Yours ever,

J.W.  CROKER.

Send me “Walpoliana,” I have lost or mislaid mine.  Are there any memoirs about the date of 1743, or later, beside Bubb’s?

That Mr. Croker made all haste and exercised his usual painstaking industry in doing “this little job” for Mr. Murray will be evident from the following letters: 

Mr. Croker to John Murray.

December 27, 1820.

DEAR MURRAY,

I have done “Lady Hervey.”  I hear that there is a Mr. Vincent in the Treasury, the son of a Mr. and Mrs. Vincent, to whom the late General Hervey, the favourite son of Lady Hervey, left his fortune and his papers.  Could you find out who they are?  Nothing is more surprising than the ignorance in which I find all Lady Hervey’s descendants about her.  Most of them never heard her maiden name.  It reminds one of Walpole writing to George Montagu, to tell him who his grandmother was!  I am anxious to knock off this task whilst what little I know of it is fresh in my recollection; for I foresee that much of the entertainment of the work must depend on the elucidations in the Notes.

Yours,

J.W.C.

The publication of Lady Hervey’s letters in 1821 was so successful that Mr. Croker was afterwards induced to edit, with great advantage, letters and memorials of a similar character. [Footnote:  As late as 1848, Mr. Croker edited Lord Hervey’s “Memoirs of the Court of George II. and Queen Caroline,” from the family archives at Ickworth.  The editor in his preface said that Lord Hervey was almost the Boswell of George II. and Queen Caroline.]

The next important memoires pour servir were brought under Mr.
Murray’s notice by Lord Holland, in the following letter: 

Lord Holland to John Murray.

HOLLAND HOUSE, November 1820.

SIR,

I wrote a letter to you last week which by some accident Lord Lauderdale, who had taken charge of it, has mislaid.  The object of it was to request you to call here some morning, and to let me know the hour by a line by two-penny post.  I am authorized to dispose of two historical works, the one a short but admirably written and interesting memoir of the late Lord Waldegrave, who was a favourite of George II., and governor of George III. when Prince of Wales.  The second consists of three close-written volumes of “Memoirs by Horace Walpole” (afterwards Lord Orford), which comprise the last nine years of George II.’s reign.  I am anxious to give you the refusal of them, as I hear you have already expressed a wish to publish anything of this kind written by Horace Walpole, and had indirectly conveyed that wish to Lord Waldegrave, to whom these and many other MSS. of that lively and laborious writer belong.  Lord Lauderdale has offered to assist me in adjusting the terms of the agreement, and perhaps you will arrange with him; he lives at Warren’s Hotel, Waterloo Place, where you can make it convenient to meet him.  I would meet you there, or call at your house; but before you can make any specific offer, you will no doubt like to look at the MSS., which are here, and which (not being mine) I do not like to expose unnecessarily to the risk even of a removal to London and back again.