You could not suppose I thought that you never write.  No; but I concluded you did not intend, at least yet, to publish what you had written.  As you did intend it, I might have expected a month’s preference.  You will do me the Justice to own that I had always rather have seen your writings than have shown you mine; which you know are the most hasty trifles in the world, and which, though I may be fond of the subject when fresh, I constantly forget in a very short time after they are published.  This would sound like affectation to others, but will not to you.  It would be affected, even to you, to say I am indifferent to fame.  I certainly am not, but I am indifferent to almost any thing I have done to acquire it.  The greater part are mere compilations; and no wonder they are, as you say, incorrect, when they are commonly written with people in the room, as Richard and the Noble Authors were.  But I doubt there is a more intrinsic fault in them:  which is, that I cannot correct them.  If I write tolerably, it must be -,it once; I can neither mend nor add.  The articles of Lord Capel and Lord Peterborough, in the second edition of the Noble Authors, cost me more trouble than all the rest together:  and you may perceive that the worst part of Richard, in point of ease and style, is what relates to the papers you gave me on Jane Shore, because it was taken on so long afterwards, and when my impetus was chilled.  If some time or other you will take the trouble of pointing out the inaccuracies of’ ’It, I shall be much obliged to you:  at present I shall meddle no more with it.  It has taken its fate; nor did I mean to complain.  I found it was Condemned indeed beforehand, which was what I alluded to.  Since publication (as has happened to me before) the success has gone beyond my expectation.

Not only at Cambridge, but here there have been people wise enough to think me too free with the King of Prussia!(1006) A newspaper has talked of my known inveteracy to him.  Truly, I love him as well as I do most kings.  The greater offence is my reflection on Lord Clarendon.  It is forgotten that I had overpraised him before.  Pray turn to the new State Papers, from which, it is said, he composed his history.  You will find they are the papers from which he did not compose his history.  And yet I admire my Lord Clarendon more than these pretended admirers do.  But I do not intend to justify myself.  I can as little satisfy those who complain that I do not let them know what really did happen.  If this inquiry can ferret out any truth, I shall be glad.  I have picked up a few more circumstances.  I now want to know what Perkin Warbeck’s Proclamation was, which Speed in his history says is preserved by Bishop Leslie.  If you look in Speed, perhaps you will be able to assist me.