“A thousand thanks for Gibbon: all the additions are very great improvements.
“At last, I must be most peremptory with you about the print from Phillips’s picture: it is pronounced on all hands the most stupid and disagreeable possible; so do, pray, have a new engraving, and let me see it first; there really must be no more from the same plate. I don’t much care, myself; but every one I honour torments me to death about it, and abuses it to a degree beyond repeating. Now, don’t answer with excuses; but, for my sake, have it destroyed: I never shall have peace till it is. I write in the greatest haste.
“P.S. I have written this most illegibly; but it is to beg you to destroy the print, and have another ‘by particular desire.’ It must be d—d bad, to be sure, since every body says so but the original; and he don’t know what to say. But do do it: that is, burn the plate, and employ a new etcher from the other picture. This is stupid and sulky.”
