DEAR Marter,—I have just recd your letter, having returned from a month’s holydays. My exertions for the London are, tho’ not dead, in a dead sleep for the present. If your club like scandal, Blackwood’s is your magazine; if you prefer light articles, and humorous without offence, the New Monthly is very amusing. The best of it is by Horace Smith, the author of the Rejected Addresses. The Old Monthly has more of matter, information, but not so merry. I cannot safely recommend any others, as not knowing them, or knowing them to their disadvantage. Of Reviews, beside what you mention, I know of none except the Review on Hounslow Heath, which I take it is too expensive for your ordering. Pity me, that have been a Gentleman these four weeks, and am reduced in one day to the state of a ready writer. I feel, I feel, my gentlemanly qualities fast oozing away—such as a sense of honour, neckcloths twice a day, abstinence from swearing, &c. The desk enters into my soul.
See my thoughts on business next Page.
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Who first invented work?—and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing Spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of Business in the green fields, and the Town—
To plough, loom, [anvil], spade, and (oh most sad!)
To this dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! He, who his unglad
Task ever plies ’mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel—
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel—
In that red realm from whence are no returnings;
Where toiling & turmoiling ever & aye
He and his Thoughts keep pensive worky-day.
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With many recollections of pleasanter times, my old compeer, happily released before me, Adieu.
