The usual course thro which an author’s manuscript

passes is this: if it be of a nature that the bookseller thinks worth a moment’s consideration, he requests some other author of whose judgment he happens to think well to look at it (sometimes the most incompetent person in the world) and acts upon his opinion. The recommendation of one who is a friend of the writer goes for nothing. If you have any friend in London to whom you can entrust this sort of commission, let him take the manuscript to Murray, or any other respectable publisher, & ask as speedy an answer as may be convenient. If you have not, & the manuscript is in your own writing, a more summary way may be to have the first sheet printed in Dublin – for a sheet will be as sufficient a sample as a volume. The idlest person to whom it may be referred will glance over it, – whereas a manuscript if not very legibly written is always regarded with some degree of dismay. You can then enclose your sample in a frank to the publisher-elect, who may then very likely form his own opinion – & is in good manners bound to deliver it without delay. The time and trouble which this method will save, I should think worth the cost. If the bookseller declines the undertaking, you can try others. ... I like a book in which the writer shows himself to be what he is, & is not ashamed of a little honest egotism. Do not expect too much from it. Public opinion is as little to be relied on in such things as the wind and weather in this uncertain climate. And no author who knows what the public is, and by what mere caprice it is determined to the right or left, will either be elated by success or dispirited by failure. … My little boy is in the honey-moon of puerile happiness, having just put on that fashion of apparel which he must wear thro life.