don't venture to put any price on the admirable work which your talent
will produce,--that's for you and your publishers to settle between
you, and, as a matter of fact, it has been already settled, as you
are in their employ. But I _can_ put a price on my own, and I do. I
collaborate with you in furnishing all the materials of which you are
in need. _Soit._ For the use of my Pegasus, no matter what its breed,
and, as it isn't a gift-horse, but a hired one, you can examine its
mouth and legs critically whenever you are going to mount and guide it
at your own sweet will, _I charge twenty guineas for the first hour_,
and _ten for the second_. It may be dear, or it may be cheap. That's
not my affair. _C'est à laisser ou à prendre._

The Magazine in which the article is to appear is not given away
with a pound of tea, or anything of that sort I presume, so that your
strictly honourable and business-like firm of employers, and you also,
Sir, in the regular course of your relations with them, intend making
something out of me, more or less, but something, while I get nothing
at all for my time, which is decidedly as valuable to me as, I
presume, is yours to you. What have your publishers ever done for me
that I should give them my work for nothing? Time is money; why should
I make Messrs. TOWER, FONDLER & Co. a present of twenty pounds, or,
for the matter of that, even ten shillings? If I misapprehend the
situation, and you are doing your work gratis and for the love of the
thing, then that is _your_ affair, not mine: I'm glad to hear it, and
regret my inability to join you in the luxury of giving away what it
is an imperative necessity of my existence to sell at the best price
I can. Do you honestly imagine, Sir, that my literary position will
be one farthing's-worth improved by a memoir and a portrait of me
appearing in your widely-circulated journal? If _you_ do, _I don't_;
and I prefer to be paid for my work, whether I dictate the material to