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MS untraced; published in John Holland and James Everett, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery (London, 1855), II, pp. 209–10
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish 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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Upbraid me not, if you can help it, for my extreme tardiness. I have had some of the world’s cares to buffet with,—a long and severe rheumatic winter, and a total privation of the strength and resolution to attend to music or poetry;—add to this, my son with a broken leg, which, considering it was that which had been long lame, and must continue so, has been as far restored as reason could crave. He is well, and his father is alive again.
You know the nature of the instrument I send, and therefore I
only observe, that if when placed under the lifted sash, or
just inside, so as to conduct a current of air through the strings, it should
not play satisfactorily, then take off the top board and place the harp alone on
the broadest edge with the strings rising nearly
perpendicularly over each other, and close to an inlet made by lifting the sash
about an inch. I have no doubt that it will perform; but I should be glad to
hear of any intimations to that effect, at any convenient time. I have been
informed that you too have been out of health, or spirits, or both,—I know not
which, but hope to hear a good account.
Your harp, I doubt, is too short to admit of larger strings; but you may
possibly enjoy quite as much the extreme softness of the smaller ones: that you
may, is my hope: and that you may find some amusement from a thing so frail, and
not suffer it to be a ‘Harp of Sorrow,’her song.