Read it through once

“I enclose you _Robert Jeffery’s Lament_, altered according to your suggestions.... This little poem is not inscribed to you, because I am presumptuous enough to hope that at some future period you will allow me to usher a book into the world under your auspices. A long poem is to me so formidable a task that I fear it will scarcely be completed by next year (it is now indeed hardly begun)—but when finished, I shall make a new demand upon your kindness, by submitting it to your criticism and correction. I am quite ashamed of this letter. A lady’s pen, like her tongue, runs at a terrible rate when once set a-going.”