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. 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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Grosvenor I have cut my finger in mending this blackguard pen.
————
how this exordium may amuse you I know not but I hope I shall never make another like it. I have to abuse you for sending your last to Oxford when you received mine dated from hence, & likewise to apologize for no answering sooner. variety of engagements I cannot plead but must alledge particular ones.
you say her husbands name will please me. in sober sadness no. Integer laude — fuge suspicari.s upon one armed either with Philosophy or with Love. I forget the old sage whom Lais could not tempt,
but I believe the story.t Peter
You have of course seen Wynn. I was much with him last term
& witnessd some actions which would have raised him in my esteem had that been possible. an old Welshman who had formerly kept a
school & lived in affluence & whose productions shewed that he possessd ability & knowledge above mediocrity, was
travelling homewards with his wife. at Oxford she was taken ill & they were both old friendless & penniless. Wynn supported them there. paid the apothecary to attend Mrs
Denhamthem it.
I wish Grosvenor you would visit Oxford very soon
& meet Lovell there. we have determined upon publishing Valentine & Orson
at Oxford & he will be with me a week shortly. can you not come then and at the commemoration? remember you have promised me an
annual visit & recollect that I should like a monthly weekly & daily one better. or rather one visit to last all the year
round. am I ever to see Horace there? if it be but out of compassion to
me send him to Balliol. for Seward
is gone! & Lightfoot soon goes — then will I hang my harp on the wash
hand basons stand & sit down by the waters of the pot of abomination. poor Lightfoot! he is now with Seward in Worcestershire but Lightfoot lost his place tho he got up at four o clock & put on his new leather breeches & boots. & then Lightfoot went to bed
again in his new leather breeches & boots. & surprized Burnet & me at breakfast by his unexpected appearance. oh had you but seen Lightfoot in the affair of the Imposition when he had 42 pages of Ralph Churton
Have you seen the Children in the Woodmortuum & damnatum esse doctorum
hodie omnium universitatum magis quam Christum!!
I have ventured upon the drama at last. & chosen for my subject that memorable passage in Tacitus which struck me
so powerfully on the first perusal & which I pointed out to you at Brixton. possibly you may have forgotten it. if so turn to the
fourteenth annal & read the murder of Pedanius Secundus & the execution of four hundred slaves.
remember me to Mr & Mrs Deacon. I thought I saw Mr D in Bristol but was mistaken. how is your fathers gout?
the ligament which suspends my liver is undergoing an unpleasant extension owing to the vacuity of my intestines. the gastric juice is devouring my stomach for want of other food. Grosvenor I am ravenous. but dinner is not yet ready & I have about time to give you some rhyme in the fag end of the sheet. I shall soon write to Horace.
To a College Cat
—— (how Strachey would like the subject
————
Orson.
when Lightfoot told Thomas Howe
x that Powell courted Miss Hornsby,