entirely helpless (not having any use of her limbs) that Mary is
necessarily confined from ever sleeping out, she being her bed fellow.
She thanks you tho' and will accompany me in spirit. Most exquisite are
the lines from Withers. Your own lines introductory to your poem on Self
run smoothly and pleasurably, and I exhort you to continue 'em. What
shall I say to your Dactyls? They are what you would call good per se,
but a parody on some of 'em is just now suggesting itself, and you shall
have it rough and unlicked. I mark with figures the lines parodied.

4.--Sorely your Dactyls do drag along lim'p-footed.
5.--Sad is the measure that han'gs a clod round 'em so,
6.--Meagre, and lan'guid, proclaiming its wretchedness.
1.--Weary, unsatisfied, not little sic'k of 'em.
11.--Cold is my tired heart, I have no charity.
2.--Painfully trav'lling thus over the rugged road.
7.--O begone, Measure, half Latin, half En'glish, then.
12.--Dismal your Dactyls are, God help ye, rhyming Ones.

I _possibly_ may not come this fortnight--therefore all thou hast to do
is not to look for me any particular day, only to write word immediately
if at any time you quit Bristol, lest I come and Taffy be not at home. I
_hope_ I can come in a day or two. But young Savory of my office is
suddenly taken ill in this very nick of time and I must officiate for
him till he can come to work again. Had the knave gone sick and died and
putrefied at any other time, philosophy might have afforded one comfort,
but just now I have no patience with him. Quarles I am as great a
stranger to as I was to Withers. I wish you would try and do something
to bring our elder bards into more general fame. I writhe with
indignation when in books of Criticism, where common place quotation is
heaped upon quotation, I find no mention of such men as Massinger, or B.