University of Virginia Library

I should deserve to be entirely discarded from your good opinion if I
did not take an early opportunity of replying to your last kind letter just
received. I sincerely hope you will not allow a negligence which is constitution
al & impartial which has lately found some excuse in the pressure of a
good deal of business, to exclude me from your friendship. I will not promise
to do better for the future, because the strongest resolutions are sometimes unavail
=ing, & promises unexecuted are only covert insults.

I do not recollect to have objected to the title of your lucrubrations. The
latin word Adversaria, though I see no etymological reason for it, has been always
applied to the use which you have made of it. A certain Dutch Latinist who
once attempted to find good Roman words for all the terms Spheazes used among
merchants employed with great propriety, the term Adversaria for a Ledger; matters
of account being there arranged, as we all know, in opposition to each other
My Library is not rich enough to contain the Lexicographic treasury of Henry
Stephens, but I suppose old Lagun did not overlook it when he was raking
his learned heapthere I did find it. together & I'll look for it there. I cannot imagine
where else you, my friend, chanced to light upon it. There are few, even among
Erudites themselves, who look to any more ancient or more trustworthy guide
thro the labyrinths of Greek & Latin than Lehrevelius & Ainsworth. I, indeed,
having neither of these, am obliged to rely, for my Latin, on an old worm
eaten dictionary of Latin, Greek & English of the seventeenth century completed
by one Thomas Holyoke, or, as he himself translates his name, Thomas de
Sacra Quercu, alias Holiokeus.

You mention that a number of the mag. was still due at Baltimore
I believe the delay has arisen from want of paper, at any rate, this no fault

of the editors.— This is a good opportunity for telling you that the magazine is
going to be metamorphosed, from a monthly, to a semiannual affair. Whether
it will lose by this change, or gain, in any other respect than in intrinsic value
I cannot foresee. Conrad thinks it will benefit, as to vendability, this opinion is
sufficient to influence me tho' my labour, especially the labour of reflexion, will
be greatly augmented. The work is, as nearly as possible, to take the shape of
the British Annual registers, & to consist of the various departments to be found
in them. I am just going to prepare a prospectus, which, when published,
you will see, of course: permit me to request your sentiments as to the eligibi
=lity of this plan. The mag: has now subsisted more than three years: a very
long life for an American publication of this kind. It is quite time that it
should die, in the order of Nature; of pure old age.

You have reason to say that experience has justified your sticking close to
your profession when the first or second year gives you twelve or fifteen hundred
dollars. This is a success which not one young man among an hundred can
boast of, even after five or seven years of probation. I should sincerely
grieve if I were to see your attention even divided by any other object
than law, I mean any literary object, for it is in vain to pray against
the intrusion of every diverting or seductive phantom without exception There
is one phantom from whose visits at your gravest or busiest moments, it is not
possible, nor perhaps desirable to guard you. I mean woman. Your age & your
constitution of mind will never allow you a moment perfect tranquility or so=
ber application till you are married. Your friends Merediths destiny, I see,
provokes an Eheu!, but I suspect there is more of envy than of pity in the
sigh. When I hear you are married I shall rejoice. When I have discovered
what kind of wife you have got, my joy may be converted into grief, or it
may be raised into higher joy; but that you are married is, so far, good news
This subject always reminds me of an old ditty of my own inditing in my versifying days.

You will probably think the council as poor as the terms in which it is
conveyed;— but, seriously, & in plain prose, I assure you that I shall be
extremely glad of an opportunity to wish you joy of a wife. You'll never
be at ease, nor settle down into a good thorough going lawyer till you
have one.