Newton Bosworth, Cambridge, to J. H. Wiffen, Woburn Abbey, 25 October 1821.

Cambridge, 25th October, 1821.

My dear Friend,

         Allow me to thank you again and again for your very kind letter rec.d yesterday, and especially for your prompt and explicit reply to my enquiries respecting M.r Salmon, a reply which leaves me nothing to wish for as to the points I was desirous of ascertaining. Not knowing how I shall be situated tomorrow, when D.r Thackeray is to pack up the books he is about sending to you, I obey the injunction—“Carpe diem”—to write to you a few lines, or words, as opportunity may be afforded to me, in reply to the remainder of your letter, and for the purpose of continuing a correspondence which I shall always be happy to maintain, as far as I can, with my good friend at Woburn Abbey.

         I do not usually see the Quarterly; but your information excited my curiousity to see the next N.o   It has reached Cambridge, I find, but D.r T., who has seen it, assures me that there is nothing in it about your translation of Tasso, the whole article being taken up with an account of M.r Hunt’s, so that you must wait awhile, which I trust you will do with exemplary patience, for the awful declaration of your sentence in that count.[7]

         Friday evening—1/2 past 6.

         It was well I began yesterday, tho’ my pen was suddenly arrested in its progress. I have had no time till now to resume it; and I have just rec.d the D.r’s summons to let him have my parcel by 7 o’clock. I am much interested in your reflections suggested by his marriage & your own experience & prospects. I must take another turn among “Aonian Hours,” for the Tale, &c. I should be happy to satisfy your enquiry about the Baptists; but I scarcely know, at the moment, what book to send you, as almost all their writings which explain any of their tenets, are written in defence of the practice by which they are designated, and by which alone (or nearly so) they are distinguished as a body from the Independent dissenters in general. With the one exception I have mentioned, the Particular Baptists agree with the Calvinistic Independents in doctrine and discipline; and the General Baptists with the Arminian Dissenters. I venture to send you a Pamphlet, that I may not be negligent of your request, (tho not exactly what you wish for): it is the second in the bound volume. If you wish for any further information, I shall be happy to communicate it to you whenever you may express your desire to receive it. I enclose also, for your perusal, the Annual Report of the B. M. Socy, which I have this day rec.d  In return may I ask you, in what publication the tenets of the ‘Friends’ are most correctly given, and whether you can favour me with the perusal of it? 

         My watch is within a minute of 7, and I have the parcel to make ready. So with every good wish, I conclude—hoping soon to write again, for which, however, I hope also you will not wait; but assure yourself that, whether in or out of course, a letter from you will always give great pleasure to, my dear friend,

                                                                                                 Your’s most sincerely,

                                                                                                   N. Bosworth

Attached to the above letter is a letter from J. H. Wiffen, Woburn Abbey, to T. H. Horne, London, 19 February 1823.

My dear Sir,

         I have but a few moments to answer thy letter of yesterday morning. I by no means wished to insinuate that Mr Bosworth was not fully competent to give instruction in Writing & Arithmetic as well as the Classics.  Thou will form thine own opinion from the letter I send thee, which I judge likely to be more satisfactory than any opinion I should give upon the subject. The letter may be returned at any convenient opportunity, and with every wish for the welfare and success, believe me, with kind remembrances to Mr. Roy.  

                                                               Thy sincere friend   

                                                                                  J. H. Wiffen

Wob. Abb. Feb. 19th. 1823.

[1]Newton Bosworth (1778-1848), Baptist educator and writer, operated boarding schools in Cambridge (1803-23) and London (1823-34) before emigrating to Canada. 

[2]Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (1792-1836), Quaker writer and educator in Woburn, Bedfordshire, 

Text: Eng. MS. 373, f. 213a, JRULM.

[4]Most likely a reference to Thomas Salmon (1800-54), Methodist evangelist and later missionary to India for the London Missionary Society.

[5]Frederic Thackeray, M.D. (1774-1852) was a prominent physician in Cambridge (he resided for many years in St. Andrew’s Street) during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1766, his father, Thomas Thackeray (1736-1806), became one of the first surgeons at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. Frederic’s brother, William (1770-1849) was a prominent physician at Chester. Frederic succeeded his father at Addenbrookes Hospital in 1796. Frederic was apparently known to many members at St. Andrew’s Street, including Robert Hall, for in 1804 he was the attending physician during Robert Hall’s first mental breakdown. In 1817, Frederic became a member of the Cambridge County Club, the same club Robert Hall had joined in 1798. See Henry John Wale, My Grandfather’s Pocket-Book. From A.D. 1701 to 1796 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1883) 230; Timothy Whelan,  “‘I am the Greatest of the Prophets’: A New Look at Robert Hall’s Mental Breakdown, November 1804,” Baptist Quarterly 42 (2007): 116-19.

[6]The Quarterly Review was one of the most important periodicals of its day, with William Gifford (1756-1826) serving as the initial editor, 1809-24. John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876) was editor from 1824 to 1853.

[7]A reference to Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, an Heroic Poem, translated by J. H. Hunt (1818), which was reviewed in the Quarterly Review in July 1821 (pp. 426-37). Wiffen had just published his Jerusalem Delivered. Book the Fourth … Being the Specimen of an Intended  … Translation in … Spenserian Verse; With a Prefatory Dissertation on Existing Translations (1821). His complete translation of Jerusalem Delivered would not appear until 1824.

[8]A reference to Wiffen’s Aonian Hours; and Other Poems (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819). 

[9]Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780-1862), bibliographer, scholar, and prolific author.

[10]Eng. MS. 373, f. 213b, JRULM.

[11]Wiffen’s letter to Horne was written shortly after Bosworth’s removal to London, where he established a new school at Hackney (see letters 147 and 148).