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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Grosvenor — stand Godfather to this Ode & give it what name you please. it was designed for your birth day — & might as well have been designed for any thing else.
————
———
There Grosvenor is one of the best Odes I have ever written. it is too general for the occasion that gave it birth. I shall
therefore print it with my other lyrics — & supply its place among the
birth day Odes by when I shall find more
leisure
Where you will be on the eleventh I know not. wherever you are I
wish you <I> were with you.
Friendship has its red-letter days as well as Superstition & perhaps
hereafter we may keep them as holy days. it is but three years since I was at
Brixton — an interval crowded with
events! & here am I writing verses with the same delight as ever.
& whoever loves Poetry as sincerely as I do will agree with me that it
is a pity I should ever do any thing else. however I have done enough — if ever
I can honestly get enough by the blackguard rascally Law to retire into the
country & write over my door
Inveni portum — Spes et Fortuna valete —
Why then Grosvenor will I take the old harp from the wall — [MS torn] if I have forgotten to strike its strings aright.
farewell — write to me — it is some weeks since I have heard[MS torn] you — & I want a report on the state of the sky light. now must I — write letters from Portugal.