It is a good article, not overdone and yet not dull.

I return, to be set up, the article [by Captain Procter] on Southey's "Peninsular War." It is very bad--a mere _abstracted history of the war itself_, and not in the least a _review of the book_.
I have taken pains to remove some part of this error, but you must feel how impossible it is to change the whole frame of such an article.

A touch thrown in here and there will give some relief, and the character of a _review_ will be in some small degree preserved.

This cursed system of writing dissertations will be the death of us, and if I were to edit another number, I should make a great alteration in that particular.

But for this time I must be satisfied with plastering up what I have not time to rebuild.