'[letter to H.M. esq] my poor brains have been of late so completely fused in the furnace of metaphysic, that they have become a complete [italics] calx [end italics]. I have been obliged, in pursuit of [italics] hints [end italics], to wade through volumes: keeping neither commonplace book nor memorandum, have been forced to stupify myself in search of passages which remained in my memory, while every trace of the place in which I had found them was lost'.