“The Life of Nelson* was completed this morning. The printer began with it before it was half written, but I have distanced him by ten sheets. Do not fear that I have been proceeding too fast: it is he who, after the manner of printers, has given me plenty of time by taking his own. This is a subject which I should never have dreamt of touching, if it had not been thrust upon me. I have walked among sea terms as carefully as a cat does among crockery; but, if I have succeeded in making the narrative continuous and clear—the very reverse of what it is in the lives before me—the materials are, in themselves, so full of character, so picturesque, and so sublime, that it cannot fail of being a good book. . . . . I am very much inclined to attempt, under some such title as the Age of George III., a sketch of the revolutions which, almost everywhere
* This, which was perhaps upon the whole the most popular of any of my father’s works, originated in an article in the fifth number of the Quarterly Review, which was enlarged at Murray’s request. My father received altogether 300l. for it. 100?. for the Review; 100l. when the Life was enlarged; and 100l. when it was published in the Family Library. |
| 18 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 39. |
“You wonder that I should submit to any expurgations in the Quarterly. The fact is, that there must be a power expurgatory in the hands of the editor; and the misfortune is, that editors frequently think it incumbent on them to use that power merely because they have it. I do not like to break with the Review, because Gifford has been something more than merely civil to me, and offered me services which I had no reason to expect, because the Review gives me (and shame it is that it should be so) more repute than anything else which I could do, and because there is no channel through which so much effect can be given to what I may wish to impress upon the opinion of the public. . . . .
“My aim and hope are, ere long, to support myself by the sale of half my time, and have the other half for the completion of my History. When I can command 500l. for the same quantity that Scott gets 3000l. for, this will be accomplished, and this is likely soon to be the case. God bless you!
