Editor’s Notepg 28Editor’s Note2395To Francis Place31 July 1817 (Aet 69)

Ford Abbey near Chard Thursday 31 July 1817.

J.B. to F.P.

Mill wrote to you yesterday: to day, being interrogated, he says he has nothing to say to you.

Inclosed is my answer to the Mutl. Improvt. Society.² I send it closed, because propriety requires that it should have my seal to it. Copy will be visible to you, I plague you with it, rather than send it to H.K. because you have all along been the channel, and understand the mode of conveyance etc: but it is no part of my plan to tax you with the expense.

Here comes another plague: but among your faculties is that of being plague proof. Wanted here, to keep me from the blast of a lofty door, and thence from the tooth-ach, 5 Yards—yes five Yards—of Dimity—white Dimity—to make a curtain of: and to be got by you in the few hours which you will have between the receipt of these presents and your departure for this holy place.³ Once upon a time you burnt your fingers I remember though with a little of our assistance—with Dimity for the Curtains which by God's blessing you are about to see. Be it your care not to burn them thus a second time. The thicker the Dimity, for such a purpose, I suppose the better.

If you can not read this beautiful writing, go with it to the Parson of your Parish.

Every body here burns with impatience to take the Taylorus Taylororum by the hand.

Cruden's Concordance.⁴ A beautiful copy I have or had of it—a book I prize next to my Bible—is missing. Something was said to you about it I believe yesterday by Mill from me. A sort of recollection—half-recollection—strikes me—I hope it is not of the number of my false ones —that, after coming actually to Town as intended, it was borrowed bypg 29 Walter Coulson.⁵ If so, mention is as ought to be made of it, in a book in which entries of books lent by me are made. This book is kept in the room I sit in—in a place which H.K. knows of. There are a number of them— little thin memorandum-books, together on a shelf over or nearly over the fire place.

Coulson however will not for this week or more have been returned 〈…〉 〈…〉 in furlow. Mill says you have a Copy: but not knowing of any immediate need of it, I will not ask you to bring it. Yet upon second 〈..〉〈…〉bly you might as well: for if mine can not be found, I must have one of the new edition: and for convenience of consultation it must be bound 〈…〉 being continually in hand I would have it well bound: extra bound: and that would be a work of time: the sheets should have time to dry etc. One half-recollection is that Walter borrowed it: another is—that if he did, he returned it.

Let not H.K. cheat you of our expected Periodicals