Your obedient servant,
WM. WORDSWORTH.
As Mr. Murray did not answer this letter promptly, Mr. H. Crabb Robinson called upon him to receive his decision, and subsequently wrote:
Mr. H.G. Robinson to John Murray.
February 1827.
"I wrote to Mr. Wordsworth the day after I had the pleasure of seeing you. I am sorry to say that my letter came too late. Mr. Wordsworth interpreted your silence into a rejection of his offer; and his works will unfortunately lose the benefit of appearing under you auspices. They have been under the press some weeks."
For about fifteen years there had been no business transactions between Murray and Constable. On the eve of the failure of the Constables, the head of the firm, Mr. Archibald Constable (October 1825), was paying a visit at Wimbledon, when Mr. Murray addressed his host—Mr. Wright, whose name has already occurred in the Representative correspondence—as follows:
My Dear Wright,
Although I intend to do myself the pleasure of calling upon Mr. Constable at your house tomorrow immediately after church (for it is our charity sermon at Wimbledon, and I must attend), yet I should be most happy, if it were agreeable to you and to him, to favour us with your company at dinner at, I will say, five tomorrow. Mr. Constable is godfather to my son, who will be at home, and I am anxious to introduce him to Mr. C., who may not be long in town.
Mr. Constable and his friend accordingly dined with Murray, and that the meeting was very pleasant may be inferred from Mr. Constable's letter of a few days later, in which he wrote to Murray, "It made my heart glad to be once more happy together as we were the other evening." The rest of Mr. Constable's letter referred to Hume's Philosophical Writings, which were tendered to Murray, but which he declined to publish.