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BL Add. MS 28268, ff. 116–17; extract published in Hart, p. 31
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish 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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Last week was remarkable for a combination of vexations and
unexpected troubles. My own health very midling amongst the rest My Wife and the 3 elder
Children ill with bad colds, my
poor Boy had early last week an unusual swelling come on his right
knee, and the surgeon tells me that it is in a fair way to be a White swelling
if the means he takes do not stop it. We apply night and morning a large
poultice of Vinegar, Water, and Oatmeal, which draws it full of pimples, and
those pimples are to subside, and then to have them raised again by the same
means: he gives me no hope of its speedy ammendment. this is one of my serious
troubles. I had two holidays last week but was too ill to make my visits which
had been defer’d or to write, or any thing else but think. On Friday, the day
after the Holidays, I expected a busy day at the Seal Office; and so I found it with a
vengeance. I had eat no breakfast, and the Mob of Lawyers made me perfectly
savage: at One o’clock we shut the Office, but shut in between 40 and 50 people,
and did not get through the Work for 3 quarters of an hour after one. I then
grew faint, and knew if I walkd home to the City Road that my Wind and
indigestion would get the upper hand of my Stomach, and should eat no dinner; so
I put into the Cook’s in Salsbury Court and eat heartily. by this time there was
no time to go home and then to Temple Bar again by 4; so I sulkd away the time
in St George’s Fields, and then took another 3 hours’ Mobbing at the Office,
having seald during the day nearly 1100 Writs! by far the busiest day (if Mr A is to be credited) that have
occurrd for eight years past. Returnd to my sick house, tired and insufferably
disgusted. At home I found a Letter from Troston, not quite the thing and your most melancholy tidings, and—to
crown all, a young Man in the neighbourhood fourced on me a M:S. book of poems
for me to read and to give my judgment of, which accorded with the feelings of
the moment, being a doleful string of Elegies as black as midnight—This I shall
call Black Friday—Another trifle had displeased me. I had found in the Morning
Chronicle a bit of news put there by some fool or other that ‘Bloomfield the
poet has been recently appointed to a handsome situation in
the Seal Office in the Temple, thus
he has not courted the Muses unsuccessfully!’originally printed this wonderfull piece of news,handsome appointment’ is ridiculous. This story has served
the Herald two days, the first to say I was there, and the
next to say I had resignd it!!—tis useless to be angry, but if the Asses that
meddle with another mans business before they know it were buried three times as
deep as your poor Wife, I would not were [i.e. wear] black for them.—What G says in his paper is false, thus,
because confinement is not my objection, and I hope and
trust that it is well known to the Duke. Extreem publicity
begins to be more and more disgusting to my feelings, and these boobys make it
worse.—The Good Man at Euston will be
here soon, and then I shall know how I am to proceed. His last letter said that
‘he was sorry I was going to leave it at all.’
circumstances made it absolutely necessary to reply that I would not leave it,
at least untill I see him—thus we stand now—Dr Jenner is in Town, and has
written to me. Dr Perkins
plagued me by publishing my name with his Tractors, till I wrote to him to
forbid it. my cough plagues me, and I have no time to write down my Rhimes, I
have enough on my mind to craze a saint, but I feel my soul soar above it all—I
know that I shall triumph—and ‘that Spring will come and Nature smile
again’.
Robt
Tuesday Afternoon—The Surgeon says the Boys Knee is mending. Perhaps the others will soon be well—Sickness is allmost universal.