Suppose you were a young Lady in the nineteenth year of your age, very busy in preparing certain remembrances to be transmitted by a safe opportunity to her distant friends, – & that some of these remembrances could not be finished for want of ultra-marine;

& that one of your fathers oldest & dearest friends, holding a high situation in his Majestys Exchequer, had promised to send you a cake of this indispensable colour, under cover of an official frank, – should not you think that the whole business of the Exchequer & all things connected therewith might be suspended, while the said ultra-marine <marine> was procured?

The Royal Irish Academy sent me, the other day, another tail to my name,

for the benefit of my next title-page. – I am glad this was done after my Irish Ode was written, & before it has appeared in the world.

I have to day received the proofs of my paper upon the Theophilanthropists in France & the Rise & Progress of Infidelity,

– & of course seen it for the first time as a whole. What opinion may be formed of it I cannot foresee; – but that with regard to individuals it will do some of the good which was intended, I do not doubt. And upon this first consecutive perusal, I am glad that I have written it.

Gifford has not written to me since his recovery. It is possible that he may not be in good humour with me for endeavouring to procure a successor for him, tho it was in consequence of his expressing to me the necessity of looking out for one. I certainly wish the Journal were in John Coleridges hands, both for personal & public considerations. The good which it might do is grievously counteracted by the gross inconsistencies which are now to be found in it, – its cruel & unmanly injustices on some occasions, – & its wretched cowardice on others. – I shall ask him if he will have an article upon Spain & Portugal,

– a question upon which I am quite willing to take the field against all the Whigs in the world. Oh how I could trample upon them!

I mean to ask Murray to print a selection of xxx my papers with restorations & revisions, in some such arrangement – as Essays – moral & political, which would fill two volumes,

– then as many more of Essays, historical & ecclesiastical, – & lastly critical & miscellaneous,

keeping each collection distinct, not to alarm the public with too much at once. In this manner he might put some money in my pocket & in his own. I should include some papers from the Annual Review & make up some from the Ed: An: Register