Pièce 33 - Richard Jones to William Whewell

RJ has heard that the next Quarterly Review has been advertised with a review of RJ's book in it ['Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation by the Rev. Richard Jones', The Quarterly Review, 1832]: 'I shall hardly believe it till I see it...Murray and C. are greater noodles still - what the deuce could they all mean with their equivocation and mystery - truly the smallness of the wisdom that governs the literary world deserves to be embodied in a new proverb in which their names should figure. I shall rejoice much to see it. I was prepared to be magnanimous if it was left out - but I knew all along that the circulation of the book depended essentially and mainly on it'. Maria Edgeworth paid RJ a visit - 'tell Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] all this. I shall be disappointed if he is not very jealous'. RJ does not know when he will be sending up the manuscript to volume two and hopes WW will not be angry at the delay - it 'is assuming a dignified and attractive shape in my mind'. He has read John Briggs 'Land and Tax in India I wish I had seen it before - but it is clear that that Indian scholars are fighting about the use of language not about facts - I have invented a neutral phraseology which will simply express the facts and avoid disputed names and I regret not to have used it in Rents'.