"You ask me why I am not intimate with Wilson. There is
a sufficient reason in the distance between our
respective abodes. I seldom go even to Wordworth's or
Lloyd's; and Ellery is far enough from either of their
houses, to make a visit the main business of a day. So
it happens that except dining in his company once at
Lloyd's many years ago, and breakfasting with him here
not long afterwards, I have barely exchanged
salutations once or twice when we met upon the road.
Perhaps, however, I might have sought him had it not
been for his passion for cock-fighting. But this is a
thing which I regard with abhorrence.
"Would that 'Roderick' were in your hands for
reviewing; I should desire no fairer nor more competent
critic. But it is of little consequence what friends or
enemies may do for it now; it will find its due place
in time, which is slow but sure in its decisions. From
the nature of my studies, I may almost be said to live
in the past; it is to the future that I look for my
reward, and it would be difficult to make any person
who is not thoroughly intimate with me, understand how
completely indifferent I am to the praise or censure of
the present generation, farther than as it may affect
my means of subsistence, which, thank God, it can no
longer essentially do.
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