't let it go any farther. I understand there
are dramatic exhibitions in China. One would not like to be forestalled.
Do you find in all this stuff I have written anything like those
feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend, that is gone
to wander among Tartars, and may never come again? I don't, but your
going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out
with thinking, it has come to me when I have been dull with anything,
till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have
introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much; but if I had you
here in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have
written, so--Those "Tales from Shakspeare" are near coming out, and Mary
has begun a new work, Mr. Dawe is turned author; he has been in such a
way lately,--Dawe the painter, I mean,--he sits and stands about at
Holcroft's and says nothing, then sighs, and leans his head on his hand.
I took him to be in love, but it seems he was only meditating a
work,--"The Life of Morland:" the young man is not used to composition.
Rickman and Captain Burney are well; they assemble at my house pretty
regularly of a Wednesday, a new institution. Like other great men, I have
a public day,--cribbage and pipes, with Phillips and noisy Martin Burney.

Good Heaven, what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze all I
know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn
lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. I shall get L200 from the
theatre if "Mr. H." has a good run, and I hope L100 for the copyright.
Nothing if it fails; and there never was a more ticklish thing. The
whole depends on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I
value myself on, as a _chef d'oeuvre_. How the paper grows less and
less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may
rave to the Great Wall of China. N.B.--Is there such a wall? Is it as
big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine
named Ball at Canton? If you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him.
Maybe you'll think I have not said enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts.
Tuthill is a noble fellow, as far as I can judge. The Holcrofts bear
their disappointment pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mortified.
Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well, if it were but on this account, that
Tuthill is come home. N.B.--If my little thing don't succeed, I shall
easily survive, having, as