icular,
I should have brought forward that on "Troilus and Cressida" and
Shakspeare, which, it is little to say, delighted me and instructed me
(if not absolutely _instructed_ me, yet put into _full-grown sense_ many
conceptions which had arisen in me before in my most discriminating
moods). All these things I was preparing to say, and bottling them up
till I came, thinking to please my friend and host the author, when lo!
this deadly blight intervened.

I certainly ought to make great allowances for your misunderstanding me.
You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained over
your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in
which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a
common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an
engagement will act upon me to torment; _e.g._, when I have undertaken,
as three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant
Taylors' boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them in perfect
inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my
wretchedness for a week together. The same, till by habit I have
acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in making paragraphs. As to
reviewing, in particular, my head is so whimsical a head that I cannot,
after reading another man's book, let it have been never so pleasing,
give any account of it in any methodical way, I cannot follow his train.
Something like this you must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten
thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter
inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can
vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at _parts_; but I cannot
grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be
seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which
no reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about
Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1 1/5
column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to show it you. However,
it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I neither slunk
from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any (most
imaginary on your part) distaste of "Chaucer;" and I will try my hand
again,--I hope with better luck. My health is bad, and my time taken up;
but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed for you,
since you desire it: and if I br