Chapter LXIII: Letter 122: To W. Gifford, Esq

"June 18. 1813.

"My dear Sir,

"I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all--still more to
thank you as I ought. If you knew the veneration with which I have
ever regarded you, long before I had the most distant prospect of
becoming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my embarrassment
would not surprise you.

"Any suggestion of yours, even were it conveyed in the less tender
shape of the text of the Baviad, or a Monk Mason note in Massinger,
would have been obeyed; I should have endeavoured to improve myself
by your censure: judge then if I should be less willing to profit
by your kindness. It is not for me to bandy compliments with my
elders and my betters: I receive your approbation with gratitude,
and will not return my brass for your gold by expressing more fully
those sentiments of admiration, which, however sincere, would, I
know, be unwelcome.

"To your advice on religious topics, I shall equally attend.
Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding them altogether. The
already published objectionable passages have been much commented
upon, but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted. I am no
bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the
immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence
of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and
_our world_, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, of
which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our
pretensions to eternity might be over-rated.

"This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school,
where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my life,
afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a
disease of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochondria."[73]

[Footnote 73: The remainder of this letter, it appears, has been lost.]

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