"The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and might prove a 'national service,' but unfortunately I must be angry with a man before I draw his real portrait; and I can't deal in '_generals_,' so that I trust never to have provocation enough to make a _Gallery_. If '_the_ parson' had not by many little dirty sneaking traits provoked it, I should have been silent, though I _had observed_ him. Here follows an alteration: put-- Devil with _such_ delight in damning, That if at the resurrection Unto him the free election Of his future could be given, 'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven; that is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things, and may be indulged now and then. "Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a horse and fire a pistol 'without thinking or blinking' like Major Sturgeon; I have fed at times for two months together on sheer biscuit and water (without metaphor); I can get over seventy or eighty miles a day _riding_ post, and _swim five_ at a stretch, as at Venice, in 1818, or at least I _could do_, and have done it ONCE. "I know Henry Matthews: he is the image, to the very voice, of his brother Charles, only darker--his laugh his in particular. The first time I ever met him was in Scrope Davies's rooms after his brother's death, and I nearly dropped, thinking that it was his ghost. I have also dined with him in his rooms at King's College. Hobhouse once purposed a similar Memoir; but I am afraid that the letters of Charles's correspondence with me (which are at Whitton with my other papers) would hardly do for the public: for our lives were not over strict, and our letters somewhat lax upon most subjects.[10] "Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity of _checking_, or at least _limiting_, those _French republications_. You may let all your authors publish what they please _against me_ and _mine_. A publisher is not, and cannot be, responsible for all the works that issue from his printer's.