will not consider me mercenary, when I am indeed influenced by
the most sincere desire to meet your views.

If this modification of your arrangement will suit you, as I fervently
trust it will, I shall be delighted to accede to your wishes. In that
case let me know without loss of time, and pray let us meet to talk over
minor points, as to the mode of publication, etc. I shall be at home all
the morning; my time is very much occupied, and on Thursday or Friday I
must run down, for a day or two, to Wycombe to attend a public meeting.
[Footnote: Mr. Disraeli was then a candidate, on the Radical side, for
the borough of Wycombe.]

Fervently trusting that this arrangement will meet your wishes,

Believe me, yours,

BENJ. DISRAELI.

While the MS. was still in Mr. Milman's hands, Mr. Disraeli followed
this up with another letter:

_Mr. Disraeli to John Murray_

35 DUKE STREET, ST. JAMES'S.

MY DEAR SIR, I am very sensible that you have conducted yourself, with
regard to my MS., in the most honourable, kind, and judicious manner;
and I very much regret the result of your exertions, which neither of us
deserve.

I can wait no longer. The delay is most injurious to me, and in every
respect very annoying. I am therefore under the painful necessity of
requesting you to require from your friend the return of my work without
a moment's delay, but I shall not deny myself the gratification of
thanking you for your kindness and subscribing myself, with regard,

Your faithful Servant,

BENJ. DISRAELI.

At length Mr. Milman's letter arrived, expressing his judgment on the
work, which was much more satisfactory than that of Mr. Lockhart.

_The Rev. H.H. Milman to John Murray_.

READING, _March_ 5, 1832.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have been utterly inefficient for the last week, in a state of almost
complete blindness; but am now, I trust, nearly restored. Mrs. Milman,
however, has read to me the whole of the MS. It is a very remarkable
production--very wild, very extravagant, very German, very powerful,
very poetical. It will, I think, be much read--as far as one dare
predict anything of the capricious taste of the day--much admired, and
much abused. It is much more in the Macaulay than in the Croker line,
and the former is evidently in the ascendant. Some passages will startle
the rigidly orthodox; the phrenologists will be in rapture. I tell you
all this, that you may judge for yourself. One thing insist upon, if you
publish