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National Library of Scotland, MS 42551 . 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 forgot when writing yesterday to thank you for the sheets of Park, & likewise to say something concerning them,
which, if your life be not printed, it may perhaps be worth while to suggest to his biographer.
That Mungo Park is dead there can be very little doubt, but I entirely disbelieve the account which is given of his death.
I do not believe that such a river as the Niger flows thro a rock & is navigable thro it. Such
a ‘wonder of the world’ would have been heard of at some time or other, Herodotus would have known it (who knew in what course the
Niger flows)
But supposing this fact to be admitted (tho I upon it alone I should repeat the whole story) the other
circumstances are grossly improbable. under <In> the circumstance <situation> which are <there>
represented Park would have done of one of three things; – he would have turn’d back, – or he would have landed &
xxx given up the property which tempted the Africans to this attack, – or lastly he would, having the current in his
favour have fairly run the gauntlet, – it was hit, or miss, – if he once got under the rock he was safe. But he is represented as
making his negroes kept <keep> the boat back against the stream, whilst he & his party fought. against
– Indeed there is nothing in romance more incredible than all this.
Park’s plan was a very unwise one, & his conduct towards his people when they fell sick, inhuman to the last
degree. Wherever a man sickened it was his duty to have left him at the first inhabited place, with assurances to the inhabitants of
ample payment if they delivered him at the coast. But for a medical man to drag them along when they could not sit upon the saddle, –
& leave them dying upon the road, – or to be eaten by beasts before they were dead – it is monstrous! monstrous!
____
I return the proof by this post:make xx xx xx <are
felt in> the general effect of the style.
And now let me solicit a favour of you. I never complain of alterations in my articles, or remonstrate against them, –
tho it is not possible that any mans writings can suffer more from mutilation, because no man can takes more
<such> pains to render them coherent, & make the transitions natural: the cutting out part of a paragraph destroys this, –
& the parts which are then joined together look as a hand would do if it could be fixed to the elbow after the arm were taken away.
I say this in confidence, – & what I have to ask xx is, that as the articles are always set up as they are printed, I
should be greatly obliged to you if in future you would have a second set of proofs struck off which I might preserve for my own
satisfaction & use: much being lost in this way, of which I might sometimes be glad to avail myself.
You see I have bestowed some rhymes upon Capt Lewis & Clarke.
y. 1815