THE KEY. JOHN WHITE. 49 



LETTER XXII. 



Thames Street, Feb. 27. 



Dear Brother, 

 Many thanks for your letter of the 18th, and for your extract 

 from Reaumur. We all much approve of what you intend to 

 inscribe to the Archbishop, thinking it neat and polite ; but, 

 like yourself, we do not much like your title page. Brother 

 Ben says he thinks that " Hist. Nat. : Observations in Lat. 

 Si} " should all be left out, and that it should begin with 

 " An Essay," &c. : but it is not worth while to be solicitous 

 about a title page. Swift says, " for a title page consult your 

 bookseller." But the term "Fauna Calp" they judged to 

 be too quaint and pedantic for the beginning of a title ; yet, 

 I think, must by no means be sunk, for the following reason, 

 because I believe you have always told Linnseus that you 

 should call your book by that name ; and therefore if he 

 mentions your work in his last edition (as he certainly will) 

 you will lose all the credit to be derived from such notice of 

 you, if you mention no such title. Supposing Linn, to be 

 dead, there can be no doubt that his son will put forth the 

 new edition. By what we remember of the specimen of 

 your work, we thought some articles too diffuse. It is 

 natural for you to fall a little into this extreme from the 

 regard you express for Reaumur, since all the French in 

 Nat. Hist, are Very circumstantial. Be so good as not to 

 forestall my cobweb shower. I wish I had two or three dozen 

 more of such anecdotes. An engraver has been with me ; 

 and I have been talking with him about his taking off 5 or 6 

 of my drawings : he says that my 4to drawings cannot be 

 well executed under 8 guineas a piece : now 5 times eight is 

 forty ! Grimm is reducing my Hermitage-view in order to 

 bring it to a proper size for a vignette * : he is also to take it in 

 a large scale for bro. Hen. 



* [This forms the vignette in both the quarto editions. — T. B.] 

 VOL. II. E 



