"Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of the Edinburgh Review with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson, thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be truly happy to comply with his request.—How do you go on? and when is the graven image, 'with bays and wicked rhyme upon 't,' to grace, or disgrace, some of our tardy editions?
"Send me 'Rokeby.' Who the devil is he?—no matter, he has good connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your enquiries: I am so so, but my thermometer is sadly below the poetical point. What will you give me or mine for a poem of six cantos, (when complete—no rhyme, no recompense,) as like the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas that one day may be embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure.
"P.S.—My last question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like Jeremy Diddler, I only 'ask for information.'—Send me Adair on Diet and Regimen, just republished by Ridgway."
LETTER 108. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Cheltenham, Sept. 14. 1812.
"The parcels contained some letters and verses, all but one anonymous and complimentary, and very anxious for my conversion from certain infidelities into which my good-natured correspondents conceive me to have fallen. The books were presents of a convertible kind. Also, 'Christian Knowledge' and the 'Bioscope,' a religious Dial of Life explained;—and to the author of the former (Cadell, publisher,) I beg you will forward my best thanks for his letter, his present, and, above all, his good intentions. The 'Bioscope' contained a MS. copy of very excellent verses, from whom I know not, but evidently the composition of some one in the habit of writing, and of writing well. I do not know if he be the author of the 'Bioscope' which accompanied them; but whoever he is, if you can discover him, thank him from me most heartily. The other letters were from ladies, who are welcome to convert me when they please; and if I can discover them, and they be young, as they say they are, I could convince them perhaps of my devotion. I had also a letter from Mr. Walpole on matters of this world, which I have answered.
"So you are Lucien's publisher? I am promised an interview with him, and think I shall ask you for a letter of introduction, as 'the gods have made him poetical.' From whom could it come with a better grace than from his publisher and mine? Is it not somewhat treasonable in you to have to do with a relative of the 'direful foe,' as the Morning Post calls his brother?
"But my book on 'Diet and Regimen,' where is it? I thirst for Scott's Rokeby; let me have your first-begotten copy. The Anti-jacobin Review is all very well, and not a bit worse than the Quarterly, and at least less harmless. By the by, have you secured my books? I want all the Reviews, at least the critiques, quarterly, monthly, &c., Portuguese and English, extracted, and bound up in one volume for my old age; and pray, sort my Romaic books, and get the volumes lent to Mr. Hobhouse—he has had them now a long time. If any thing occurs, you will favour me with a line, and in winter we shall be nearer neighbours.
"P.S.—I was applied to, to write the Address for Drury Lane, but the moment I heard of the contest, I gave up the idea of contending against all Grub Street, and threw a few thoughts on the subject into the fire. I did this out of respect to you, being sure you would have turned off any of your authors who had entered the lists with such scurvy competitors. To triumph would have been no glory; and to have been defeated—'sdeath!—I would have choked myself, like Otway, with a quartern loaf; so, remember I had, and have, nothing to do with it, upon my honour."