As you seemed to think it better that I should commune
direct with the publisher, and I had a prospect of being shortly in town, when
I could deliver my answer in person, I deferred writing to either you or them
till that opportunity should occur. I have now seen your messengers, at least,
one of them; a very grave, respectable bibliopolist as I should wish to meet with, and have given him
my answer (as I feared all along I should) in the negative. I was glad,
however, to see that he had not much set his heart upon the plan, and I shall
hope that neither have you been very desirous of it, as I hate to refuse
anything that any body (how much, therefore, such a luminous lady as yourself)
wishes me to do. The fact is, it would not be worth a publisher’s while
to give me such a sum as alone would make it worth my while to put myself so
much out of my way. I was once offered at the rate of one hundred pounds a
month to conduct the Times for a certain period, and at another time had a
proposal from Croker to edit the Quarterly
Review, at a thousand pounds a year, but neither tempted me.
Talking of the Times, I have
no conception of who was the author of that malignant attack upon you, but
meant to have asked the editor, had I
seen him when I was in town. That great machine and I have long parted company;
| THE SECOND WORK ON FRANCE—1830. | 317 |
Mrs. Moore begs to be most kindly remembered to you and Sir Charles, who is, I trust, by this time, quite himself again.
PS.—People express a little alarm about my Life and Death of Lord Edward, and I get hints from all sides that it would be prudent to defer its publishing; but I shall not mind them.
