Seek not to look at the Book,--nay in fact it is
"not to be _published_ till September" (so the man of affairs
settles with me yesterday, "owing to the political &c., to the
season," &c.); my only stipulation was that in ten days I should
be utterly out of it,--not to hear of it again till the Day of
Judgment, and if possible not even then! In fact it is a bad
book, poor, misshapen, feeble, _nearly_ worthless (thanks to
_past_ generations and to me); and my one excuse is, I could not
make it better, all the world having played such a game with it.
Well, well!--How true is that you say about the skater; and the
rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads, on his et
ceteras! Dismally true have I a thousand times felt it, in these
late operations; never in any so much. And in short the
business of writing has altogether become contemptible to me;
and I am become confirmed in the notion that nobody ought to
write,--unless sheer Fate force him to do it;--and then he ought
(if _not_ of the mountebank genus) to beg to be shot rather.
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