I received yours in course of post, and shall be glad to treat with you
for the M.S. which I have delivered to your friend Mr Behn; but can
by no means comply with the terms proposed. Those things are so
uncertain--Writing is all a lottery--I have been a loser by the works
of the greatest men of the age--I could mention particulars, and name
names; but don’t choose it--The taste of the town is so changeable.
Then there have been so many letters upon travels lately published--What
between Smollett’s, Sharp’s, Derrick’s, Thicknesse’s, Baltimore’s, and
Baretti’s, together with Shandy’s Sentimental Travels, the public seems
to be cloyed with that kind of entertainment--Nevertheless, I will,
if you please, run the risque of printing and publishing, and you shall
have half the profits of the impression--You need not take the trouble
to bring up your sermons on my account--No body reads sermons but
Methodists and Dissenters--Besides, for my own part, I am quite a
stranger to that sort of reading; and the two persons, whose judgment I
depended upon in those matters, are out of the way; one is gone abroad,
carpenter of a man of war; and the other, has been silly enough to
abscond, in order to avoid a prosecution for blasphemy--I’m a great
loser by his going off--He has left a manual of devotion half finished
on my hands, after having received money for the whole copy--He was the
soundest divine, and had the most orthodox pen of all my people; and I
never knew his judgment fail, but in flying from his bread and butter on
this occasion.
By owning you was not put in bodily fear by Lismahago, you preclude
yourself from the benefit of a good plea, over and above the advantage
of binding him over. In the late war, I inserted in my evening paper,
a paragraph that came by the post, reflecting upon the behaviour of a
certain regiment in battle. An officer of said regiment came to my shop,
and, in the presence of my wife and journeyman, threatened to cut off
my ears--As I exhibited marks of bodily fear more ways than one, to the
conviction of the byestanders, I bound him over; my action lay, and I
recovered. As for flagellation, you have nothing to fear, and nothing to
hope, on that head--There has been but one printer flogged at the cart’s
tail these thirty years; that was Charles Watson; and he assured me it
was no more than a flea-bite. C-- S-- has been threatened several times
by the House of L--; but it came to nothing. If an information should
be moved for, and granted against you, as the editor of those Letters,
I hope you will have honesty and wit enough to appear and take your
trial--If you should be sentenced to the pillory, your fortune is
made--As times go, that’s a sure step to honour and preferment. I shall
think myself happy if I can lend you a lift; and am, very sincerely,
Yours,
HENRY DAVIS. LONDON, Aug. 10th.
Please my kind service to your neighbour, my cousin Madoc--I have
sent an Almanack and Court-kalendar, directed for him at Mr Sutton’s,
bookseller, in Gloucester, carriage paid, which he will please to accept
as a small token of my regard. My wife, who is very fond of toasted
cheese, presents her compliments to him, and begs to know if there’s any
of that kind, which he was so good as to send us last Christmas, to be
sold in London.