Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
BL Add. MS 28268, ff. 392–93; published Hart, p. 65
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.
All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard
Dashes have been rendered as —
Bloomfield's spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Do not be alarmed at my writing to you, for I have much to say,
and none such to speak to. I have composed nearly a thousand lines of a new work
to convince you that I have not forgotten to help myself.
This £90 I have found inadequate to my expenses with myself and wife and two children to support here, without servant, without company, and without extravagance, besides clothing my Daughter in Town, and assisting my Son at Putney, as sober a lad as ever had a father. This is my present state.
Now Sir you may remember that three years ago Colonel Rushbrook personally offered me one hundred pounds of the Suffolk subscription which I then refused, well knowing that I was likely to want it more at a future day, and knowing also that the subscribers wish’d me to recieve it when it would do me most good. That time is come, for I have determin’d to return to London at Michalmas, for here my eldest Daughter, who lives with me for my sake far more than her own, has no employment, and I will not be her hindrance, for in London she could serve herself and ease my pocket.
Coln Rushbrooks money is in the form of an
Exchequer Bill, bearing interest. If it is not paid into your house may I with
any prospect of success, or colour of reason, tell him how great a service it
would do me now, when no considerations that I can see
ought to put me out of my persuit, and when a compleat work should be offerd to
the publishers rather than a mutilated cripple, a thing that says, ‘pray give me
a shilling.’
If you can condescend to give me a reply I shall know I have to proceed.
I rejoice to hear that your muse has not been idle, and as heartily wish success as any man among your numerous friends.
But I have said enough from my lonely den, and with unusual health am,