he discerning public at large, all of
whom are intended to be comprised in that comprehensive and, I
hope, comprehensible pronoun.

"By the by, one of my corrections in the fair copy sent yesterday
has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom--

"When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.

Ceasing to _live_ is a much more serious concern, and ought not to
be first; therefore I will let the old couplet stand, with its half
rhymes 'sought' and 'wrote.'[51] Second thoughts in every thing are
best, but, in rhyme, third and fourth don't come amiss. I am very
anxious on this business, and I do hope that the very trouble I
occasion you will plead its own excuse, and that it will tend to
show my endeavour to make the most of the time allotted. I wish I
had known it months ago, for in that case I had not left one line
standing on another. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as
much as I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a
nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have
not the cunning. When I began 'Childe Harold,' I had never tried
Spenser's measure, and now I cannot scribble in any other.

"After all, my dear Lord, if you can get a decent Address
elsewhere, don't hesitate to put this aside. Why did you not trust
your own Muse? I am very sure she would have been triumphant, and
saved the Committee their trouble--''tis a joyful one' to me, but I
fear I shall not satisfy even myself. After the account you sent
me, 'tis no compliment to say you would have beaten your
candidates; but I mean that, in _that_ case, there would have been
no occasion for their being beaten at all.

"There are but two decent prologues in our tongue--Pope's to
Cato--Johnson's to Drury Lane. These, with the epilogue to the
'Distrest Mother,' and, I think, one of Goldsmith's, and a prologue
of old Colman's to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, are the best
things of the kind we have.

"P.S.--I am diluted to the throat with medicine for the stone; and
Boisragon wants me to try a warm climate for the winter--but I
won't."

[Footnote 51:

"Such are the names that here your plaudits sought,
When Garrick acted, and when Brinsley wrote."

At present the couplet stands thus:--

"Dear are the days that made our annals bright