I am sorry to say that the prospect before me is not such as to allow much hope of my seeing Holland this year.

Time, the Printers & the Constable

are leagued together to oppose my wishes. I shall overcome the alliance, but not till this season will be too far advanced. Perhaps I could be ready by the vintage,

– which would be no unpleasant sight, – but then the days are shortening, & day light is the worst thing which travellers can spare.

My winter has not been idly spent, but it has not carried me so far forward as I had anticipated, chiefly because writing a book is like building a house, – a work of more time & cost than the estimate xx has been taken at. This is the chief reason. But something I confess must be set down to my besetting sin, – a sort of miser-like love of accumulation. Like those persons who frequent sales & fill their own houses with useless purchases, because they may want them some time or other, – so am I for ever making collections & storing up materials which may not come into use till the Greek Calends.

And this I have been doing for five & twenty years! It is true that I draw daily upon my hoards & should be poor without them; – but in prudence I ought now to be working up these materials rather than adding to so much dead stock.

I have printed 520 pages of the Peninsular War, – the volume will exceed 700.

Half my time is occupied with correspondence upon this subject, eliciting by questions that kind of information which is not to be obtained in any other way. Some of my old friends the Portugueze Chroniclers travelled over their country to find out men who had been actors in the events which it was their business to record, – & thus they collected materials for certainly the best & liveliest chronicles that exist in any language. This I have done & am doing by letter when I can.

This volume when it appears will provoke a great branch of the Satanic Confederacy, the Buonapartists.

It is the most damning record of their wickedness that has yet appeared in this country, & in a form to command both attention & belief. – Only yesterday I learnt from General Whittingham

who was in the battle of Medellin, that the French had orders to give no quarter.

A wounded Sp. Officer was brought into the room where Victor was at supper, & Victor said to him, ‘If my orders had been obeyed Sir, you would not have been here. Those orders were obeyed so well that the French Dragoons that night rubbed their right arms with soap & spirits, to recover the muscles from the fatigue they had undergone in cutting the fugitives down.

Do you remember three or four years ago being here when I received a letter from a Lady with a mss. poem?

That Lady (Miss Bowles is her name) has just published a little volume entitled The Widows Tale &c,

– of very great merit. Her subjects are too tragic, – partly owing perhaps to her own state of health, & the loss of her mother,

who was her only near relation. But she writes with great power, great sweetness & with real feeling.

I have given the Satanic School a bone to pick, over which they may snarl till they are weary.

They x can neither injure nor annoy me.