engagement of your mind in worthy objects? Did I not, in your person,
make the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind people that was ever
made? If these things be not so, I never knew what I wrote or meant by
my writing, and have been penning libels all my life without being aware
of it. Does it follow that I should have expressed myself exactly in the
same way of those dear old eyes of yours _now_,--now that Father Time
has conspired with a hard taskmaster to put a last extinguisher upon
them? I should as soon have insulted the Answerer of Salmasius when he
awoke up from his ended task, and saw no more with mortal vision. But
you are many films removed yet from Milton's calamity. You write
perfectly intelligibly. Marry, the letters are not all of the same size
or tallness; but that only shows your proficiency in the _hands_--text,
german-hand, court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords variety. You
pen better than you did a twelvemonth ago; and if you continue to
improve, you bid fair to win the golden pen which is the prize at your
young gentlemen's academy.

* * * * *

But don't go and lay this to your eyes. You always wrote
hieroglyphically, yet not to come up to the mystical notations and
conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You never wrote what I call a
schoolmaster's hand, like Mrs. Clarke; nor a woman's hand, like Southey;
nor a missal hand, like Porson; nor an all-on-the-wrong-side sloping
hand, like Miss Hayes; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and-Persian, peremptory tory
hand, like Rickman: but you wrote what I call a Grecian's hand,--what
the Grecians write (or wrote) at Christ's Hospital; such as Whalley
would have admired, and Boyer [2] have applauded, but Smith or Atwood
[writing-masters] would have horsed you for. Your boy-of-genius hand and
your mercantile hand are various. By your flourishes, I should think you