Z1118/1/23/3

Letter from Bernard Barton at Woodbridge [Suffolk] to George Procter at 101 Fleet Street, London I am well aware you Londoners have other and more profitable occupation than corresponding with Country Poets: but I should like very well to know how the first of my "Snuff Lyrics" answers thy ideas. To mine the up and down, dancing metre of Tom Moore's legacy renders it peculiarly suitable for any little jeu d'esprit of the kind, and the best mode of rendering any such popular is, I think, to select a well known Song. There are one or two other of Moore's which I think I shall try my hand on in the same way. If it would answer your purpose better to insert this bagatelle in the Morning Herald, I think I could manage it; only, in every point of view it w'd be better it should go from me; so let me know about it. A Person in this town who selld fancy Snuffs, and who is himself a Snuff-taker, is vastly taken with the piece I sent thee, and wants very much to print it on neat ounce, or two ounce papers. I once wrote him a rhyming catalogue of Snuffs, which he says sold him many an extra ounce, while its novelty lasted. By the by there is one line, in the stanzas which had better be altered if thy Partner's Name like thy own consist of one syllable only: I mean instead of your initials to insert your Christian Names. "Place it at (John) and George Procter's door" I do not know but I may also make Snuff-taking the subject of an Essay. The London magazine has had some Papers "The Confessions of an Opium Eater" - and I see one announced for this Mo. "The Confessions of a Drunkard" why not "The Confessions of a Snuff-taker"? Whenever the Box may be sent, let me have a line via Post the day before to say so, as I am not always at my lodgings, and so small a parcel might be laid aside, and lost sight of.

31 Jul 1822

From: 1822 To: 1822

item

Barton, Bernard,
Procter, George,
Moore, Thomas

poems, snuff taking, magazines, newspapers