SINCE I saw you I have been gradually, too gradually perhaps, improving; and though under an interdict with respect to animal food living upon pseudo victuals, Brown says I have pick’d up a little flesh lately. If I can keep off inflammation for the next six weeks I trust I shall do very well. You certainly should have been at Martin’s dinner for making an index is surely as dull work as engraving . . . Brown has been mightily progressing with his Hogarth. A damn’d melancholy picture it is, and during the first week of my illness it gave me a psalm singing nightmare, that made me almost faint away in my sleep. I know I am better, for I can bear the Picture . . .

I am sorry to see by Mrs D’s note that she has been so unwell with the spasms. Does she continue the Medicines that benefited her so much? I am affraid not. Remember me to her and say I shall not expect her at Hampstead next week unless the Weather changes for the warmer. It is better to run no chance of a supernumery cold in March . . . You must improve in your penmanship; your writing is like the speaking of a child of three years old, very understandable to its father but to no one else. The worst is it looks well — no that is not the worst — the worst is, it is worse than Bailey’s. Bailey’s looks illegible and may perchance be read; your’s looks very legible and may perchance not be read — I would endeavour to give you a facsimile of your word Thistlewood if I were not minded on the instant that Lord chesterfield has done some such thing to his Son.

Now I would not bathe in the same River with lord C. though I had the upper hand of the stream . . . You must recollect I have served no apprenticeship to old plays, If the only copies of the greek and Latin authors had been made by you, Bailey and Haydon they Were as good as lost. It has been said that the Character of a Man may be known by his hand writing — if the Character of the age may be known by the average goodness of said, what a slovenly age we live in. Look at Queen Elizabeth’s Latin exercises and blush. Look at Milton’s hand — I cant say a word for shakespeare.