Memoir of Francis Hodgson
Henry Drury to Francis Hodgson, 5 September 1820
Rue Rivoli, Paris: September 5.
My dear Hodgson,—I only arrived from the Southern clime late last
night, with a severe bilious attack upon me, caused by the Indian heats and
perpetual day and night work in a carriage. I am now staying
out,1 with my window looking over the garden
of the Tuileries. But what is Paris to me after
Tot congesta manu præruptis oppida saxis; Fluminaque antiques subter labentia muros. |
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I have read your second letter; the first I answered 1 An Eton boy who is out of school in
consequence of illness, real or imaginary, is said to be ‘staying
out.’ |
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| 118 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. | |
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from Piedmont. Before this you will have absolved me from
all neglect, and honoured the motive why I do not detail my travels. O that you
had been my companion! Our souls reciprocally Horatian,
Virgilian, Ovidian,
Claudianian, etc., sparks would have been mutually
elicited. I have seen no news from England yet, but garbled bits of trial in
the Italian paper. . . . . In a few days I shall again be in Old England, from
which I have now been absent nearly seven weeks. I have kept up a
correspondence daily with my family, and I hope it will have been the means of
teaching my elder children geography in an easy manner. I was thunder-struck at
Lyons—and in a short voyage I made down the Rhone to Vienne—with
the stupendous remains of Roman magnificence. The aqueduct at Lyons, did
nothing else remain to tell us of the people who planned and executed it, would
give an idea of Messieurs the Romans which no reading can possibly convey. At
Vienne there is a perfect temple of the age of Augustus. The very roof and entablature are now as
they were 1800 years back. But hush! you must read my tour at Christmas.
Although I shall dine to-day in the Palais Royal, yet not the dainties of
kidneys fried in champagne, or ortolans ![]()
| LETTER FROM HERMAN MERIVALE, ÆT 14. | 119 |
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garnished with
cocks’-combs; not the vintages of Chambertin and Lafitte, will give me
half so much pleasure as a beef-steak and a bottle of port at the Union Hotel,
Dover. When I return to my own dear country you shall hear again from your ever
sincere, etc.
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
