To Samuel Rose, Esq.
Weston, August 8, 1789.
My dear Friend,—Come when you will, or when you can, you cannot come at a wrong time; but we shall expect you on the day mentioned.
If you have any book that you think will make pleasant evening reading, bring it with you. I now read Mrs. Piozzi's[491] Travels to the ladies after supper, and shall probably have finished them before we shall have the pleasure of seeing you. It is the fashion, I understand, to condemn them. But we, who make books ourselves, are more merciful to book-makers. I would that every fastidious judge of authors were himself obliged to write: there goes more to the composition of a volume than many critics imagine.[492] I have often wondered that the same poet who wrote the "Dunciad," should have written these lines,
The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others, was the measure of mercy he received! He was the less pardonable too, because experienced in all the difficulties of composition.
I scratch this between dinner and tea: a time when I cannot write much without disordering my noddle and bringing a flush into my face. You will excuse me therefore, if, through respect for the two important considerations of health and beauty, I conclude myself.
Ever yours,
W. C.