“Sir,—Mr. Colburn has just given me your letter, the terms of which, I need scarcely say, are very gratifying to me. It tempts me, however, to take the liberty of addressing you a second time—partly with a view to correct an error into which you appear to have fallen in respect to my first letter; but chiefly on another account.
“You speak of the ‘unpleasant
commission’ which I have executed. This makes me fear that you may
have received my letter as the result of an understanding between Mr.
Colburn and myself, that that would be the best mode of making
you acquainted with the opinion which, according to your express wish, he had
obtained respecting your work. I am anxious that you should not suppose this to
have been the case, simply because, in point of fact, it was not the case. If it had been so, I should then indeed have been
executing ‘an unpleasant commission’—or rather it would have
been one that I should have refused to execute at all—because I consider that
my only fair excuse for venturing to address you was (if I may
| 228 | HORACE SMITH. |
“I will say no more on this point. Indeed I am afraid you may already think I am ‘considering too curiously’—especially as I feel that the point in question would not, of itself, have entitled me to trouble you a second time.
“My chief reason for addressing you now is the hasty
determination (you must allow me to call it so) to which you seem to have come,
in consequence of what I said concerning your work. I am not going to affect
any particular modesty in regard to the value of my opinion on a point like the
one in question; and if you yourself had had any opportunity of judging as to
that value, and had then chosen to abide by it, I should have had nothing to
say. Nay—if I had gone somewhat into detail concerning the work, and given any
express reasons for the unfavourable opinion I
entertained of it,
| HORACE SMITH. | 229 |
“You will perhaps say that the affair is one for your consideration alone. But to this I must reply—not
exactly, and for the reason I have just hinted at. In fact, it never for a
moment occurred to me that you would think of doing more than I had urged you
to do. The utmost that I anticipated or hoped from my letter was that you would
pause and consider, and take further means of ascertaining whether my advice
was worth attending to. I assure you that if I had wished my letter to produce
any other result than this, I should have written it in different terms. If,
therefore, its effect was any other, it arose from my
| 230 | HORACE SMITH. |
“Probably your reply will still be—that all this is for your consideration. I cannot deny it—and I have done: for my object in troubling you now is, not to again urge anything upon your consideration, but only to absolve myself from the imputation as well as the responsibility of having presumed to offer you a judgment that could by possibility become a final one on such a point.
“Long as I fear you will find this letter, I cannot
conclude it without alluding to a few words at the beginning of yours, which
seem to point at the possibility of our not remaining unknown to each other. If
I have never sought this pleasure, and cannot persuade myself to seek it even now, it is because I feel with the most
unfeigned humi-
| HORACE SMITH. | 231 |
