[9] Last but one article in the Notes. [↑]
[10] The writer is now an accepted Companion. [↑]
[11] I am only too happy to be justified in withdrawing it. But my errors will, I trust, always be found rather in the relaxation than the unnecessary enforcement, even of favourite principles; and I did not see what line I could draw between the spinning-wheel, which I knew to be necessary, and the sewing machine, which I suspected to be mischievous, and gave therefore permission only to use; while I shall earnestly urge the use of the spinning-wheel. I will give the reason for distinction, (so far as my correspondent’s most interesting letter leaves me anything more to say,) in a future letter. [↑]
[12] The printseller obligingly giving an eleventh, “Pembury Mill,”—Fors thus directing that the first art gift bestowed on the Company shall be Turner’s etching of a flour mill. [↑]
[13] Remember, however, that the publication of prime cost, and the absolute knowledge of all circumstances or causes of extra cost, are inviolable laws of established trade under the St. George’s Company. [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER LX.
I cannot finish the letter I meant for my Christmas Fors; and must print merely the begun fragment—and such uncrystalline termination must now happen to all my work, more or less, (and more and more, rather than less,) as it expands in range. As I stated in last letter, I have now seven books in the press at once—and any one of them enough to take up all the remainder of my life. ‘Love’s Meinie,’ for instance, (Love’s Many, or Serving Company,) was meant to become a study of British birds, which would have been occasionally useful in museums, carried out with a care in plume drawing which I learned in many a day’s work from Albert Durer; and with which, in such light as the days give me, I think it still my duty to do all I can towards completion of the six essays prepared for my Oxford schools:—but even the third of these, on the Chough, though already written and in type, is at pause because [[330]]I can’t get the engravings for it finished, and the rest—merely torment me in other work with the thousand things flitting in my mind, like sea-birds for whom there are no sands to settle upon.
‘Ariadne’ is nearer its close; but the Appendix is a mass of loose notes which need a very sewing machine to bring together—and any one of these that I take in hand leads me into ashamed censorship of the imperfection of all I have been able to say about engraving; and then, if I take up my Bewick, or return to my old Turner vignettes, I put my Appendix off again—‘till next month,’ and so on.