FROM MR. GAY.
TO MORROW we set out for Amesbury, where I propose to follow your advice, of employing myself about some work against next winter. You seemed not to approve of my writing more fables. Those I am now writing, have a prefatory discourse before each of them, by way of epistle, and the morals, of them mostly are of the political kind; which makes them run into a greater length than those I have already published. I have already finished fifteen or sixteen; four or five more would make a volume of the same size as the first. Though this is a kind of writing that appears very easy, I find it is the most difficult of any that I ever undertook. After I have invented one fable, and finished it, I despair of finding out another; but I have a moral or two more, which I wish to write upon. I have also a sort of scheme to raise my finances by doing something for the stage: with this, and some reading, and a great deal of exercise, I propose to pass my summer. I am sorry it must be without you. Why cannot you come and saunter about the downs a horseback, in the autumn, to mark the partridges for me to shoot for your dinner? Yesterday I received your letter, and notwithstanding your reproaches of laziness, I was four or five hours about business, and did not spend a shilling in a coach or chair. I received a year's interest on your two bonds,
