I prune my apples and pears. I
have a few friends who gild many hours of the year. I sometimes
write verses. I tell you with some unwillingness, as knowing
your distaste for such things, that I have received so many
applications from readers and printers for a volume of poems that
I have seriously taken in hand the collection, transcription, or
scription of such a volume, and may do the enormity before New
Year's day. Fear not, dear friend, you shall not have to read
one line. Perhaps I shall send you an official copy, but I shall
appeal to the tenderness of Jane Carlyle, and excuse your
formidable self, for the benefit of us both. Where all writing
is such a caricature of the subject, what signifies whether the
form is a little more or less ornate and luxurious? Meantime, I
think to set a few heads before me, as good texts for winter
evening entertainments. I wrote a deal about Napoleon a few
months ago, after reading a library of memoirs. Now I have
Plato, Montaigne, and Swedenborg, and more in the clouds behind.
What news of Naseby and Worcester?
CI.
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