John Cam Hobhouse to William Hone, 14 December, 1821: An Electronic Edition An Electronic Edition John Cam Hobhouse Kyle Grimes

For publication in the Hone Correspondence section of the William Hone BioText, http://honearchive.org. The letter is published under a Creative Commons license, details of which are accessible from the BioText homepage.

Transcribed from the original in the British Library, Add. MS 40856, ff. 10-11.

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John Cam Hobhouse to William Hone, 14 December, 1821.British Library, Add. MS 40856, ff. 10-11. [return] — -TEI-
Southill Park Biggleswade
My dear Sir,

The specific context for this letter is not clear, though it may well have to do with a review of Hone's Apocryphal New Testament that had recently appeared in the Quarterly Review (1821; vol. 25, pp. 348-65). The review was an utterly savage attack on Hone (a "wretch as contemptible as he is wicked" who is a "poor illiterate creature, far too ignorant to have any share in the composition either of this or of his seditious pamphlets" [348]), and Hone may well have asked Hobhouse to appeal to his father for assistance in responding. Hobhouse's father, Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, was a prominent politician and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, groups with whom Hone hoped to find favorable audiences for his antiquarian writing.Your letter to me has been travelling about the country or you would have had a more speedy answer. Certainly I will forward the case to my father and impress upon him how much I wish the thing to be done. I am not, however, aware in what manner or to whom he will have to apply especially as Lord Sidmouth is going out of office. What can be done you may depend shall be done.

Never mind the Quarterly — you are in good company that is one comfort.

I am yours very truly John C. Hobhouse

[Address:] Bedford — December Fourteen 1821 Mr William Hone Bookseller Ludgate Hill W. H. Whitbread London