I am sure. One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my older
friends. I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging
yourself would appear to _Quakers_, and put their objection in my own
foolish mouth. I would eat my words (provided they should be written on
not very coarse paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your,
and my once, harmless occupation. I have read Napoleon and the rest with
delight. I like them for what they are, and for what they are not. I
have sickened on the modern rhodomontade & Byronism, and your plain
Quakerish Beauty has captivated me. It is all wholesome cates, aye, and
toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I were George Fox, and George
Fox Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute IMPRIMATUR. I
hope I have removed the impression.

I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained to that
gally thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood. If no
imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one. Do "Friends" allow
puns? _verbal_ equivocations?--they are unjustly accused of it, and I
did my little best in the "imperfect Sympathies" to vindicate them.

I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy. Did you see a sonnet
to this purpose in the Examiner?--

"Who first invented Work--and tied the free
And holy-day rejoycing spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of business, in the green fields, and the town--
To plough--loom--anvil--spade--&, oh, most sad,
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being Unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad