“We arrived here without any accident about five o’clock on Monday evening. The good weather made our journey pleasant. I have been attending to your commissions here, and find that the last volume of Dodsley’s Annual Register published is that for 1787, which I was about to send you; but the bookseller I frequent had not one in boards, though he expects to procure one for me. There is a new work of the same title and size, on the same plan, which, being published every year regularly, has almost cut out Dodsley’s, so that this last is expected to stop altogether. You will let me know if you would wish to have the new work, which is a good one, will join very well with those volumes of Dodsley’s, which you already have, and is published up to the present year. Byron’s Narrative is not yet published, but you shall have it whenever it comes out.
“Agreeable to your permission, I send you the scroll
copy of an essay on the origin of the feudal system, written for the Literary
Society last year. As you are kind enough to interest yourself in my style and
manner of writing, I thought you might like better to see it in its original
state, than one on the polishing of which more time had been bestowed. You will
see that the intention and attempt of the essay is principally to controvert
two propositions laid down by the writers on
| ESSAY ON THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, &c. | 173 |
“I also send, as amusement for an idle half hour, a copy of the regulations of our Society, some of which will, I think, be favoured with your approbation.
“My mother and sister join in compliments to aunt and you, and also in thanks for the attentions and hospitality which they experienced at Rosebank. And I am ever your affectionate nephew,
“P.S—If you continue to want a mastiff, I think I can procure you one of a good breed, and send him by the carrier.”
