My dear Sir, As I wholly rely upon your judgment for the excellency of
the design in question, I wish you to be better acquainted with my
abilities as a reviewer before I suffer my curiosity to be further
gratified in respect to the plan of the work you have undertaken, or the
names of those persons who, with yourself, have done me the very great
honour to require my assistance. Before I see you, then, and possess
myself of your further confidence, it is proper that I should acquaint
you that there is only one department of a Review for which I am in the
least qualified, and that one combines plays and novels. Yet the very
few novels I have read, of later publications, incapacitates me again
for detecting plagiary, or for making such comparisons as proper
criticism may demand. You will, perhaps, be surprised when I tell you
that I am not only wholly unacquainted with the book you have mentioned
to me, but that I never heard of it before. If it be in French, there
will be another insurmountable difficulty; for, though I read French,
and have translated some French comedies, yet I am not so perfectly
acquainted with the language as to dare to write remarks upon a French
author. If Madame Cottin's "Malvina" be in English, you wish it speedily
reviewed, and can possibly have any doubt of the truth of my present
report, please to send it me; and whatever may be the contents, I will
immediately essay my abilities on the work, or immediately return it as
a hopeless case.

Yours very faithfully,

E. Inchbald.

On further consideration, however, Mrs. Inchbald modestly declined to
become a contributor. Notwithstanding her great merits as an author, she
had the extremest diffidence in her own abilities.