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Him your poem, while He is here, as I am sure you will promise me not to imitate yr Friend Pratt & say in an absurd advertisement, that yr poem is improved by Hints from the first literary characters of the age — His Poem on Sympathy has really very great merit, & I am sure you will forgive his very ill behaviour towards you on the consideration mentioned in my last – Yet let me entreat you, my dear Sister, to learn from what is past, how much we odd Beings called Authors ought to be on our Guard in the article of letters. For Heaven’s sake let no mortal peep at the hasty scrawls, that I dispatch to you, for I scribble to you not only in the most careless Haste, but with all the Frankness of the most unguarded affection. – I am at present particularly overwhelmed with literary Business. – not only being engaged in a very long Poem with tremendous annotations, which I want to finish before X^stmas, but obliged to stop in the middle of this work, to finish some additions to the Poem on History, which is to be reprinted, as soon as I can dispatch them – but I