Every house in London, in those dark, exciting days, was being combed for salvage, particularly scrap metal and waste paper. Out of Mr Ainsworth’s office alone came more than three hundred pounds of paper that, on consideration, was condemned to pulp as not worth keeping. The pamphlet I found must have been lying at the bottom of a bottom drawer – it was on top of the salvage basket. If the lady, or gentleman, who sent it to the People will communicate with me I will gladly pay her (or him) two hundred and fifty English pounds. As literature it is nothing but a piece of pretentious nonsense written by one of those idle dabblers in ‘Natural Philosophy’ who rushed into print on the slightest provocation in the eighteenth century. But the significance of it is formidable. It makes me afraid. * The author of my pamphlet had attempted to tickle his way into public notice with the feather of his pen by writing an account of a Monster captured by a boatman fishing several miles out of Brighthelmstone in the county of Sussex in the summer of the year 1745.
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