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Memoir of John Murray
Elizabeth Inchbald to John Hoppner, 31 December 1808
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Preface
Vol. 1 Contents
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Chapter XV.
Chapter XVI.
Chapter XVII.
Chapter XVIII.
Chapter XIX.
Vol. 2 Contents
Chap. XX.
Chap. XXI.
Chap. XXII.
Chap. XXIII.
Chap. XXIV.
Chap. XXV.
Chap. XXVI.
Chap. XXVII.
Chap. XXVIII.
Chap. XXIX.
Chap. XXX.
Chap. XXXI.
Chap. XXXII.
Chap. XXXIII.
Chap. XXXIV.
Chap. XXXV.
Chap. XXXVI.
Chap. XXXVII.
Index
Creative Commons License

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Produced by CATH
 
December 31st, 1808.
My dear Sir,

As I wholly rely upon your judgment for the excellency of the design in question, I wish you to be better acquainted with my abilities as a reviewer before I suffer my curiosity to be further gratified in respect to the plan of the work you have undertaken, or the names of those persons who,
122 MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY
with yourself, have done me the very great honour to require my assistance. Before I see you, then, and possess myself of your further confidence, it is proper that I should acquaint you that there is only one department of a Review for which I am in the least qualified, and that one combines plays and novels. Yet the very few novels I have read, of later publications, incapacitates me again for detecting plagiary, or for making such comparisons as proper criticism may demand. You will, perhaps, be surprised when I tell you that I am not only wholly unacquainted with the book you have mentioned to me, but that I never heard of it before. If it be in French, there will be another insurmountable difficulty; for, though I read French, and have translated some French comedies, yet I am not so perfectly acquainted with the language as to dare to write remarks upon a French author. If Madame Cottin’s ‘Malvina’ be in English, you wish it speedily reviewed, and can possibly have any doubt of the truth of my present report, please to send it me; and whatever may be the contents, I will immediately essay my abilities on the work, or immediately return it as a hopeless case.

Yours very faithfully,
E. Inchbald.