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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. 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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I passed yesterday by a house which was once the uttermost boundary of my evening walks, when in early childhood I lived with my Aunt at Bath, it is now whitened & like a place where the towns people go to drink tea because it is rural. then it was a thatchd cottage, tenanted by an old man & his wife. I had a pack of sentimental cards given me, the picture of the cottage there was like this old mans house & I had strange associations of comfort & retirement with the little house <dwelling> in the orchard. But xx beyond this place all was unknown — a terra incognito — a kind of infinity, beyond <into> which I <had> never wandered — scarcely in imagination. After twenty years of restlessness & experience, the feelings of childhood have become the principles of maturity, & I would have giv again most willingly <continue> my walks & actions — aye even wil my wishes within as small a boundary. x action — even the thought of action — is irksome to me, quietness is all I wish, & whatever intrudes upon that is unwishd & unwelcome, I xx am often silent in conversation lest ought argumentative should break in upon the tranquillity of the moment.
When I was seven years old my first school masterdrow overpower agitation of mind by exercise of body — & when some person asked me if I liked going to school, replied “I dont care where I go — so I can have my own way” — & then my heart seemd coming up out my mouth — & I gulpd with a great gulp I checkd the rising tumult.
How have 18 days been passed since I began this letter? not at law — a plague upon Cokeupon Lyttleton for not taking his place in the coach himself — since nobody else will do it for him.
yrs is just arrived. you tell me in the one before that William Nicolgave made him your confidant because you found him a convenient one, & then resolved to like because he was your confidant. apropos — Cottle collected some trifling sum at Bristol for the family of poor Burns,
I like the terms you are on with your Mother — & understand them — but you give me no clue to find the terms on which you are with some body whose assent is of more importance.
Give my love to Carlisle & tell him I never received the letter he mentions relative to poor Mary Godwin! Lloyd will now remain here till we come to London. do you mean to dine at Grays Inn again? if so I shall be there on the Monday nearest the 18 of November.
Grosvenor Bedford I cannot make out from your letter whether or no you have found out the principal person in all these concerns, or whether you have only determined to look out for one. your first letter implies that you had, but now you say that all this “is not the result of your present particular situation”.
Tom is gone to sea & his Musæus is — with mine Grosvenor. he is on the Mars — with Ld Bridport.Mars. The latter was killed in action between the Mars and the French ship L’Hercule on 21 April 1798.
I have made many & great alterations in Joan of Arc, & am now going to make erudite researches in Burneys History of Music.
Why have not I written to Horace?!