My Friends and Acquaintance
Horace & James Smith II
Horace Smith to Peter George Patmore, 12 November 1824
“No. 14, Regent Street, Friday,
“Nov. 12, 1824.
“Sir,—Beginning with thanking you most cordially for the
frank, friendly, and delicate manner in which you have executed your unpleasant
commission respecting my attempt, I beg to assure you, that if we had known one
another personally (a pleasure and advantage to myself which I still hope to
enjoy), you would have felt little or none of that difficulty and embarrassment
to which you allude. Always distrustful of my own trifling productions, nobody
has been more ![]()
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astonished than myself at the
incommensurate notice which some of them have obtained; and I am, therefore,
not less sincerely obliged to any friend for his opinion, than disposed to
yield to it an implicit obedience. Hearing that such a thing was in existence,
Mr. Colburn, with his usual
promptitude and liberality, wrote to make me an offer for my novel, which I
accepted, as he can confirm to you, on two conditions—first, that my name should not be committed; and, secondly, that it should be submitted to some competent person to
decide upon its fitness for publication at all. Some little deviation has
certainly taken place from the former condition in the way it was announced in
the last ‘New Monthly;’
but it is unimportant now, as your friendly advice will of course induce me to
make an immediate auto-da-fé of
Mr. Isaac Spurlingford and all his
heretical associates. As leisure offers, however, I may make another, and I
hope a better, effort against the season of next year, which I should put into
Mr. Colburn’s hands; and nothing would give me
more confidence than the prospect of looking forward to the same ![]()
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able and judicious counsel which, I verily believe, has
done me an essential service in the present instance. On Mr.
C.’s account, even more than on my own, I am happy that I
was provident enough to stipulate for this previous supervision.
“It might look like affectation were I to say that I am
not vexed at having misspent my time. But I can from my heart declare, that the
sentiments of esteem with which you are pleased to honour my character as a
man, more than compensate any little disappointment which I may feel as a
scribbler.
“Again begging you to accept my sincere acknowledgments,
I am, Sir, your obliged and grateful servant,
Henry Colburn (1785-1855)
English publisher who began business about 1806; he co-founded the
New
Monthly Magazine in 1814 and was publisher of the
Literary
Gazette from 1817.
New Monthly Magazine. (1814-1884). Founded in reaction to the radically-inclined
Monthly Magazine,
the
New Monthly was managed under the proprietorship of Henry
Colburn from 1814 to 1845. It was edited by Thomas Campbell and Cyrus Redding from
1821-1830.
