Written from "60 Warren St. Fitzroy Square."
Apologizing for spilling ink on a copy of poems by Kemble that Taylor had loaned to him and discussing his biography of Mrs. Siddons; saying "At length my offense is declared, and is as black as Ink can make it. You state it with your accustomed pleasantry, that it may seem the lighter in my eye. 'You say I might have sold it' (that must mean the book) for many guineas some years ago and now nobody would give a farthing for them' (I am afraid you mean the poems.) But permit me very seriously to beg your pardon for a damage I fear irreparable. 'Dost thou hear me, Hal' when I restored to you the precious loan of Kemble's poems, I saw their condition, pshaw I mean the state of the brochure; but as I knew they had never been out of my own writing desk, I hoped that they had been so disfigured when I received them. I now see that, in letting the glass, with fresh ink, into its square box, it must have cracked, and the black mixture produced its full effect upon the [illegible] below. If you will allow me, Allaway my binder shall with Lady Macbeth repeat the 'out, damned spot' until the chemical process have rendered it (the brochure I mean, not the poems) as white as snow. Once more forgive unconscious undesigned mischief. If I ever find my own clean copy it shall be yours. The Mirror is without spot; I looked in it this very morning. Yes, my old friend, I am writing the progress of Mrs. Siddons in her divine art, and hope to do full justice to her brilliant appearance in 1782. You can no doubt be of service in bringing out your 'hive of hoarded sweets' on this subject. Anything from your memory merits attention even when robbed of the personal grace of your own delivery. But as you and I never compliment one another, I refuse myself the pleasure of enlarging upon a theme so grateful. I have no doubt that there will be difficulties thrown in my way by some persons anxious themselves to become biographers; but the art of our Siddons can only be known entirely to her contemporaries - You and I, in any tributes of this nature, cannot wait for death who is perhaps waiting for us. I write, while I am able, what, if I did not write it, might be done at last imperfectly, and the beginning of her greatness be only conjectured by younger writers from(?) its decline and fall. My family as far as 'Quite Correct' are united in their kind respects - I am, as you teach me to be, / yours Sincerely."