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Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. 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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It is no easy task to make or mend an inscription of this kind.better <less so>, & cannot think of any other substitution. The last line had better be struck
out: & perhaps the word universally
had better <ought to> be got rid of. Might it not run thus
I was doubtful about Conimbrica, – but made it short, – as you will see
As for the other word, xxx xxx xx xxx xxx it xxxx be got rid of for its unpleasant sound; & it will be some
loss < the blunder is unfortunate>, because there is a more than ordinary grace in the epithet which is coupled with it.
– The whole will undergo xx careful & repeated revision: as for haste, Heaven knows the poem will
have no faults arising from that cause, for it has moved like a tortoise. – I have used Desert in its wide, but proper sense, for despoblado, – & said that it offered fruit & water.
I see Falkners Patagoniao 2,
Newport Street, Long Acre, (almost opposite the top of St Martins Lane,) – & look at Atkins’s Voyage to Guinea & the
Brasils.xx my possession, but it is worth while to ascertain
whether it be so or not.
I find that it would not be possible for me to leave home before the end of May, – & as that would bring me to town
just when every body is leaving it, it will be better to delay my journey till the close of the year, on some respects
<accounts> I am sorry for this, but it may be better as far as regards my appearance at Streatham.
Murray will send you the Nelson,Xx I undertook to review Stanier Clarkes book with little predeliction for the subject; double pay was offered me for it
before hand, & my own opinion when the article was sent off, xxx was that I never earned any money so easily, or
deserved it so little. The thing however was praised by Canning, & some of
those men whose opinions have a current value, & Murray then offered me a
hundred guineas to enlarge it into a volume which he could sell for a dollar,cast or
rather mis-cast the ms. so that when they the printing was about half finished, they discovered that it would be too thick
if xxx the whole were comprized in one volume. I did not enlarge the latter part a single paragraph or sentence on this
account, – but perhaps if the division had not been determined on I should have felt it advisable to curtail it, – which would have
been the worse for the book, because it would have injured its proportions. Murray
has sent me the sum originally agreed upon me, & voluntarily engaged to make a similar payment when he prints a second edition.
This is handsome enough on his part, because I had no claim upon him; – & I am well contented, tho not overpaid. – We are at
present planning a work of great extent, of which you shall hear more as soon as it assumes any thing like a substantial form.
I hope my Aunt is recovering her spirits.