As you have brought me into a little sort of disress, you must assist me, I believe, to get out of t as well as I can. Yesterday I had the misfortune of receiving a letter from certain gentlemen (as heir bookseller expresses it), who have taken the Magazine of Magazines into their hands: They ell me that an ingenious Poem, called reflections n a Country Church-yard, has been communicated o them, which they are printing forthwith; that hey are informed that the excellent author of it is by name, and that they beg not only his indulence, but the honour of his correspondence, &c. s I am not at all disposed to be either so indulent, or so correspondent, as they desire, I have ut one bad way left to escape the honour they ould inflict upon me; and therefore am obliged › desire you would make Dodsley print it immeiately (which may be done in less than a week's me) from your copy, but without my name, in hat form is most convenient for him, but on his est paper and character; he must correct the press imself, and print it without any interval between e stanzas, because the sense is in some places connued beyond them; and the title must be,-Elegy,

written in a Country Church-yard. If he would add a line or two to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better. If you behold the Magazine of Magazines in the light that I do, you will not refuse to give yourself this trouble on my account, which you have taken of your own accord before now. If Dodsley do not do this immediately, he may as well let it alone.

You will take me for a mere poet, and a fetcher and carrier of sing-song, if I tell you that I intend to send you the beginning of a drama, not mine, thank God, as you will believe, when you hear it is finished, but wrote by a person whom I have a very good opinion of. It is (unfortunately) in the manner of the ancient drama, with choruses, which I am to my shame the occasion of; for, as great part of it was at first written in that form, I would not suffer him to change it to a play fit for the stage, and as he intended, because the lyric parts are the best of it, they must have been lost. The story is Saxon, and the language has a tang of Shakespeare, that suits an old-fashioned fable very well. In short I don't do it merely to amuse you, but for the sake of the author, who wants a judge, and so I would lend him mine: yet not without your leave, lest you should have us up to dirty our stockings at the bar of your house, for wasting the time and politics of the nation. Adieu, Sir! I am ever yours,