BIB_ID
81286
Accession number
MA 9197
Creator
Cambridge, Richard Owen, 1717-1802.
Display Date
[1792] February 20.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1906.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 23.1 x 18.8 cm
Notes
Cambridge does not give a place of writing, but, based on internal evidence, he appears to have written this letter in Twickenham.
His correspondent is identified as Malone in a pencil note on the letter. Cambridge's inquiry about Sir Joshua Reynolds (Malone was a close friend of Reynolds and served as his literary executor) supports this identification but it is not definite.
A note in pencil on the letter dates it to 1791 or 1792. However, Reynolds was in good health in February 1791; he sickened suddenly in the fall of 1791 and died on February 23, 1792. If Cambridge's inquiry in this letter is interpreted to refer to Reynolds's health, a 1792 dating is more likely.
This letter was removed from from an extra-illustrated version of Letters of James Boswell Addressed to the Rev. W.J. Temple (London: Richard Bentley, 1857) that had been enlarged to three folio volumes with the addition of autograph letters and 258 portraits "as collected by E. Hornby." It was in Volume II, on page 109. Other letters from the volumes are now catalogued as MA 981.1-109.
His correspondent is identified as Malone in a pencil note on the letter. Cambridge's inquiry about Sir Joshua Reynolds (Malone was a close friend of Reynolds and served as his literary executor) supports this identification but it is not definite.
A note in pencil on the letter dates it to 1791 or 1792. However, Reynolds was in good health in February 1791; he sickened suddenly in the fall of 1791 and died on February 23, 1792. If Cambridge's inquiry in this letter is interpreted to refer to Reynolds's health, a 1792 dating is more likely.
This letter was removed from from an extra-illustrated version of Letters of James Boswell Addressed to the Rev. W.J. Temple (London: Richard Bentley, 1857) that had been enlarged to three folio volumes with the addition of autograph letters and 258 portraits "as collected by E. Hornby." It was in Volume II, on page 109. Other letters from the volumes are now catalogued as MA 981.1-109.
Provenance
Major William Stone; purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co. before 1906.
Summary
Saying he is sorry that the weather has been so bad that "Neither could I expect you at Twickenham nor you me in London"; quoting a line from Henry IV, Part 2 (Act 2, Scene 2): "I allow this Wen"; explaining that Tolondron, the title of Giuseppe Baretti's book critiquing John Bowle's edition of Don Quixote, is the Spanish word for "wen" and "is generally used for a Blockhead: that is a swollen excrement without brains, matter or solidity or any kind of value or use"; writing further "As Shakespear applys it to Falstaff, Barretti gave it to Bowles for his ignorance of Spanish"; mentioning a note by Samuel Johnson about the use of the phrase "Ephesians of the Old Church" in Henry IV, Part 2 (also in Act 2, Scene 2): "I venture to say [...] that the first word was suggested to Shakespear by the character of the Ephesian Maden & the two last by the Antiquity of the Profession of the Ladies, for he means Whores not Topers"; asking after Sir Joshua Reynolds: "I would not trouble you to write unless you can give me a better acct. of Sir Joshua than I heard from Mrs. Bunbury [possibly Lady Sarah Bunbury]"; adding in a postscript that his comments about the wen and the Ephesians aren't for public circulation "but for yr. own private satisfaction as you knew Baretti, & his word puzzled everybody: & in return for the satisfaction I have reciev'd from so many of your discoveries."
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