Fraser's people
are not now my Booksellers, except in the matter of your _Essays_
and a second edition of _Sartor;_ the other Books I got
transferred to a certain pair of people named "Chapman and Hall,
186 Strand"; which operation, though (I understand) it was
transacted with great and vehement reluctance on the part of the
Fraser people, yet produced no _quarrel_ between them and me, and
they still forward parcels, &c., and are full of civility when I
see them:--so that whether this had any effect or none in their
treatment of Brown and his Bill I never knew; nor indeed, having
as you explained it no concern with Brown's and their affairs,
did I ever happen to inquire. I avoid all Booksellers; see them
rarely, the blockheads; study never to think of them at all.
Book-sales, reputation, profit, &c., &c.; all this at present is
really of the nature of an encumbrance to me; which I study, not
without success, to sweep almost altogether out of my head. One
good is still possible to me in Life, one only: To screw a
little more work out of myself, my miserable, despicable, yet
living, acting, and so far imperial and celestial _self;_ and
this, God knows, is difficulty enough without any foreign one!
You ask after _Cromwell:_ ask not of him; he is like to drive
me mad.
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