'Anch'io have been reading La Rochefaucould [sic] - and he has furnished me with an excellet Motto for my third Volume - And what is more to the purpose, with some entertainment of the highest & most rational kind for my breakfast hours. I can only afford time now to read at my meals. Ah pauvre humanite - I am afraid he is a [underlied] very [end underlining] little too severe against it! [...] He seldom writes as if he was hardened enough to exult in human depravity, but often as if he sadly, yet irresistibly felt its existence to be true - and such a book, it strikes me, properly considered, is calculated to produce infinite benefit'.