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Remains, II, pp. 206–9
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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It was out of my power to answer your letter of yesterday, so promptly as you desired, in consequence of being away from home. At the distance of twenty-four years, I should hesitate to speak very positively as to matters of conversation: but I am relieved from this difficulty by a memorandum made at the time, in my own copy of the second edition of the Farmer’s Boy, in 1800, which I will here transcribe.
‘This poem was first offered to Bent, in Paternoster-row, with a request to know his opinion of its deserts: but this he declined, in a short note, which was returned to Mr. B. in the course of a week, along with his MS. Dilly was next applied to, who refused to have any concern in publishing it, but recommended the slighted author to take his production to Phillips, who probably might print it in the Monthly Magazine. But as the poet foresaw that in case it was accepted for insertion he should have to pay five or six shillings for obtaining a copy to send to his mother, which was his prime object, he preferred sending the MS for her inspection to his brother at Bury, who fortunately got it conveyed to the eye of Mr. Lofft. Mr. L. was delighted with its merits, communicated it to Mr. Hill, and it was immediately recommended to Hood for publication.’
With the above memorandum I will extract the following note:
‘To Mr. Lofft’s protection and encouragement it was primarily owing that a production so morally and poetically estimable as the Farmer’s Boy has struggled into day; but to the modest author’s faithfulness of delineation, felicity of diction, purity of sentiment, and refined simplicity of taste, it will stand indebted for ‘aye-enduring fame.’’
I had not heard of Mr.
Lofft’s decease
The subscription papers shall be circulated where I can anticipate any success.
I cannot decidedly say whether the MS. of the Farmer’s Boy was
ever taken to the editor of the Monthly Magazine; but I should think that some
of the letters which passed between his brothers and himself (a transcript of
which I transmitted, with his letters to me) would be likely to settle the
question. This I can decidedly say, that I never heard him
repeat the sarcasm ascribed to that editor, nor did I ever know him give vent to
any resentful feeling against him or any other person. Indeed I verily believe
that he had too catholic a benevolence for human kind to allow himself to foster
an emotion of resentment towards any human being; and when he did speak of his
early struggles, he spoke of them with much complacency. Perhaps the rustic
anathema, in his ‘Neighbourly Resolution’, may comprise the amount of his
indignant feelings, while in his ‘First View of the Sea’ he breathes a christian
supplication for that wisdom which would ‘teach him to forgive’.