It appears to be very unnecessary, my dear friend to trouble you with a letter just to tell you I am not coming to Town--but Papa tells me that he engaged that I should write--so being a dutiful daughter I obey. I am not detained by indisposition or any thing half so pretty-sounding being perfectly recovered from my cough & sound & flourishing as a red Cabbagein a housewife's garden--indeed it's quite provoking to have had so genteel a complaint (as a young lady of my acquaintance calls it) without the consolation of losing a whit of my ruddiness or rotundity--The reason that I cannot keep the engagement Papa made for me in London, is that I had before made one for myself in the Country--a young friend of mine, who is leaving the neighborhood & therefore not put-off-able is coming here for a couple of days on Sunday. I regret this very much since it prevents my seeing Miss James--I should regret it much more if I thought it would likewise prevent my seeing you but I do not--I have no such fear--You are pledged to the nightingales & white kitten & under their influenceauspices I shall be fortunate enough to see you myself. My Father will be in Town soon--Sundayperhaps, or Monday or Tuesday & you can settle with him or with me by letter when we shall have the pleasure of your company. He will certainly be home by Friday, before which day you I understand do not intend to leave London.

So you cannot readmake out my writing! And so my honoured Father cannot help you! Really this is too affronting! The two persons in all the world who have had the most of my letters cannot read them! Well there is the secret of your liking them so much--obscurity is sometimes a great charm--you just make out my meaning & fill it up by the force of your own imagination--the outline is mine--the colouring your own. So much the better for me. I assure you however whatever you may think of the matter that there are persons who write a worse hand than I. Here is my friend Mr. Dickinson--if you saw his writing! He can't read it himself--And if you heard him admire mine! Parmi les aveugles les borgnes sont Rois Proverbial for "Among the blind, the one-eyed is King." for this. He thinks me the greatest (what is the fine grand word for a person who writes a good hand?--Dear me I wish I had a Dictionary!) the greatest Calligrapher (is that spelt spelled right Mama?) that ever trod the earth--& I keep up my dignity & never tell him what you say or what Papa says I assure you. By the way Papa says he can read my writing in general--only he was puzzled in that particular case because it was a hard word & he had not got his spectacles. The word is Undine, Sir, U.N.D.I.N.E. Can you read it now?

I have not seen your friend but I have no doubt of his being quite right--I was always of his opinion about Pope--a great wit--a great Satyrist--a great writer certainly--but not a great Poet in the highest sense of the word, the sense in which Spenser& Milton are Poets. Even if Mr. Campbell had been right in the matter of his criticism his manner was the very worst that could have been devisedIn 1806, Bowles had edited a ten-volume edition of the complete works of Pope, entitled The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., in Verse and Prose: Containing the Principal Notes of Drs. Warburton and Warton. When Campbell published his Specimens of British Poets in 1819, Bowles replied with a pamphlet entitled The invariable principles of poetry, in a letter addressed to Thomas Campbell, Esq.; occasioned by some critical observations in his Specimens of British poets, particularly relating to the poetical character of Pope. Bowles continued the controversy into 1821 with a pamphlet to Byron entitled Two letters to the Right Honorable Lord Byron, in answer to his Lordship's letter to **** ****** on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles's strictures on the life and writings of Pope: more particularly on the question, whether poetry be more immediately indebted to what is sublime or beautiful in the works of nature, or the works of art?--an attempt at a sneer--not a sneer proper--for a good sneer is a great thing--a man had need have the upper lip of a Greek statue to to execute it--your good sneerers & have been of different persons from Mr. Thomas Campbell--Voltaire--Horne Tooke, Lord Byron, Buonaparte--these are your sneerers--Now Mr. Campbell is a pretty poet & a "smooth & sober gentleman" A quotation from on from March 1819. as he says of Drummond of Hawthornden--but no sneerer. He can't sneer, he does not know how--but he tries with all his might & main, & the objects whom he selects for this very unlucky attempt are Mr. Bowles, Mr. Lamb (a much better critic than himself by the bye) Webster, one of the greatest dramatists of the great Dramatic age & Fletcher's , the finest pastoral in any language. Truly I think he has put Mr. Bowles into very good company.

I have heard in two letters from Town from people who love Painting of the fine landscape which Papa tells me is to be a landscape royal-- O rare! He tells me of two of the flowers which are not in the Exhibition but which will be I hope next year. I always thought the anemone one of the loveliest of all flowers--the one which is fitter for painting because it has no scent to lose & all its char m can be given by that lovely Art. Some of the purple & red Anenomespreserve the rich lost tints of the old stained glass--You are lucky that a friend is just come to interrupt me & save you a platitude about Nature's never losing a beauty or a sunset, &c, &,--.

Goodbye my dear Sir William--Good bless you--Kindest regards from Papa & Mama.