“I thank you for your very obliging, and, to me, most interesting letter. I rejoice to find a person so able to appreciate, and so zealously prepared to co-operate with the projected institution of the Royal Society of Literature. Some unavoidable business at Abergnelly, which I could not postpone, and the necessity of taking immediate possession of a new stall in the church of Durham, which the Bishop had given me, obliged me to leave London at a time when I should otherwise have been most anxious to stay there for the purpose of promoting the advancement of our new institution. It was therefore with great pleasure that I read your account of the institution in the ‘Literary Gazette.’ It has kept the subject alive; it has put it on its right footing, and must have excited very widely those higher feelings in its favour which are calculated to render the institution, what it was wished to be, honourable to the King, and creditable to the country, and capable of becoming a great instrument of national good.
“I hope to be in London on the 24th of this month, and should be very glad to have the pleasure of talking over the whole plan of the institution with you, very soon after I am in town.
“I shall be detained here till the 21st (among other
| 140 | AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. |
“P.S. In order to bring the objects of the Society into as comprehensive and tangible a view as possible, I always state its two main objects to be,—to reward literary merit, and to excite literary talent.”
