On January 13th, a week after George's arrival, John took up his pen to try and write to his sister-in-law a journal letter in the old chatty affectionate style. If he had the means, he says, he would like to come and pay them a visit in America for a few months. 'I should not think much of the time, or my absence from my books; or I have no right to think, for I am very idle. But then I ought to be diligent, or at least to keep myself within reach of the materials for diligence. Diligence, that I do not mean to say; I should say dreaming over my books, or rather over other people's books.' He gossips about friends and acquaintances, less good-naturedly than usual, as he seems to be aware when he says, 'any third person would think I was addressing myself to a lover of scandal. But we know we do not love scandal, but fun; and if scandal happens to be fun, that is no fault of ours.' He tells how George is making copies of his verses, including the ode to the Nightingale; lets his inward embitterment show through for an instant when he says, 'If you should have a boy, do not christen him John, and persuade George not to let his partiality for me come across: 'tis a bad name, and goes against a man;' describes a dance he has been to at the Dilkes, and among a good deal of rather irritable and wry-mouthed social satire, to which he tries to give a colour of pleasantry and playfulness, strikes into sharp definition with the fewest possible words the characters of some of his friends and acquaintances:-- I know three witty people, all distinct in their excellence--Rice, Reynolds, and Richards. Rice is the wisest, Reynolds the playfullest, Richards the out-o'-the-wayest. The first makes you laugh and think, the second makes you laugh and not think, the third puzzles your head. I admire the first, I enjoy the second, I stare at the third.... I know three people of no wit at all, each distinct in his excellence--A, B, and C. A is the foolishest, B the sulkiest, C is a negative. A makes you yawn, B makes you hate, as for C you never see him at all though he were six feet high.--I bear the first, I forbear the second, I am not certain that the third is. The first is gruel, the second ditch-water, the third is spilt--he ought to be wiped up.