Chapter 49

"High Street, Cheltenham, Sept. 5. 1812.

"Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of the Edinburgh Review with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson, thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be truly happy to comply with his request.--How do you go on? and when is the graven image, 'with _bays and wicked rhyme upon 't,'_ to grace, or disgrace, some of our tardy editions?

"Send me '_Rokeby_.' Who the devil is he?--no matter, he has good connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your enquiries: I am so so, but my thermometer is sadly below the poetical point. What will you give _me_ or _mine_ for a poem of six cantos, (_when complete_--_no_ rhyme, _no_ recompense,) as like the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas that one day may be embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure.

"P.S.--My last question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like Jeremy Diddler, I only 'ask for information.'--Send me Adair on Diet and Regimen, just republished by Ridgway."

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