CHAP. VI. POETICAL EXEKCISES. 353 



states that twenty miles were in working condition, 

 along which coal and lime were conveyed in consider- 

 able quantities, to the profit of the Company and the 

 benefit of the public ; the price of these articles having 

 already in some places been reduced twenty-five, and 

 in others as much as fifty, per cent. " The canal affairs," 

 he says in one of his letters, "have required a good 

 deal of exertion, though we are on the whole doing well. 

 But, besides carrying on the works, it is now necessary 

 to bestow considerable attention on the creating and 

 guiding of a trade upon those portions which are exe- 

 cuted. This involves various considerations, and many 

 contending arid sometimes clashing interests. In short, 

 it is the working of a great machine : in the first place, 

 to draw money out of the pockets of a numerous pro- 

 prietary to make an expensive canal, and then to make 

 the money return into their pockets by the creation of a 

 business upon that canal." 



But, as if all this business were not enough, he was 

 occupied at the same time in writing a book upon the 

 subject of Mills. In the year 1796 he had undertaken 

 to draw up a paper on this topic for the Board of 

 Agriculture, and by degrees it had grown into a large 

 quarto volume, illustrated by upwards of thirty plates. 

 He was also reading extensively in his few leisure 

 moments; and among the solid works which he perused 

 we find him mentioning Robertson's ' Disquisitions on 

 Ancient India,' Stewart's ' Philosophy of the Human 

 Mind,' and Alison's ' Principles of Taste.' But, as a relief 

 from these graver studies, he seems, above all things, to 

 have taken peculiar pleasure in occasionally throwing 

 off a bit of poetry. Thus, when laid up at an hotel 

 in Chester by a blow on his leg, which disabled him 

 for some weeks, he employed part of his time in 

 writing his ' Verses on hearing of the Death of Eobert 

 Burns.' On another occasion, when on his way to Lon- 

 don, and detained for a night at Stratford-on-Avon, he 



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