To Dr. John Brown

Denmark Hill, 11th Feb. [1847].

My dear Sir,—I was much grieved this evening by receiving your letter written under circumstances of illness and fatigue, and expressing feelings so unnecessarily, unwarrantably painful, and more that my delay in thanking you for your paper in the North British had left you so long in this state of anxiety. I hope you will not give the subject one thought more, except so far as it may be a source of pleasure to you to know that you have infinitely delighted an old and tender-hearted friend of mine, who could never forget the critique in Blackwood, and who certainly would have shrunk like a sea-anemone at shadow, had any part of the present one been unkind or unjust. I do not think there is one whit more fault-finding than is fully and fairly warrantable, certainly no more than is expedient, for I fear that if your kind spirit of praise had thoroughly pervaded the article there had been much chance of all being set down as the work of my friends and private abettors, and much of the credit it will now carry refused in consequence.