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BL Add. MS 28268, ff. 358–59
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish 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.
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Your last was very agreeable, and very much wishd for, but contained nothing of Burton. Well, I suppose we must give it up. I am afraid Mr Phillips is ill, and I may have had brighter hopes in that quarter than were warranted by any friendships that may have existed between us.
—Sunday 17th—You see I had intended to write sooner, but Miss
Badger came in for a gossip and put me out. I am happy to say that Mr Weston is still better, or in
fact as well as the concerns of the world will let him. Miss Weston is quite
well, but if you should write to her pray remember to say nothing that will
intimate that you had heard of her brother’s ill health. I will give you ample
and full sufficient reasons for this injunction hereafter. I suppose you have
learnd by this time that Whitbreads Gamekeeper was lately shot by a gang of poachers? It
happen’d in that part of the Southill
road leading down to the lodge gate from peppercorn’s farm, and not far from a
large Single Oak which you may remember standing on the right, near the
roadside. The Funeral past through this place on Wednesday. He is buried
somewhere beyond Hitchen.
I am truly glad to hear of even the remotest prospect of your
getting employment, and if your entertainers mention the subject again I advise
you by every consideration of love and interest to accept that, or any similar
offer. I want your company more than you can imagine, it is therefore much against the grain of my affection that I thus urge
with warmth and earnestness your continuance abroad at least till after March. I
give you the following reasons for such earnestness.
Up to this moment I cannot even guess what I
shall get for my reversion of copy. If I get but a small sum I must make it
larger by parting with half my share of the whole concern,
which will reduce our income by just
half.—Whether I be compeld to this or not, all the Town knows that I must
probably move at Lady-day. And I can not untill I learn my London affairs, judge
either of my ability to hire another House at all, or of what path I shall take.
There seems to be no House in the Town fit for our purpose. This is too large
and some others would be too small. If you return to see me in the depth of my
uncertainty and trouble, and then have to move with us in three months, it will
make your home very uncomfortable. Would to God I could receive you better, but
if you come home sooner, here is my Heart and my porridge pot now and for life.
I write to your Reason, and not to your affection. The latter is my treasure, I wish it would pay my debts!
Yet make yourself happy on my account. I am not deprest, I am not ill, but this
plaguy suspence worries me sadly sometimes. I shall know my fate as to London in
a few weeks, and the rest must depend on that. Learn all you can. Make yourself
usefull. Yours ultimately must be the gain. You have given a very good critique
on the Orphan, I should have liked to have seen it. We have mountebanks in the
Town. Leevit won a shoulder of mutton, and one of the Wright’s, a leg.—
—All in the House have had colds but myself—The post hour is come, and my fingers numbd with cold, God bless my dear girl, and reward all her friends.
Harvey has sent us some little Davy’s