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Bodleian Library, Don. d. 3. 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 hope your Lordship goes on well with your contested election for Middlesex,r Pike Watts,
I have made an ugly discovery of a swelling in my neck, just above the collar bone, & a little to the right of the
windpipe, which I found out by my shirt collars becoming tight upon me. Edmondson
saw it yesterday. You know I just know enough of nosology to have in turn every imaginable disease; – however I persuaded x
myself that this was not an aneurism, because I could find no pulsation. Edmondson
is not certain whether it is an enlargement of some muscle whose name I do not remember, – or if it be something under that muscle
which protrudes it, & which he imagines may be some of those hydatids who seem to have taken a fancy to me. You know I have two
lumps of them on my head & there is a third coming. If it be so, he says, they will make way to the surface & suppurate. But
there is no soreness nor any pain whatever. He has given me a discutient lotion, & if that fail will apply a mercurial plaister for
the same purpose, – & he desires me to use no muscular exertion that I can avoid. I am not sensible of having straind myself, – tho
it is very possible I may have done so, for I am fond of muscular exertion, such as hanging by the hands from a bough &c. Aneurism,
he says, it is not: which of course he would say, – but I believe him; – nor is it any thing in the nature of a wen. In short it is
some damned thing or nother, as the Hampshire foxhunter said of his dyspepsy, – & I cannot button my shirt-collar & must not
row in a boat, – which prohibition at this season is an evil.
I have worked very hard this quarter for the Review for a reason which you may easily conjecture.
Murray means I believe to announce my Hist: of the Peninsular War in this
forthcoming number.xxx keep me in a steady jog trot to the end of the journey. To days proof
of Brazilx information as I could desire upon that subject.
In the Panorama (which is on my xxxx xx establishment of Periodicals) it is stated that a late Brazil packet
when 1000 miles from any land was covered with a yellow dust in some places half inch deep. A volcano is supposed:any volum there was an eruption at the time either
in the Canaries or the Azores, xx we should have heard of it ere this, – or certainly shall hear. If I believe
that these showers proceed from the same cause as the sky-stones,
A Mr Scoresby of Whitby proposes to travel over the ice to the North Pole in sledges. I like his
scheme & his reasonings better than I should like the journey. He has often been in the Whalers as far North as they go, &
therefore has some experience of the climate.
Shall we see you in August? Have you got a new house, or got rid of your old one? How is Gooch? – I shall certainly be in town at the fall of leaf, if not prevented by any
unforeseen ill. The childs ear continues in the same state, – & a similar
discharge now takes place from the other. The hearing is not affected, & therefore I suppose not in danger, – but I wish the
disease were removed – Edmondson will do nothing, & evidently dislikes to be
spoken to about it. Excepting this & my own neck we are doing well. My complaint you see is neck or nothing, – which is as bad a
pun as ever was laughed at by virtue of our old contract. Remember me at Champion Hill