Written from "Heather Brae, / Maybury Hill, / Woking" on note cards printed with the address.
Saying "There is some mistake, I'm sure. I would write nothing about these Minor Works except a few cordial & cheery sentences about Captani Boldheart, & I can't understand how the mistake has arisen. Of course, if you say that I'm hooked - that I hooked myself - I must believe you. But I hope you won't. I hope you will rather call on Mr. W. H. Pollock or Mr. Edmund Gosse, or even Mr. Andrew Lang, & get the thing out of them. If it were the H.W. & A. the Y.R. stories, now! I would take them in for nothing; & with infinite pleasure. But this cheap journalism : frankly, I won't. So far as I remember, Sproul wrote confirming the Chuzzlewit. So that's all right. However, it's not for me to criticize and I'll say no more than that I think that Lang was very happily inspired when he said no. I said what I thought - said it in print - of his contribution to the 'Gadshill' Dickens; & I am not at all sorry that Mr. Swinburne has said what he thinks of it;" adding, in a postscript, "When do you want my copy? You say August 1 for Reprinted Pieces. Mr. Sproul says a year hence is all his fancy permits. Which of you am I to believe?"