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