Delany's book is what I cannot commend so much as dean Berkeley's, though it has many things ingenious in it, and is not deficient in the writing part: but the whole book, though he meant it ad populum, is I think purely ad clerum. Adieu.
DUBLIN, JUNE 12, 1731.
I DOUBT, habit has little power to reconcile us with sickness attended by pain. With me, the lowness of spirits has a most unhappy effect; I am grown less patient with solitude, and harder to be pleased with company; which I could formerly better digest, when I could be easier without it than at present. As to sending you any thing that I have written since I left you (either verse or prose) I can only say, that I have ordered by my will, that all my papers of any kind shall be delivered you to dispose of as you please. I have several things that I have had schemes to finish, or to attempt, but I very foolishly put off the trouble, as sinners do their repentance: for I grow every day more averse from writing, which is very natural, and when I take a pen say to myself a thousand times non est tanti[1]. As to those papers of four or five years past, that you are pleased to require soon; they consist of little
- ↑ It is not worth the trouble.
