"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be published
till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over
since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it I have
told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--_not the whole_ truth--for if
I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated
history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others
permitted it to appear.

"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are curious
in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you
had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by
my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his
publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which
you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy of the
literary mind (_if_ mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly,
or give a reason for _not_, good--bad--or indifferent. At present, I am
paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste; for, as
long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in
which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few
years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I
suspect to have the principle of duration in it: the Church, the
Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq.,
of the _Edinburgh Review_, have risen up against me, and my later
publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by
degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be
Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own
endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to
find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am
of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to
irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I