14 Apr. 1808

But, not to confuse ourselves to presumptive repose, let us see what is to be seen in the way /shape/ of actual repose, repose proved by written evidence, or matter of fact equally notorious. Correcting of books is not absolute repose, any more than writing them. But what is quite sufficient, it is relative to repose, relation being had to /the test of/ judicature. Any thing in short is repose in which a man finds relief from that which in his vocabulary stands under the name of labour: tennis, an exercise which requires a man to be in two distant places at the same instant, tennis is repose to one of Your Lordship's noble friends /affords no less repose than poetry does/.

Now my Lord as to corrections of the press /correcting of books for sale/, all Scotland (as observed in the first of these Letters) all Scotland does not contain a more diligent /industrious/ and careful as well as skillful and in very point a more trustworthy corrector /the Right Honourable the Lord President/ of the press than Mr Hutchinson is happy enough to posses in the person of the Right Honourable the Lord President. But my Lord while his Lordship is exciting himself and reposing himself and exerting himself in the correction of Mr Hutchinson's books (and though his learning and accuracy leaves little work for a corrector in comparison of what in so abstruse and difficult a subject might be left by one ordinary hand, D r Boyde,[?] for example yet and for that very reason, Mr Hutchinsons books are not small ones) which the Right Honourable corrector is thus employed in the correction of the papers of the learned /his learned friend the/ Institutionalist[?], is he at the same moment of time employed either in the considering or in the reading of the learned form[?]; put into his box by Advocates, under the name of pleadings, in the name and on the behalf of suitors? Here there is a quantity of time which if he could but be prevailed upon to set down his vocabulary under the head /[...?]/ of repose, exercise /discharge performance/ of judicial duty as well as correction of the press, might have the effect of substituting blessings to not altogether unmerited curses in /between/ the mouth of many an hones and injured suitor.