contented
in, and thankful for, the state of life in which it has
pleased God to place me.

"We hoped to have seen you on your way back from
Ellery. I believe you did not get the ballad of the
'Devil and the Bishop,' which Hartley transcribed for
you. I am reprinting my miscellaneous poems, collected
into three volumes. Your projected publication[32] will
have the start of it greatly, for the first volume is
not nearly through the press, and there is a corrected
copy of the ballad, with its introduction, in
Ballantyne's hands, which you can make use of before it
will be wanted in its place.

"You ask me why I am not intimate with Wilson. There is
a sufficient reason in the distance between our
respective abodes. I seldom go even to Wordworth's or
Lloyd's; and Ellery is far enough from either of their
houses, to make a visit the main business of a day. So
it happens that except dining in his company once at
Lloyd's many years ago, and breakfasting with him here
not long afterwards, I have barely exchanged
salutations once or twice when we met upon the road.
Perhaps, however, I might have sought him had it not
been for his passion for cock-fighting. But this is a
thing which I regard with abhorrence.

"Would that 'Roderick' were in your hands for
reviewing; I should desire no fairer nor more competent
critic. But it is of little consequence what friends or
enemies may do for it now; it will find its due place
in time, which is slow but sure in its decisions. From
the nature of my studies, I may almost be said to live
in the past; it is to the future that I look for my
reward, and it would be difficult to make any person
who is not thoroughly intimate with me, understand how
completely indifferent I am to the praise or censure of
the present generation, farther than as it may affect
my means of subsistence, which, thank God, it can no
longer essentially do. There was a time when I was
materially injured by unjust criticism; but even then I
despised it, from a confidence in myself, and a natural
buoyancy of spirit. It cannot injure me now, but I
cannot hold it in more thorough contempt.

"Come and visit me when the warm weather returns. You
can go nowhere that you will be more sincerely
welcomed.