" He was willing to comply with her request,
provided she submitted her manuscript for perusal and approval. But as
she did not comply with his request, Mr. Murray wrote to her as follows:
_John Murray to Mrs. Jameson_.
_July_ 14, 1840
MY DEAR MADAM,
It is with unfeigned regret that I perceive that you and I are not
likely to understand each other. The change from a Publisher, to whose
mode of conducting business you are accustomed, to another of whom you
have heard merely good reports, operates something like second
marriages, in which, whatever occurs that is different from that which
was experienced in the first, is always considered wrong by the party
who has married a second time. If, for a particular case, you have been
induced to change your physician, you should not take offence, or feel
even surprise, at a different mode of treatment.
My rule is, never to engage in the publication of any work of which I
have not been allowed to form a judgment of its merits and chances of
success, by having the MSS. left with me a reasonable time, in order to
form such opinion; and from this habit of many years' exercise, I
confess to you that it will not, even upon the present occasion, suit me
to deviate.
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