In humble imitation of my aforesaid friend Mr. Godwin, and of divers other well-reputed authors, I have written this life in one hundred and seventy-eight quires of foolscap paper, in a small and close, but neat hand; which by my computation, having counted the number of words therein contained, as well as the number of words in the learned Bishop Watson's life of himself (which made my excellent friend Dr. Snodgrass, who lent me the same, facetiously declare, that I was the only man he ever knew who could get through it); I say, having counted all these words, I find that my life of Mr. Whittington (including thirteen quires on the general history of Cats) would, if duly printed after the manner of Mr. Davison, who never puts more than sixteen lines into a quarto page, make or constitute five volumes of a similar size and shape to Dr. Watson's life, which, with cuts by Mr. John Britton, author of several curious topographical works, might be sold for the reasonable sum of £31 10_s._, being only six guineas the volume; and if it should please the Legislature, in its wisdom, to repeal the Copy-right Bill (by which costly books are made accessible to poor students at the Universities, who have no business with such sort of works), my said work might be furnished at the reduced price of £31 4_s._ 6_d._ But small as this sum is, it is with grief I say, that such is the badness of the times, occasioned by the return of peace, and the late long succession of plentiful harvests, that I find booksellers strangely reluctant to embark in this transaction with me.[28] They offer indeed to print my work if I can get it previously praised in the _Edinburgh Review_; and the Reviewers say, that they are not unwilling to praise it, but that it must, of a necessity, be previously printed. I have observed to Mr. Jeffrey in my seventh letter to him on this subject, that this condition is not only new and injurious to me, but, by his own showing, clearly gratuitous and unnecessary; because, for aught that appears in the generality of his articles, he may never have read the work which is the subject-matter of them; nay, it hath sometimes been proved from the context, that he never hath even seen the work at all; and as this little accident hath not hindered his writing an excellent essay under colour of such work, so I contended, that he need not now make the preliminary _sine quâ non_, as to having my work printed; for "de non impressis et de non lectis eadem est ratio." But I grieve to say, that all my well-grounded reasoning hath been unavailing; and as neither party will give up his notion, I stand at a dead lock between the booksellers and reviewers.