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 publication, all I can say is that as soon as paper arrives, your lordship shall be master both of the time and the manner, so far as is in my power; but until we get a recruit of paper, which has long been wholly exhausted, it is not possible to publish the first volume, since there are two sections of it still unprinted."

On June 17, however, he reports a change for the better: "Our paper arrived in the Downs last week, and is in port probably by this time, so that we shall now carry on our work with all possible vigour; and if we cannot publish both the volumes in Michaelmas term, which my managers, however, promise me to do, I will undertake at least at all adventures for the publication of the first."

The work still did not progress. Middleton writes on August 24: "I should sooner have paid my thanks if I had not been tempted to wait these two or three posts by the daily expectation of being able to send you some good news from the press, but I have the mortification still to acquaint your lordship that we have not printed a sheet since I saw your lordship, and though I wrote to my bookseller above three weeks ago to know what end we are to expect to this unaccountable interruption, yet I have not heard a word from him."

But on September 4 he reports himself at the end of his troubles, so far as concerns the supply of paper: "I could not omit the first opportunity of acquainting your lordship that we have received a stock of paper at last from Genoa, sufficient for finishing the first volume, and have provided a