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British Library, Add MS 47890. 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 expected to have had some family information to send you by this mail, but you must now be content to wait for the
next. the delay will be of less import to you than to me, for I am waiting to see Edith safexxx
all xxx since the the year 1685 (that of Charles 2d’s death)
You have no Madoc by this packet because Edith cannot without
inconvenience stoop to the posture of writing, & I, in the daily expectation which we have been in for the last four weeks, have
been working like a pack horse to get ready for my journey,
Politics both abroad & at home become exceedingly interesting – there can be no doubt that Pichegru was
murdered.have made the remark
& assigned the reason as soon as the first account reached us, & found the same positive inference deduced from the same
argument in the Iris.suffocation with
strangulation without a struggle. the least struggle would have loosened the end of the stick, & of course relaxed the pressure.
Besides there are enough reasons deducible from the circumstance of the exposure, & from the situations of Pichegru & Bonaparte
to be certain that he was murdered. What will become of Moreau?prime Addington administration,pr very likely overset him, & if he relapse he cannot in common decency be permitted again to appear as
the Executive Power. I look ere long for a Regency. The Iris some few weeks ago recommended an Abdication as the most decent, most
expedient & most impressive measure, but such a measure requires more courage & more talents & more popularity than can at
present be united in any administration.
It is astonishing that Lord St Vincent should make so wretched a First Lord of the Admiralty. his
blockading system may be accounted for by his rooted dislike to all the systems of the old English school – but with respect to convoys
he had suffered our trade to be at the mercy of the Enemys privateers. Three & forty merchant men have been captured within three
months! & we with such a navy. I abominate that man both for his public & private conduct. his blockading system is in every
light absurd. we lose <in one year> more ships by the winds in consequence than we should in battle for were the
enemys ports open, in ten.
From London I will send you more politics, & from better sources, for I shall be in the way of hearing much. What a change will it be from this utter solitude to such society as I fall into in London! – & yet do I look forward with far less pleasure to the society of London than to the bookstalls & booksellers shops – for in that way I have been famished here. think Tom not to have bought an old book for nine months! – I – who never in Bristol let nine days pass without carrying home a handfull!
No news of Edwards having got a ship as yet.
Charles Lloyd rode over to dinner last week. it would provoke you to see him.
there was a poor madman some years ago who conceived that his soul was annihilatedignis fatuus), also known as
‘will-o-the-wisp’ or ‘St Elmo’s fire’.
Your letter from ‘half seas over’Topaze was a Royal
Navy 32-gun frigate, which had been built by the French in 1791 and taken into British service after being captured in 1793.xxx hot. It would heartily rejoice me to hear
you were homeward bound. do not forget my land crabs & my alligator. it would delight me to give Carlisle a live alligator.
Poor Bella
I have lately thought of compiling a very humble but very useful volume – to collect in the course of my reading all
such facts as can in any way be useful – arrange them under proper heads, & so publish them as hints for practice or experiment –
in as cheap a way as possible that they may be widely circulated. if I had thought of this scheme two years ago I might now have had
extracts enough for the purpose, with what Coleridge could have supplied
from his Germans.mm! George Burnett has been a surgeon in the Militia &
is now going to Poland as librarian to some nobleman whose name ends in ski, he knowing no Polish, no German &
nothing at all about a library! – Ediths love. God bless you.