sonal Reminiscences" sounds like a
bad title for an autobiography. Now this is nothing of the sort. It
is literally a book made up of favorite scraps of poetry and prose;
the bits of my own writing are partly critical, and partly have
been interwoven to please Henry Chorley and give something of
novelty, and as it were individuality, to a mere selection, to take
off the dryness and triteness of extracts, and give the pen
something to say in the work as well as the scissors. Still, it is a
book founded on other books, and since it pleased Mr. Bentley to
object to "Readings of Poetry," because he said nobody in England
bought poetry, why "Recollections of Books," as suggested by Mr.
Bennett, approved by me, and as I believed (till this very day)
adopted by Mr. Bentley, seemed to meet exactly the truth of the
case, and to be quite concession enough to the exigencies of the
trade. By the other title we exposed ourselves, in my mind, to all
manner of danger. I shall write this by this same post to Mr.
Bennett, and get the announcement changed, if possible; for it seems
to me a trick of the worst sort. I shall write a list of the
subjects, and I only wish that I had duplicates, and I would send
you the articles, for I am most uncomfortable at the notion of your
being taken in to purchase a book that may, through this misnomer,
lose its reputation in England; for of course it will be attacked as
an unworthy attempt to make it pass for what it is not....

Now if you dislike it, or if Mr. Bentley keep that odious title,
why, give it up at once. Don't pray, pray lose money by me. It would
grieve me far more than it would you. A good many of these are about
books quite forgotten, as the "Pleader's Guide" (an exquisite
pleasantry), "Holcroft's Memoirs," and "Richardson's
Correspondence." Much on Darley and the Irish Poets, unknown in
England; and I think myself that the book will contain, as in the
last article, much exquisite poetry and curious prose, as in the
forgotten murder (of Toole, the author's uncle) in the State Trials.
But it should be called by its right name, as everything should in
this world. God bless you!

Ever faithfully yours,

M.R.M.

P.S. First will come the Preface, then the story of the book
(without Henry Chorley's name; it is to be dedicated to him),
no