Autograph letter signed : Swansea, to Miss Smith, 1811 February 25.

Thanking Smith for her letter and the enclosed five pound note from an unnamed gentleman: "you will infinitely oblige me by assuring him of the sense I feel, of the honour he has done a work, which has been written more from the heart than the head but which I trust if he likes poetry, may afford him amusement for an idle half hour"; regarding the printing of her book Poetic Trifles: "I yesterday received a letter informing me that the poetry will occupy Seventeen Sheets -- that it will be impossible to work more than a sheet a week -- of consequence it must be June before it will be ready for delivery"; bemoaning the "delays of Printers"; assuring Smith of her gratitude for the "liberal and generous interest you have taken in my affairs -- me, a Stranger! without any other claim upon your consideration, than misfortune -- and those misfortunes too, the generality of the world will perhaps say, not altogether unmerited"; referring to lines spoken on the subject of gratitude by the character Charles Dudley in Richard Cumberland's play The West Indian; praising their mutual friend Mr. Rock (possibly Edward Anthony Rock) and describing the history of their friendship: "it was my misfortune to be a very tall girl at fourteen years of age -- I was much neglected by my family, and though not handsome, had an air of something, that exposed me to the attentions of men, with which my romantic brain and childish vanity was pleased. Mr. Rock, though then but a young man himself, used to admonish me of my danger, and point out the precipice on which I stood -- giddy as I was in that day, I listened to him with grateful attention -- but now since time and woeful experience have corrected my errors, I love and venerate him"; saying that she has enclosed a packet with some poems, which she is considering publishing and on which she solicits Miss Smith and Mr. Rock's "frank opinion"; saying that she has been reading the play Zenobia and that she hopes it "may repay your acknowledged abilities"; adding that she has still not heard from her brother John; saying that she receives sixty pounds a year from him and her sister Sarah Siddons, "but I have a mind on which kindness would have wonderful effects -- and the cold manner in which this money is bestowed, always makes me ill for two or three days, every quarter of a year -- and makes me wish that I was able to labour, for if I was, I think I would prefer working for my daily bread rather than accept a mere existence bestowed with a heartless I wish you well"; saying that she also receives twenty pounds annually as a bequest from her father Roger Kemble, though for many years she had assumed that the eighty pounds total she receives yearly was all due to her brother and sister's charity, until she learned otherwise from a Mrs. Mason; adding that she contrived to make "a tolerably genteel appearance" on this sum, until she went twenty pounds into debt for the sake of her late husband's daughter from his first marriage: "to liquidate this debt I commenced Authoress, and flatter myself that the sale of my Romance will restore me again to comparative tranquility -- for the idea of debt is horrible to my mind."