Autograph letter signed : place of writing not specified, to [C.M. Westmacott], 1837 January 15.

Sending two poems and suggesting, "if you think it would not offend her", that one of them be addressed to Mrs. Norton, "the Corinna of England"; asking that he "entreat" his people not to "murder" his verses with misprints and detailing some of the errors found in previously published pieces; criticizing a speech delivered in Glasgow by Sir Robert Peel ("Bobby Peel's speech was ridiculous - good per se, but ridiculous as addressed to those little Glasgow snobs. Quoting Homer & Cicero to them! ... even if they knew the languages they cd not understand a syllable he said. I know that I have heard Scotchman in Scotland recite Latin, & I cd not understand a syllable they said. ... But what I dislike it most for is its ambition-encouraging tone - a sop to the Radicals. Are we to have no hewers of wood & drawers of water?"); contrasting his verse to that of the "modern school", "I care about the sense - these folk only attend to sound"; explaining that he has not written a prose article as he has not heard from the recipient "about our bargain"; expressing his opinion of Bentley's ("The articles in his first number are all light - frothy, with heavy wet under the froth not the essence of Champagne") and the New Monthly ("It seems to me that the writers write against time - common place & old jokes").