New York Dec. 24th 1829.
Dear Sir
I shall communicate to Mr. Coleman the fate of his packet which was committed to the post office in perfect forgetfulness of the spirit of reform now infused into all public departments, and which I hope will produce as much accommodation in some respects as it deprives us of in others. I believe the packet consisted of Coleman's article on the subject of Banking which appeared in the United States Review either in the original pamphlet or transcribed, with perhaps some additional manuscript. 1
You have accounted satisfactorily enough for Eaton's failure, but has he no friends who write English and who can look over his official communications for him?
The other day Mr. Sands showed me the third volume of [a] work called Tales of an Indian Camp published in England by Colburn and which Carey & Lea are to republish here. You may perhaps have seen some preliminary puff of the book in which the author is said to be a Mr. Jones--J. A. Jones I believe--the same who wrote the sonnet on Webster, and then edited a Jackson paper in Philadelphia. And what do you think I found Mr. Jones had been doing in his third volume? Only transplanting my story of the Cascade of Melsingah bodily into his work leaving out my introduction, and fitting it with a short one of his own, altering slightly the beginning and end of several of the paragraphs, and putting a new sentence at the close of the whole, but otherwise copying verbatim about twenty pages of Mr. Herbert's composition. 2 It is the same old coat with a new cuff and collar. Not the slightest acknowledgment of the obligation is made in any part of the book. What adds to the man's impudence he relates in the course of the work with the utmost gravity as Mr. Sands tells me that in his childhood he was attended by an Indian servant from whom he learned the superstitions and traditions he has made use of in compiling the book. This theft from me is not however the only one the work contains. The Notes to Yamoyden are stolen in the same wholesale manner. 3 It will be necessary that the critics should be prepared to vindicate Mr. Herbert's literary rights when the book comes out. For my own part I intend to expose the robbery, and if the book comes in your way you will not forget what is due to our old friend. 4
Sands has seen Carey. He seemed to entertain the proposition favorably and promised to write with an offer of terms. 5
Yrs truly
W. C. BRYANT.
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