'You bid me tell you what I read; and, in obedience to your commands, I confess myself to be at present under a course of [italics] historical physic [end italics], which ought to have been administered to me in my youth, and for want of which I have grown up under many infirmities. [...] I am therefore labouring hard amongst the ruins of antiquity, tho' even amidst their profound recesses I sometimes have a little of the dust of [italics] modern rubbish [end italics] thrown into my eyes. The truth is, in a town, it is very difficult to refrain from following the multitude in their pursuits of literature. One is so [italics] baited [end italics] with new books that one is forced to take the up in self defence; for who would dare to drag forth a huge musty volume of Roman antiquities, in preference to an elegant little epitome of modern biography? '