Fervently trusting that this arrangement will meet your wishes,

Believe me, yours,

BENJ.  DISRAELI.

While the MS. was still in Mr. Milman’s hands, Mr. Disraeli followed this up with another letter: 

Mr. Disraeli to John Murray

35 DUKE STREET, ST. JAMES’S.

MY DEAR SIR, I am very sensible that you have conducted yourself, with regard to my MS., in the most honourable, kind, and judicious manner; and I very much regret the result of your exertions, which neither of us deserve.

I can wait no longer.  The delay is most injurious to me, and in every respect very annoying.  I am therefore under the painful necessity of requesting you to require from your friend the return of my work without a moment’s delay, but I shall not deny myself the gratification of thanking you for your kindness and subscribing myself, with regard,

Your faithful Servant,

BENJ.  DISRAELI.

At length Mr. Milman’s letter arrived, expressing his judgment on the work, which was much more satisfactory than that of Mr. Lockhart.

The Rev. H.H.  Milman to John Murray.

READING, March 5, 1832.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have been utterly inefficient for the last week, in a state of almost complete blindness; but am now, I trust, nearly restored.  Mrs. Milman, however, has read to me the whole of the MS. It is a very remarkable production—­very wild, very extravagant, very German, very powerful, very poetical.  It will, I think, be much read—­as far as one dare predict anything of the capricious taste of the day—­much admired, and much abused.  It is much more in the Macaulay than in the Croker line, and the former is evidently in the ascendant.  Some passages will startle the rigidly orthodox; the phrenologists will be in rapture.  I tell you all this, that you may judge for yourself.  One thing insist upon, if you publish it-that the title be changed.  The whole beauty, of the latter part especially, is its truth.  It is a rapid volume of travels, a “Childe Harold” in prose; therefore do not let it be called “a Romance” on any account.  Let those who will, believe it to be a real history, and those who are not taken in, dispute whether it is truth or fiction.  If it makes any sensation, this will add to its notoriety.  “A Psychological Auto-Biography” would be too sesquipedalian a title; but “My Life Psychologically Related,” or “The Psychology of my Life,” or some such title, might be substituted.

H.H.  MILMAN.

Before Mr. Milman’s communication had been received, another pressing letter arrived from Mr. Disraeli.

Mr. Disraeli to John Murray.

MY DEAR SIR,

It is with deep regret and some mortification that I appear to press you.  It is of the highest importance to me that the “P.R.” should appear without loss of time.  I have an impending election in the country, which a single and not improbable event may precipitate.  It is a great object with me, that my work should be published before that election.