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Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. 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 am at present giving up all the intervals I can spare from the pressing occupation of the Register,r Walpoles papers;mor trouble, will certainly be of some advantage in giving me his view of things, & serving as a map of the
country over which I am to travel.xxxx the latter part of it may almost be called a new species of
history; – he has been so accustomed to diplomatic papers that it is a history of the intrigues of Embassadors, & he writes as if
mere diplomacy were the moving principle of the revolutions of empires.
The reviewal of D’Israeli
Perhaps I may one day be near enough to drink your wine myself,meantime
at present you can only have my best wishes, for & a good word, which I fear is of little more value than mere good
will. – Heber is a man of whom his acquaintance say there is one place in which
they will never see him, – at the head of his own table. The fact is that he lives upon the move, & his establishment in
Shropshire has nothing to fix a batchelor there, & his home in town is a mere wareho receiving-house for books, where he
has barely room for a small breakfast table.
I hope Mrs May is thoroughly recovered. We are going on well as far as
concerns ourselves; – but Edith has a brother here, – who came to us for a visit, & is likely to find his last home here. He
is labouring under a complicated disease of <the> liver & lungs, which must bring him to the grave. – I see him but little,
for I am rarely out of my library except at meal-times; & never sit after dinner except but at such times as I have
guests. Still I cannot help feeling a heavy depression of m spirits; & as soon as possible I shall run into Durham for a
week or two, for the mere purpose of endeavouring to shake off the effects of this sight of death.
Edith joins me in remembrances to Mrs May –