all I should like to know what man could have been put at the head of the Quarterly Review at my time of life without having the Doctors uttering doctorisms on the occasion.  If you but knew it, you yourself personally could in one moment overcome and silence for ever the whole of these people.  As for me, nobody has more sincere respect for them in their own different walks of excellence than myself; and if there be one thing that I may promise for myself, it is, that age, experience, and eminence, shall never find fair reason to accuse me of treating them with presumption.  I am much more afraid of falling into the opposite error.  I have written at some length on these matters to Mr. Croker, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Rose—­and to no one else; nor will I again put pen to paper, unless someone, having a right to put a distinct question to me, does put it.

Mr. Lockhart to John Murray.

Sunday, CHIEFSWOOD, November 27, 1825.

My Dear Murray,

I have read the letter I received yesterday evening with the greatest interest, and closed it with the sincerest pleasure.  I think we now begin to understand each other, and if we do that I am sure I have no sort of apprehension as to the result of the whole business.  But in writing one must come to the point, therefore I proceed at once to your topics in their order, and rely on it I shall speak as openly on every one of them as I would to my brother.

Mr. Croker’s behaviour has indeed distressed me, for I had always considered him as one of those bad enemies who make excellent friends.  I had not the least idea that he had ever ceased to regard you personally with friendship, even affection, until B.D. told me about his trafficking with Knight; for as to the little hints you gave me when in town, I set all that down to his aversion for the notion of your setting up a paper, and thereby dethroning him from his invisible predominance over the Tory daily press, and of course attached little importance to it.  I am now satisfied, more particularly after hearing how he behaved himself in the interview with you, that there is some deeper feeling in his mind.  The correspondence that has been passing between him and me may have been somewhat imprudently managed on my part.  I may have committed myself to a certain extent in it in more ways than one.  It is needless to regret what cannot be undone; at all events, I perceive that it is now over with us for the present.  I do not, however, believe but that he will continue to do what he has been used to do for the Review; indeed, unless he makes the newspaper business his excuse, he stands completely pledged to me to adhere to that.