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National Library of Scotland, MS 42551 . 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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I have finished Eulia, & return it by tomorrows coach. The parts which would probably serve to collate with the
Spanish traveller
I sincerely thank you for your offer of an advance upon the Spanish war.xx Temptation when you hint at a
continuance of the Register.con amore,xx again to take
upon myself such a burden is not easily to be determined. For tho’ sufficiently inclined, still it should seem that with my reputation,
& with my powers both in verse & prose I ought to be better remunerated for avowed than for anonymous publications.
At present I have but too much in hand. Indeed I never have any prospect of finishing a work till it is fairly in the
press: then, other things must give way. For this reason I shall wish to put the Spanish War in, as soon as the Brazil
I know of no continuous & laborious work in which I should so willingly engage as in the Cosmorama of which we
talked; this if it were properly executed might form a source of permanent income. I have borne it in mind & the notes which have
from time to time been collected are become numerous.
You need not send Charlemagne, for Longman has given me a copy.
I think it a bad poem, – defective in all the higher requisitions of the art. The stanza is well constructed, & the fable, tho
without xx any interest, put together with tolerable <some> ingenuity. But Lucien Buonaparte is neither a
poet nor a philosopher. Would you wait for the translation before it is reviewed? it is not yet gone to the press.
I inclose with the MSS a small packet for Mr Bedford, & request
that when you are sending to Mr Gifford you will have the goodness to let it
be dropt at his door.