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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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Yours is a good natured letter. & I would repent if I could –
but my time is not come yet – I have no grace for repentance – tho God knows
calls enough – for the postman brings me nothing but reproaches for silence
& if I answered them as duly as they arrive nothing else should I be able to
do. Look at my list of employments – Madoc in correction.
Yet I have thought of writing & talked of it. did you never
want to disembogue in a cold day when it was uncomfortabell to go into the
garden & sit in the cold? a homely illustration – but it will do – & it
is taken from nature. but I meant & resolved to write because I had
something to tell you – I have reason to expect an increase of family this
autumn nextxxx & having said that I need not say any
thing of the whole train of thought & feelings that it occasions. Take this
then for a letter – & two good reasons for its brevity – I am going first to
put it in the Post Office – & then to call on your friends at Clifton