The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-23 00:00:00

1226

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.


BOOKS.

Studies from Nature. Dr. H. Masins. Chapman and Hall.

C. Boner.

Ditto.

Jerusalem Revisited. W. H Bartlett. Hall and Virtue.
4 Boy's Adventures in Australia. W. Howitt. Ditto.
The Old Chelsea Bun-House. Ditto.
The Daily Life. Rev. J. Cumming, D.D. Ditto.
Lyrics of the Heart and Mind. M. F. Tupper. Ditto.
Athens and Attica. C. Wordsworth, D.D. Murray.
Dictionary of Italian Painters. Ditto.
The Englishwoman in Russia. Ditto.
Handbook for Young Painters. C. R. Leslie, R. A. Ditto.
History of British Guiana. H. U. Dalton.

Longman and Co
Life of Nicholas I. F. Mayne. Ditto•
The War; or, Voices from the Ranks. ltoutledge•
PAMPHLETS.
ka Fleur et la Feuilk. Translated by Le Chevalier de
Chatelain. Jeffs.
Rejected Addresses. J. and H. Smith. Murray.
Notes from Life. H. Taylor. Ditto.
The Conduct of the if A Speech by the Right Hon. S.
Herbert, M.P. Ditto.
The Death Ride. W. Marston. Mitchell.
Af/tna and Other Poems. R. C. Trench.

J. W. Parker and Son.
The Treasury of Rampsinilus. J. S. Phillips, ➢1 A. Bogue.
The Philosophy of Evidence. W. Williams Ridgway.

MR. WARREN'S MISCELLANIES.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS."
Sir,—l have been equally surprised and concerned
by your strong observations in your last week's num-
ber on the publication of Sir Walter Scott's letter to
me in my " Miscellanies." You say that it was
" most unpardonable to print a letter which, if only
" from compassion to a great man's failings, ought
" never to have seen the light. . . . To us it is
" evident that Mr. Warren has published it from
" much the same kind of animus that would lead a
" callous operator to exhibit a tumour which he had
" cut from a great man's body."
I beg to disclaim being actuated by such motives ;
and lament that any one can seriously imagine me
capable of acting thus by one whose memory I vene-
rate as that of incomparably the greatest genius of
the age in which I have lived. I published the letter
bolely because I thought it so illustrative, as I
!Mated, of Sir Walter Scott's " good nature and con-
descension." Ido not enter upon the vexed ques-
tion as to the validity of the right exercised by that
great writer of denying the authorship of a work
which he desired not to be known as written by
himself. I remember who has said, "Let your corn-
" munication he Yea, yea ; Nay, nay ; for whatsoever
"is more than these, cometh of evil."
But I venture to ask you if, when you penned your
Revere strictures, you were aware of Sir Walter Scott
having deliberately avowed and vindicated what he
had done, not to me only, but to so many others, in
his " General Preface" to the Waverley novels ? There
you will find the following remarkable passage; to
the last sentence in which I beg particularly to point
your attention :
My desire to remain concealed, in the character of the
author of these novels, subjected me occasionally to
awkward embarrassments, as it sometimes happened that
those who were sufficiently intimate with me would put
the question in direct terms. In this case, only one of
three courses could be followed. Either I must have
surrendered my secret, or have returned an equivocating
answer,—or, finally, must have stoutly and boldly denied
the fact. The first was a sacrifice which I conceived no
one had a right to force from me, since I alone was con-
cerned in the matter. The alternative of rendering a
doiibtffil answer must have left me open to the degrading
suspicion that I was not unwilling to assume the merit (if
there was any) which I dared not absolutely lay claim to;
or those who might think more justly of me must have
received such an equivocal answer as an indireot avowal.
I therefore considered myself entitled, like an accrued person
put upon trial, to refuse giving my own evidence to my own
conviction, and flatly to deny all that could not be proved
against me.

You have printed in italics Sir Walter Scott's de-
nial of the authorship of his novels, but I had not.
Nay, I had considered whether I should omit the
sentence; but it was so connected with the previous
and succeeding sentences that I determined not to
do so, as it would be a liberty which I did not feel
authorised by literary licence to take. I thought,
besides, that Sir Walter Scott's avowal and vindica-
tion of his denial were equally notorious with the
denial itself.
Finally, when I spoke of the letter as " an evi-
" dance of the extraordinary good nature and con-
" descension of that great writer to an unknown cor-
" respondent, a mere boy," I think it is going a great
way to charge me with representing Sir Walter
Scott's denial of the authorship of his novels as
" creditable to his character," and to express your-
self as " very sorry for the deadness of my moral
" perceptions." I made no allusion whatever to that
denial, and porposely assigned reasons for lauding
the letter, altogether independent of such denial.