be to read the triumph of such a man as Hastings over the tremendous combination of his persecutors at home!  I had a noble catastrophe in writing the Life of Nelson, but the latter days of Hastings afford a scene more touching, and perhaps more sublime, because it is more uncommon.  Let me have the works of Orme and Bruce and Mill, and I will set apart a portion of every day to the course of reading, and begin my notes accordingly.”

The second touches on his perennial grievance against Gifford: 

“You will really serve as well as oblige me, if you will let me have a duplicate set of proofs of my articles, that I may not lose the passages which Mr. Gifford, in spite of repeated promises, always will strike out.  In the last paper, among many other mutilations, the most useful fact in the essay, for its immediate practical application, has been omitted, and for no imaginable reason (the historical fact that it was the reading a calumnious libel which induced Felton to murder the Duke of Buckingham).  When next I touch upon public affairs for you, I will break the Whigs upon the wheel.”

Mrs. Graham, afterwards Lady Callcott, then the wife of Captain Graham, R.N., an authoress and friend of the Murray family, wrote to introduce Mr. (afterwards Sir) Charles Eastlake, who had translated Baron Bartholdy’s “Memoirs of the Carbonari.”

Mrs. Graham to John Murray.

February 24, 1821.

All great men have to pay the penalty of their greatness, and you, arch-bookseller as you are, must now and then be entreated to do many things you only half like to do.  I shall half break my heart if you and Bartholdy do not agree.

* * * * *

Now, whether you publish “The Carbonari” or not, I bespeak your acquaintance for the translator, Mr. Eastlake.  I want him to see the sort of thing that one only sees in your house, at your morning levees—­the traffic of mind and literature, if I may call it so.  To a man who has lived most of his grown-up life out of England, it is both curious and instructive, and I wish for this advantage for my friend.  And in return for what I want you to benefit him, by giving him the entree to your rooms, I promise you great pleasure in having a gentleman of as much modesty as real accomplishment, and whose taste and talents as an artist must one day place him very high among our native geniuses.  You and Mrs. Murray would, I am sure, love him as much as Captain Graham and I do.  We met him at Malta on his return from Athens, where he had been with Lord Ruthven’s party.  Thence he went to Sicily with Lord Leven.  In Rome, we lived in the same house.  He was with us at Poli, and last summer at Ascoli with Lady Westmoreland.  I have told him that, when he goes to London, he must show you two beautiful pictures he has done for Lord Guilford, views taken in Greece.  You will see that his pictures and Lord Byron’s poetry tell the same story of the “Land of the Unforgotten Brave.”  I envy you your morning visitors.  I am really hungry for a new book.  If you are so good as to send me any provision fresh from Murray’s shambles, as Mr. Rose says, address it to me, care of Wm. Eastlake, Esq., Plymouth.  Love to Mrs. Murray and children.