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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. 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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Thank you for the notes.
Your last letter noticed the arrival of the 3d book of Roderickx recollected ere this.
The 7th & 8th I gave Lord Sunderlin this
morning to take to Harry, thinking that as he will be about five days on the
road they will meet their predecessors there, & save the trouble of one transfer. The latter of these will be new to you, –
& by the time you get them I shall have transcribed & sent off to you the two following, – beyond which the poem has not
yet proceeded, – except more than a few lines.
Whenever your comments arrive all due attention shall be paid to them. I myself anticipate little immediate success
for the poem: – the mere accidental & temporary interest which it might have excited from its accommodation to passing events,
will, most probably have past away before it is published; & it will have little of that novelish excitement which is what
ordinary readers look for. I proceed it with it in a temper proof against disappointment hoping nothing as to its
present reputation, but looking to its future rank in full faith. There will be a great deal to do in ornamenting, stiffening
& stately-fying the parts where the author speaks, which ought to have a more elaborate character than such as are
dramatic.
I will take the opportunity of writing to Herries when the life
of Nelson
I am hard at work upon the Register; – this day is employed in West Indian affairs & in writing to the honour
& glory of blind Tobin.
Did I tell you that I had conceived of a work which would be well worthy of all the labour that could be bestowed
upon it, – & xxx xx <for> which some of the best matter both in my Annualxxxx might serve to be worked in as materials? – A view of the revolutions in all parts & in all things which
have taken place during the last half-century, – skimming the cream of histor events, – but laying their roots bare, –
& looking on to their remotest consequences. The Age of George 3.
I have a letter tonight from John W Knoxx x he is much more likely to know than I can be. – The stone which the
builders rejected may perhaps become the capital of their column, – & I have pleasant recollections enough connected with
Westminster to feel gratified that it should be so. I must write this youngster some civil answer which is all he wants.
Have you seen Coleridges play?ratherexpect he will) write better dramas, – but his mind is not essentially dramatic.