I am almost ashamed to be thanking you but now for a most entertaining letter of two sheets, dated December 22, but I seriously had nothing to form an answer.  It is but three mornings ago that your brother was at breakfast with me, and scolded me, “Why, you tell me nothing!”—­“No,” says I “if I had any thing to say, I should write to your brother.”  I give you my word, that the first new book that takes, the first murder, the first revolution, you shall have, with all the circumstances.  In the mean time, do be assured that there never was so dull a place as London, or so insipid an inhabitant of it, as, yours, etc.

(365) Ames, in a letter written on the 22d of March to Mr. T. Martin, says, “I cannot forbear to give you some relation of Sir Hans Sloane’s curiosities.  The Parliament has been pleased to accept them on the condition of Sir Hans’s codicil; that is, that they should be kept together in one place in or near London, and should be exhibited freely for a public use.  The King, or they, by the will, were to have the first error.  The 19th instant being appointed for a committee of the whole House, after several speeches, the Speaker himself moved the whole House into a general regard to have them joined with the King’s and Cotton Libraries, together with those of one Major Edwards, who had left seven thousand pounds to build a library, besides his own books; and to purchase the Harleian manuscripts, build a house for their reception,” etc.  An act was shortly after passed, empowering the Crown to raise a sufficient sum by lottery to purchase the Sloane collection and Harleian manuscripts, together with Montagu House.  Such was the commencement of the British Museum.-E.

157 Letter 71 To Mr. Gray.  Arlington Street, Feb. 20, 1753.

I am very sorry that the haste I made to deliver you from your uneasiness the first moment after I received your letter, should have made me express myself in a manner to have the quite contrary effect from what I intended.  You well know how rapidly and carelessly I always write my letters:  the note you mention was written in a still greater hurry than ordinary, and merely to put you out of pain.  I had not seen Dodsley, consequently could only tell you that I did not doubt but he would have no objection to satisfy you, as you was willing to prevent his being a loser by the plate.(366) Now, from this declaration, how is it possible for you to have for one momentput such a construction upon my words, as would have been a downright stupid brutality, unprovoked?  It is impossible for me to recollect my very expression, but I am confident that I have repeated the whole substance.

How the bookseller would be less a loser by being at more expense, I can easily explain to you.  He feared the price of half a guinea would seem too high to most purchasers.  If by the expense of ten guineas more he could make the book appear so much more rich and showy as to induce people to think it cheap, the profits from selling many more copies would amply recompense him for his additional disbursement.