Henry Crabb Robinson, 30 Russell Square, London, to William Wordsworth, Jr., [London], 1 January 1847.

1st Jan: 1847

30 Russell Square London

My dear friend

     I write to inform you that I have settled the momentous business of the plate to my own satisfaction and probably therefore to yours.

    The four tea-table articles have as you are doubtless ^aware^ a different relative value when you make the estimate of the value in use & the value in exchange Vide Smith’s wealth of Nations passim. In use they rank – Tea pot-cream jug Coffee pot & sugar bason – In exchange they rank Coffee pot, Tea pot sugar bason & cream jug

     I found on examining into the relative value in exchange – that the Coffee pot & cream jug are very nearly of the same value as the Tea pot & Sugar bason – And therefore in conformity with my original wish I purchased 2 os. 1 & 4 – If Mr Graham do not buy No 3 Some other friend will be glad to do it.

     I have orderd them to be engraved as the Tea pot already has been And I mean to bring them with me in a box.

     Mr Graham shews himself to be a man of taste in the choice of the form & ornaments tho’ they are rather more florid than I should have perhaps selected – They will be admired by the hyperborian natives.

    I believe I shall set out on the 11th And I have made some pecuniary arrangements which will enable me to remain at Rydal till February, when I expect to meet a friend at Birmingham on my return.

  I am faithfully your’s

                                             H. C. Robinson 

W. Wordsworth Esqr

Text: WLL, Robinson, Henry Crabb/6, Wordsworth Trust and Museum, Grasmere. Robinson begins a new year with his entry on 1 January 1847: ‘I lost nearly all the morning looking over my accounts from the year which my infirmities render a disagreeable task wch I continue notwithstanding that I may not forget thro’ disuse the first three rules in arithmetic. I also wrote letters to Wordsw: junr about the plate bought for him ...’