e five hundred more to which additional labour would
have been serviceable. Not that I regret the absence of such labour,
because no poem contains more proofs of skill acquired by practice.
These observations are not called out by any defects or imperfections in
your last pieces especially: they are equal to the former ones in
effect, have many beauties, and are not inferior in execution; but again
I do venture to submit to your consideration, whether the poetical parts
of your nature would not find a field more favourable to their exercise
in the regions of prose: not because those regions are humbler, but
because they may be gracefully and profitably trod with footsteps less
careful and in measures less elaborate. And now I have done with the
subject, and have only to add, that when you write verses you would not
fail, from time to time, to let me have a sight of them; provided you
will allow me to defer criticism on your diction and versification till
we meet. My eyes are so often useless both for reading and writing, that
I cannot tax the eyes and pens of others with writing down observations
which to indifferent persons must be tedious.

Upon the whole, I am not sorry that your project of going to London at
present is dropped. It would have grieved me had you been unfurnished
with an introduction from me to Mr. Coleridge; yet I know not how I
could have given you one--he is often so very unwell. A few weeks ago he
had had two attacks of cholera, and appears to be so much broken down
that unless I were assured he was something in his better way I could
not disturb him by the introduction of any one. His most intimate friend
is Mr. Green, a man of science and a distinguished surgeon. If to him
you could procure an introduction he would let you know the state of
Coleridge's health; and to Mr. Green, whom I once saw, you might use my
name with a view to further your wish, if it were at all needful.

Shakspeare's sonnets (excuse this leap) are not upon the Italian model,
which Milton's are; they are merely quatrains with a couplet tacked to
the end; and if they depended much upon the versification they would
unavoidably be heavy.

One word upon Reform in Parliament, a subject to which, somewhat
reluctantly, you allude. You are a Reformer! Are you an approver of the
Bill as rejected by the Lords? or, to use Lord Grey's words, anything
'as efficient?'--he means, if he means anything, for producing change.
Then I earnest