1st. What shape will you adopt? I think the correspondence of a nature
rather too light for a quarto, and yet it would look well on the same
shelf with Horace Walpole's works. If you should prefer an octavo, like
Lady Hervey's letters, the papers would furnish two volumes. I, for my
part, should prefer the quarto size, which is a great favourite with me,
and the letters of such persons as Pope, Swift, and Gay, the Duchesses
of Buckingham, Queensberry, and Marlbro', Lords Peterborough,
Chesterfield, Bathurst, and Lansdowne, Messrs. Pitt, Pulteney, Pelham,
Grenville, and Horace Walpole, seem to me almost to justify the
magnificence of the quarto; though, in truth, all their epistles are, in
its narrowest sense, _familiar_, and treat chiefly of tittle-tattle.
Decide, however, on your own view of your interests, only recollect that
these papers are not to cost you more than "Belshazzar," [Footnote: Mr.
Milman's poem, for which Mr. Murray paid 500 guineas.] which I take to
be of about the intrinsic value of the _writings on the walls_, and not
a third of what you have given Mr. Crayon for his portrait of Squire
Bracebridge.
Pages:
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454