My mother, I am informed, is almost blind; even though I had the utmost inclination to return home, under such circumstances I could not, for to behold her in distress without a capacity of relieving her from it, would add much too to my splenetic habit.  Your last letter was much too short; it should have answered some queries I had made in my former.  Just sit down as I do, and write forward until you have filled all your paper.  It requires no thought, at least from the ease with which my own sentiments rise when they are addressed to you.  For, believe me, my head has no share in all I write; my heart dictates the whole.  Pray give my love to Bob Bryanton, and entreat him from me not to drink.  My dear sir, give me some account about poor Jenny.  Yet her husband loves her:  if so, she cannot be unhappy.

I know not whether I should tell you—­yet why should I conceal those trifles, or indeed anything from you?  There is a book of mine will be published in a few days:  the life of a very extraordinary man; no less than the great Voltaire.  You know already by the title that it is no more than a catch-penny.  However, I spent but four weeks on the whole performance, for which I received twenty pounds.  When published, I shall take some method of conveying it to you, unless you may think it dear of the postage, which may amount to four or five shillings.  However, I fear you will not find an equivalent of amusement.

Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroi-comical poem which I sent you.  You remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem as lying in a paltry ale-house.  You may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original.  The room in which he lies may be described somewhat this way: 

  The window, patched with paper, lent a ray
  That feebly show’d the state in which he lay;
  The sandy floor that grits beneath the tread,
  The humid wall with paltry pictures spread;
  The game of goose was there exposed to view,
  And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew;
  The Seasons, framed with listing, found a place,
  And Prussia’s monarch show’d his lamp-black face. 
  The morn was cold:  he views with keen desire
  A rusty grate, unconscious of a fire;
  An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored,
  And five crack’d teacups dress’d the chimney board.

And now imagine after his soliloquy, the landlord to make his appearance in order to dun him for the reckoning: 

  Not with that face, so servile and so gay,
  That welcomes every stranger that can pay: 
  With sulky eye he smoked the patient man,
  Then pull’d his breeches tight, and thus began, &c.

All this is taken, you see, from nature.  It is a good remark of Montaigne’s, that the wisest men often have friends with whom they do not care how much they play the fool.  Take my present follies as instances of regard.  Poetry is a much easier and more agreeable species of composition than prose; and, could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.  I am resolved to leave no space, though I should fill it up only by telling you, what you very well know already, I mean that I am