I am glad to find that the management of the Quarterly Review is not to remain much longer in abeyance, & that it is likely to be placed in very competent hands. Looking at all the requisites which are necessary for such a task, I should think it impossible to find a person better qualified for it than John Coleridge. As a scholar he has been thoroughly bred, at Eton & at Oxford; he has a high University reputation,

– which tho but a feather in a scale, is a feather in a cap also. His principles are in every respect what they ought to be; I know no man who is more sincerely attached to the institutions of his country, nor who understands them better. He has all the attainments that the office requires, all the discretion & all the firmness. His connections are good; & his professional prospects such that it is deemed by some of his friends an act of imprudence in him to engage in any thing which may seem to interrupt them, – for that it is possible to be a man of business & of letters at the same time is far from being generally understood, tho few ages have afforded better examples of this union than our own.

Our own is indeed a marvellous age in whatever light it be regarded; & a pleasanter one there never can have been to have lived in for one, who like myself, has nothing to do in the world but to learn what has been done in former times, to observe what is going on, & to speculate upon what is to come. I am glad to see that your Conway papers are soon to see the light.

You were busy with them when I saw you last, & hardly then knew what treasures you might find there. A compleat body of such papers would be of as much importance to our history, as the publication of the Records, & of the original historians: & if the Royal Society of Literature

had had any thing to recommend it, except its good intent, it might have been made available to this, & other such purposes.

I have just now had a pressing application to undertake a continuation of Smolletts History.

But whatever I do must be done at my own time, & in my own way. Something in English history I have long thought of doing. It will be Murray’s fault if I do not produce a summary view of our political progress down to the accession of the present family, – under the title of the Book of the State, & follow it by the Age of George 3^d – with a brief view of the two intermediate reigns.

I think I know how this ought to be done. At present I am chearfully employed in proceeding with the Peninsular War,

& finishing a poem in the Spenserian stanza,

which tho of no great length has been a work of time.

The Bishop of Limerick induced me to make a half promise of visiting him in the ensuing spring. I told him I should prefer waiting till the next rebellion were over, – which I fear will not be by that time. The bed of roses

is not without its thorns at present. It is well that when the crisis th comes the struggle should assume its true character, of a war for separation & for Catholic ascendancy. I wrote an Ode upon the Kings Visit to Ireland,

which would naturally have concluded with a compliment to Marquis Wellesley;

– but I saw so little to hope & so much to fear that I had not heart to finish it as it should have finished, – otherwise I should have been glad to publish it.