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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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In B. 20. you have either mistaken or miswritten Orpas for Eudon. It is Eudon who does not recognize Julian in his
turban, having probably never seen him in it before. The drift of the book & of the 22d you must now
perfectly understand, & will see that they are indispensable in producing & preparing for the catastrophe.
Line 179 B. 21. cannot be spared, & ‘offspring of hot Africa’ is a fit expression for Julian, well acquainted
as he was with the climate & the people.
266. Roderick is hurried on, & ought to be so.led
him brought him into contact with Julian. You will see that this was prepared for in the 15th
book.
285. I like the effect of epithets thus placed
320 – For an answer to your objection to the word dearest
326. This Miraclewill be her work
Nothing can be more accurate than the epithet rolling as applied to the moon whose motion is
so visible & rapid as to produce precisely this appearance.
I do no think that the last speech of Florindaarising beginning in exhaustment & then taking the character of thoughtfulness. – I have added about thirty
lines to wind the book up in this tone, & the improvement is very great.
Your notions of metre will always often be confounded in my blank verse unless you remember that I
am entitled to the same allow that Shakespere & Milton are the authorities by which that measure should be used,
& that their example justifies the principle of making occasionally two short syllables stand in the place of one long one
Pray send the concluding books as soon as possible.
_____
Barbarous as it may appear to decline Grosvenor, õras, it would be absurd to translate it & convert you in
imitation of Nimrod into a mighty hunter.
It would be ill judged to put the insertion in the Bag & Sword copy of the odes,xx xxx telling the
Prince that the poems were written in a hurry & printed without
correction.& has nothing of which the worst part is that I must pay for binding a few leaves which will never be
opened
I have made out a sort of Dramatis or Poematis Personæ as far as historical characters personages are
mentioned in the poem, & having done this am really at a loss for any thing to say in the way of preface. The book therefore
will very probably go without one.it in the greater part of it the interest &
manner are rather dramatic than narrative <epic>, – because it busies itself more with the passions
than with actions, with the inward heart of man than with his outward works, this is what the judicious reader will find out for
himself, – & for the injudicious one it would be only setting his cat-call.
My table is covered with Yankee books, from which I am about to begin collecting notes for Oliver Goffe,stage stage of the process which may be compared to mixing the
colours in or preparing the palate in the painters business. I am lamentably undecided about the metre, whether
Thalaban
Mr & Mrs Raymondthe Mr Yewdale’shis hornpipe. As I have no less than three children in this exhibition I think I will must
send you ‘a bill of the play’.