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Huntington Library, HM 4871 . Previously published: J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), II, pp. 425–428.
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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Tho it is too long a time since you have heard from me, I hope you have duly received a proof in quarto that you are
not forgotten.x it is perfectly clear to me that their enemies
outlied them; – which may be called out-Heroding Herod. If any of the monastic orders are to exist, better this than any other. If I
were the Pope I would restore them;& in its pretext, & in its manner little less cruel than the French deportations to Cayenne, & in
its consequences in South America exceedingly injurious.xxxx perceive no other political good than a dispute between Portugal & Rome, which may possibly tend to separate
that country from xx its papal thraldom.xx A various parts of America which were begun by the Ex Jesuits in Italy, & discontinued for want of patronage.
From the Pope to Lucien Buonaparte, the Popes poet.
His Charlemagne has lowered him in my estimation, & almost induced me to think that the great difference between him & the rest of his family is merely that he has been the best political calculator. The stanza is well constructed; for this I give him great credit. The story is perfectly free from the ordinary vice of imitation; & put together with sufficient skill. But there is little character, little passion, little interest, little poetry. We were told of his antiquarian researches for the costume, & behold there is nothing antiquarian about the work; & his Saxons have a Druid for their priest. The philosophy of the poem is truly curious, & lamentably characteristic of the age.
Never was the want of a commanding intellect likely to be so severely felt as in these our days. What a golden
opportunity of re-casting Europe has been lost! With Italy in one state, & the North of Germany in another under Prussia as its
head, & Poland reestablished as an independant state, we might have looked for a long peace, the indispensable precaution having
been taken of paring the claws & drawing the teeth of France. Instead of this France has been left with all that Louis 14x any of those by which she is surrounded, that in the common course of things she must inevitably become
too strong for the divided continent. All will then be to do over again; & woe be to the continent if they do not religiously
preserve their hatred of the French as a nation. It is a For the last ten years the madness has been Bunoapartes, but the
atrocities have been those of the French. He was the God Hanuman,
I think of going to France about autumn next if the state of affairs public & private will permit. A very little of
Paris will satiate me, but I would fain see the Pyrenees, ramble in Dauphiny, & return down the Rhine. There are very persons whom
I shall be desirous of seeing Fayette
You will have heard of Harrys intended marriage. It
brings forces upon me a sense of the lapse of time, – for when I was last at Lisbon Louisa Gonne was a little child. Her mother
I regret that I do not see the Monthly Review. From a newspaper advertisement of Longmans I concluded that you gave the Omniana a good word there, where otherwise it was
not likely to have found one.
I act the school master every day for an hour & half. – a sad expence of time, but it is bringing back my lost Greek.
Jeffrey talks of having written a crushing review of the Excursion.