"By the by, one of my corrections in the fair copy sent yesterday has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom--
"When Garrick died, and Brinsley ceased to write.
Ceasing to _live_ is a much more serious concern, and ought not to be first; therefore I will let the old couplet stand, with its half rhymes 'sought' and 'wrote.'[51] Second thoughts in every thing are best, but, in rhyme, third and fourth don't come amiss. I am very anxious on this business, and I do hope that the very trouble I occasion you will plead its own excuse, and that it will tend to show my endeavour to make the most of the time allotted. I wish I had known it months ago, for in that case I had not left one line standing on another. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as much as I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning. When I began 'Childe Harold,' I had never tried Spenser's measure, and now I cannot scribble in any other.
"After all, my dear Lord, if you can get a decent Address elsewhere, don't hesitate to put this aside. Why did you not trust your own Muse? I am very sure she would have been triumphant, and saved the Committee their trouble--''tis a joyful one' to me, but I fear I shall not satisfy even myself. After the account you sent me, 'tis no compliment to say you would have beaten your candidates; but I mean that, in _that_ case, there would have been no occasion for their being beaten at all.
"There are but two decent prologues in our tongue--Pope's to Cato--Johnson's to Drury Lane. These, with the epilogue to the 'Distrest Mother,' and, I think, one of Goldsmith's, and a prologue of old Colman's to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, are the best things of the kind we have.
"P.S.--I am diluted to the throat with medicine for the stone; and Boisragon wants me to try a warm climate for the winter--but I won't."
"Such are the names that here your plaudits sought, When Garrick acted, and when Brinsley wrote."
"Dear are the days that made our annals bright, Ere Garrick fled, or Brinsley ceased to write." ]
"I have just received your very kind letter, and hope you have met with a second copy corrected and addressed to Holland House, with some omissions and this new couplet,