enters (for he is used to the family, and sees them play at cards) he set up a rattle like a watchman’s in London, or near as loud, and reared up a head, from the midst of these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every sign a snake can show of irritation.  I had the foolish curiosity to strike the wires with my finger, and the devil flew at me with his toad-mouth wide open:  the inside of his mouth is quite white.  I had got my finger away, nor could he well have bit me with his big mouth, which would have been certain death in five minutes.  But it frightened me so much that I did not recover my voice for a minute’s space.  I forgot, in my fear, that he was secured.  You would have forgot too, for ’t is incredible how such a monster can be confined in small gauzy-looking wires.  I dreamed of snakes in the night.  I wish to Heaven you could see it.  He absolutely swelled with passion to the bigness of a large thigh.  I could not retreat without infringing on another box, and just behind, a little devil, not an inch from my back, had got his nose out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through the bars!  He was soon taught better manners.  All the snakes were curious, and objects of terror; but this monster, like Aaron’s serpent, swallowed up the impression of the rest.  He opened his cursed mouth, when he made at me, as wide as his head was broad.  I hallooed out quite loud, and felt pains all over my body with the fright.

I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer read out one book of “The Farmer’s Boy.”  I thought it rather childish.  No doubt, there is originality in it (which, in your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare quality, they generally getting hold of some bad models in a scarcity of books, and forming their taste on them), but no selection.  All is, described.

Mind, I have only heard read one book.  Yours sincerely,

Philo-Snake, C. L.

XXX.

TO MANNING.

November 3, 1800,

Ecquid meditatur Archimedes? What is Euclid doing?  What has happened to learned Trismegist?  Doth he take it in ill part that his humble friend did not comply with his courteous invitation?  Let it suffice, I could not come.  Are impossibilities nothing?—­be they abstractions of the intellects, or not (rather) most sharp and mortifying realities? nuts in the Will’s mouth too hard for her to crack? brick and stone walls in her way, which she can by no means eat through? sore lets, impedimenta viarum, no thoroughfares? racemi nimium alte pendentes??  Is the phrase classic?  I allude to the grapes in Aesop, which cost the fox a strain, and gained the world an aphorism.  Observe the superscription of this letter.  In adapting the size of the letters which constitute your name and Mr. Crisp’s name respectively, I had an eye to your different stations in life.  ’Tis really curious, and must be soothing to