My dear Sir,
I have had a slight peep at the article in the Quarterly. <1> What I have seen has quite determined me to do any thing in my power to counteract such an act of obscurity. But I have just heard that Emerson <2> has already filled the next number of the Edinburgh. <3> If this is so I shall be partly pleased, partly [illegible deletion] annoyed. In other words I shall be pleased to have a little more time for writing, on the other I shall be sorry to let the ignorant injustice of that paper to work its mischief in the interval. Could you learn how the matter stands.
Believe me yrs very truly
T Hewitt Key
New: Coll: Lond:
Octr 19th 1847
H. F. Talbot Esqre
[envelope]
Henry F. Talbot Esqre
Athenaeum Club
Notes:
1. John Wilson Croker wrote a negative review of WHFT, English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847), in Quarterly Review, v.81, September 1847, pp. 500–525. WHFT replied to this review in ‘The Reviewer Reviewed’, The Literary Gazette and Journal of belles lettres, science and art, n.1615, 1 January 1848, p. 3 - Doc. No: 06078. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Irish-born, was a Tory MP from 1807 to 1832 and Secretary of the Admiralty from 1810 to 1830. As an author, he was noted for his virulent reviews in The Quarterly Review as much as for his 1831 edition of Boswell's Live of Johnson.
2. A mis-spelling of William Empson (1791–1852), editor of the Edinburgh Review.
3. Probably Edinburgh Review.