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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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Thank you for the half-notes.
The state of Roderick is this. The second edition was 1500 copies (larger than I ever printed of a poem before,) two
thirds of this impression being gone, the Long Men of the Row have ordered a
third edition of 2000 to be printed without delay.
I have worked very hard for this number. The Wellington article, as far as the proofs have yet gone, reads better than I anticipated, – for to whisper a secret in your
ear, I wish Murray may not discover that he had offered me a most ridiculous price
for it.possible that I should write better, or take more pains, in
proportion to the price which, I am paid. Those articles ought to be paid best, of which the materials are either entirely home-drawn,
– or else of so rare a kind that the writer has a monopoly of them. But for such subjects as Nelsonleast trouble, require least thought, & excite in me least
interest. I hope the Bibliopole of Albemarle Street will not find this out, – nor
his Editor either. It would perhaps provoke you to see how the former writes to
me about fame, & reputation &c &c as attached to these things: it only amuses me.
You will receive my poems soon.
I want you here, grievously. Here are some chapters of Dr Daniel Dove
Somebody has whispered a secret in my ear which I will tell you in Latin not of Ciceros school, but of Swifts.
Socer ure noces rea das apio ne.
And thereby hangs a tale about Mrs Coleridge, – which you shall
have when you come to compare noses. – From noses to necks is no x easy transition. I have found out an ugly swelling upon
my own, – just above the collar bone, & on the right of the wind pipe. Edmondson does not know whether it be the muscle itself that is swoln, – or whether something under it protrudes it. It is
not a wen, & it is not an aneurism, which I of course thought of. It is not painful, – but I cannot button my collar, & am
ordered to use no muscular exertion that I can avoid. At present he applies discutients. I am <do> not remember any
strain. At present it is no inconvenience, nor should I have discovered it but for my shirt collar; – but now that it is discovered my
finger goes oftener there than it ought to do. Edmondson rather suspects some
hydattids under the muscles: in which case he says they will come to the surface & thus suppurate. If the Devil could take them,
without taking me too he should be welcome to them. I have already two settlements of them upon my scalp, & a third beginning
there.