s intention of praising me. It would be very hard, and not
desirable, to make you understand why my Mama need not have heard the
verses: but it is a very little matter: so no more of it. As to my doing
anything else in that way, I know that I could write volume after volume
as well as others of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease: but I
think unless a man can do better, he had best not do at all; I have not
the strong inward call, nor cruel-sweet pangs of parturition, that prove
the birth of anything bigger than a mouse. With you the case is
different, who have so long been a follower of the Muse, and who have had
a kindly, sober, English, wholesome, religious spirit within you that has
communicated kindred warmth to many honest souls. Such a creature as
Augusta--John's wife--a true Lady, was very fond of your poems: and I
think that is no mean praise: a very good assurance that you have not
written in vain. I am a man of taste, of whom there are hundreds born
every year: only that less easy circumstances than mine at present are
compel them to one calling: that calling perhaps a mechanical one, which
overlies all their other, and naturally perhaps more energetic impulses.
As to an occasional copy of verses, there are few men who have leisure to
read, and are possessed of any music in their souls, who are not capable
of versifying on some ten or twelve occasions during their natural lives:
at a proper conjunction of the stars. There is no harm in taking
advantage of such occasions.

This letter-writing fit (one must suppose) can but happen once in one's
life: though I hope you and I shall live to have many a little bargain
for pictures. But I hold communion with Suffolk through you. In this
big London all full of intellect and pleasure and business I feel
pleasure in dipping down into the country, and rubbing my hand over the
cool dew upon the pastures, as it were. I know very few people here: and
care for fewer; I believe I should like to live in a small house just
outside a pleasant English town all the days of my life, making myself
useful in a humble way, reading my books, and playing a rubber of whist
at night. But England cannot expect long such a reign of inward quiet as
to suffer men to dwell so easily to themselves. But Time will tell us:

Come what come may,
Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day. {106}

It is hard to give you so long a letter, so dull an one, and writt