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National Library of Wales, MS 4812D . 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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I received yours & its enclosure yesterday – the day on which it could not be acknowledged. – I tried the double
writer last night
I am deeply obliged by what you have done for my brother. He is now at Taunton with his Uncle & namesake. The estate which has been left to a stranger lets for 500£ a year, & this it seems is what I was heir at law to, for in the Vale of Taunton, where the rest of the land lay Borough English prevails. My younger brother is therefore presumptive heir – whose history I may as well bring down to the present time – After thrice leaving the navy he obtained a commission in the Caermarthenshire Militia, from which he has now been dismissed – it is said for plundering some French prisoners under his guard!, – & is now turned strolling player under the name of Smith. – What a career for one who is not yet 18!
Surely this rocket expedition is something more than foolish. The French have only to take sure aim with these very
rockets
Do not forget to make enquiries respecting the duty on books. You must know better than I whether the P. court is to
removexxx <it> will & that in consequence my
Uncle’s library must ere long be sent over to England.
The fact respecting Palmerin seems to be this – that the French & Italian translations were printed before the
Port: original.dates of the editions in Lord Spencers
library
The little one & his mother go on well.
God bless you
RS
Friday Oct. 17. 1806.
I know not my dear Wynn how you will like these lines, or whether you will like them at all, – but I threw them off, such as they are, an hour after I heard of the old mans death, & now your double-paper has induced me to copy them fair & add the last six lines.
You will not wonder that I want to have another long poem in hand. it is something to think about in a solitary walk.
& something to dream about if one lies awake at night. – which fills up the time till sleep comes, & does not prevent sleep –
as the thoughts of any reasoning composition would do – because ideas come like breathing without any sensible effort. & one rather
seems to receive than to produce them. I hesitate between three subjects – the Deluge, Pelayo the restorer of the Spanish Goths,
You do not perhaps know this history intimately enough to see its capabilities. Nothing more is required as data than one splendid event, characters of sufficient interest, & a final issue of sufficient importance. This
is all which one need ask from history. My characters would be these. Pelayo – a hero of fifty, – on whom I could throw a new interest
by making him not so much a Goth as a Cantabrian, – an ancient-Briton-Spaniard, – for which there is authority enough for my purpose.
His daughter Ormisinda, Munuza the tributary governor who chuses to have her for his wife, & so irritates Pelayo to revolt. Young
Alonso, who married her & became King in her right, Count Julian & Oppas among the Moors. Egilona the Queen of Rodrigo, now
wife of a Moorish chief. Rodrigo himself as a hermit, & Florinda – in a state of half derangement, finally killing herself in her
fathers sight. The storming of Gijon, the death of Munuza & the marriage of Alonso would form the conclusion.
In all this I have a second-sight of so many situations in which strong passions are called out. So much zeal, so much patriotism, so much intrepidity, remorse & hope, – such pictures of mountain solitude, religious caverns, desolated convents, & of that pervading life & spirit which historical truth would communicate to the whole – that to use a common phrase my fingers itch to be at it. And it is some inducement that I have already acquired so much knowledge of the whole temper, laws, & manners of the time & place.
If you tell Lord H. that I think of this & of Aljubarrota he will lift up his hands & eyes in deprecation of the Portugueze story, – for they completely Castillianized him in Spain. But he will like the thoughts of Pelayo. Yet in the Portugueze story there is one finer character, one finer incident than I can feign, & I have the advantage of knowing the ground, & all the accompaniments –