give you pleasure. I have nothing botanical to communicate that might interest you to know, & “I sigh and lament me in vain” for the epistolary talents of Cowper or even of Miss Seward, whose correspondence just published in 6 small octavo volumes I have been reading within the last week. I wish I could find a good opportunity of conveying to you a copy of this book, for I am sure it would serve to pass away very pleasantly some of the winter evenings, “when howling winds & beating rain in tempest shake” the windows of Ballylickey, & that you would be amused, as I have been, with this history of contemporary literature, relieved by personal anecdotes, & seasoned with the remarks of a very sensible woman. Among her correspondence she reckoned most of the eminent literary men of our country, & her letters were certainly in such a degree confidential that you see she is saying what she really thinks, though at the same time she made it evident they were designed for the press, by keeping copies of them regularly, & bequeathing them at her death to a bookseller. Your sex has certainly the superiority over ours in letter-writing; & I am persuaded it is in great measure owing to your being really better than we are; to your language flowing more freely from your heart; & to your being less corrupted by those passions & vices which every man has continually to rub against in the present state of society. The Miller, I recollect, says in the old song, that, “Gold, in handling, will stick to the fingers like meal”; &, as with gold & meal, so with evil practices, it is impossible to be among them without bringing away some of the grubbiness. — Now speaking of ladies, I must tell you of another work I have just got by a female author of a very different cast from Miss Seward, Madame de Stael. It is her new small book “On the Influence of Literature on Society”, in which I find a great many things that I did not know before, & several that I did know made to look new by the light they are placed in. I think I recommended to you last year, when it first appeared, Madame Genlis’ Botanique Historique et Litteraire. It is, like Madame de Stael’s book, small & easy to be got. Turning, however, from matters of this kind, let me tell you, what has certainly from the first been uppermost in my mind, how sincerely I rejoice at the comparatively good account you give me of your own health & of that of your family. That every wish you have formed on this subject may be gratified & every hope realised I desire most earnestly for your sake; but, alas!, you must not flatter yourself, if the years of Mrs Hutchins are already many, that many more will be added to them. It is the common lot of humanity for us to weep the loss of our parents, & it is ordered that the death of them gradually loosens our own ties to this world & makes us look more to the other to which we are insensibly hastening. Do you know the following beautiful little poem of Roscoe’s? — if not, I am sure you will pardon my sending it. You will much oblige me if you will have the goodness to mark in my Musc. Hib. the times when you have observed the different mosses in fruit; or, if you have not kept notes on the subject, if you will trouble yourself to do so in future. Mr Hooker would be greatly obliged to you for any similar information as to the Jungermanniae. His first No. of this work is to appear on the 1^st of April. The second edition of his Tour makes very slow progress, my printer has so much to do, & the same is the case with the Lichenographia Britannica, of which nothing is yet printed beyond Isidium — Sphaerophoron, Calicium, Thelotrema, Pertusaria, *Verrucaria, Gyrophora, *Opegrapha & *Arthonia, all still remain to be printed to finish the first volume, but all are written except the three marked with Asterisks.

Roscoe’s poem: twenty line To the Memory of a Deceased Friend.