John Foster, Stapleton, to S. C. Hall, 24 Paternoster Row, London, May [1827].

Stapleton, near Bristol – May [1827]

Sir,

        I did receive, through the hands of a young gentleman unknown, and whom I was not at the time in the way to see, the parcel containing the “Amulet” and your letter. Certainly I ought, in all reason, to have acknowledged it without delay. – I have to plead as one chief cause of that delay that I have not happened to fall in with any friend going to town whom I could charge with the little commission to call in Paternoster row to leave payment for the “Amulet.” – You intended it as a present, (a very elegant one,) and I am most truly obliged for that intention, – but should feel it quite unfair and illiberal to take this advantage otherwise than on the condition of complying with the flattering request conveyed in your accompanying letter. –

        Having just recd your second letter, in a frank from Mr Easthope, and intending to write to him to-day or tomorrow, I have been enclosing this note for you. I have been devising to conceal a half-sovereign, now on my table, in the wafer or wax of the seal, – that being about the price that I should be charged for a 12o book by the trade. – But  observing the very sensible weight which that bit of metal gives to the edge of a letter, and considering what ^shrewd perceptions and^ dishonest fingers there are in the post and 2d post offices, I am afraid the chances would be much against the safe conveyance; and therefore request you will take the trouble to send to Mr Holdsworth for that amount, and I shall apprise him of this claim, in a note which I shall have occasion to send to him under the same envelope to Mr Easthope. which will enclose this. I beg you, and will assure myself that you will not fail nor hesitate to do this. –

        In answer to your request I must plead to be excused. I have an extreme indisposition  to all authorship-kinds of work, and never do any thing of the kind but when I can by hard force bring myself to set at it as a disagreeable and painful labour. And this pitch of resolution I can never reach but for some very formal and tedious operation. Having no facility of invention or composition, I never in my life threw off one of the that kind of short lively finished pieces which alone are adapted to such miscellanies as the Amulet. The attempt at such a thing would be a matter of far more labour than the result would, in any sense, be worth.

        Besides, I am under one or two obligations (by promise) in the writing way which have been so deferred and neglected that it is quite irksome to think of them; and they, exclusively, must occupy me whenever I can force the quill into action.

        It may seem impertinent to say one word in the way of opinion respecting the multiplication of periodical miscellanies. It is, however, impossible to help regretting their vast superabundance. It sadly tends to dissipation of mental habits, – to the prevention of all serious application and sustained protracted discipline. Much also the tends cast of many of these productions tends to create and cherish a factitious order of sentiment. Even in this “Amulet,” amidst a profusion of very elegant, pretty, and pious composition, there seems to me to be not a little of this fault, – description overdone, sentiment in excess, fancy quite loaded with flowers and glaring with colours, an artificial process for heating and melting the affections, pathetics too violent, tears too much like a rain or flood. All this has a very bad effect on youthful readers, especially the young ladies, whom these elegant little volumes are especially designed and adapted to captivate.

        Will you excuse this liberty, from an old and perhaps rather cynical observer of the course and effect of our contempoary literature. – I am, Sir, your respectfully,

                                            J. Foster

Address: Mr S. C. Hall | 24 Paternoster Row[1]

Postmark: 26 May [?]

[1] 24 Paternoster Row was for many years the location of the print/bookshop of William Button, Baptist minister at Dean Street, Southwark.

Text: John Foster Folder, RG 1107, American Baptist Historical Society Archives, Atlanta.