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Huntington Library, HM 4829 . Previously published: J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, pp. 369-372.
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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Your letter in spite of Norfolk frosts &
Norfolk flats would have excited in me some half desire to
diet for life upon Norfolk puddings & turnips &
turkies – if destiny did not invite me to a better country.
I have the hope & prospect of visiting Italy in a
prudent way – as Secretary to some legation there – an
office of little trouble, with the prospect of
advancement.for to a
residence in that country, & the prospect of a permanent
income, without that eternal anxiety about ways & means
which have so long harrassed me. This is for your own eye
only. my destination will probably be Palermo – if peace
comes, as likely to any of the other states – & as
willingly. Ultimately I look to Lisbon – & certainly to
a long absence from England – to me less an object of regret
than it would be to most persons, not merely from my state
of health, but from my peculiar circumstances. I have never
been settled in England – never had a home there – my
friends are scattered – nowhere two in a place. from my
family (excepting Henrys
prospects) I receive no comfort, & can communicate none
to them. thus without anchor or cable it is but to hoist
sail & away! –
To the other part of your letter – a visit to Norwich would promise much pleasure. but look at the map. – & there is a wretched distance between. besides my time is otherwise allotted. I am going to Keswick, to pass the Autumn with Coleridge – to work like a negro – & to arrange his future plans with my own. he is miserably ill, & must quit England for a warmer climate or perish. I found letters announcing his determination to ship himself & family for the Azores, the only spot his finances could reach. this I have stopt; & the probability is that he will accompany me abroad. thus Edith will have one sister with her to reconcile her to an abandonment of the rest – & I shall have with me the man, to whom, in all the ups & downs of six years, my heart has clung with most affection, despite even of its own efforts.
There I am to work – but on what Messrs
Longman &
Rees are now
deciding. I have been compelled to propose to them – either
Madoc
The justice of your praise I of course
believe – however ill qualified to judge. your censure:–
there is a fault of story – a want of
sufficient concatenation of events – perhaps inevitable from
the subject. yet I have found no lack of interest in the
readers – who have followed the story breathlessly – & nor do I see more
motive – human motive for Huonthere is only
his imagination in the enchanted fabric. for this also I
build the hope – the confidence of my own immortality upon
Madoc. because in a story diversified as that of Thalaba,
human characters are well developed, human incidents well
arranged – because it will be as new in the Epic as this is
in the Romance, & assert a bolder claim to originality
than has been asserted since the voice of Homer awoke its
thousand echoes. – I expect with some wishfulness your
remarks on the second volume. Book 8. the voyage in B.
11r Sayers
I am so entirely satisfied with Henrys
situation – that were I on the spot – eyes & ears would
be useless, & only my tongue wanted to find out phras[MS
torn] & approbation. soon he shall hear from me – when
his shirts come which are making – & his Thalaba which
is at the book-binders to be drest in my livery. it would be
well, if he had my example before him, to stimulate an
independant frugality – a difficult virtue – but of all the
most necessary – to teach him that the pleasure of
forbearance is ever greater than of indulgence. Madame
Guyon
Give me a letter soon. directing to Mr Danvers’s. Kingsdown.
Bristol.