Leigh Hunt letter to Thomas Carlyle, January 24, 1836

              Sunday. January 24, 1836



My dear Sir,



With the deepest sense of your kind feelings & those of your friend, & a delight to find another jewel to long in my memory with the thought of his offer, I trust that neither you nor he will think ill of me in seeing it come back. Your delightful & truly delicate letter does me but justice in /---/ making no doubt of my sentiments on such an occasion, supposing the necessity to exist, & the friend to be of a nature worthy to comfort it (as I have no doubt he is, thus caring hand in hand with yourself); but all the difficulties of the moment have been more than done away by other generous friends; & I have no prospective right to let other purses enclose for me, seeing that myself & my family have none got time, & that we may have health & strength enough to neutralize the real struggle before it comes. Not to mention, that the most generous people are not always the richest, & that I might be drawing upon the resources of one whose purse might ill spare them, whatever his heart might do. Should a very frightful hour however still come some day, ^to which other friends would not be all-sufficient, I will call to mind, -indeed I shall,



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P.P.S.  I have just received a prodigious hamper from some anonymous friends in the coming containing an absolute poulterest & party-cooks shop. may the contents a Twelfth Cake, did I shall keep for your Mozart evening, & a pig, a quarter of which (ready dressed) will beg admittance at your dinner. Hence to-day, sure of not being refused.

P.S. Pray shew your friend this letter, -I need not add, in confidence. For my part, I confess I would fain have to secrets from any body; but then the world, not ^to a nature like his,- being yet come to generous [?mam’] state, is apt to make mistakes. It is still more needless to add, that no secret of course is to be made with her Carlyle, if she has any curiosity to read what I write, as she may have, -reckoning, as I know I may do, upon her kind wishes. It is one of my dreadful theories, you know, that husband & wife are the last people who ought to keep any secrets from one another.