his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale.
Why, I never heard of such a work as "the Review." Strange that in my
stall-hunting days I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This
circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I
may have met with 'em, and not knowing the prize, overpast 'em. I was
almost a stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those reigns,
and picked my way through that strange book the "Consolidator" at
random. How affecting are some of his personal appeals! what a machine
of projects he set on foot! and following writers have picked his pocket
of the patents. I do not understand where-abouts in _Roxana_ he himself
left off. I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of description of
the town she passes through on her last embarkation miserably
unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten
me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by accident, can
correct one A.D. "Family Instructor," vol. ii. 1718; you say his first
volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a fifth, printed
for Eman. Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather
picked it up where it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing
date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my pains. I think
yours a book which every public library must have, and every English
scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the
author's works. I seem to be twice as opulent. Mary is by my side just
finishing the second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so
long from her modern novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I was a
little disappointed at my "Ode to the Treadmill" not finding a place;
but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader,
being so akin. Odd that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with
some fifteen years' interval I should nearly have said the same things.
But I shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De
Foe's, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself, if not
immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both
had much illness this year; and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow
upon us, we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods,
and commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple
next door to where you found us. We use a sort of common table.
Nevertheless, w