It is of the highest importance that
in our anxiety about a new affair one should not lose sight of the old
and established one, and I _can_ believe that if the real state of the
case were known at the outset of my career in London, a considerable
feeling detrimental to the _Quarterly might_ be excited. We have enough
of adverse feelings to meet, without unnecessarily swelling their number
and aggravating their quality.
I beg you to have a serious conversation with Mr. Barrow on this head,
and in the course of it take care to make him thoroughly understand that
the prejudices or doubts he gave utterance to in regard to me were heard
of by me without surprise, and excited no sort of angry feeling
whatever. He could know nothing of me but from flying rumours, for the
nature of which _he_ could in no shape be answerable. As for poor Rose's
well-meant hints about my "identifying myself perhaps in the mind of
society with the scavengers of the press," "the folly of _your_ risking
your name on a _paper_," etc., etc., of course we shall equally
appreciate all this. Rose is a timid dandy, and a bit of a Whig to boot.
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