Letter to William Sotheby

9 Waterloo Plains, Ramsgate,
November 9, 1828

My Dear Sir,

It is a not unfrequent tragico-whimsical fancy with me to imagine myself as the survivor of

This breathing House not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong--

and an Assessor at it's dissection--infusing, as spirits may be supposed to have the power of doing, this and that thought into the mind of the Anatomist. Ex. gr. Be so good as to give a cut just there, right across the umbilical region--there lurks the fellow that for so many years tormented me on my first waking! or--a stab there, I beseech you, it was the seat and source of that dreaded subsultus which so often threw my Book out of my hand, or drove my pen in a blur over the paper on which I was writing! ... O if in addition to ... half a score other intrusive Draw-backs, it were possible to convey without inflicting the sensations, which (suspended by the stimulus of earnest conversation or of rapid motion) annoy and at times overwhelm me as soon as I sit down alone, with my pen in my hand, and my head bending and body compressed, over my table (I cannot say, desk)--I dare believe that in the mind of a competent Judge what I have performed will excite more surprize than what I have omitted to do, or failed in doing. Enough of this. ...

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