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British Library, Add MS 47890 . 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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These vile things from Bristol are not yet arrived, & I begin to fear they never will, because there are a set of
thieves scattered thro these northern counties who have made the waggon warehouses their object, & are said to have plundered to a
prodigious amount.
We have <had> the loveliest autumn that ever was remembered in this country. Our garden was in full flower till the middle of November.
Your information concerning my Uncle was not quite accurate,
– the choice of those two livings has been offered him, – it appears that he cannot xxx xxx either with his present
preferment, & tho Streatham is 1000£ a year he does not think it worth his while to give
up 600£ in one of the finest parts of Herefordshire in exchange for it. This was my latest account from him. He was then about to leave
London for Marydown, the seat of his wifes father Mr Wither,
Pople is provokingly slow with my book,you & any body else chuses to call them so. By whatever name they may be christened mine they are,
& I shall always be as ready to acknowledge them, as any body can be to father them upon me. I have spoken of all parties with
bitter contempt, as it becomes an Englishman to do.
Kehama is finished.r Southey! – There is nothing like having enough to do, Sir Charles, & with a history of my own, a history of the booksellers, & a long
poem in hand in hand <at once>, besides a few stray etceteras, I am not likely to yearn for want of something to think
about. Pelayo is in blank verse, – it is a noble subject, – the foundations are laid well, & I hope & trust (if it please God
that I live & do well) to raise a goodly superstructure. By way however of not losing time it is my intention to begin Robin Hood
also,xxx xxx – when I have once got fairly under
weigh, it will be smooth sailing to the end of the voyage.
We are not quite xxx easy about Bertha, who is on the
point of getting her first upper teeth. – will you read this to King, – she is
subject to very frequent obstructions of bile, – that is to say the fæces are often white or clay coloured, a dose of calomelxxx makes them very green & fœtid, – but things are hardly set right before they get wrong again in the same way. And
after the calomel has been taken about two hours it has the effect of vomiting her. – I am somewhat alarmed at this because Emma died of some anomalous liver complaint, tho it was not preceded by these
symptoms. Nothing is more common among infants in this country than slight attacks of jaundice, – but in this case the derangement
occurs far more frequently than I have seen in any other instance
Are you not astonished at Coleridges regularity?th numbermadness form of madness on which the fiction (as I take it to be) is founded, really did exist some fifty years ago in
Denmark, – as I well remember to have read, – & was put a stop to by condemning such fanatics to perpetual imprisonment instead of
death. Their practise was to kill children, in order to be put to death for it.
The M Magazine
What a misfortune not to be in London during the war of Covent Garden!!