14–20 March 1842

The Dial is to be sustained or ended, and I must settle the question, it seems, of its life or death. I wish it to live, but do not wish to be its life. Neither do I like to put it in the hands of the Humanity and Reform Men, because they trample on letters and poetry ; nor in the hands of the Scholars, for they are dead and dry, I do not like the Plain Speaker so well as the Edinburgh Review. The spirit of the last may be conventional and artificial, but that of the first is coarse, sour, indigent, dwells in a cellar kitchen, and goes to make suicides.