Although the pressure of business since my return to London has prevented me writing to you sooner, yet my thoughts have, I assure you, been almost completely employed upon the important subjects of the conversation with which you honoured me during the time I was experiencing the obliging hospitality of Mrs. Scott and yourself at Ashestiel.
Mr. Murray then proceeded to discuss the question of the Novelists’ Library, described in the preceding chapter, and continued:—
This project is tolerably mechanical, and does not require in
its production the mental energies of every kind which are indispensable in the
other grand plan of a Review, which I perceive to be
imperiously demanded. You have probably seen the advertisement of the New Review,
which is to appear from the shop of the publisher of the Satirist, each critique to be
signed by its author, and the whole phalanx to be headed by the notorious
veteran Richard Cumberland, Esq. The
miserable existence of such a Review cannot possibly linger beyond the third
number; but it assists in showing practically how much a good Review is wanted
in London by every class. I understand—indeed, I may say with
certainty—that Marmion is
to be the second article in the first number, after Fox, and it will probably
bear the signature of your friend Cumberland himself. It
happens very luckily, both for himself and the admirers of this gentleman, that
he is about to publish a novel (now in the press), ‘John de Lancaster,’ in which he
relies upon his talents as a writer, and his moral character as a man; for,
having made two or three slips in former novels, he intends in this work to
give his recantation, so that, whatever figure he may make in his own Review,
he would certainly be a most admirable subject, and it will be hard if, upon
this occasion, he does not receive that justice which his writings and
character have so long merited. But I am diverging too much. I have seen Mr.
William
| GIFFORD ACCEPTS THE EDITORSHIP. | 99 |
I remain, with the highest esteem,
