By the by, one of my corrections in the fair copy sent yesterday has
dived into the bathos some sixty fathom:
When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.
Ceasing to _live_ is a much more serious concern, and ought not to be
first; therefore I will let the old couplet stand, with its half rhymes
"sought" and "wrote." [1]
Second thoughts in every thing are best, but, in rhyme, third and fourth
don't come amiss. I am very anxious on this business, and I do hope that
the very trouble I occasion you will plead its own excuse, and that it
will tend to show my endeavour to make the most of the time allotted. I
wish I had known it months ago, for in that case I had not left one line
standing on another. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as much as
I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line
stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning.
When I began _Childe Harold_, I had never tried Spenser's measure, and
now I cannot scribble in any other.
After all, my dear Lord, if you can get a decent _Address_ elsewhere,
don't hesitate to put this aside [2].
Why did you not trust your own Muse? I am very sure she would have been
triumphant, and saved the Committee their trouble--"'tis a joyful one"
to me, but I fear I shall not satisfy even myself. After the account you
sent me, 'tis no compliment to say you would have beaten your
candidates; but I mean that, in _that_ case, there would have been no
occasion for their being beaten at all.
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