If the paper has any merit, it owes it to the delay of which you must, I am sure, have complained very bitterly in your heart.

I was so thoroughly dissatisfied with the article, as it stood at first, that I completely re-wrote it; altered the whole arrangement; left out ten or twelve pages in one part; and added twice as many in another.

I never wrote anything so slowly as the first half, or so rapidly as the last half.
You are in an error about Akenside, which I must clear up for his credit, and for mine.

You are confounding the Ode to Curio and the Epistle to Curio.

The latter is generally printed at the end of Akenside's works, and is, I think, the best thing that he ever wrote.
The Ode is worthless.