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Royal Institution, London, Davy MSS. Previously published: John Davy (ed.), Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. (London, 1858), pp. 41–43.
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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The immediate occasion of my writing is to
request that if a Mr Elliottr Elliott, but write at the desire
of my particular friend here, Rickman, to whom
if you should ever find leisure to visit me here I should be
gratified by introducing you, as to a man of the most
various knowledge I have ever known.
I write in much weakness – of mind as well as body. something ails me at heart. I have, except the first few morning hours, a settled dull obtuse aching there – as if the rib against which it prest were bruised. for a fortnight this has been the case, & within the last five days a diarrhœa with consequent fever & sleeplessness has reduced me to almost a palsied debility. of course all enjoyment & all employment have of necessity been suspended.
From William Taylor, the all-knowing, I learn that the
few Peruvian words preserved by GarcilassoMago Mango Capac signifies a
man with an axe. – sufficient proof of an eastern origin,
which I always believed the most probable.
With the view to collect more materials for
this subject I have lately from the Zend-Avesta & other
labours of Anquetil Du Perronxxx time this heap of matter
may ferment into form & life – but now my head is only
susceptible of aching & fever & all nervous feelings
of pain & agitation. to night I try if opiates will send
me to sleep & when I sleep preserve me from broken yet
connected dreams, more fatiguing than wakefulness.
I often wish myself at Bristol – & if, as I have more & more reason to apprehend a constitution, debilitated by the worst possible management in childhood, the most ruinous system of coercion from all things proper, should for ever incapacitate me from the labour & confinement of professional studies – why I shall probably look to Bristol as my haven. tis the place where I have ever most felt myself at home, where I have when absent myself remembered my dearest friends, where I could walk confidently in darkness thro every winding. I have experienced more pain & pleasure there than elsewhere & these things twist into a strong cord of attachment.
God bless you. excuse a half letter from a sick man. at all times I should be glad to give you my hand, but now I should be glad to offer you my pulse – that I might have faith & be cured. here the people would poison me if I sent for the commonest drug.