wrack behind. What I have done
indeed is little else than one of the old Review Articles, which gave a
sketch of the work, and let the author fill in with his better work.

Well then I want to know--(2) if you find the present tense of my Prose
Narrative discordant with the past tense of the text. I adopted it
partly by way of further discriminating the two: but I may have
misjudged: Tell me: as well as any other points that strike you. You can
tell me if you will--and I wish you would--whether I had better keep the
little _Opus_ to ourselves or let it take its chance of getting a few
readers in public. You may tell me this very plainly, I am sure; and I
shall be quite as well pleased to keep it unpublished. It is only a
very, very, little Job, you see: requiring only a little Taste, and Tact:
and if they have failed me--_Voila_! I had some pleasure in doing my
little work very dexterously, I thought; and I did wish to draw a few
readers to one of my favourite Books which nobody reads. And, now that I
look over it, I fancy that I may have missed my aim--only that my Friends
will like, etc. Then, I should have to put some Preface to the Public:
and explain how many omissions, and some transpositions, have occasioned
the change here and there of some initial particle where two originally
separated paragraphs are united; some use made of Crabbe's original MS.
(quoted in the Son's Edition;) and all such confession to no good, either
for my Author or me. I wish you could have just picked up the Book at a
Railway Stall, knowing nothing of your old Friend's hand in it. But that
cannot be; tell me then, divesting yourself of all personal Regard: and
you may depend upon it you will--save me some further bother, if you bid
me let publishing alone. I don't even know of a Publisher: and won't
have a favour done me by 'ere a one of them,' as Paddies say. This is a
terrible Much Ado about next to Nothing. 'Parlons,' etc.

Blanche Donne wrote me you had been calling in Weymouth Street: that you
had been into Hampshire, and found Mrs. Sartoris better--Dear Donne seems
to have been pleased and mended by his Children coming about him. I say
but little of my Brother's Death. {149} We were very good friends, of
very different ways of thinking; I had not been within side his lawn
gates (three miles off) these dozen years (no fault of his), and I did
not enter them at his Funeral--which you will very likely--and
properly--thin