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Berg Collection, New York Public Library. ALS; 2p. . Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt
All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.
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Southey's spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
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Your pamphlett <little parcel> has duly reached me. I am much obliged to Mrs Fry
It is exceedingly <very> probable that the passage quoted from Cotton Mather is as you represent it, a
collection of choice expressions culled from one or more of Fishers works, & not a simple extract, which I
certainly <had> considered <supposed> it to be; – a mistake which I am very readyily
to admit, was made for want of due consideration.entertain <feel> great individual & personal respect & regard.
With regard to the opinion expressed <in that note> concerning the railing language of the Quakers in their
first age, I believe it to be well founded.xxxxx <adduced> some strong instances from Cotton Mather, –
but neither in Cotton Mather, nor in any other author, Churchman or Sectarian, with whose writings I am acquainted, could you find page
after page of pure railing, such as is found in some of the books of the early Quakers, – Edward Burroughswas <is> worthy of admiration in them, without being blind to thiserrors. Of these <And> I am well convinced, that in writing the life of a great & good
man, no greater injury can be done to him than that of concealing his faults & errors, for the sake of representing him as perfect.
For a judicious reader <in perusing a panegyric> is always likely to abate more <of his admiration> from an undeservin xxxx
panegyric, than a fair & open statement would have led him to subtract
<De mortuis nil nisi verum,that is, when so much time has elapsed that the truth may be spoken without injury to any one, – nil nisi bonum