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National Library of Scotland, MS 42552. ALS; 4p. . Previously published: Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends. Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768–1843, 2 vols (London, 1891), II, pp. 111–112 [in part].
These letters were edited with the assistance of Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt
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I am sorry to hear the cause of your long absence from town, & that so little benefit to Mrs Murrays
Some weeks ago I wrote to you, & I have no doubt that the letter shared the same fate with
one written about the same time to Bedford, which
never reached him. You had sent me two Huntingtonian books, which were nothing more than separate portions of his
works;t Giles’s,
The peninsular war may be estimated at three volumes of from 6 to 700 pages, such pages as the H:
of Brazil:
Thank you for the Sketch Book, – it is very clever, very amusing, & in an excellent
spirit:
You ask me concerning the times, a subject on which, living in perfect peace, & out of the
sphere of the prevailing madness, I am little qualified to form an opinion, – except indeed the opinion which I
have long held that things must be worse before they are better. The Whigs will go on as they have begun till an
explosion takes place, & then we shall see who among them are fools & who traitors: the traitors will be
five to one: but the fools are those who have most weight to throw into the scale, provided the balance be not
destroyed. I shall probably have something for you when it is time; – some preventatives & remedies to suggest,
– but we must wait for the proper season. – I expect that my book of Dialogues
impression now, & some good in time. I mean to sweeten it that it may go down, – with
descriptive sketches of this country, & a few poems, so that there may be something for various tempers. Westall has made some sketches for it.to make
it a that my reputation hereafter for political sagacity should rest upon this work.
The Book of the Church
You will really serve as well as oblige me, if you let me have a duplicate set of proofs of my
articles,lose the passages, which Mr Gifford, in spite of repeated promises, always
will strike out. In this last paperfact in the essay, for its
immediate, practical, application has been omitted, & for no imaginable reason (– the historical fact that it
was the reading a calumnious libel which induced Felton to murder the D of Buckingham.)