Letter to Collector MacVicar, May 28 1773 'Since I wrote to you last, I have been most intent on biography, and quite engrossed by heroes and legislatures' [and later in same letter] 'You bid me read biography, to teach me to think; I have thought and here is the result [ie re Peter the Great]. If I have not made you very angry, I will next give my thought of this rival hero.'[and in the following two letters to same recipient May 30 and June 20 1773] 'The poor dear Odyssey is quite neglected; I have forsaken it for biography; I can speak of nobody less than a king or a general, and shall take the first opportunity of introducing you to prince Mazeppa. Tweed and Clyde are not worth a farthing now, I can think of nothing but Dneiper and the Boristhenes. I have some toleration too for the Wolga [sic]. "Oh voman [sic], voman!" as Win Jenkins says, " If you knew but the plesur [sic] we scullers have when we censter the crabbit werds." ?'; [and] ... 'To quit the flowery paths of ingenious fiction [ie the Vicar of Wakefield] for the thorny maze in which I am slowly advancing, [ie a biography of Cromwell] is no pleasing transition to female fancy?.'