your power; show yourselves superior to common prejudice, and by an
immediate exercise of your acknowledged pre-eminence of intellect,
suffer arrangements to be made for an accommodation and for a renewal of
that connexion which has heretofore been productive of honour and
profit. I am sure I have to apologize for having ventured to say so much
to men so much my superiors in sense and knowledge of the world and
their own interest; but sometimes the meanest bystander may perceive
disadvantages in the movements of the most skilful players.

You will not, I am sure, attribute anything which I have said to an
insensibility to the immediate advantages which will arise to myself
from a determination opposite to that which I have taken the liberty of
suggesting. It arises from a very different feeling. I should be very
little worthy of your great confidence and attention to my interest upon
this occasion, if I did not state freely the result of my humble
consideration of this matter; and having done so, I do assure you that
if the arrangements which you now propose are carried into effect, I
will apply the most arduous attention to your interest, to which I will
turn the channel of my own thoughts and business, which, I am proud to
say, is rising in proportion to the industry and honourable principles
which have been used in its establishment. I am every day adding to a
most respectable circle of literary connexions, and I hope, a few months
after the settlement of your present affairs, to offer shares to you of
works in which you will feel it advantageous to engage. Besides, as I
have at present no particular bias, no enormous works of my own which
would need all my care, I am better qualified to attend to any that you
may commit to my charge; and, being young, my business may be formed
with a disposition, as it were, towards yours; and thus growing up with
it, we are more likely to form a durable connexion than can be expected
with persons whose views are imperceptibly but incessantly diverging