Letter from Charles Dickens, London, to Fanny M'Ian, 1850 July 8 : autograph manuscript signed.

Returning the gardener's book; praising some aspects of it, but saying "It seems to me to be no better and no worse, than a vast cloud of verse, that is always rising from all sorts of quarters. I see something every day, of the misery and bitterness consequent on mistaken rushings into print. I would on no account encourage a tendency to authorship in this writer. It would be to do him no kindness. He cannot too clearly understand that the difficulties under which he writes, are no reason for his writing ; and that the men who have laid down the spade or hammer for the pen, and become famous, have been among the most extraordinary men the world has ever produced."