My greatest difficulty will be to avoid that _grievous_ defect of running one number into another, I not being present at the printing. To really cut down or stretch out every subject to the Procrustes-Bed of sixteen pages is not possible without a sacrifice of my whole plan, but most often I will divide them polypus-wise, so that the first half should get itself a new tail of its own, and the latter a new head, and _always_ take care to leave off at a paragraph. With my best endeavours I am baffled in respect of making one Essay fill one number. The tenth number is, W. thinks, the most interesting, "On the Errors of both Parties," or "Extremes Meet;" and, do what I would, it stretched to seven or eight pages more; but I have endeavoured to take your advice _in toto_, and shall announce to the public that, with the exception of my volume of Political Essays and State Memorials, and some technical works of Logic and Grammar, I shall consider "The Friend" as both the reservoir and the living fountain of all my mind, that is, of both my powers and my attainments, and shall therefore publish all my poems in "The Friend," as occasion rises. I shall begin with the "Fears in Solitude," and the "Ode on France," which will fill up the remainder of No. 11; so that my next Essay on vulgar Errors concerning Taxation, in which I have alluded to a conversation with you, will just fill No. 12 by itself.
I have been much affected by your efforts respecting poor Blake. Cannot you with propriety give me that narrative? But, above all, if you have no _particular_ objection, no _very_ particular and _insurmountable_ reason against it, do, do let me have that divine narrative of John Walford,[61] which of itself stamps you a poet of the first class in the pathetic, and the painting of poetry so very rarely combined.
As to politics, I am sad at the very best. Two cabinet ministers _duelling_ on Cabinet measures like drunken Irishmen. O heaven, Poole! this is wringing the dregs in order to drink the last drops of degradation. Such base insensibility to the awfulness of their situation and the majesty of the country! As soon as I can get them transcribed, I will send you some most interesting letters from the ablest soldier I ever met with (extra aide-de-camp to Sir J. Moore, and shot through the body at Flushing, but still alive); they will serve as a key to more than one woe-trumpet in the Apocalypse of national calamity. But the truth is, that to combine a government every way fitted as ours is for quiet, justice, freedom, and commercial activity _at home_, with the conditions of raising up that individual greatness, and of securing in every department the very man for the very place, which are requisite for maintaining the safety of our Empire and the Majesty of our power abroad, is a state-riddle which yet remains to be solved. I have thought myself as well employed as a private citizen can be, in drawing off well-intentioned patriots from the wrong scent and pointing out _what_ the _true_ evils are and _why_, and the exceeding difficulty of removing them without hazarding worse.... I was asked for a motto for a _market clock_. I uttered the following literally, without a moment's premeditation:--