I will finish your work, and never more trouble you on the subject of money. What I sought was not as a matter of right, but of pure favour. I am sorry it has annoyed you. You are bound to forgive me, I think, when I say that I regret the application. You have a right to refuse me on the score of a legal claim, but you do me some injustice in stating the grounds of your right of refusal. It is because my work is unfinished that this just denial must be admitted by me, but you should not found it on a circumstance which never existed—that of my having used your library for the purpose of other undertakings. Brewster, whose articles* I agreed to write by your express sanction before beginning our work, gave me a full order upon his bookseller, Richardson, for all books necessary for his biographies. They were, from the nature of the articles,
* For the ‘Edinburgh Encyclopædia.’ |
| 332 | MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY |
The lengthened delay of the work has been occasioned by the nature of its materials, which lie so diversely scattered, that with all your zeal and liberality, and my own exertions, it has been physically impossible to collect them into one mass at one time. The other things on which I have been engaged have been resorted to as the mere supports of my family at certain intervals when I saw my finances near a close, and found that by the utmost progress I could make in our work, I could not have a just claim on you in time enough for my necessities. I wrote, not to ask from you or to annoy you, but to vindicate myself for past delays. Believe me, they have not been voluntary. Even now I believe I shall be obliged to cast about for some scheme of lecturing to make money wherewith to finish the ‘Criticisms,’ or at least to stand out the time when I shall be engaged in correcting the proofs, which I should not wish to be put too hastily off. I do not by this mean to insinuate the slightest wish again to trouble you. I feel that your refusal is perfectly just.
I thank you for expressing a wish that we should continue friends. I meet it cordially. I trust that the entire MSS. will convince you that instead of the Lectures starving the ‘Criticisms,’ they have enriched them much. The tone of our future intercourse will depend on your reception of this letter.
