BIB_ID
107695
Accession number
MA 9946
Creator
Cumberland, Richard, 1732-1811.
Display Date
Royal Tunbridge Wells, England, 1801 June 2.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 25.5 x 20.8 cm
Notes
Cumberland gives the date of writing as "Tuesday noon." There is a postmark of June 3, 1801, which fell on a Wednesday, suggesting that the letter was written the previous day.
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
Address panel with postmarks: "Sir James Bland Burges / Dartmouth Street / Westminster."
Removed from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London: Printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly, 1791); PML 9812-9815; volume IV, page 400.
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
Address panel with postmarks: "Sir James Bland Burges / Dartmouth Street / Westminster."
Removed from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London: Printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly, 1791); PML 9812-9815; volume IV, page 400.
Summary
Condemning "the British Critic" for publishing "unfavorable Comments upon parts & passages of a Work, which has been confidentially submitted to his correction for months before it went to Press;" writing disparagingly of reviewers generally: "I never read their monthly trash ; never purchas'd one in my life, never will;" urging Burges not to take their opinions on his writing to heart; adding "Let me entreat of you to countermand your monthly Magazines of nonsense, and never read another line of their dirty ink;" advising Burges on renting or buying a house from Cumberland's nephew Tom Ridge; reporting on the fitness and readiness of the military companies he is overseeing: "They have unanimously pledg'd themselves to serve at an hour's notice, & I have thoughts of offering them for service within Engl'd indiscriminately. Believe me, my friend, they are in ye finest order, and men of ye very best stamp."
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