regret that he did not devote more of his time to the higher
branches of the Art, and further, I think you join with me in lamenting
to a certain degree at least that he did not live more to himself. I
have since read the rest of his Discourses, with which I have been
greatly pleased, and, wish most heartily that I could have an
opportunity of seeing in your company your own collection of pictures
and some others in town, Mr. Angerstein's, for instance, to have pointed
out to me some of those finer and peculiar beauties of painting which I
am afraid I shall never have an occasion of becoming sufficiently
familiar with pictures to discover of myself. There is not a day in my
life when I am at home in which that exquisite little drawing of yours
of Applethwaite does not affect me with a sense of harmony and grace,
which I cannot describe. Mr. Edridge, an artist whom you know, saw this
drawing along with a Mr. Duppa, another artist, who published _Hints
from Raphael and Michael Angelo_; and they were both most enthusiastic
in their praise of it, to my great delight. By the bye, I thought Mr.
Edridge a man of very mild and pleasing manners, and as far as I could
judge, of delicate feelings, in the province of his Art. Duppa is
publishing a life of Michael Angelo, and I received from him a few days
ago two proof-sheets of an Appendix which contains the poems of M.A.,
which I shall read, and translate one or two of them, if I can do it
with decent success. I have peeped into the Sonnets, and they do not
appear at all unworthy of their great Author.

You will be pleased to hear that I have been advancing with my work: I
have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks. I do not
know if you are exactly acquainted with the plan of my poetical labour:
it is twofold; first, a Poem, to be called 'The Recluse;' in which it
will be my object to express in verse my most interesting feelings
concerning man, nature, and society; and next, a poem (in which I am at
present chiefly engaged) on my earlier life, or the growth of my own
mind, taken up upon a large scale. This latter work I expect to have
finished before the month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my
might on the former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts
have been fixed these many years. Of this poem, that of 'The
Pedlar,'[25] which Coleridge read you, is part, and I may have written
of it altogether about 2000 lines. It will consist, I ho