6--Sydney Owenson's new novel, _The Wild Irish Girl_,
and it led to an amusing correspondence with its author on the part of
Phillips on the one side, and Johnson, who, it will be remembered, was
Cowper's publisher, on the other. Phillips was indignant that, having
first brought Sydney into fame, she should dare to ask more money on
that account. As is the case with every novelist to-day who scores one
success, Miss Owenson had formed a good idea of her value, and there is
a letter to Johnson in which she admitted that Phillips's offer was a
generous one. Johnson had offered her L300 for the copyright of _The
Wild Irish Girl_. Phillips had offered only L200 down and L50 each for
the second and third editions. When Phillips heard that Johnson had
outbidden him, he described the offer as 'monstrous,' and that it was
'inspired by a spirit of revenge.' He would not, he declared, increase
his offer, but a little later he writes from Bridge Street to Sydney
Owenson as his 'dear, bewitching, and deluding Syren,' and promises the
L300. A few months later he gave her a hundred pounds for a slight
volume of poems, which certainly never paid for its publication,
although Scott and Moore and many another were making much money out of
poetry in those days. In any case Phillips did not accept Miss Owenson's
next story with alacrity, in spite of the undoubted success of _The Wild
Irish Girl_. She no doubt asked too much for _Ida of Athens_. Phillips
probably thought, after reading the first volume in type, that it was
very inferior work, as indeed it was. Athens was described without the
author ever having seen the city. After much wrangling, in which the
lady said that her 'prince of publishers,' as she had once called him,
had 'treated her barbarously,' the novel went into the hands of the
Longmans, who published it, not without some remonstrance as to certain
of its sentiments. The successful Lady Morgan afterwards described _Ida_
as a bad book, so perhaps here, as usually, Phillips was not far wrong
in his judgment. A similar quarrel seems to have taken place over the
next novel, _The Missionary_. Here Phillips again received the
manuscript, discussed terms with its author, and returned it. The firm
of Stockdale and Miller were his successful rivals. Later and more
prosperous novels, _O'Donnel_ in particular, were issued by Henry
Colburn, and Phillips now disappears from Lady Morgan's life. I have
told the story of Phillips's relati