from you and the proprietors
more particularly by the next post, and then we were to have a farther
conference. The next post brought me your long letter, and he has not
made his appearance since. I suppose, by what you say in _confidence_
to me, that he finds he cannot be director general, and possibly
suspects that he may have very little to do. I find myself under some
embarrassment with regard to this _personage_. However, as he is going
to marry into a family with some branches of which I have long had a
very agreeable connection, I must suffer myself to be in a degree of
acquaintance with him, especially if (as he _threatens_) he should make
this place [Boston] his future residence. If I cannot esteem him as a
friend, I do not wish to make him an enemy, and I am very awkward in the
art of Chesterfield. Hence arises my embarrassment. What he has told
Thomas I know not, but I must do him the justice to say that he did not
tell me the names of any of the proprietors, excepting yourself and
himself; nor do I know who the others are."

Hazard's papers were finally published by themselves, and the Magazine
and Register never got beyond the proposals point. Before the collection
was published, however, another magazine loomed up, for the regular
failure of each venture never seemed to dampen the ardor of magazine
projectors. The story of the enterprise sketched in these letters may be
taken as the story of all,--sanguine literary men and inert subscribers;
a class of material is reckoned upon which always seems abundant, vastly
interesting to the persons who hold it, but insufficient to beguile
subscribers. Mr. Hazard, with his collection of papers, expects five
hundred pounds, and his associates think him not unreasonable,
especially after he agrees to pay one fourth himself; and with all his
prudence and shrewdness he begins to count on the profits of the
magazine with something of Webster's facile hope.

Webster himself, in spite of the dislike with which Hazard and Belknap
agreed to regard him, appears in an honorable light. No doubt he was
consequential and eager to have a hand in what was going on, but he had
the confidence and courage which seem to have been lacking in his
associates. His impulsive dashes at literature and capricious excursions
into the realms of language were offensive to highly conservative and
orderly scholars like these correspondents, and they sniffed at him
rather contemptuously; but Webste