“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 connexions, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your inquiries: 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 imbodied, 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.”
