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 148 Poole is recovered, as you are silent on that most alarming and interesting topic in both your last letters. God be with you in all things. My wife joins me in this prayer.—I am, dear Sir, yours sincerely affectionate,

35.

To William Hayley.

7th April 1804.

,—You can have no idea, unless you were in London as I am, how much your name is loved and respected. I have the extreme pleasure of transmitting to you one proof of the respect, which you will be pleased with, and I hope will adopt and embrace. It comes through Mr. Hoare, from Mr. Phillips of St. Paul's Churchyard. It is, as yet, an entire secret between Mr. P[hillips], Mr. H[oare], and myself, and will remain so till you have given your decision. Mr. Phillips is a man of vast spirit and enterprise, with a solidity of character which few have; he is the man who applied to Cowper for that sonnet in favour of a prisoner at Leicester, which I believe you thought