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INTRODUCTION xxvii
which is in perfect taste, quite lovely. Only I do feel ashamed of
accepting anything so precious for a speck of scribbling done in
neighbourly eagerness for a good fellow, with whom I am proud to
share a page. What am I, or you, to say to Messrs. Smith and
Elder? The impression of our vignette comes very well, nicely
engraved.— My dear Thackeray, faithfully and sincerely yours,
"E. LANDBEER."
My father's correspondence over the Cornhill was not only
with the distinguished. Here are two specimens of a different
kind.
One contributor states that he is a "gentleman" wishing to
go abroad on an historical and antiquarian tour through Normandy,
the only difficulty being that he has not sufficient means to accomplish
his object. He therefore requests my father to send him
£12 at once, and he, the writer, will immediately start, and
contribute gratuitously, he says, to the Cornhill an account of his
journey. He trusts that if my father cannot do this he will make
some other arrangement (the dashes are the correspondent's own).
The contributor thinks of going by Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, St.
Michel, and returning by Tours and Orleans. " You will perceive,"
he says, " that this is an original tour, and contains many interesting
points."
"HONOURED AND ADMIRED SIR,"—writes another in Johnsonian
language from the depths of the country—" In the writer of
this letter you would behold the unlucky, unfortunate, and unworthy
contributor of some poetical subjects to your influential and extensive
Cornhill Magazine. Indeed I have but received a day or two ago
such a piece returned. ... I now try my hand at prose, and send
you a paper for the May number of the magazine." (The letter is
dated March 27, and the editor and printers would have to bestir
themselves.) "If the manuscript is returned," says the author,
" I will send the postage necessary. . . . May such a contingency
be far off."
There is a very interesting exchange of letters between Mrs.
Browning and my father concerning a difference of view held by
her and by him as to the line which ought to be drawn by the
editor of a popular magazine for family reading. I cannot re-