Memoir of John Murray
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 27 December 1820
I have done ‘Lady Hervey.’ I hear that there is
a Mr. Vincent in the Treasury, the son of a Mr. and Mrs.
Vincent, to whom the late General Hervey, the favourite son of Lady Hervey, left his fortune and his papers. Could you find
out who they are? Nothing is more surprising than the ignorance in which I find
all Lady Hervey’s descendants about her. Most of
them never heard her maiden name. It reminds one of Walpole writing to George
Montagu, to tell him who his grandmother was! I am anxious to
knock off this task whilst what little I know of it is fresh in my
recollection; for I foresee that much of the entertainment of the work must
depend on the elucidations in the Notes.
Yours
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
Hon. William Hervey (1732-1815)
The fourth son of Lord John Hervey and Mary Lepell Hervey, educated at Westminster and
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; he was a general in the American wars (1755-63) and MP
for Bury (1763-68).
George Montagu (1713-1780)
M.P. for Northampton (1744); he was a classmate and correspondent of Horace
Walpole.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
