e your approbation with gratitude,
and will not return my brass for your gold by expressing more fully
those sentiments of admiration, which, however sincere, would, I
know, be unwelcome.

"To your advice on religious topics, I shall equally attend.
Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding them altogether. The
already published objectionable passages have been much commented
upon, but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted. I am no
bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the
immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence
of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and
_our world_, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, of
which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our
pretensions to eternity might be over-rated.

"This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school,
where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my life,
afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a
disease of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochondria."[73]

[Footnote 73: The remainder of this letter, it appears, has been lost.]

* * * * *

LETTER 123. TO MR. MOORE.

"June 22. 1813.

"Yesterday I dined in company with '* *, the Epicene,' whose
politics are sadly changed. She is for the Lord of Israel and the
Lord of Liverpool--a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a
Tory--talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I
presume, expects that God and the government will help her to a
pension.

"Murray, the [Greek: anax] of publishers, the Anac of stationers,
has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the
staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you?
Will you be bound, like 'Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years
in the Universal Visiter?' Seriously he talks of hundreds a year,
and--though I hate prating of the beggarly elements--his proposal
may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to
our pleasure.

"I don't know what to say about 'friendship.' I never was in
friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as
much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the
king, when he wanted to knight him,