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_To Mr. Westwood_

43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: February 2, [1854].

Thank you, my dear Mr. Westwood, for your kind defence of me against the
stupid, blind, cur-dog backbiting of the American writer. I will tell
you. Three weeks ago I had a letter from my brother, apprising me of
what had been said, and pressing on me the propriety of a contradiction
in form. Said I in reply: 'When you marry a wife, George, take her from
the class of those who have never printed a book, if this thing vexes
you. A woman in a crowd can't help the pushing up against her of dirty
coats; happy if somebody in boots does not tread upon her toes! Words
to that effect, I said. I really could not do the American the honour of
sitting down at the table with him to say: 'Sir, you are considerably
mistaken.' He was not only mistaken, you see, but so stupid and
self-willed in his mistake, so determined to make a system of it, but he
was too disreputable to set right. Also of the tendency of one's
writings one's readers are the best judges. I don't profess to write a
religious commentary on my writings. I am content to stand by the
obvious meaning of what I have written, according to the common sense of
the general reader.

The tendency of my writings to Swedenborgianism has been observed by
others, though I had read Swedenborg, when I wrote most of them, as
little as the American editor of 'Robert Hall' can have done, and less
can't be certainly. Otherwise, the said editor would have known that the
central doctrine of Swedenborgianism being the Godhead of Jesus Christ,
no Unitarian, liberal or unliberal, could have produced works
Swedenborgian in character, and that William and Mary Howitt being
Unitarian (which I believe they are) couldn't have a tendency at the
same time to Swedenborgianism, unless it should be possible for them to
be bolt upright with a leaning to the floor. I speak to a wise man.
Judge what I say. For my own part I have thought freely on most
subjects, and upon the state of the Churches among others, but never at
any point of my life, and now, thank God, least of all, have I felt
myself drawn towards Unitarian opinions. I should throw up revelation
altogether if I ceased to recognise Christ as divine. Sectarianism I do
not like, even in the form of a State Church, and the Athanasian way of
stating opinions, between a scholastic paradox and a curse, is
particularly distasteful to me. But I hold to