ARLINGTON STREET, Feb. 18, 1768.

You have sent me a long and very obliging letter, and yet I am extremely out of humour with you.  I saw Poems by Mr. Gray advertised:  I called directly at Dodsley’s to know if this was to be more than a new edition?  He was not at home himself, but his foreman told me he thought there were some new pieces, and notes to the whole.  It was very unkind, not only to go out of town without mentioning them to me, without showing them to me, but not to say a word of them in this letter.  Do you think I am indifferent, or not curious about what you write?  I have ceased to ask you, because you have so long refused to show me anything.  You could not suppose I thought that you never write.  No; but I concluded you did not intend, at least yet, to publish what you had written.  As you did intend it, I might have expected a month’s preference.  You will do me the justice to own that I had always rather have seen your writings than have shown you mine; which you know are the most hasty trifles in the world, and which though I may be fond of the subject when fresh, I constantly forget in a very short time after they are published.  This would sound like affectation to others, but will not to you.  It would be affected, even to you, to say I am indifferent to fame.  I certainly am not, but I am indifferent to almost anything I have done to acquire it.  The greater part are mere compilations; and no wonder they are, as you say, incorrect, when they are commonly written with people in the room, as “Richard"[1] and the “Noble Authors” were.  But I doubt there is a more intrinsic fault in them:  which is, that I cannot correct them.  If I write tolerably, it must be at once; I can neither mend nor add.  The articles of Lord Capel and Lord Peterborough, in the second edition of the “Noble Authors,” cost me more trouble than all the rest together:  and you may perceive that the worst part of “Richard,” in point of ease and style, is what relates to the papers you gave me on Jane Shore, because it was tacked on so long afterwards, and when my impetus was chilled.  If some time or other you will take the trouble of pointing out the inaccuracies of it, I shall be much obliged to you:  at present I shall meddle no more with it.  It has taken its fate:  nor did I mean to complain.  I found it was condemned indeed beforehand, which was what I alluded to.  Since publication (as has happened to me before) the success has gone beyond my expectation.

[Footnote 1:  He is here alluding to his own very clever essay, entitled “Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.”  It failed to convince Hume; but can hardly be denied to be a singularly acute specimen of historical criticism.  It does not, indeed, prove Richard to have been innocent of all the crimes imputed to him; but it proves conclusively that much of the evidence by which the various charges are supported is false.  In an earlier letter