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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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In return for your ode to Indolence I know nothing better than these strains to her eldest born. they immortalize a man who is the ne plus ultra of folly. one who in the midst of a moral argument when the principles of morality were discussing by one of most extraordinary merit, declared himself to be a very moral man “for by Gd I have not prostituted my body these six months!” as if (said Lovell) such a body could be prostituted! the first ode is by Lovell. the second my own.
Ode to Griggin
Valentine
————
Ode to Griggin.
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DIGNUM LAUDE VIRUM MUSA VETAT MORI.
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Orson.
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[MS missing] has stolen it who knew not half its value. that night [MS missing] of
Helicon.
Your verses are good but incorrect. the more you write the better will be your verses. send me some more — & write oftener. I am much in the mood for versifying that I was at Brixton. continually at it & satisfied with all.
talking of Helicon I am longing for spruce beer. but between you & I, have a pretty good succedaneum in some strong beer. of which I will lay in another stock against your arrival.
Lightfoot departs on Friday
week. alas poor Nicholas! but
he lends me his rooms so you <may> wail for him over the pot. I
have quarrelld with Jerry
Collins. when you & your brother come I shall
ask him to meet you some day. if he has sense enough he will come. if he does
not ‘his crime will be his punishment.’
I am sitting without a fire for no other reason but because tis
June. tis a bad reason — my legs & hands ache & my fire shall
blaze tho twere the Dog days. what think you of Polish politics.
write soon. friends fall off & Oxford grows duller. Seward is gone. & Lightfoot going. so Burnett & I
<shall> have only a great unlickd Welch boy
one hour to dinner! & I have the voracity of ten tygers. Horace I have foresaid (not foresworn for I swear not) sugar. & my mouth is a stranger to gooseberry pye! never again shall the delicacies which human slavery & human misery produce, pollute the lips of
when you sweeten your tea think of this — in my next — more on this subject.