Your Streatham hooping cough has influenced my daughters movements at Exeter in a manner which may as distinctly be traced as the way in which Jacks building a house led to the marriage at which the Priest all shaven & shorn officiated.

One of Lady Malets sons

had nearly lost his life at Winchester in consequence of the measles, she was summoned thither in all speed; & E May left in consequence to shape her operations how she could. To day we have heard that Colonel Coleridge

takes her under convoy on Friday the 5^th next, – he with two Ladies

is going to town to visit his daughter,

– & they have taken the whole stage for their journey, – they start at six in the evening, & reach London about three on the following afternoon when I trust Edith will be safely deposited at M^rs Gonne’s. – I hope she will get thro all her engagements in or near town, so as to be ready for returning in February, & Bertha with her: – that is, as soon as the severity of the winter is over. I begin to be a little impatient at losing both for so long a time.

Murray I see announces my second volume for next November

– if he had said May, he might have hit the mark. I know not why the publishers are so fond of holding out promises in this way which they know cannot be realized. However it is Murrays concern, not mine, – both the MS. & the proof sheets pass thro his hands, tho that he knows exactly in what forwardness it is: & I hurry myself for no man. A fourth part of the vol. is printed, & I am proceeding steadily, but not so as to weary myself. A writer who pursues his subject when his own attention flags, will make his readers flag also. If I do not see my way clearly to day, I halt till tomorrow, & having other things to turn to, lose no time by the delay. My Dialogues

are now so far advanced that they will go to press as soon as I hear the Engravers

are in any forwardness. And I am half thro the third canto of the Paraguay Tale,

– which extends only to four: – the end being in view, this of course becomes one of my prime objects, & it will be a relief to be rid of it, so difficult is it to satisfy myself in that most difficult of all stanzas. I verily believe that in the same time I could have composed ten poems of the equal length in any other measure; – but no other would have been so appropriate.

Our weather during the present month has been very unfavourable – premature & severe cold, changes as sudden as they were great, – violent storms, – heavy rain, & a heavy unwholesome oppressive atmosphere. To this I attribute a severe but short bilious attack from which thank God Cuthbert is just recovered. Today we have physicked the two girls

& one of the servants. For myself, I take exercise, rub myself down, eat drink & sleep well, & am in as good condition for mental exertion as ever I was, whatever I may be in other respects.

I would have written the Epilogue

at Edwards desire if I could, – but I could have planned half a dozen poems of great pith & moment

in less time than it would have cost me to have hammered out what after all I should have been ashamed of.

Scaliger

has amused me greatly, – & made me hungry for farther reading of the same kind. I wish I had Erasmus’s Epistles

– which must be full of good matter. If that Royal Society of Literature

(or whatever they call themselves) had been founded upon any intelligible plan or with any views of common sense, it might have done excellent service to literature, by promoting works which never can be executed while Trade presides over the Press. A series of lives of the restorers of literature, – & a collection of their letters, properly edited, with all necessary notes, are some of the plans which might have been effected by a proper application of their misdirected means. It is vexatious to see good intentions marred by weak heads.