When one commences an action with a full conviction they shall not acquit themselves with honor, they are sure not to succeed; imprest with this idea I write you. I positively declare I have felt a great reluctance ever since we concluded on the plan. I am aware of the construction you may put on this, but call it _affectation_ or what you will, I assure you it proceeds from different motives. When I first proposed this correspondence, I thought only of the amusement and instruction it would afford _me_. I almost forgot that I should have any part to perform. Since, however, I have reflected on the scheme as it was about to be carried into execution, I have felt a degree of diffidence which has almost induced me to hope you would _forget_ the engagement. Fully convinced of my inability to afford pleasure or instruction to an enlarged mind, I rely wholly on your candor and generosity to pardon the errors which will cloud my best efforts. When I reflect on the severity of your criticisms in general, I shrink at the idea of exposing to you what will never stand the test. Yet did I not imagine you would throw aside the _critic_ and assume the _friend_, I should never dare, with all my vanity (and I am not deficient), give you so fine an opportunity to exercise your favorite propensity. I know you will laugh at all this, and I must confess it appears rather a folly, first to request your correspondence and then with so much diffidence and false delicacy, apparently to extort a compliment, talk about my inability and the like. You will not think I intend a compliment when I say I have ever felt a disagreeable restraint when conversing before you. Often, when with all the confidence I possess I have brought forward an opinion, said all my imagination could suggest in support of it, and viewed with pleasure the little fabric, which I imagined to be founded on truth and justice, with one word you would crush to the ground that which had cost me so many to erect. These things I think in time will humble my vanity, I wish sincerely that they may.