little question that he richly enjoyed writing when it was not for the
public eye. "It is not the letters of my friends which give me trouble,"
he wrote to one correspondent; to another he said, "I began with telling
you that I should not write a lengthy letter but the result has been to
contradict it;" and to a third, "when I look back to the length of this
letter, I am so much astonished and frightened at it myself that I
have not the courage to give it a careful reading for the purpose of
correction. You must, therefore, receive it with all its imperfections,
accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in
the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally
there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this
scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all,"
he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive
it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It
is now ten o'clock at night, after my usual hour for retiring to rest, and
the mail will be closed early to-morrow morning."

To his overseer, who neglected to reply to some of his questions, he told
his method of writing, which is worth quoting:


"Whenever I set down to write you, I read your letter, or letters
carefully over, and as soon as I come to a part that requires to be
noticed, I make a short note on the cover of a letter or piece of waste
paper;--then read on the next, noting that in like manner;--and so on
until I have got through the whole letter and reports. Then in writing my
letter to you, as soon as I have finished what I have to say on one of
these notes I draw my pen through it and proceed to another and another
until the whole is done--crossing each as I go on, by which means if I am
called off twenty times whilst I am writing, I can never with these notes