same helps towards the study of the manners and characters of men, must be a study of an inferior nature.
You have taken infinite pains, and pursued your inquiries with great sagacity, not only in this respect, but in such of your notes as hitherto I have been able to peruse. You have earned your repose by public spirited labour. But I cannot help hoping that when you have given yourself the relaxation which you will find necessary to your health, if you are not called to exert your great talents, and employ your great acquisitions in the transitory service to your country which is done in active life, you will continue to do that permanent service which it receives from the labours of those who know how to make the silence of their closets more beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and camps.
I beg leave to send you a pamphlet which I have lately published.[1] It is of an edition more correct I think, than any of the first; and rendered more clear in points where I thought, in looking over again what I had written, there was some obscurity. Pray do not think my not having done this more early was owing to neglect or oblivion, or from any want of the highest and most sincere respect to you; but the truth is (and I have no doubt you will believe me) that it was a point of delicacy which prevented me from doing myself that honour. I well knew that the publication of your Shakspeare was hourly expected; and I thought if I had sent that small donum, the fruit of a few weeks, I might have subjected myself to the suspicion of a little Diomedean policy, in drawing from you a return of the value of a hundred cows for my nine. But you have led the way, and have sent me gold, which I can only repay you in my brass. But pray admit it on your shelves; and you will show yourself generous in your acceptance as well as your gift. Pray present my best respects to Lord and Lady Sunderlin, and to Miss Malone. I am, with the most sincere affection and gratitude,
My dear Sir,
Your most faithful and obliged humble servant,
Edmund Burke.
