“I shall be but a shrimp of an author.”

A characteristically self-deprecating assessment of his remarkably small body of published work · Letter to Horace Walpole, 25 February 1768

• Humility
• Humour
• Writing

“A letter from you stands in the place of all these.”

Written after saying he lacked company, pleasure and spirits, revealing how much he valued a friend's correspondence · Letter to William Mason, 13 January 1758

• Communication
• Friendship
• Solitude

“Our poetry, on the contrary, has a language peculiar to itself, to which almost every one that has written has added something.”

Presenting poetic language as a tradition continually enriched by individual writers · Letter to Richard West, 8 April 1742

• Language
• Poetry
• Tradition