‘SIR, The conversation we had on Sunday morning concerning Rousseau, Voltaire, Shakspeare, etc. started an idea as I was returning home, which I immediately put into the form you see. I would not have you suppose, Sir, I mean to depreciate the talents of Voltaire; that is far from my intention; I would only vindicate the poet who of all others within my sphere of knowledge, and as far as my judgment extends, is infinitely the greatest. I should have sent you the verses before, because I know your reverence for my favourite bard,[7] but that I kept them to see if after sleeping two or three nights I still thought them fit to be read. I am yet in doubt; for any thing middling on such a subject is contemptible. However, I have not yet shewn them to any person, except you, Sir, and Mr Bonneville, at whose lodgings they were written. ‘Clad in the wealthy robes his genius wrought, In happy dreams was gentle Shakspeare laid; His pleas’d soul wand’ring through the realms of thought, While all his elves and fairies round him play’d. ‘Voltaire approach’d—strait fled the quaint-eyed band, For Envy’s breath such sprites may not endure: He pilfer’d many a gem with trembling hand; Then stabb’d the bard to make the theft secure. ‘Ungrateful man! Vain was thy black design: Th’ attempt and not the deed thy hand defiled. Preserv’d by his own charms and spells divine, Safely the gentle Shakspeare slept and smiled.’ The conception of this little allegorical fiction, is certainly a very happy one, and the execution is no less spirited and elegant. With respect however to the enthusiasm with which Englishmen generally endeavour to persuade foreigners of the superlative excellence of our great dramatist, unless where it is taken up in self-defence, it is undoubtedly a species of quixotism, and of the most hopeless kind. The remittances which Mr Holcroft was to receive from his employer, were not so regular as he had expected. Indeed there seems to have been some unaccountable neglect on the part of Rivington,[8] and Mr Holcroft would have been reduced to very great distress, had it not been for the generous assistance afforded him by his friend Bonneville, who was himself in no very affluent circumstances. He was at last wearied out with the state of suspense and dependence in which he was kept, and in October he took the resolution of again returning to England. He however left his son behind him at a school, in or near Paris.