Your letter interested me as usual. I thank you for the regard which it expresses for my interests, and for the compliments (most unmerited) which it pays me. I hope to maintain your good opinion, and that we shall be as much in love with each other twenty years hence as we are now.
You are right in your conception relative to the work of Mr. Carr. It cannot interfere with your’s. Dr. Beaufort has been so many years beating about the subject, and making preparations and promises, that my patience is exhausted. The world is not informed about Ireland, and I am in the situation to command the light to shine! I am sorry you have assumed the novel form. A series of letters, addressed to a friend in London, taking for your model the Turkish letters of Lady M. W. Montagu, would have secured you the most extensive reading. A matter-of-fact and didactic novel is neither one thing nor another, and suits no class of readers. Certainly, however, Paul and Virginia would suggest a local plan, and it will be possible, by writing three or four times over, in six or eight months, to produce what would command attention.
I assure you that you have a power of writing, a fancy,
an imagination, and a degree of enthusiasm which will enable you to produce an
immortal work,
| PERIOD OF 1805-5 | 255 |
I earnestly exhort you to subject yourself to this drudgery. It may be painful to endure for a few weeks, but you will reap a harvest, for years, of renown and fortune.
Every one speaks highly of the Novice of St. Dominic, but their praise is always qualified by the remark that it would have few equals in this line, if it were reduced one entire volume in length. Some copies of the novel have been sent for you to Archer, whom you ought to reprimand for not ordering any copies.
PS. A series of letters on the state of Ireland, the manners and characters of its inhabitants, &c., &c., would be well read in the Monthly Magazine, would be worth as much to me, and would afterwards sell separately.
