f his
work: "Even Croker, who edited her letters, loves her, and has that
regard for her with which her sweet graciousness seems to have inspired
almost all men, and some women, who came near her." The following letter
of Croker shows the spirit in which he began to edit the Countess's
letters:

_Mr. Croker to John Murray_.

_May_ 29, 1822.

DEAR MURRAY,

As you told me that you are desirous of publishing the Suffolk volume by
November, and as I have, all my life, had an aversion to making any one
wait for me, I am anxious to begin my work upon them, and, if we are to
be out by November, I presume it is high time. I must beg of you to
answer me the following questions.

1st. What shape will you adopt? I think the correspondence of a nature
rather too light for a quarto, and yet it would look well on the same
shelf with Horace Walpole's works. If you should prefer an octavo, like
Lady Hervey's letters, the papers would furnish two volumes. I, for my
part, should prefer the quarto size, which is a great favourite with me,
and the letters of such persons as Pope, Swift, and Gay, the Duchesses
of Buckingham, Queensberry, and Marlbro', Lords Peterborough,
Chesterfield, Bathurst, and Lansdowne, Messrs. Pitt, Pulteney, Pelham,
Grenville, and Horace Walpole, seem to me almost to justify the
magnificence of the quarto; though, in truth, all their epistles are, in
its narrowest sense, _familiar_, and treat chiefly of tittle-tattle.

Decide, however, on your own view of your interests, only recollect that
these papers are not to cost you more than "Belshazzar," [Footnote: Mr.
Milman's poem, for which Mr. Murray paid 500 guineas.] which I take to
be of about the intrinsic value of the _writings on the walls_, and not
a third of what you have given Mr. Crayon for his portrait of Squire
Bracebridge.

2nd. Do you intend to have any portraits? One of Lady Suffolk is almost
indispensable, and would be enough. There are two of her at Strawberry
Hill; one, I think, a print, and neither, if I forget not, very good.
There is also a print, an unassuming one, in Walpole's works, but a good
artist would make something out of any of these, if even we can get
nothing better to make our copy from. If you were to increase your
number of portraits, I would add the Duchess of Queensberry, from a
picture at Dalkeith which is alluded to in the letters; Lady Hervey and
her beautiful friend, Mary Bellenden. They are in Walpole's works; Lady