Memoir of John Murray
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, [December 1819]
I certainly should most strongly recommend you to call the
Duke, if Macirone does not, if it were only to prove that the letter
quoted by Macirone of the Duke’s was not the real
one, for the Duke had the original, which he promised to send for. The reason
the Duke does not wish to see your counsel is that it appears like collusion,
and it would appear singular to a jury that he should have so far
interested himself in a subject
which appears so little to concern him. With respect to what the Duke will
think it proper to answer, we should leave it to him. I do not think it
necessary, therefore, to show the enclosed to the Duke, as his time is at this
moment much taken up. Above all, let us have good notice of the day, and
whether on second thoughts your counsel will not call him on the point I have
mentioned, as well as on all those in the brief which have been marked. In
haste,
Yours truly,
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).
Francis Maceroni (1788-1846)
He was aide-de-camp to Joachim Murat, king of Naples, afterwards a political adventurer
and mechanical inventor; he published
Memoirs of the Life and Adventures
of Colonel Maceroni, 2 vols (1838-48).
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.