" I know I am noways
better in practice than my neighors, but I have a taste for religion, an
occasional earnest aspiration after perfection, which they have not. I
gain, nothing by being with such as myself,--we encourage one another in
mediocrity, I am always longing to be with men more excellent than
myself. All this must sound odd to you; but these are my predominant
feelings when I sit down to write to you, and I should put force upon my
mind, were I to reject them, Yet I rejoice, and feel my privilege with
gratitude, when I have been reading some wise book, such as I have just
been reading,--Priestley on Philosophical Necessity,--in the thought
that I enjoy a kind of communion, a kind of friendship even, with the
great and good. Books are to me instead of friends, I wish they did not
resemble the latter in their scarceness.
And how does little David Hartley? "Ecquid in antiquam virtutem?" Does
his mighty name work wonders yet upon his little frame and opening mind?
I did not distinctly understand you,--you don't mean to make an actual
ploughman of him? Is Lloyd with you yet? Are you intimate with Southey?
What poems is he about to publish? He hath a most prolific brain, and is
indeed a most sweet poet. But how can you answer all the various mass of
interrogation I have put to you in the course of the sheet? Write back
just what you like, only write something, however brief.
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