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McLennan Library, McGill University. Previously published: Catalogue of the Collection of Autograph Letters and Historical Documents Formed Between 1865 and 1882 by Alfred Morrison, 6 vols (London, 1883–1892), VI, pp. 162–163.
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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My friend Turner (the Anglo Saxon historian, one of the best men
whom I have ever known) wrote to me a few days ago, saying, he had great pleasure in telling me that the Critical Review had gone out
of its way to do me justicethe <a> piece of malice to its tail.
You speak of Wordsworths poemsof to the censure which he
despises; (– like one who is flea-bitten into a fever. But what must that blindness of heart be which is dead to the noble poetry
contained in those volumes! Surely nothing was ever more calculated to deaden & dwarf the mind than that fashion of breeding up
xxxxxx xxxxx <all persons> to be a critics! – Did you ever see Dr Aikins Letters to a young Lady upon a course of poetry,xxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxx – & in these letters the Doctor says to his daughter ‘make yourself mistress of the Paradise Lost!
– This book fell into Erskines& when he
came to this passage he repeated the words – ‘make yourself mistress of the Paradise Lost’ – & with a wholesome malediction upon
the xxxx xxxx xxxx the author, which flows more pardonably from the tongue than from the pen, – he whisked the unhappy
volume behind the fire. – This Miss Lucy now criticises poetry in the Annual Review,xxxxxx rivalling it in nothing but its pertness. I bear a
part in that review & am heartily ashamed of the company wherein I am found.
– God help me – when I was in my youth instead of fancying that I could make myself master of
Spenserthing <part> which gave me less pleasure than the rest, I past on to what accorded better with my fancy, – never
pausing to seek out why there was this difference in the effect produced, & never daring to suspect that the author could be in
fault. And when I grew up & found it necessary to learn discover why others had failed in that pursuit on which I was
determined: it was not in these Masters that I looked for faults. I borrowed no insects eye to magnify their blemishes, but went at
once to those writers where they were to be seen like vermin in a solar microscope – to the Italian Trissino,
Horace Walpoles lettershold upon impression, because the palsy of his mind is so often evident.be bequeathed to her descendants, – still that mind appears to me to have been naturally a
stronger one than any of these whom I have named, possessed. – Will [MS torn] agree with me in holding Mrs
Hutchinsonxxxxx love & admiration.
My Uncle whom I expected from Lisbon has at length arrived. He makes no
tarriance in London now, & it will suit him better to meet me there about the beginning of February, – as it will t me
to remain at home till then. Before that time I expect a great family event to take place, the expectation of which would lay a heavy
weight upon me in absence. I have two children, & look then for a third.
Of the Sewards who lived at Sapey in Worcestershire – there were
four brothers & three sisters. Edmund the youngest brother died the first, –
a fever carried him off. – he was almost the strongest man I ever saw, & certainly the most temperate. I used to call him Edmund
Ironside.five <about two> years after his
brother of an enlargement of the heart, – a disease which provd fatal to the father, & which one of the sisters also has inherited.
John Seward was a man of distinguished ability, – it is believed that he materially injured his constitution by severe application at
Cambridge. There remains of him one of the best portraits I have ever seen. drawn by Edridge, & in the possession of Duppa (the biographer of M. Angelo)
his kinsman & my friend. William, the elder brother was an Attorney at Ledbury. After the death of John & Edmund I happened to
stop a night at the Hundred House, – near Abberley. Mr Severnt Johns – Worcester where I saw them about seven years ago, – the elder
lying on a sopha, having it was supposed an enlarged heart, – the younger bearing all the marks of premature old age, induced by
watchfulness beside a sick bed, – & by sorrow. – In my next