I read a Letter with Pleasure giving an Account of your Health and it gave Me the Opportunity likewise of sending you the Books subscrib’d for which Wanted a proper Address on your Return to America where I might safely deposit them sooner. They consist of the following Books, of one which is most analogous I have sent a triplicate, they are as follows

now sent 2 Vols: Octavo Derhams Physico & Astro Theology. 2 Do. Lord Bacons Essays. 1 Do. King Prussia’s Letters to Count Salm 1 Pamphlet French & English Calonne 3 Vols. 12 no. Platonic Marriage 1 Do. Latudes Memoirs. 1 Do. Octo. Memoirs of Count D’Argenson 1 Do. D. Important Period of Parliament 3 Do. Correspondence between France & America. 3 Do. Necker on Finance

I did print an Octavo Edition of Robinson Crusoe and another of Butlers Analogy, but they are out of print which made me substitute 3 Sets of Correspondence between France and America, that you might receive Books to Amount of Subscription which I thank You for.

This Undertaking has been most perilous both to my Fortune and Sensibility. It happened in the Course of human Events that you though innocently have been the Cause of this Undertaking being on the Decline. I have sent You a brief Relation of many Circumstances, which have attended it, but how will you be astonish’d when I relate that from some Authority I understand You were a Stumbling Block from the Name of whom Majesty shrunk—certain it is the King was pleas’d with the Plan, that his Librarian appear’d to forward it—That he promis’d to get the Kings Name to the Head of my Subscription and after I had sent him a List of the Subscribers, he shrunk back and from the Civility of a Courtier, he dwindled down to the Rudeness of a Sycophant. All the Applications I have made to the Treasury during 5 Years though flattering, are so much Time spent in Vain for as I had embark’d in a Trade to which I was not bred, it was necessary for Me to force Connections, as the Trade were hostile to the Undertaking and it must drop as an Art, unless I can get some industrious Person to retire into the Country with some Apprentices to bring it forward, for Industrious Application to the Business has fill’d up my Time, which cannot now be spar’d to complete the System of Logographic Printing, for those Apprentices I have, are too much in league with the Compositors to benefit the Undertaking and I find it is kicking against the pricks.

If any Opportunity offers of recommending the Press, or my Trade as a Bookseller which I have embark’d in Piccadilly in my own Defence, or sending for either the Times (formerly the Universal Register) a daily paper which is still printed cheifly Logographically and will, till the Founts are worn out or the Evening Mail which comes out 3 Days in the Week and are both principally my Property, it will oblige with great Veneration sir Your Most Oblig’d Humble servant