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Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. 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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‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!”xxxx that <it>
would taint all my enjoyments; – & to have the usufruct of the Museum Library is the greatest temptation which could possibly have
been offered to me.
400£ a year, if liable to the same deductions as my pension, which I suppose it is, is frittered down to 280. the
labour of three hours a day, required for cataloguing, if given to the booksellers, would produce twice that sum. It is not that
cataloguing would be unpleasant work. – far from it, – xxx that kind of desultory employment which is as good as
idleness: but considering the objects which I have before me I ought not to allow time for any such (comparatively) unworthy
employment. Even now I find it necessary to abstain from reading many things because there is not time for it. Did my ways & means
afford it, I would give up the Quarterly for the same reason, tho there it is that I am best paid & that I
obtain most reputation. – so ill are these rewards apportioned in our present state of things! – But it cannot be doubted that it is
better to write even such miscellanies as these, than to employ the same time in cataloguing, & three hours a day throughout the
year, is nearly if not entirely as much as the Review & the Register cost me. Granted that a few years would get thro the Catalogue
I have not a few years to spare. – You know what a series of historical work <labour> lies before me, – if it be
compleated it will place me far above all the historians whom this country has produced, & I must not let any thing which can be
avoided impede the completion, from this time forward.
I am of course strongly attached to this place of residence, – which you would not wonder at if you had seen it.
Nevertheless a less lovely country would satisfy me, but it must be country, for my own sake & that of the children. I cannot bear
to confine either them or myself within the walls of London. As for the Mus. Gardens & such other places they would be to us like a
sod to xxx <a> Lark in a cage.
I would willingly come nearer to you, so as to be within an easy days distance, & to this I look forward. The first term of my lease expires in five years. perhaps by that time it may be in my power to remove. Meantime however a yearly journey for myself is nothing. A month in town & a week in travelling I can well spare.
I am very much obliged both to xxx
Turner & Rickman. Had
not you been so near London the decision would have cost me nothing. As it is – I wish the choice had not been offered – because it
costs me as much disquietude thus to have decided.