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British Library, Add MS 47890. 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.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Having replied, as above, to your interesting letters from Bristol & from Staunton, I proceed to the more immediate object of this present writing. Murray has applied to me to write a life of Nelson,& some part better, & between us it would be rather a pleasure than a task. If you are not coming I
shall repack the books & return them without delay. Not that I want inclination to undertake it, being confident that I could make
both a good book & a useful one, – but I do not like to meddle with sea terms unless you are at my elbow, & moreover to do the
whole would occupy more time than I can allow for it.
What a wretched Irishman is this Lord Wellington at
all times except on the field of battle! after wasting four months in the most unwholesome part of Spain, he has suffered himself to be
led a will-of-the-wisp march into Portugal, – just out of the way of the French.x in their operations there, & along the whole line of coast
wherever they are resisted, but neither ins nor outs,