en lecturing; I have been sick; I have been beaten about in
all ways. Nay, at bottom, it was only three days ago that I got
the _Bibliopoliana_ back from Fraser; to whom, as you
recommended, I, totally inadequate like yourself to understand
such things, had straightway handed them for examination. I
always put off writing till Fraser should have spoken. I did not
urge him, or he would have spoken any day: there is my sin.

Fraser declares the Accounts to be made out in the most beautiful
manner; intelligible to any human capacity; correct so far as
he sees, and promising to yield by and by a beautiful return of
money. A precious crop, which we must not cut in the blade;
mere time will ripen it into yellow nutritive ears yet. So he
thinks. The only point on which I heard him make any criticism
was on what he called, if I remember, "the number of Copies
_delivered,_"--that is to say, delivered by the Printer and
Binder as actually available for sale. The edition being of a
Thousand, there have only 984 come bodily forth; 16 are "waste."
Our Printers, it appears, are in the habit of _adding_ one for
every fifty beforehand, whereby the _waste_ is usually made good,
and more; so that in One Thousand there will usually be some
dozen called "Author's copies" over and above. Fraser supposes
your Printers have a different custom. That is all. The rest is
apparently every-way _right;_ is to be received with faith;
with faith, charity, and even hope,--and packed into the bottom
of one's drawer, never to be looked at more except on the
outside, as a memorial of one of the best and helpfulest of men!
In that capacity it shall lie there.

My Lectures were in May, about _Great Men._ The misery of it was
hardly equal to that of former years, yet still was very hateful.
I had got to a certain feeling of superiority over my audience;
as if I had something to tell them, and would tell it them. At
times I felt as if I could, in the end, learn to speak. The
beautiful people listened with boundless tolerance, eager
attention. I meant to tell them, among other things, that man
was still alive, Nature not dead or like to die; that all true
men continued true to this hour,--Odin himself true, and the
Grand Lama of Thibet himself not wholly a lie. The Lecture on
Mahomet ("the Hero as Prophet") astonished my worthy friends
beyond measure. It seems then this Mahomet was not a quack? Not
a bit of him! That he is a be