Transcript
Yarmouth;
Monday, 9 Dec[embe]r 1799.
Sir Herbert Croft returns Mr Bush {1} the vol. of Johnson containing the life of Young, {2} with many thanks. He will thank Mr B. to say to Mr Turner, the banker, that, from what he has heard of him in different quarters here, it w[oul]d afford Sir H. C. much pleasure to have the honour of making the acquaintance of Mr Turner, & to show him something that he is writing. But he, first, wishes Mr Turner to look at a book he publish’d on the continent; that he may see, by that & by the french dedication at the end to Sir H. C., how he has employ’d his time abroad; &, by the copy of Bishop Douglas’s letter at the beginning, that he has no occasion to blush for what drove him abroad. {3}—On account of his situation (w[hic]h he trusts will end very shortly, when Lord & Lady Dysart & Lady Croft come from the Isle of Wight to Helmingham in Suffolk), {4} Sir H. C. wishes the liberty he has thus taken with Mr Turner not to be known; especially, too, as the jealousy of others, here, might take offence.
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Letters missing from words abbreviated by superscript letters have been supplied in square brackets.
{1} Frederick Bush, a Yarmouth bookseller, who reprinted Croft’s Chatterton and ‘Love and Madness’ in 1800.
{2} The life of Edward Young in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets was written by Croft himself. Croft’s Letter from Germany (see below) contains an epigraph from Young’s sixth Satire. It may be that he was obliged to borrow a copy of the book because his library had been sold in 1797 to defray some of his debts.
{3} The book referred to, a copy of which appears to have accompanied the present letter, was probably A Letter from Germany to the Princess Royal of England on the English and German Languages, which Croft published at Hamburg in 1797. This does not contain a letter from Bishop Douglas or a French dedication but it is possible that those items were copied in by hand. According to Gilbert Burgess (Introduction to The Love Letters of Miss H and Mr R, 1775-1779), there is a letter in the British Museum (Egerton MSS 2185) from Croft to Bishop Douglas, ‘in which he complains of having been cold-shouldered by Pitt, whose favour he had tried to gain by offering to insert verses in favour of that politician in book he was writing’, and another (Egerton MSS 2186, ff. 88-93) to Bishop Douglas’s son, the Rev. W. Douglas, ‘written from Exeter Gaol, “the common prison—pudet hoc opprobria!” as Croft says, where he was imprisoned for a debt of £40, which he hopes Mr Douglas will send at once.’
{4} Lady Dysart and Lady Croft were sisters. Lady Dysart’s husband Wilbraham had succeeded to the earldom earlier in the year (on 20 February), and Helmingham Hall was one of the properties he inherited.