and indeed he has taken care to preserve for himself the only advantage he can ever have over you, by making his edition far more legible than that which you last published. The quarto however will not I trust, be affected by it: indeed, I now wish for its success more ardently than ever. Yet it is whispered here among the booksellers that the present state of the times may possibly retard its coming forth. I hope otherwise.
A month later his lordship writes again:
Improbus—with your ardour, talents, and indefatigable diligence, my dearest Malone, it is utterly impossible you should fail of success. We may now flatter ourselves that we shall shortly know all that ever can be known of that first of bards, whose writings alone would have rendered the poetick fame of his country immortal.
All I dread is that your sight—with which mine has a sad fellow-feeling—will never hold out to the end of your pursuit; and the bare idea of your having examined three thousand antique papers, the greater part of which were legible with difficulty, makes, I confess, my poor eyes ache. . . . .
He adverts again to the quarto edition, and learns from Mercier, “an intelligent bookseller in Dublin, that some of the plates are already finished and well executed.” But this information proved erroneous. The times also would not admit of expensive editions such as the quarto with plates; nor even the quarto form without plates, as he next proposed. Two years, 1794–95, were spent in various projects between him and the booksellers, without satisfactory results. His first edition had been some time exhausted. All that was done to replace it was a cheap reprint, in seven small volumes, without the dissertations or poems;—so insignificant in his view,
