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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. 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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Your note of the 8th was quite a relief to me, – for I had been dreaming disturbedly every
night of you & your father for the last two nights.
First about the Carmen Annuum,Annualis, – which was lucky; as the Longmen are not scholars enough to have set me right, & the blunder would have looked ill in the an
Advertisement. The copy which you have was made for your pleasure, & for nothing else. I have inserted five stanzas in place of the
first half of the 9th, – relating to Spain. They are in keeping with the rest, & contain a wipe at some of our
lilly-livered politicians, which will serve to bring in an extract <or two> from the Edinburgh Review in the notes. As for the
poem it is necessarily rather an oration in verse than an ode, – for which reason I have given it a generic name,
– Carmen being any kind of poem.
Many of your criticisms on these booksone of the plan of the Æneid, – but I must make the plan suit the subject, & excite not only compassion for Roderic
but a disposition to excuse him. – The inconsistency of being shocked at the thought of leaving his body to the birds is perfectly
natural.danger <fear>,
– for I happened to be upon the Tagus when she & the Prince
I have no time to notice the points in which I agree with you, nor those all those in which our judgements
differ. The Ode has cost me more time than it is worth, & I am now preparing a few notes which will be of essential use – in
filling a few pages.
The half notes are safe. The Docster should have paid a bookbinders bill, – I suppose however he had not received it, & also that the fee-searchers of the Court had not found him out.