Ever yours faithfully,

J. MURRAY.

Mr. Turner thanked Mr. Murray for his letter, and said that if he proceeded with his intentions he would adopt his advice.  “I have always found Longman very kind and honourable, but I will not offer him now what you think it right to decline.”

During Gifford’s now almost incessant attacks of illness, Mr. Croker took charge of the Quarterly Review.  The following letter embodies some of his ideas as to editing: 

Mr. Croker to John Murray.

BRIGHTON, March 29, 1823.

DEAR MURRAY,

As I shall not be in Town in time to see you to-morrow, I send you some papers.  I return the Poor article [Footnote:  “On the Poor Laws,” by Mr. Gleig.] with its additions.  Let the author’s amendments be attended to, and let his termination be inserted between his former conclusion and that which I have written.  It is a good article, not overdone and yet not dull.  I return, to be set up, the article [by Captain Procter] on Southey’s “Peninsular War.”  It is very bad—­a mere abstracted history of the war itself, and not in the least a review of the book.  I have taken pains to remove some part of this error, but you must feel how impossible it is to change the whole frame of such an article.  A touch thrown in here and there will give some relief, and the character of a review will be in some small degree preserved.  This cursed system of writing dissertations will be the death of us, and if I were to edit another number, I should make a great alteration in that particular.  But for this time I must be satisfied with plastering up what I have not time to rebuild.  One thing I would do immediately if I were you.  I would pay for articles of one sheet as much as for articles of two and three, and, in fact, I would scarcely permit an article to exceed one sheet.  I would reserve such extension for matters of great and immediate interest and importance.  I am delighted that W. [Footnote:  Probably Blanco White.] undertakes one, he will do it well; but remember the necessity of absolute secrecy on this point, and indeed on all others.  If you were to publish such names as Cohen and Croker and Collinson and Coleridge, the magical WE would have little effect, and your Review would be absolutely despised—­omne ignotum pro mirifico.  I suppose I shall see you about twelve on Tuesday.  Could you not get me a gay light article or two?  If I am to edit for you, I cannot find time to contribute.  Madame Campan’s poem will more than expend my leisure.  I came here for a little recreation, and I am all day at the desk as if I were at the Admiralty.  This Peninsular article has cost me two days’ hard work, and is, after all, not worth the trouble; but we must have something about it, and it is, I suppose, too late to expect anything better.  Mr. Williams’s article on Sir W. Scott [Lord Stowell] is contemptible, and would expose your Review to the ridicule of the whole bar; but it may be made something of, and I like the subject.  I had a long and amusing talk with the Chancellor the night before last, on his own and his brother’s judgments; I wish I had time to embody our conversation in an article.