“I hope your ode will be put to a better purpose than being used for match paper. I think you might easily polish it a little. ‘Owen's Return’ is very well written; yet I
think you might have given it a more pleasant cast, by making him come home ‘before his locks were grey.’ Besides I am not sure of its being proper to give him a harp at all; it is such an unwieldy instrument, that the mind cannot easily suppose a soldier to be carrying one of them about with him.
I must entreat you to burn John M———n’s last Will. I had not thought of it being in existence. I was surprised lately on seeing a person with a copy, which he lent me. He did not know of its being mine. I have burned it. Besides its being childishly low, John M——— is an industrious, peaceable old man, and is no subject for ridicule.” [1]
[1] John Mann, manufacture; Queen Street, was certainly a very respectable person, and the author only acted right in burning the piece entitled the “Last will.”—Ed,