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Beinecke Library, GEN MSS 298, Series I, Box 1, folder 14. 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 heard yesterday from Norfolk concerning Harry, my friends there have
found out a situation for him far better than I could reasonably hope to have
met with. it is with a Mr Maurice near Lowestoff, a dissenting minister whom I once
met at Yarmouth. Harry has frequently visited
for some days at his house, & Maurice was pleased with him. he has ten pupils at sixty guineas a
year, & will take Harry
for thirty. requesting however that this may not be mentioned to any other
persons than those concerned. thirty guineas are the terms of the Kingsbridge
school where Lightfoot is
usher, & there <are> fifty boys there. of course there must be a
material difference in the attention paid to each of them. Maurice has been anxious to have
him under his care, & William
Taylor who has written to me upon the subject, promises to take care
of him in the holydays. you see Harry is very fortunate.
Of Maurice I hear
a very good character. he is attentive to the morals of his pupils & anxious
to inculcate Christian morality principles. his
wife
I wrote to you on Friday last transmitting an account of a young
man
We had an adventure this morning which has much amused us. As we were beginning breakfast, a well dressed woman entered the room, & said she was come to take a little breakfast with us. we thought she was deranged. this however was evidently not the case, & it was not without great difficulty I refrained from laughing at the oddity of the visit during the whole of the meal time. When she had done she rose up & askd what was to pay, & as you may suppose was somewhat confused when she found that we did not keep a public house. the poor woman breakfasted I believe in a state of very uncomfortable doubt, for the sight of my books which fronted her might have shown her that she had made some blunder. She was walking from Bristol some little way farther into the country, & found herself so cold & hungry that she determined to breakfast on the road.
My complaint is relieved, & when it returns affects me less because I am accustomed to it & acquainted with its cause. when the weather will permit it bathing is prescribed for me. I take exercise daily, & ether every night.
An odd circumstance occurred to me on Monday; a man who had been
at school with me,xxxxx language it was
necessary to read the dictionary thro, & that two or three times, & as
far as I could unravel his meaning it was to make a dictionary of elegant words
which gentlemen would be very glad to use if they understood them, & which
would save them the trouble of studying Johnsons two folios.
I have been reviewing a melancholy book; Memoires Historique de
Stephanie-Louise de Bourbon Conti written by herself.
<Edith desires to be remembered.>