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[Letter of Francis William Newman to J. Chapman Esq.] 37 Bedford
Square, Dear Sir, Mr Bagehot was my pupil, & I believe I may say I knew him well; but I do not keep up any correspondence with him. I know him to be one of the Editors of the National, but do not know whether he would or would not write in any other Review. I have understood that his father is a banker in Lamport, Somersetshire, & I have conjectured that he himself has some part in the practical duties of the bank; but this is only a surmise. I shall be in London next Monday. If you wish me to see the cover before it is decided, perhaps it is worth while losing a week, the more so as I cannot add a certain paragraph to the advertisement of my Homer until I return: otherwise I shall be perfectly satisfied to leave the choice of the cover in your hands. Only, the board should not be too thick for so thin a book. I enclose a receipt for the £14.10. I of course accept this money, as that which you would pay to another; nor am I at all indifferent to money, & the less so, since my Junior Class at College steadily lessens. Yet I accept it with an uncomfortable feeling that it is more than the article could deserve in the general market. This makes me wish to compromise by offering you for the next Westminster the present of a political article which I have in my mind, upon the existing political evils of the whole empire & their cure. No new reform Bill will have been carried by April 1st but I think I should not clash with any other political article you might have. I am conscious of having much to say, & the difficulty is to arrange it well. If I did not believe that it would be, 1. full of thought, 2. not commonplace, 3. in so close relation to practice as to be of interest; I could not offer it. But, of course, I could not expect you to express a willingness to take it till you have seen it: also, I see no reason why, as on former occasions, you should not by a brief note refer it to an extra-editorial source, if so you choose. I now only want to know whether you are so preoccupied that my pains would be thrown away. As to the 3 pages of advertisements, I am at a loss. My servant (following a general rule not to send on mere advertisements) has not sent to me your printed list. But the truth is, I made sure there would be only one page, which might have contained a list of your Theistical books only; then as you would have had but one page to my five, it would have seemed to be a part of my own advertisement of books harmonizing more or less with my own. But if you are to have 3 pages with various miscellaneous books, it is visibly your advertisement, & I gain nothing by an invidious exclusion of certain books. And what shall I exclude? Atkinson & Martineau? Feuerbach? Comte? It is not worth while. You must please to use the space as you like. Can you get me access to Gladstone's Essays on Homer,—one in the Oxford Essays of 1857, & one in a recent Quarterly? I want to quote from them in the advertisement of my Iliad. Sincerely yours,
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