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British Library, Add MS 28603. 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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Though this letter can bear but a vague sort of direction I trust it will find its way to you, & convey my thanks for some excellent brawn.
You left us on the last day of a long autumn, & winter weather immediately set in. It has been however a very mild
season, with little frost & less snow. The tremendous gales in December did less damage here than in the south, & yet we had
our share of the storm. The windows suffered at the Parsonage, & at Mr Stangers;tiles <slates> were flying about the street like crows. We on the hill
here fared better than our neighbours, – a slate or two from the roof, & a brick or two from the chimney were all our losses. You
have doubtless heard of your windfalls. Lord William
I was grieved to read of Sir Charles Malets death.r Forbes’s book
I have been vexed at to see that what I had said of your friend Bowles in the last Quarterly has been cut down, & converted by this mutilation
into an equivocal kind of compliment, – or at best but a cold, half-praise. – which I should be the last man to offer. My words were –
Bowles – who yet lives to enjoy his fame, & to whom we gladly take
this opportunity of returning our thanks for the pleasure & benefit which we derived from his poems in our youth.”
Poor Mungo Parksthro’ a rock, & be
navigable during its passage. Little as we know of the Niger, we certainly should have heard of this wonder of the world if it had
existed. But setting this aside, which alone would induce me to reject the whole tale as a fiction, is it likely that Park with only
eight men in his boat, & an army upon the rock, over the door-way as it is called to oppose his passage with arrows stones &c –
& a very strong current in his favour, should keep make his slaves keep the canoe against the current while he fought
with the army? Seeing [MS obscured] gauntlett boldly, – or at first sight of the force which was brought against him have turned back,
– or have landed & given up the property for the sake of which he was attacked –
A Dissenting Minister by name Campbell,xxx top of the cork & left resting on op <over> the mouth of the bottle, & left there, the cork
being waxed afterwards. He & the Captain both affirm that when they drew the bottle up, the cork had not been
forced in, & yet the bottle was full of sea-water, which must have come thro’ the glass. The thing appears
impossible, – but tho’ I have not the slightest respect for this writers judgement I have full confidence in <cannot
doubt> his veracity, & it is equally in unaccountable how this could have happened, if it did happen, – or how two
persons should have supposed been deceived, if it did not.
Our Ladiesx thanks for the Brawn. Present my respects to Colonel Hill,