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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. 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.
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as I do not know when I may again find so excellent an opportunity of beginning — I seize old Time by the forelock
& there will I hold him till I want him. so no more at present from your sincere friend. where my letter is destined to be finished
I know not but the continuation comes from Reading where I am writing in a small room with a good fire & two London Riders
dissertating upon robberies & the most likely places for such adventures. as one of them is at the same table I cannot versify as I
intended & had begun so plain prose must tell how I got this far. the Doctor left me at Brentford I proceeded on sad & solitary to Hounslow & there gave one shilling for Sir Launcelot
Greaves
I know nothing so unpleasant as leaving the friends we love & — yet such is the state of society that life is
hardly any thing than continual parting. you are an exception — but observe the general tenour of life — school & college occupy
what ought to be <the> happiest ages — then comes business & perhaps the opportunity of happiness when the relish is gone.
Universities might certainly be made useful institutions but at present they are pernicious to individuals & to the nation at
large. the morality of Oxford you know how to estimate but with respect to the polishing which I know I want but fear I shall never
attain — is it to be found there? steel receives its last polish from a womans hand I believe — & my rugged ore requires the same
management — this I shall never meet with. three years must be spent in studies which lead to nothing — & the remainder of my life
in forming theories of happiness which I never can practises. Edmund Seward says very truly that <a> man who indulges himself in literature merely
for self amusement deserves no more respect from the public than the glutton or the voluptuary. this is very true but selfishness is
deeply implanted in the human heart so deeply that even the strong hand of Philosophy cannot root it up. you & I may indulge
ourselves in theories of reforming the taste & morals of a corrupt age & perhaps our theories are not wholly visionary — but is
our disinterestedness such as might prompt us to this against our inclination?
I soon found the two Riders were Democrats when they began upon politics, so up went your letter & I joined in the
discourse. eat a boild rabbit with the one who remaind & got to bed. next morning sketched the gate house of the abbey (which you
shall have as soon as I reach Bristol) put a biscuit in my pocket & trudged on. after eighteen miles walking without rest or other
food than my biscuit I reachd Dunnington Castle — more fatiguing pilgrimages have certainly been performd by greater fools but none
with more devotion. I had the idea of Chaucerc.
1340–1400;
on Saturday morning I purpose proceeding to Bristol. Oxford I do not visit. you will direct to me as usual & the
sooner you write the better. I have some good odes in embryo to fill up this letter — in the interim you shall have the remarks that
occurrd upon reading Sir Launcelot Greaves on the road. broad coarse humour seems to be the chief excellence of Smollet incidents
almost too gross to please & too strange to be probable happen at every inn his heroes stop at & we are sure to find the
sailors dialect & the clowns broad Scotch or broad Yorkshire in the place of humour. when he gets upon those subjects which perhaps
none but Rousseau knew how to treat he rhapsodizes about charms angels & Hymens & thinks passion & nonsense mean the same.
some strange discovery of birth comes in at the end & all the dramatis personæ are tacked together at the altar. yet with all these
faults you are not soon tired of Smollets novels. they insensibly lead you on & if they do not come near the heart certainly play
round the head. Humphrey Clinker
I copied these four lines from the hospital at Reading
To the ME at Brixton
———
———
the transition from your letter to the card table was not the most agreable last night — particularly as I was in the
writing mood — I met with a fellow of Corpus now doing penance in all the horrors of disease for his faults & follies —
Goldesbroughmonstrous institutions) were
exposed — that our sage reformers would have provided against their renewal. they ought to have known that the same causes will produce
the same effects & when they tolerated matrimony in the clergy they should not have insisted upon celibacy in the universities. In
the history of these hot beds of vice I am not well read — but it is probable that when the work of reformation was performd by Rapine
— some timeservers who secretly favoured the old Religion presided in the universities & retained thus much of the Babylonian
patchwork. the consequences are visible. our fellows are either the most dissolute libertines or good well meaning scholars like Tom Howe sauntering about their respective quadrangles with long faces & keeping
them free from the impurities of impudent dogs. Ginger forms a genus of his
own & a queer genus it is — distinguishd by the generic marks of everlasting thirst & invincible stupidity to which
accomplishment he specifically adds — two eyes like a boild rabbits & the harmonious nasal twang that instead of filling the heart
with devotion plays upon the risible muscles of his auditors. for many years these unfortunate animals have been the butt of ridicule
whilst the satirist forgets that instead of lashing the victims of the institution he ought to expose the institution itself. Vicesimus
Knox
To me the radical defect of the universities appears this — the association of men with only men. the total absence of
that sex from whom only we can receive the last polish. the intercourse in this country is much too distant & of course Man becomes
more brutal when the tablecloth is removed the women retire with the dishes they have dressed & of Mr
Wilkeswere <is> in a state of Nature
were I so disposed — should we in that best state be pleasd with Hail Politeness Power divine — the curst little rushlight or the horid
squalling of a thing imported from Italy? but I am running from my subject into a rage against opera singers — beings to be pitied most
certainly — but 999 degrees below the Men Milliners & that is below nothing.
The human mind is formed as capable of excellence now, as it was in those days when Themistocles
I have denominated my stick the Sans Culotte to which name it has the most undoubted title. in my next you will
probably have an ode to it & another to the Me at Bristol — but I must have Snivel
the Doctor & I made a fine contrast — the drest
travelling democrat & the drest Man Millener! he will be very angry at this so tell him that in five minutes I shall <begin>
him a very long epistle. I am in momentary expectation of my baggage & you need not be told a little impatient. make my respects to
all your good family. Mr &
Mrs Deacon — Mrs Colyns
a la mode CC you see I have once remembered the rules of Politeness Power divine.
I have pleased myself during the filling of this sheet with the idea that you & Horace are busied in performing the same task. tomorrow I reach Bristol to dinner direct to me as usual.