By all means appoint this Mr. Clark to the honorary office of Account-keeper—­if he will accept it!  By Parker’s list of questions from him, and by earlier reminiscences recalled on that occasion, I can discern that he is a man of lynx eyesight, of an all-investigating curiosity:  if he will accept this sublime appointment, it will be the clearest case of elective affinity.  Accounts to you must be horrible; as they are to me:  indeed, I seldom read beyond the last line of them, if I can find the last; and one of the insupportabilities of Bookseller Accounts is that nobody but a wizard, or regular adept in such matters, can tell where the last line, and final net result of the whole accursed babblement, is to be found!  By all means solicit Clark;—­at all events, do you give it up, I pray you, and let the Booksellers do their own wise way.  It really is not material; let the poor fellows have length of halter.  Every new Bill from America comes to me like a kind of heavenly miracle; a reaping where I never sowed, and did not expect to reap:  the quantity of it is a thing I can never bring in question.—­For your English account with Nickerson I can yet say nothing more; perhaps about Newyear’s-day the poor man will enable me to say something.  I hear however that the Pirate has sold off, or nearly so, his Two-shillings edition of the Essays, and is preparing to print another; this, directly in the teeth of Cash and double-entry book-keeping, I take to be good news.

James is a very good fellow, better and better as we see him more.  Something shy and skittish in the man; but a brave heart intrinsically, with sound, earnest sense, with plenty of insight and even humor.  He confirms an observation of mine, which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a stammering man is never a worthless one.  Physiology can tell you why.  It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow-creature, that makes him stammer.  Hammond l’Estrange says, “Who ever heard of a stammering man that was a fool?” Really there is something in that.—­James is now off to the Isle of Wight; will see Sterling at Ventnor there; see whether such an Isle or France will suit better for a winter residence.

W.E.  Channing’s Poems are also a kind gift from you.  I have read the pieces you had cut up for me: worthy indeed of reading!  That Poem on Death is the utterance of a valiant, noble heart, which in rhyme or prose I shall expect more news of by and by.  But at bottom “Poetry” is a most suspicious affair for me at present!  You cannot fancy the oceans of Twaddle that human Creatures emit upon me, in these times; as if, when the lines had a jingle in them, a Nothing could be Something, and the point were gained!  It is becoming a horror to me,—­as all speech without meaning more and more is.  I said to Richard Milnes, “Now in honesty what is the use of putting your accusative before the verb, and otherwise