“My dear Sir,—I am afraid you will have thought me long in answering your letter, but pray don’t think me negligent.
“I read your sketch with avidity—with a pleasure quite intense, and I read it immediately. But I have been more occupied, and worried too, by a rascally attorney, who has contracted for a part of my Suffolk property, and who will neither pay for it nor let me off. When I tell you he has broken six appointments to settle, and is as far off as ever, you may guess how he has plagued me.
“Certainly, among other inconveniences, he has
prevented me from writing, though
| 80 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
“I have not a scruple in saying, by all means publish, and that soon.
“As you say you will follow my opinion, doing me the honour to add you confide in it, I give it you without reserve. There is a little verbal criticism, towards the end, which you will at once find out in the shape of sentences (or rather a sentence or two), seemingly involved (from lengthenings), which I presume to point out to your observation. In all other respects the style is clear, forcible, and often pathetic—as becomes the subject; and as for the subject itself, few things are more interesting.
“Your first picture of him fixed me. Nothing I have
seen of yours, or anybody’s else, could be more graphic. All the
incidents, too, are made the most of, and we only wish there were more. So says
General Phipps (by no means a bad
judge), who was charmed with it, though he never heard of Hazlitt except by name, and disliked him. On
the strength of your sketch, however, he immediately set to reading him, and is
so
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“P.S.—We leave home on Wednesday, and I hope to show Mrs. Plumer Ward Oxford and the Wye before we return.
“I took your hint as to the colour of the Conservatory, and the success is beyond imagination.”*
