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Beinecke Library, GEN MSS 298, Series I, Box 1, folder 21. Previously published: John Holland and James Everett, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery, 7 vols (London, 1854–1856), II, pp. 319–322 [in part].
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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You talk of yourself & of me in terms of comparison upon which I must not comment, lest you should be as much pained by the comment as I was by the text. – Let that pass. If I had not admired your poetry, & felt it & loved it, & loved you for its sake, I should not so often have thought of you & spoken of you, & determined to see you, – nor have broken thro the belt of ice at last.
You wish me a sounder frame both of body & mind than your own. My body God be thanked is as convenient
as a tenement as its occupier could desire. When you see me you will fancy me far advanced in consumption so little is
there of it, – but there has never been more; – & tho it is by no means unlikely (from family pre-disposition) that this may be my
appointed end, it is not at all the more likely for xx xxxxx <because of> my lean & hungry appearance. I am in far
more danger of nervous diseases, from which nothing but perpetual self-management, & the fortunate circumstances of my life &
disposition preserve me. Nature gave me an indefatigable activity of mind, & a buoyancy of spirit, which has ever enabled me to
make light <think little> of difficulties, & to live in the light of hope; these gifts too were accompanied
with an hilarity which has enabled me to retain a boys heart to the age of eight & thirty: but my senses are perilously acute, –
impressions sink into me too deeply, & at one time ideas had all the vividness & apparent reality of actual impressions to such
a degree, that I believe a speedy removal to a foreign country where bringing with it a total change of all external
objects, saved me from imminent danger. The remedy, or at least the preventitive of this is variety of employment, & this it is
which has made me the various writer that I am, even more than the necessity of pursuing the gainful paths of literature. If I fix my
attention morning & evening upon one subject, & if my latest evening studies are of a kind to interest me deeply, my rest is
disturbed & broken, & those bodily derangements ensue which indicate great nervous susceptibility. Experience having taught me
this I fly from one thing to another, each new train of thoughts neutralizing as it were the last, & thus in general maintain the
balance so steadily that I lie down at night with a mind as tranquil as an infants.
That I am a very happy man I owe to my early marriage. When little more than one & twenty I married under circumstances as singular as they well could be, & to all appearance as imprudent, – but from that hour to this I have had reason to bless the day. The main source of disquietude was thus at once cut off – I had done with hope & fear upon the most agitating & most important action of life, & my heart was at rest. Several years elapsed before I became a father, & then the keenest sorrow which I ever endured was for the loss of an only child at twelve-months old. Since that event I have had five <children> more, one of whom has been taken from me. Of all sorrows these are the most poignant. but I am the better for them, & never pour out my soul in prayer without acknowledging that these dispensations have drawn me nearer to my God.
But I will not pursue this strain f too far. The progress of my mind thro many maz changes &
mazes of opinion you shall know hereafter, & the up-hill work which I have had in the world, up-hill indeed, but by a path of my
own chusing, & always with this comfort that I felt myself gaining the ascent, as well as toiling for it. Something I must say,
while there is yet room for it concerning the World before the Flood. You say that you are about to begin it again.involve <render> no other alteration of the story (as far as I understand
it than that of relating the assumption of Enochof (a book almost unequalled for its powers of imagination) & to have connected Whistonsof to come, because the maid whom he loved (tho herself convinced also) would not forsake her parents. Their death,
followed by their immediate beatitude would have made an impressive scene. The outstanding picture figure of the
Anti-Anakimt Bartholomews massacre& a
& as if defying the vengeance which was denounced. It would have resisted the weight of the waters of the flood & have
overlived all things, till (xxx following Burnetts sublime vision) the xxx shell of the gl earth gave
way. You have here all that is worth recollecting <remembering> of a plan which never went farther than this. If any
part of it should could serve you as a hint, believe me Montgomery I should feel proud at having contributed one unhewn
stone to your building. – God bless you.
I have a book of Pelayo